The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • “Friendly fire” at the dawn of a new era: an exchange that may prove prophetic

    “Friendly fire” at the dawn of a new era: an exchange that may prove prophetic

    Note:

    I got the response below from Mallam Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant (Media and Publicity) to President Buhari to the three-part open letter that I addressed to him in this column over the last three weeks. The response speaks for itself. I was both surprised and pleased to receive it; more importantly, I am glad to have it published in this column so that it will reach as many of those who read the series to which Shehu is responding. In the spirit in which Shehu writes, I respond to him with the hope that the exchange here will clarify many things that were on my mind when I wrote but were probably merely implicit in my series. In my short response to Shehu, I have made these things more explicit.

    BIODUN JEYIFO’S FRIENDLY FIRE

    Garba Shehu

    Dear Biodun,

    Thank you for your letter to me, published in The Nation newspaper over the past three weeks. In addition to your generous but humbling praises of the work I do for the President, all three parts of the essay contained a profusion of goodwill towards the President himself. Behind these cordial notes however, the essay seemed to have done some straight talk on the need for a fair and balanced government structure, which is fair enough. It equally contained a sense of forewarning, and, perhaps, frustration on the part of the writer.

    For me, what it all amounts to, is “friendly fire”, or better still, a mock dialectical battle. The Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sunusi (The Second) said it all a week ago.

    Your friends are those who tell you that which you don’t want to hear. They don’t love you if all they tell you is what pleases you. I read it with a sense of pride at being part of a government such as that of President Muhammadu Buhari’s, where Nigerians are able to enjoy such freedom of expression on the pages of a national daily. Our great country has indeed come a long way from the days of censorship and clampdown on the press, and I am grateful to God for granting me the unique opportunity to be a part of this new dispensation in Nigeria’s history.

    Indeed, my participation in this government nullifies a number of points you made in your article.  My very presence among President Buhari’s staff destroys the foundation of your argument that our Commander-in-Chief is parochial and not accepting of new people in his environment. If that statement were true, President Buhari would have chosen someone other than Garba Shehu as his spokesperson.  I would have been considered unqualified for the job.

    For over a decade, I was the spokesperson for former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who stood against President Buhari, not only in the last elections but in two previous ones: 2003, 2007 and to a lesser extent 2011.  Despite this, after Atiku conceded defeat in the December 10, 2014, APC primaries and pledged his full support to the Buhari candidacy, I was appointed as the head of the APC Campaign Media and Publicity Committee.  Thus, President Buhari not only trusted me with his presidential campaign but, thereafter, made me his spokesperson. He gave me the privilege of attending nearly all his meetings.  Clearly, President Buhari is not distrustful of new people around him as you alleged.

    You also lent your enormous weight to those who accuse the President of punishing individuals and parts of the country that voted against him.  This criticism of the President began as paranoia in the minds of some Nigerians, when the President’s initial appointments appeared lopsided.  At the time, he had appointed barely a fistful out of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of appointments that he is expected to make over the course of his administration. His staff at the time he spoke was made up of only a Personal Assistant, a Senior Special Assistant on House Hold Affairs, the Special Assistant responsible for his kitchen, a Special Adviser on Media, and myself. At that time, there was no Chief of Staff, no Secretary to the State Government, and none of the many other key appointments that followed.  This remark wasn’t intended as a philosophical foundation for government appointments. Instead, it was meant to be an explanation to what then had happened. If there are a hundred balls in a drum and the first seven someone picks are all blue, can anyone honestly and scientifically declare that the drum is filled with blue balls?  Of course not.  Not if they studied basic mathematics and if they understand probability.

    Yes, I am quite aware of that statement allegedly credited to President Buhari during his trip to America.  But no, he never said that politics is a system of reward, and that you give favours to only those who voted for you. The infamous remark was removed from its context by people whose stock in trade is to fuel the flames of public distrust. Unfortunately, critics won’t just let go of this falsehood even after the publication of the full transcript, which clearly shows that President Buhari’s meaning was distorted. Pity. What he actually said on that occasion was that in politics in its classic meaning, you give rewards to only those that chose you.  However, he went on to add that he was a different kind of leader; that he, unlike the average leader, would be balanced. “I will respect the constitution in ensuring a fair representation for all,” he added.

    Dear Biodun, please I encourage you to give the benefit of the doubt to the President as you promised you would. Let us give the President a chance to do his work.  He is bent on improving the economy, on extinguishing corruption and on restoring security to every region of Nigeria.  The success of this government is not to President Buhari’s advantage alone.  All Nigerians will benefit when he does well, when he accomplishes that for which we installed him with our millions of votes.  Let us therefore not succumb to the distractions from mischief-makers with no one’s interest in mind but their own.  There is nothing to be gained by propagating accusations that have no basis in reality.  Thankfully, the media in the country, including our foremost columnists such as your good self, to their credit, have shown that they are fully aware of the challenges facing the country at this time and our much-admired President. As President, Muhammadu Buhari will walk his talk as a converted democrat and a civil, fair and a balanced leader. Time will prove him right on all counts.

    Thanks, again, for taking the time to write me.  I wish you all the best as you continue to apply your pen to being a voice for the masses of Nigeria.

    May your ink always speak the truth.

    Garba Shehu.

    My Response:

    I am heartened by Garba Shehu’s affirmation that we are now in a new dispensation in which the government will fully respect freedom of the press within the rule of the law and will never again clamp down and harass those whose views it finds critical of its policies, actions and inactions. However, I would like to remind Shehu that much as I take this particular affirmation of his in good faith, freedom of expression is not something that has suddenly descended on the country with the coming into power of the new administration; it is something that many of us have fought for all our adult lives and will continue to fight for as long as we are alive. Indeed, I would also like to remind Shehu that in the darkest days of the last administration of the PDP under Goodluck Jonathan when Buhari and his supporters were being hounded, we did not keep quiet but spoke up vigorously against the nefarious humiliations of and injustices against Buhari in particular and many of his supporters in general.

    In his response, Shehu completely keeps silent on my reference to, indeed my quotations from the transcript of the President’s interview on the BBC Hausa Service on Tuesday, October 13, 2015. Shehu also keeps silent on my reference to reports of Nasir El Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, to the effect that he stated in a public arena for the whole of Kaduna State and the country to hear that the parts of the his state that did not vote for him should expect to be treated differently than the parts that voted for him. Finally, Shehu is also completely silent on the fact that in my series, I dealt rather extensively on trends within the leadership of the APC that I consider ominously neo-feudal.

    I draw attention to these “silences” in Shehu’s response because they show that in his understandable resolve to rise to the defence of his boss, the President, Shehu consciously or unconsciously omits the fact that in my series, my criticisms of President Buhari were located in the more general and far more consequential critique of trends in the leadership of our new ruling party, the APC. In now briefly repeating these aspects of my series that Shehu leaves out of his response, I wish to make my motivation for making a general critique of the APC – and not criticisms of President Buhari – the centre of gravity of the series. Because this is a huge subject that cannot be dealt with in one piece in a weekly column, I shall have to be very brief, very summative in the following profile of the dynamics of neo-feudalism in the APC as our new ruling party, hoping that the skeletal account that I give here can be more fully explored in the weeks and perhaps months ahead of us.

    Everyone knows or thinks that the alliance between the Northwest/Northeast and the Southwest, or between the CPC and the ACN, was the critical or deciding factor that made it possible for the APC to emerge as our new ruling party, not forgetting the mass defections from the erstwhile ruling party, the PDP. On their own, neither the CPC nor the ACN could have ever become a nation-wide ruling party. I acknowledge these generally well-known facts but derive my perspectives from elsewhere, precisely from what these two parties were before they merged to become the new ruling party. Respectively, Buhari and Tinubu were the moving forces in the CPC and the ACN. Buhari did not base his towering dominance in the CPC on money; he based it on his charisma and the facts and myths surrounding his role and place in the country’s political history. So far at least, within the APC, he has made “reward” of those who have been loyal to him over the decades a cornerstone of his key appointments in his administration. Hopefully, this will be a temporary, passing phase of his presidency.

    As the preeminent political boss of the ACN, Tinubu derived his colossal influence in the party from total control of the “war chest” that was used to fight the PDP and keep control of many states in the Southwest in the grip of the party. No committee, no sub-group in the ACN had any say whatsoever in how Tinubu either amassed that “war chest” or spent it on behalf of the party; all that is known is that he did disburse a lot of handouts from the “war chest” to leading members of the party fighting for their political survival against the relentless onslaughts of the PDP. So far, there is little evidence to show that Tinubu will move away from a reliance on this base of his influence within the new ruling party.

    In conclusion so far, neither Buhari nor Tinubu seems inclined to put their days and ways in the CPC and the ACN respectively behind them. Neo-feudalism has survived into the bourgeois-democratic era in many parts of the world, including Europe. But only as vestiges, not as the linchpins of the political order. Until ideas and practices that promote progress, peace, justice and unity between our peoples replace the predominance of the currently dominant neo-feudalist currents of the APC, the party will never become a ruling party that fights for the vast majority of Nigerians across the length and breadth of the country. But this is material for other pieces in future reflections in this column.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Afenifere: Still on that threat of secession

    Afenifere: Still on that threat of secession

    With a raging Boko Haram war, an economy just getting out of the woods and an imperilled security situation, it was not the best seeing Afenifere threatening not only to expel Nigerians from other parts of the country but also suggesting it might lead her own people  out of Nigeria. 

    “Since the federal government is obligated to protect the life and property of every citizen, urgent steps should be taken to avert further killings and destruction of farmlands by herdsmen. If the Buhari administration does not discharge its constitutional duty by stopping the unwarranted civil disturbance, we shall not hesitate to pray the Federal High Court to compel it to act responsibly in the circumstances by ensuring the protection of the fundamental rightso f every farmer to life and property” – Femi Falana, SAN.

    The front line lawyer and activist, Femi Falana, SAN,  who authored the epigram to this piece, will not be the last to give us the benefit of his views on the troubling problem of the Fulani herdsmen which recently got exacerbated by that totally irreverent treatment to which Chief Falae was subjected by some Fulani urchins. Indeed, as soon as the highly regarded Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, whose guest I was this past week as he hosted society’s crème de la crème at a reception for his son, and new silk, Dr. Oladapo Olanipekun, SAN,  read my article on the subject, he called to discuss the issue with me.  Although he was beside himself with rage at Chief Falae’s macabre experience and how, unchecked, it could make peaceful co-existence extremely difficult, he nonetheless agreed with me that finding a lasting solution was the important thing. That, indeed, is precisely what I advocate. Indeed, the situation could only worsen if, as the Arewa Consultative Forum has now met the Afenifere threat with theirs, government, at all levels, do not move proactively to find that modus vivendi.

    One of the points I made in my first intervention is exactly what Mr. Falana has also done. Afenifere is an organisation of highly regarded Nigerian elders, patriots, in fact, who have more than paid their dues. Afenifere has all it takes, and is, indeed, in a pole position to put President Muhammadu Buhari to task on giving this problem all the seriousness it deserves with a view to arriving at a comprehensive solution. The president should be able to do this in collaboration with stakeholders and elders, as well as with governments at all levels and in all parts of the country. If in the past, as an ordinary Nigerian, he had championed the cause of his ethnic compatriots, irrespective of whatever they did, especially as in the then Oke-Ogun case, this is the time to put the fire to his feet with a view to making him demonstrate that he is now a national leader, indeed the President of the Federal Republic.

    For the warring groups, this is no time to play the politics of any assumed ethnic superiority or one to gift some abrasive young men the opportunity to drag Afenifere into pulling their chestnuts out of the fire for them, repeating all those names they called the Hausa/Fulani during the campaigns when it was trendy for them to be seen, in cahoots with Mrs Patience Jonathan, in demonising northerners and rubbishing their culture. On either side, there are things we do not expect elders to indulge in. Countries go to war but at the end of it all, they sit round the conference table, winner and loser alike, to iron things out and agree the peace terms. With a raging Boko Haram war, an economy just getting out of the woods and an imperilled security situation, it was not the best seeing Afenifere threatening not only to expel Nigerians from other parts of the country but also suggesting it might lead her own people  out of Nigeria. I believe that with all the good they have done the country, with the ingenious way they ensured that the goggled one could not kill the Yoruba in their millions, even if he succeeded in killing some and driving others into exile, our elders must be eager to leave behind legacies we can all be proud of. Peace is nowhere an easy commodity. We must therefore work assiduously for it and we expect our elders, God keep them, to lead in our continuing search for same. Nor can we forget that, as Professor Bola Akintehinwa put it in his robust  intervention, survival is the core  issue on both sides which then means it is a much more sensitive issue than the young Afenifere members could attempt to latch on to play a ‘Moses’ for the Yoruba people.

    Worse than all the above, however, is the belligerency we have seen demonstrated by both senators Musa Kwankwaso  and Shehu Sanni; two otherwise respected Hausa-Fulani senators who have shown such crass insensitivity and uncharacteristic illogicality that you begin to wonder if they are worth the respect usually accorded them on account of what we thought we knew about them. Their most unaccustomed sabre rattling, seeing only the rights of their murderous compatriot Fulani herdsmen, and feeling total unconcern for their victims, many of who are murdered or raped, apart from their destroyed farms, go a long way to suggest that it is men like these, Fulanis of power and of means, who provide these murderous hordes with their lethal arms. It further shows how ordinary Nigerians, across board, must never put their lives’ hopes and aspirations in the hands of unreflecting politicians. Why is it so difficult for these two senators to see beyond narrow ethnic considerations, knowing, full well, what a menace the Fulani herdsman has become all over the country but especially in states like Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, which they have turned to killing fields and Ondo, Ekiti but with Oyo bearing the brunt of their compatriots’ mindless gangsterism? Why is it beyond the politician to think national or even be rational for once? And why, as senators, has neither men raised the matter as one of urgent national interest in the hallowed red chamber?  Must politicians only think of the next election?

     In the contribution from which the epigram to this piece was taken, Femi Falana further suggested, and I quote: ‘states with large livestock population should take advantage of the Land Use Act to acquire land for the establishment of grazing reserves adding that in view of the increasing incident of cattle rustling, security measures should be put in place to police the grazing reserves which should, in turn, be phased out and replaced with ranches and abattoirs.” These, in my view, are very positive contributions but I was particularly impressed with what our much despised Nigeria police did this past week in Oyo State in order to secure a meaningful rapprochement between the two infernal enemies.

    As reported in The Nation of Monday 26, October 2015, the Oyo State command, as part of concerted efforts to curb the perennial conflict between Fulani herdsmen and farmers in the Oke Ogun, Ibarapa land, Oyo, Ogbomosho and other parts of the state, the Commissioner of Police, Lere Oyebade, summoned a peace meeting between the two warring groups at which representatives of traditional rulers and other stakeholders were present and far reaching decisions taken. In the advertised communiqué,  we learnt there would now be screening of  incoming herdsmen, apparently as a means of ensuring that undesirable elements do not infiltrate their ranks, that herdsmen should no longer threaten, intimidate or molest the farmers and members of their family, that incoming Fulanis will now be screened and recommended for settlement within particular local government areas by their own older compatriots. It is also now forbidden for herdsmen to carry firearms like AK47.  Additionally, herdsmen will ensure that movements of their flock are controlled at night, possibly by tying them to stakes, and elders of both sides are to monitor the lifestyle of their younger ones. The two obviously most critical decisions, however, revolve around the Fulani herdsmen ensuring that their flock do not graze on farm settlement or forest reserve and that on no occasion should either party resort to violence, no matter the level of provocation. This agreement, in my view, represents a fantastic template which the federal government, and government at all levels, elders and all peace-loving Nigerians should now further develop and made to work until large, and enough, number of ranches are established all over the country.

  • Change Matters

    Change Matters

    One good thing from the two groups that had used the internet to talk about Buhari’s government is that nobody had lost hope in his promise to change the country. 

    To many observers of public affairs, comments in non-traditional mainstream media have become the most fertile site for externalisation of the political subconscious of citizens. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the social media platform has become the mainstream media of the era, as it has become clear that more people in the third world have more access to the social media than they do to the mother of traditional mode of mass communication, the newspaper. The Buhari government and the party that he used to rise to the presidency need to pay closer attention to the social media than the government they have succeeded.

    Those citizens who believe more in the new media than in traditional mainstream media are already expressing frustration via the digital device. Young people have already written to Buhari’s daughter to share their frustrations with her father, with the threat to form a parallel government of ‘leaders of tomorrow.’ Older ones are also complaining about the slowness of the president and his decision to make fighting corruption his sole preoccupation among many problems calling for the attention of a government elected to change the content, style, and, if possible, form of the government that had been in vogue in the country to no avail for the past sixteen years.

    Adult expression of frustration includes the following: President Buhari is imitating or repeating some of the problems of the Jonathan government, instead of showing some creativity or innovativeness. Like the PDP, he had sent names of nominees to the Senate without indicating which portfolio for which they should be screened or considered, thus encouraging a RORO-type of screening by senators. He had chosen to be silent over investigation into the rules used to elect officers of the Senate while also choosing to pack sensitive security and electoral positions with people from his backyard, as if he had forgotten that there are six regions in the country. The president had been accused of travelling out of the country in a Jonathan-manner in an era of economic austerity. Rise in electricity supply which signalled change in June has been going down by the day. And Buhari’s presidency, according to his critics, has been lukewarm about indiscipline and lack of cohesion in his party, thus risking the stability of the party and his presidency in which citizens had invested heavy psychological and political capital, etc.

    Fortunately, there are other bloggers who are pleading for patience, stressing that the president had just started his four-year tenure and should be allowed to look through the mountains of papers he had inherited from a corrupt and non-performing government. His own sympathisers have reminded querulous Nigerians that it took sixteen years for the mess on ground to be created. Some fans of APC have also drawn the nation’s attention to the progress President Buhari has made in the fight against terrorism, drawing special attention to the government’s ability to put faces to Boko Haram by publishing photographs of 100 hitherto unknowable fanatics of the terrorist movement. On junketing abroad, Buhari’s friends on the internet have not failed to remind his critics of the president’s encouraging narrative of his administration in the foreign countries he had visited including India, where he warned Indian manufacturers to stop dumping substandard goods in Nigeria. His government has also advised the IMF to stop crying louder than the bereaved on the issue of denying foreign exchange to importers of items that any country worth its name should provide locally. They also reminded their readers of Buhari’s resolve to identify and punish looters of the country’s treasury. One good thing from the two groups that had used the internet to talk about Buhari’s government is that nobody had lost hope in his promise to change the country.

    However, it is worth reminding the president and his party that the tenure of this government of change has only 42 months left, to give citizens a changed political and economic reality. APC and President Buhari need to be reminded that most citizens who voted for him and his party, voted against sixteen years of deception of the ruling party he had replaced. Citizens are worried about the long-term impact of failure of the APC government at the centre. Citizens are afraid that such failure may leave the electorate with a Hobson’s choice in 2019.

    President Buhari, one-time military dictator and now one of Africa’s leading lights in democratic governance, needs to be reminded about common errors of the governments before his. Sweet-talking citizens by being long on promise and short on fulfilment has stopped working with the masses, hence their decision to vote for Buhari and APC despite intimidation of leaders and supporters of APC before the 2015 election. One promise from the president’s policy table is the decision to provide one free meal a day for school children. Now that his ministerial lists have been approved by the Senate, school children will find any excuse hard to accept if they still have to remain hungry while in school as from January.

    While many citizens seem indifferent to removal of petroleum subsidy, many others, especially Labor leaders who make a living by showing that they care for the working class, are clear about the need to subsidise price of petroleum in the country. Although there was some kind of fact-finding about subsidy during the administration of Jonathan, it is important for citizens to know the whole truth about this monster that is hardly affected by the forces of the market in a global market economy. Citizens need to know from an anti-corruption government why it has been difficult for the price of imported fuel to go down, months after the price of crude petroleum had collapsed in the world market. The good start his government has in respect of bringing back the country’s refineries should be consummated. If some of the refineries have to be sold, there is no reason why they cannot be sold to labour leaders and workers to manage for the benefit of citizens, instead of being sold to politically connected men and women. There also will be nothing wrong with organising a referendum to find out the preference of majority of citizens about subsidy, in relation to other forms of citizen assistance.

    Education has been for years one of the major sites of national failure for decades. Periodically, governments in the past had made token donations at the sector to convince citizens that the governments meant well. But no improvement had come to this sector for quite some time, if results of WAEC and NECO, are anything to go by. Not too long ago, federal ministers of education and finance were unequivocal in characterising most of the graduates from our universities unemployable. This sector requires immediate attention under Buhari’s presidency, not just with periodic infusion of funds but first with a thorough study by experts and actual stakeholders of what has gone wrong with education in a country that had produced the largest number of college students in Africa.

    A trademark of PDP governments in the last sixteen years has been secrecy. Citizens have been kept in the dark about how they were governed. Now that some APC leaders are boasting that some thieves of the State are returning stolen funds in order to avoid prosecution and punishment, President Buhari should tell citizens if this is true and how much has been recovered so far. Corruption amnesty, if it has been adopted as one of the ways to fight corruption, does not require that citizens are kept in the dark about the identity of those given amnesty and how the government plans to spend recovered stolen funds.

    Finally, the issue of oversize salaries and allowances paid to political office holders, particularly legislators, seems to have been off the radar, despite the public announcement of voluntary reduction of salary of the president and his deputy. The initial enthusiasm of the RMFAC on reviewing salaries and allowances in relation to the purse of the government has suddenly died down in the same manner that the talk between the police and the ministry of justice about report of investigation of forgery of rules in the Senate has gone mute. Impatient critics should be pleased that by next week the Buhari government will be fully formed as ministers will be on their seats to give details of where the country is heading. Change does not come easily and not without serious effort on the part of change agents and those who hope to benefit from change.

  • Between Ohaneze, Afenifere and Arewa, I ask again, where is Nigeria?

    Between Ohaneze, Afenifere and Arewa, I ask again, where is Nigeria?

    In this circumstance, Nigeria as a country is stillborn while Ohaneze lives, Arewa lives, Afenifere lives … You must agree that this is a crying shame

    A while back, I put forward the proposition that we have somehow contrived to get Nigeria lost somewhere in the thick folds of starched agbadas donned by our politicians. Many of you read the report and responded; I thank you indeed. To many of you who read it and merely grunted as if saying, tell us something we don’t know, I also grunt my thanks. To those of you who did not read the article, I shake my fist at you. Just be sure it does not happen again.

         In particular, I am giving a reply to someone who raised a question arising from one of my statements that getting Nigeria lost is neither a crying nor a laughing matter for the country. The reader had asked, what then should we do? Well, let me first explain what I mean. We cannot laugh off the fact of the loss because it is heavy. It is a little like a company running a deficit of billions of Naira and the chief executive blithely tells the shareholders at the AGM that the deficit is not something that cannot be laughed off. Well, yeah, if the company has credits of trillions and trillions. Even then, I can imagine some intrepid shareholders bursting their veins at the thought of such heavy drains on their profits.

          We also cannot sit and howl our heads off. As they say, life must go on. Just because we are howling does not mean that other people’s or nations’ lives will stop. They may stop momentarily to watch us howl but they will move on to continue their inventions. Believe me, it is because they are not stopping to watch nations howl that the industrialised world has now invented arm chairs for people to sit on (imagine this!) and even foldable arm chairs you can take with you to your village (imagine that!).

         So yes, we should neither laugh nor cry, but we can reassess our approach to national development. Right now, one of the strongest approaches we are adopting in Nigeria is regional affiliation. This affiliation is so strong that people do not identify themselves as Nigerians but according to their regional body. Unfortunately, the existence of these bodies is directly antithetical to the existence of the corporate body. This is why Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba people (as well as the other hundreds of minority groups) exist as concrete entities while ‘Nigerians’ only exist as an abstract entity. So, when we find ourselves outside the country, we present ourselves in this abstract sense as ‘Nigerians’; within the country however, we are content to live this big, fat lie.

        The lie began with the old Nigerian anthem that went ‘Though tribe and tongue may differ/ In brotherhood we stand’ and continues in this present anthem with words like ‘compatriots’, ‘fatherland’, ‘one nation’, etc. In practical terms, however, we are neither ‘compatriots’ nor do we ‘stand’ in ‘brotherhood’. How do I know this?

         To start with, do you know how many cries of marginalisation we have had to endure over the years? Let’s see now. During the years of Obasanjo and Jonathan, the Arewa north, the Afenifere west and the Ohaneze east never tired of singing tunes of being marginalised by the government in the distribution of public posts and amenities. Barely into this present era of Buhari, we have now been having earfuls of Ohaneze’s loud tunes on how the eastern areas have been marginalised in the distribution of national or public perks (i.e., public office and social amenities). And the beat goes on; but it is mostly off tune, off key and staccato.

          From my observation, and I am willing to be corrected, Nigeria is only a pretend country; in reality, it is the three regional countries within it running things. Fifty-five years after independence, the citizens have not evolved to see themselves first and foremost as Nigerians who happen to have come from a locality. Rather, what we have are citizens who have evolved first and foremost into regionalists who happen to reside within the place called Nigeria. Within this circumstance, Nigeria as a country is stillborn while Ohaneze lives, Arewa lives, Afenifere lives, and all jostling for domination, along with their religions and traditions.

            You must agree that this is a crying shame. Just imagine the parts of the body and where they are all coming from. The body can surely not survive where the arm fights for what it can get for its own components (arm, hand, fingers, nails, etc.); the limb does the same for its own group (leg, knee joint, toes, nails, etc.); and the torso does the same for its own group (body, shoulders, head, etc.). Each one will only succeed in drawing the life out of what it is designed to protect and reduce it to a skeleton if it looks out only for its own interests.

            In the present constitutive Nigeria, each region appears homogeneous, which it uses to advantage when seeking the things of itself. Need more representation in government? Cry as a region about marginalisation. Need to protect a son or daughter hounded for embezzlement or misappropriation? Cry wolf as a region. Need more money pumped in your direction? Sing as a region about how no one is paying attention to you. Need more food pumped your way? Why, cry crocodile tears as a region…

           Call me naive, but I do not think any country can survive where the intent of its so-called citizens is to garner as much as they can for their own little corner of the earth. To start with, it jeopardises the most essential ingredient to national development: PATRIOTISM, PATRIOTISM, PATRIOTISM. Oh yes, it also makes everyone sound like a broken record. We have jokingly said many times that a national cake that is only eaten and not baked or replenished will soon run out. When people insist on just taking, sooner or later, they will reach the skeleton.

            Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached the skeleton of Nigeria I am afraid; people are not ‘doing for’ Nigeria what they should, they are ‘taking from’ Nigeria what they should not. I just look at our lightless situation (e.g. my house enjoys two hours of electricity in twenty-four hours on good days) and shake my head. I am told a story of how someone stopped a national agricultural project from being carried out because it would not benefit his part of the country. Projects are now executed at ten times their cost because someone insists it must be located in his corner of the earth or it must benefit someone else from his locality… I’m sure you know one or two of such stories.

    I ask, how long do you think even a skeleton can keep standing while it is being scavenged? Nigerians are busy now ravaging this skeleton to benefit their various regions and, magically, they also expect it to continue standing and live in good health. How can that be? I think the logic is simple. The continued good health of these regions will spell doom for Nigeria; the continued good health of Nigeria must also spell the doom of these regional interests. We cannot eat our cake and still hope to have it.

          By normal thinking, each region should have been made into or left to evolve as a country at the beginning by Britain. But in Britain’s wisdom (or lack of it as we all appear to have agreed), the units were yoked together. These homogeneous units must then decide which they would rather prefer to survive: their regions or the country. We all need to have been born somewhere; but those places need not be placed above the interests of the nation.

  • Lagos, Ambode and broken infrastructure

    Lagos, Ambode and broken infrastructure

    Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s five-month old government has in recent weeks come under tremendous pressure. Critics and columnists  hold him responsible for what they describe as the grounding of Lagos. Roads are broken, the critics point out, robbers and cultists are running rampage day and night, traffic has become so snarled that nothing seems to be moving, and in general nothing seems to be working. They hold the governor responsible for the problems, in particular, for not sustaining the momentum of his predecessors and for advocating, among other panaceas, a civilised and modern method of traffic law enforcement. For commercial bus drivers who brutishly and defiantly flout traffic rules, the critics sneered that no civilised method could constrain them.

    The observations are fairly incontrovertible, and the circumstances they describe can’t be denied. There are problems with many roads, and traffic is truly snarled in many areas . In addition, robbers are running riot, whether in Ikorodu or Festac Town, or yet other areas, some of them unreported. The problem, however, is appreciating the factors responsible for the seeming breakdown. Nearly all the analyses and editorials suggest Governor Ambode is either not doing enough to arrest the drift or he is applying the wrong remedies, some of them too civilised for the brutes they are meant to control.

    Take traffic snarls for example. Soon after Governor Ambode turned his attention to the traffic pains afflicting Lagos, he ordered the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to humanise and civilise their enforcement methods. Rather than engage in high-speed chase along Lagos’ densely populated streets, or arrest and impound vehicles thereby clogging their premises, he directed them to modernise their methods. This order was interpreted to mean that no arrests whatsoever were to be countenanced by LASTMA, thus giving free rein to homicidal Danfo Bus drivers and other errant car owners, some of them military men.

    Governor Ambode may have accepted blame for the traffic madness afflicting the city state, for he is after all the governor. And he may have cleverly and desperately reversed himself. If indeed he has, he ought not to. And if he has not, he should stay the course. What is wrong is not the civilised method of law enforcement which he ordered, for that is the path to toe, but the imagination, capacity and efficiency of the government agencies saddled with the responsibility of keeping traffic flowing. The previous methods of traffic law enforcement were not only unsuitable, though they are countrywide and appeared to achieve results, they gave Nigerians a bad name globally. Governor Ambode was right in his appreciation of the problem, and he was even more sensible in the solutions he proffered. All that remained were for his team to persevere and courageously stay the course, fine-tune the panaceas, and work extra hours to enforce obedience along the modern, civilised lines he had identified.

    When critics and editorial writers suggest that the governor’s panaceas were too civilised and modern for the calibre of commercial bus drivers plying Lagos roads, they insult the black race and discountenance a rigorous analysis of the problem. Commercial bus drivers, who are mostly blamed for the traffic snarls, can be tamed intelligently without resorting to the brutal methods of the past. If Governor Ambode has reversed himself, let him at least recognise that in the near future, he will still have to revisit the modern methods he tried to unfold. He must recognise that the old methods of doing things, which the public seems to be enamoured of and are advocating, have limited utility. It is, after all, not working in policing;, Boko Haram war, and nearly in every other thing, including traffic chaos. Nigeria’s law enforcement methods are hopelessly antiquated.

    It is even more disturbing that Governor Ambode is blamed almost wholly for what appears like a resurgence of crime in Lagos. Admittedly, as governor, he has little choice but to accept blame, and he must find a way round what is building into a crisis of confidence in Lagos. But it is strange that analysts fail to accurately and fully appreciate the whole ramification of the crisis, especially the political economy of crime. Curbing crime is not just a question of policing or more patrol vehicles and superior firepower. Crime has its own violent logic. The national economy is virtually in the doldrums, with Lagos bearing a disproportionate share of the fallout. Migration into Lagos is at an all-time high, a high percentage of which is unemployed. Patrol cars and more guns will not curb the problem. For instance, Lagos ought more appropriately to be allocated funds for more than 57 local governments, equal to or even more than Kano and Jigawa combined, but it gets funds for just 24. Lagos is overwhelmed and bursting at the seams. Analysts should be putting pressure on the central government to succour Lagos very urgently.

    Cult wars and robberies predate the Ambode government, as newspaper reports throughout last year indicated very clearly. In addition, the federal government has become more, not less, irresponsible in both the quantity and quality of law enforcement. The police are badly trained, badly kitted, badly motivated and hopelessly underfunded and outnumbered. It is, therefore, necessary to encourage a holistic appreciation of the crime situation in Lagos and the measures needed to combat it. Governor Ambode of course needs to worry when Lagosians cannot sleep. He has an obligation to articulate the problem and work hard, notwithstanding the inclement economic environment, to stanch the flow of blood on Lagos streets. He will doubtless need to plot a way out of the commercial motorcycle menace suffocating Lagos. And he must look for ingenious methods of curbing traffic robberies and restoring order to the streets. But he must not panic, get desperate, or succumb to the short term and impracticable measures many people are advocating.

    Rather than condemnation, commentators must show more rigour in analysing the problems confronting Lagos State and its government. A reworked revenue allocation formula, state policing, and sound national economic policies conducing to even and countrywide spread of development would be a great advantage to take pressure off Lagos. For no matter how brilliantly Gov Ambode tackles the multiple menaces confronting Lagos, it will only make the state a magnet for every drifter and dispossessed from other parts of the country, thus reenacting and reinforcing the original problem confronting the state and rendering the solutions either short-lived or ineffective. There is a limit to what Lagos can do in the face of rising population; there is a limit to how many unemployed youths Lagos can put to work in the face of irresponsible national economic policies and poor governance in other states; and there is a limit to what Lagos can do when the federal government implacably controls the levers of security, takes a lion’s share of revenue, and is unable to control migration into the few prosperous and obviously now encumbered states like Lagos.

  • Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics 3

    Unity Summit: another theatrics in Yoruba politics 3

    If those promoting the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference want the support of citizens in the Yoruba region, this will be a good time to start consultations with those whose lives are likely to be affected should such recommendations become the basis for a new federal constitution.

    In the last twenty years, the Yoruba have gotten together under various auspices to examine the structure of the polity. The exercise leading to the production of the Yoruba Agenda is the most memorable of such efforts. The Yoruba Agenda contains ideas that can be reviewed and improved upon. There may be some things that are no longer applicable and need to be taken out at this Assembly. There may be other issues that need to be considered and added to the position taken by our traditional rulers, elders, professionals, and other patriots when the Yoruba Agenda was put together during the pro- democracy struggle of the 1990s. We need to brainstorm about how to make sure that “the architecture of governance”, to borrow a phrase from Chief EmekaAnyaoku, is designed to strengthen the unity of the country through a constitutional system that favours restoration of regional autonomy that made it possible for our region to create the largest pool of manpower in sub-Sahara Africa half a century ago. –General Alani Akinrinade, Rtd at the opening of the Yoruba Assembly in Ibadan on August 30, 2012.

    In the last twenty years, the Yoruba have gotten together under various auspices to examine the structure of the polity. The exercise leading to the production of the Yoruba Agenda is the most memorable of such efforts. The Yoruba Agenda contains ideas that can be reviewed and improved upon. There may be some things that are no longer applicable and need to be taken out at this Assembly. There may be other issues that need to be considered and added to the position taken by our traditional rulers, elders, professionals, and other patriots when the Yoruba Agenda was put together during the pro- democracy struggle of the 1990s. We need to brainstorm about how to make sure that “the architecture of governance”, to borrow a phrase from Chief EmekaAnyaoku, is designed to strengthen the unity of the country through a constitutional system that favours restoration of regional autonomy that made it possible for our region to create the largest pool of manpower in sub-Sahara Africa half a century ago. –General Alani Akinrinade, Rtd at the opening of the Yoruba Assembly in Ibadan on August 30, 2012.

    Over the 26 federal countries housing about 40% of the world’s population had used various methods to move from unitary to federal system. Nigeria was one of such countries. Representatives of the three regions that constituted Nigeria adopted through representatives a federal constitution, preparatory to obtaining independence from Britain in 1960. The country remained a functioning federal system until the emergence of military rule, under which the country lost its federal constitution and was moved gradually from federalism in 1975 to a quasi-federal system in 1999 through a constitution birthed and nurtured by the Abacha-Abubakar 1999 Constitution. The problem facing Nigeria today, according to some Yoruba activists, is how to move Nigeria from its current quasi-federal or quasi-unitary system back to the federal system upon which it became an independent country in 1960. The recent call by some Yoruba leaders and organisations in Ibadan for adoption of recommendations of the Jonathan national dialogue of 2014 is one of the most recent attempts to bring back to the nation’s conversation the issue of restoration of federalism. Today’s piece will conclude discussion of the need to re-start an inclusive process of mobilising citizens for a regional debate on a matter of such importance to all citizens in the region.

    Chief Obafemi Awolowo established a method of making a multilingual and multicultural society adopt a federal political system that many countries had used before him and which many more borrowed from after him. He created a political party that had as part of its core goals, establishment and sustenance of Nigeria as a multicultural federation. Whether it was his Action Group or the Unity Party of Nigeria, Chief Awolowo was consistent in asking for a federal system that promotes equality of majority and minority nationalities. Chief Awolowo did not at any time believe that sustainable federalism could be achieved through a national dialogue that did not have any legal backing nor input from citizens or their representatives. He stated in his speeches and writings that only a duly negotiated federal constitution by representatives of the federating units could lead to a sustainable federal governance. Therefore, the elation of some of his followers at the sudden convocation of a national dialogue of invitees of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 would have been an anathema to Chief Awolowo if he were alive, not to talk of the religiosity of some of his former followers in recommendations of a conference of appointed delegates.

    Long after the exit of Awolowo, the Yoruba region in 1993 took part in a protracted struggle against the imposition of military dictatorship on the country after the annulment of the presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. Yoruba leaders-traditional and modern-took part in the construction of a list of demands, called the Yoruba Agenda, referred to in the quotation above from General Akinrinade’s address to the Yoruba Assembly in 2012. The major demands of NADECO during the four-year struggle were restoration of Abiola’s electoral mandate and re-federalisation of the country/negotiation for a federal constitution created by representatives of the people.

    It is important for those canvassing for wholesale adoption of recommendations of the national dialogue of 2014 to remember the process of mobilising citizens and their cultural and political leaders during the pro-democracy struggle. Town meetings were held; traditional leaders, professional men and women; and civil society organisations in the Yoruba region were consulted and persuaded to take part in open debates before the document calling for return to a federal system was presented to the public. It is also worth noting that after the death of Abacha and ‘assassination’ of Abiola, many of the Afenifere leaders in NADECO called for participation in the political transition programme initiated by Abacha’s military ruler, General Abdusalam Abubakar. Some of the Afenifere leaders now calling for immediate and wholesale adoption of recommendations of the national dialogue of 2014 were vocal in making cases for an end to  the struggle, promising that once democracy was restored (even without Abiola), the path to federalism would be assured.

    The same narrow band of unelected leaders also pleaded in 2003 for wholesale support of President Obasanjo’s second term. Afenifere leaders discouraged their party from fielding a presidential candidate to contest against the candidate of the PDP, General Obasanjo. Obasanjo, like Jonathan, organised a political reform conference that did not involve citizens’ representatives and the recommendations of which are now in the archive. If those promoting the recommendations of Jonathan’s conference want the support of citizens in the Yoruba region, this will be a good time to start consultations with those whose lives are likely to be affected should such recommendations become the basis for a new federal constitution.

    In many of the countries that had moved from unitary to federal system: Canada, Spain, Germany, and the latest poster-child of devolution, the United Kingdom, the process of demanding shared power and sovereignty had been inclusive. Citizens and their representatives had created and nurtured the process of struggling for federalism. Ethiopia is perhaps the only country that became a federal country by military fiat. And this was after a civil war. No country has been able to shake off an undesirable unitary constitution through press conferences and communiques or by holding on to a document from a conference of appointed delegates.

    If the Yoruba region wants Nigeria to return to a sustainable federal system, its elected and unelected leaders need to stop fighting a civil war over the outcome of Jonathan’s conference. If the party in power in the region does not appear to be sufficiently serious about re-federalising the country, nothing should stop federalists in groups and movements from identifying with any federalist party as it was done in Scotland. But the PDP which President Jonathan led and which did not support him with a covering legislation for the 2014 conference is not a pro-federalism party. Many Yoruba public affairs observers still view the leaders at the recent Ibadan conference as members or supporters of the Jonathan version of PDP.

    Using a political party as a vehicle for struggling for change cannot be avoided or replaced by quarterly or daily communiques. In 2012, a Yoruba Assembly was called in Ibadan at which citizens, civil society organisations in the Yoruba region, and elected representatives in the region agreed to start a Yoruba Constitutional Commission. Most of those calling for a Jonathanian model of federalism or nothing chose to stay away from what was a regional conversation on the type of federal system the Yoruba put before the central government. It is rather too late in the day for individuals to claim they are leaders, if such individuals have not been chosen by citizens, regardless of how brave and honest such self-appointed leaders might be.

    Returning the country to a federal system is important, not only for the Yoruba region but also for Nigeria’s political and economic health. But there is a need for a more inclusive conversation than the one being conducted by Jonathan’s invitees to the 2014 conference. There is nothing wrong with Afenifere calling for federalism. What is not right is narrowing such call to adoption of recommendations of the 2014 conference of delegates handpicked by Jonathan. This is a right time to call another Yoruba Assembly to bring federalists from various political parties and movements together to fashion out how to engage elected representatives of Yoruba people.  Such an assembly can mandate elected representatives of the Yoruba region in state and federal legislatures to table Yoruba demands for a people’s constitution to replace the current military constitution that was designed for administering a quasi-federal Nigeria when revenue from petroleum appeared infinite to military dictators.

  • All the president’s men: an open letter to Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President, Media and Publicity (3)

    All the president’s men: an open letter to Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President, Media and Publicity (3)

    If you will do justice to me, as an elected Nigerian president, let them look at the Constitution a Nigerian president works with, there are people who will closely work with me that don’t need to be taken to the Senate. If I select people who I know quite well in my political party, who we came all the way right from the ANPP, the CPC and the APC, and have remained together in good or bad situation… will that amount to anything wrong?
    President Buhari, BBC Hausa Service Interview, October 13, 2015

    Mallam Shehu:

    This has been a long letter, but we are close to its end. So far, one unspoken but underlying reason for writing this letter is the fact that, like most other Nigerians – in particular those who were adults when President Buhari was a military ruler – I am trying to figure out if the elected president will be different from the military ruler and if so, in what consequential manner this will be manifested. With regard to this consideration, there is also this particular factor in my motivations: as a military ruler, the President had a widely known and much deserved reputation for holding strongly and rather inflexibly to his ideas and beliefs; indeed, he was known to be so indifferent to what people in general thought about him that the only people to whom he gave his ear were associates and confidants among his inner circle of supporters and followers within and outside the military. The infamous Decrees Numbers 2 and 4 of 1984 were the ultimate testimony to this aspect of the President when he was a military ruler.

    I do not know how old you are, Mallam Shehu; I do not know if you were already an adult when those decrees were promulgated by Buhari’s military administration, but I can tell you that the pleas, the remonstrations to the young man that Buhari was as a military ruler to reverse himself and his administration on those obnoxious decrees were not only made throughout the length and breadth of Nigeria, they were also made widely in the international community. But to all these pleas Buhari remained totally deaf, even arrogantly and contemptuously so. Against the backdrop of this aspect of Buhari as a military ruler, as we are gradually getting to know the President as an elected ruler, one question that I and I suppose many other Nigerians of my generation will be asking is whether or not the second coming of Buhari will show a ruler who is willing to listen to and reason with people outside his inner circle of advisers and confidants. In essence, this boils down to who the President will put first, Nigerians from all parts of the country, especially the teeming majority of the talakawa North and South, or his inner circle of confidants.

    Mallam Shehu, if the President does not know that the words of the quote that serves as the epigraph to this concluding piece in this series of letters to you provides no justification, none at all, for almost exclusively drawing his non-ministerial appointees from his inner circle of loyalists, let him know that people are not as gullible, as naïve as he apparently thinks. Every thinking and politically savvy Nigerian knows that the non-ministerial appointees of elected Nigerian presidents that don’t have to be sent to the Senate for screening constitute the inner core, the “kitchen cabinet” of the President; they wield far greater influence on our elected presidents than cabinet members that have to be sent to the Senate for screening and approval. Indeed, Malam Shehu, I do hope that you are aware of the fact that several commentators have pointed out that many of the ministerial appointees whose names the President sent to the Senate for screening were also selected on the same basis on which the inner core of non-ministerial appointees were chosen, i.e. loyalty to the President over the years and decades from military rulership to four attempts to become elected president, first in the ANPP, then in the CPC and finally and successfully in the APC.

    Some pundits have even plausibly argued that the real reason why it took the President so long to make his ministerial appointments was not because he wanted to choose the best and the brightest but because he had to weigh and decide carefully among the large throng of loyalists who had worked for him over the years and decades. In this respect, “loyalty” in this context more or less means “fealty”; not surprisingly, fealty is a word that comes to us from the feudal age when all who served a baron did so on the basis of “fealty’ sworn to the overlord. Indeed, the distinct neo-feudal overtone here is strengthened by the President’s extension of “reward” to those personally loyal to him to states and peoples that voted for him. In other words, it is one thing to reward individuals that have been loyal to you; it is another thing entirely to reward or punish entire states and peoples that voted for or against you; when the two are combined, you have as close as it is possible to neo-feudalism in a 21st century plural, multi-ethnic, federal, democratic and constitutionalist state whose wealth and resources do not come from inherited estates but from rents collected from extractive oil and gas industries. In such an historical context, it is very shocking that the President can be so open, so blatant in linking rewards and “punishments” to those who show or do not show fealty to him, Muhammadu Buhari. Because I wish the President well politically, I sincerely hope that he can and will be made to abandon these distinct neo-feudalist strains in his actions and utterances this early in his presidency before they become entrenched as defining features of his administration.

    I concluded last week’s installment in this series by stating that part of my concerns in this long letter, Mallam Shehu, is the fact that neo-feudalism is not a trait, a mode of thought and behavior that is exclusive to the President within the leadership of the APC as the new ruling party. Little did I know when I wrote this observation into the concluding segment of last week’s piece that the same newspaper that carried my column would publish an account in which Nasir El Rufai, the Kaduna State Governor, one of the leading intellectual lights of the APC, a man who had savagely pilloried the late President Umar Musa Yar’ Adua for being so parochial, being so nepotistic that his inner core of advisers and confidants came exclusively from his area of Katsina State, this same El Rufai was reported to have told a town hall meeting last week that people from the part of the state that did not vote for him should expect little or nothing from him. El Rufai’s brilliance is indisputable even if his opportunism is not easily forgettable; if he can be this crudely neo-feudalist, there is much to ponder on where the APC is headed as our new ruling party. The talakawas of all parts of the country and those who struggle for and on their behalf must start a dialogue now with the leaders of this new ruling party.

    This preceding statement brings me to perhaps the thorniest or most convoluted expression of neo-feudalism in the APC, specifically the one that pertains to the Leader of the Party, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, aka “Jagaban”. Tinubu’s political “estate” within the APC, unlike Buhari’s, is not based on those who have been loyal to him over the years and decades; rather, his “estate” is based on those who have been his beneficiaries in the long war of attrition and conquest against the PDP. Ask no questions as to how he amassed the vast war chest that was in many instances used successfully against the PDP; the only thing that is important is that a great number of chieftains and heavyweights in the APC and before that the ACN, owed their political lives, their very survival on Tinubu and his control of that war chest. This was the basic rationale of his colossal political influence since 1999, at least before the formation of the APC and more specifically, before Tinubu’s encounter with Muhammadu Buhari as incumbent president. There is a telling lesson here from the feudal age: the baron on whom the supreme feudal overlord obtained his sovereignty over all the baronies in the land was always the first to go, the first to be done away with. In plain language, Tinubu seems to have reached the limits of the reach of his political “estate” in the suggestion, the imputation that Buhari is one of his “beneficiaries”. This is not untrue, but it is a gross simplification; nevertheless, it is being peddled widely within and outside the ranks of the APC.

    Finally, there is Bukola Abubakar Saraki whose political “estate” within the APC is actually pre-bourgeois, pre-feudal and pre-modern in that his brand of cynical and opportunistic horse-trading had always existed in all historical polities prior to the modern full-blown bourgeois democracies. When he seized control of the Senate leadership with the great majority of his votes coming from the defeated minority party, he spoke and acted as if this was the most natural thing in the world of representative democracy. It isn’t it but this is beside the point. The ‘point” was that Saraki was successful and the party was unable to do anything to either reverse his “victory” or even call him to order. In effect, Bukola Saraki’s cynicism and opportunism hang like specters over all factions within the APC, at least in the present period when “estates” and “franchises” are being negotiated and traded in the new ruling party at the same time that what the party really and truly stands for remains unclear, even to its own ideologues and within its rank-and-file followership. The real worry within the ruling party itself and the country at large is that there are dozens, perhaps scores of other “Sarakis” lurking within the heart and soul of the new ruling party waiting for their chance to strike it big and rich, change and progress be damned.

    Mallam Shehu, all is far from well with the APC as the new ruling party and the President has a large share of what needs to be corrected in the affairs of the party. If perhaps there seems to be too much “Dogon Turenchi” in my use of words like “neo-feudalism” and “fealty”, permit me to say that what I have been arguing in this long letter is really quite simple and straightforward and it is this: we are still at an early stage in both the administration of this President and the time of the APC as a new ruling party; before it is too late, before he becomes known as a ruler who chooses those he favors or disfavors depending on his past and recent experiences, Muhammadu Buhari should strive to be the president of all parts of the country, the parts that did not vote for him as much as those that voted for him. He must especially devote himself to a better life for all of our peoples that have for so long been set aside by the wealthy and powerful few for whom the wealth of the nation was indistinguishable from their personal richness and well-being. If he does these things, his example will redound on his party, the rest of the political class and the nation. I don’t know about Bukola Saraki but the President and the Party Leader have it within their grasp to transform the APC to the first ruling party in our country’s political history that begins to make a real, beneficial difference at home and abroad.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The increasing call for true federalism

    The increasing call for true federalism

    Had both the North-East and the North-West, for instance, synergised earlier via economic cooperation, they  would probably have achieved so much that terrorism and Boko Haram  would have been a most unlikely phenomenon in those areas, and, ipso facto, in Nigeria as a whole.

    “For me, Amaechi killed off ALL and EVERY allegation against him when he not only said he was NOT indicted anywhere in the panel’s report.

    So sure-footed was he that he offered to lay the report before the senate. But convinced of his sincerity, the senate did not as much as ask him to. What this means, in essence, is that Amaechi should wait a few weeks more  till  Wike hopefully gets booted out of office, to sue him for concocting a white paper that has no basis, whatever, to have so maliciously slandered him. Today, Amaechi demonstrated again, why he proved to be such a roaring success in public service: a 2-term Speaker, 2-term governor- both of Rivers State – 2-term chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum, and Director-General of the first-ever campaign in Nigeria to boot out a sitting president awash, not only with dollars, but an entire state security apparatti that was nothing but an arm of his political party. I am exceedingly proud of Amaechi, and, like Fayemi, I am sure he will leave his name in gold whatever ministry it pleases President Buhari to deploy him to.” – My comments on ekitipanupo on 22 October, 2015.

    Suspecting that some of my readers, on reading last week’s article: ‘Chief Olu Falae:

    Matters Arising’, (Sunday, 17 October, 2015), might have been led to believe that I do not subscribe to restructuring, I present, today, one of  the many  rticles I have written in support of the subject on these pages. My point of divergence from Afenifere’s position on it is that it is wrong to hang around such a crucial issue, any iota of political opportunism, like they did in 2014, intending thereby, to sell themselves to President Jonathan by coyly attempting to gift him two extra years, or if that failed, at least make his candidature attractive in Yoruba land and thus facilitate his re-election. As God would have it, the then president, a minority Ijaw, who should ordinarily have jumped at the offer, did not even as much as make the CONFAB a campaign issue. Only Afenirere attempted to, unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, they had not only tampered with the official nominees of some state governors, as happened in Ekiti where they surreptitiously manipulated the inclusion of another person to replace the governor’s initial nominee, they also allegedly  concocted the inclusion of all manner of interest groups whose representatives’ nomination they influenced  in many cases, resulting in husbands and wives becoming members.

    The increasing call for true federalism -15 July, 2012 I have had this running dialogue with my very good friend, Antony A. Sani, Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum (A C F), who sees any talk of regional economic integration or any effort at canvassing true federalism as nothing but a façade for ethnic nationalism that I could not but shout hurray when in recent times, very important voices from the north have come out loudly in support of both. In an article titled: ‘The State Of The Nigerian Nation’, by Alhaji Ahmed Joda, like former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar at the recent Leadership Governor of the Year award ceremony,  lent a ringing support  to the drive towards true federalism.

    Wrote Joda: ‘Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must, however, not ascribe the fact of our survival to anything like military might; rather it was because ordinary Nigerians overwhelmingly desire to live together in one united country but under some acceptable arrangement. It is clear from all we are passing through that there is a sufficient body of opinion around the country that the present arrangement is not adequate and needs to be discussed further.’ In his own remarks at the Awards on September 18, 2012, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, not only called for true federalism, he regretted not supporting former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme’s  earlier call for the creation of six semi-autonomous regions affirming that Dr Ekwueme obviously saw what some of  them did not at the time. There is, he said, too much concentration of power and resources at the centre which is stifling Nigeria’s march to greatness and threatening its unity because of  the abuses, inefficiencies, corruption and reactive tensions over-centralisation generates.”

    Without a doubt, suggested ways of achieving this have been as divergent as there are calls for it. While some have called for a Sovereign National Conference, Alhaji Ahmed Joda fears that it could be a recipe for disintegration. He, nonetheless, agrees that we need to urgently restructure in order to safeguard the country’s future, whether as a unit or under some other form of arrangement concluding that it is better to face the issues frontally now, and  discuss them frankly in an open forum  in order to come up with solutions that can ensure peaceful  co-existence. His preferred model is the establishment, by an act of the National Assembly, of a Constituent Assembly whose members will be elected on a zero- party basis, and would have full powers to comprehensively review the Constitution. He is insistent there should be no representation for special interests apparently because of the abuses this could lead to.  He also suggested that serving members of any legislative body should be ineligible just as interested public servants should resign their posts and contest.

    With these views from respected Nigerians of northern extraction, it should be expected that opponents of true federalism will go back and re-learn their history of Nigeria to understand how, in the First Republic, regional autonomy galvanized national development through positive inter-regional competition.

    This, incidentally, was a theme which featured prominently in the Keynote Address by the Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, at the recent National Convention of Egbe Omo Yoruba (National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America),  in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.

    Many of the things he mentioned as developments in the Southwest, if not all, were replicated in both the North and the East. During that period, he revealed, the government led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo established the first TV and Radio Station in Sub-Saharan Africa, built Cocoa House, Ibadan, as well as the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, all from funds  sourced from cocoa and coffee.  The government also introduced the free primary education programme which till date, has put the South-West in good stead politically, educationally and economically. In like manner, great institutions like the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, built from funds realised from groundnut, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, were established in the North and the East, respectively. Our unity in diversity was subsequently thrashed by the military, with far reaching consequences among which is the fact that we lost  that positive, and pro development, inter-regional competition with all  its advantages, heconcluded.

    Today, however, there remains a glimmer of hope; a window of opportunity which is to now re-engineer the country by properly restructuring it towards true federalism which will, once again, encourage development in the various geo-political zones, remove our atavistic politics of the control of the centre and facilitate the country’s cohesion.

    Unfortunately, but not surprising, opposition to restructuring is still unrelenting in some parts of the North. Indeed, so enervating has opposition to regional integration and true federalism become that

    I once responded to Tony Sani as follows: ‘These things are about perspectives, and a pointer to each group’s preferred developmental paradigm. For the status quoists, what is on ground is the best. But for majority Yoruba, stronger regional groupings will make for a much stronger, more peaceful and equitable country. Had both the North-East and the North-West, for instance, synergised earlier via  economic cooperation, they  would probably have achieved so much that terrorism and Boko Haram  would have been a most unlikely phenomenon in those areas, and, ipso facto, in Nigeria as a whole. While Europe and the Americas are synergising, and forging economic cooperation, I remain perpetually surprised at your angst against regional economic cooperation as a way of maximising development, and catalysing national development and cohesion’.

    Today, I feel certain that my friend will, sooner than later, bow to a development (restructuring) whose time has come and for which leading lights in the north are beginning to lend their support.

  • On leaders without title

    On leaders without title

    (An evening with Chief Ajibola Ogunshola)

    Toxic politics poisons the environment in Nigeria.   As a delinquent political class threatens to abort the gains of peaceful change in the nation, it may well be time to look at alternative paradigms of leadership in the country and how we got to where we are.  Perhaps in the long run, nations should be treated like business conglomerates which are always under threat to perform and return profit or face immediate or eventual extinction.

    This is why it is so important to direct our attention to many eminent Nigerians who are quietly changing the face and values of Nigeria in other spheres of human endeavours away from the agonistic contentions of competitive politics.  The Centre for Values in Leadership, chaired by Pat Utomi, has taken the laudable and admirable lead in this direction with its Leadership Without Title series. It is indeed a moveable feast of all that is honourable and noble in the Nigerian Project.

    Among past honourees of the series, the list reads  like a who is who of Nigeria’s most illustrious and distinguished citizens:  Pa Akintola Williams, the doyen of the Accounting profession in the nation, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the quintessential global diplomat and statesman, Chief Phillip Asiodu, the dean of the old Nigerian Civil Service, Alhaji Ahmed Joda, another bureaucratic avatar, Professor Grace Alele-Williams, the first female Vice Chancellor of a university  in the history of the country ,and Gamaliel Onosode, the recently departed private sector titan among many others.

    Last Tuesday October, 20th,  at the twenty seventh colloquium  of the centre, it was the turn of Chief Ajibola Ogunshola, the former chairman of The Punch group of newspapers and president of Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria from October 2007 till his retirement in April 2011, to be so honoured. The rather modest conference hall was so packed with eminent Nigerians that many distinguished guests had to be shunted to an adjoining room to watch the proceeding.

    According to his citation, Chief Ogunshola was being honoured for his role and achievements as Punch chairman for over 24 years from February, 1987 until April 2011. The story of Ajibola’s heroic endeavour in saving the newspaper from certain death, and the resuscitation of its fortunes is the stuff of fiction. Under his watchful management and hands-on approach, the newspaper group , after escaping the hangman’s noose, began a steady rise to stardom which has seen it firmly positioned at the pinnacle of print journalism in Nigeria.

    There are two constraining factors which made this achievement all the more remarkable. By his own admission, Chief Ogunshola found himself in the newspaper world entirely by accident. He was already a highly successful Managing Director of Niger Insurance Company Ltd when the deaths of his maternal brothers, Olu and Moyo Aboderin,  changed his life forever and thrust him virtually unprepared unto the cutthroat and high risk world of newspaper publishing.

    The second was the fact often overlooked by many people that Ogunshola was not even an Executive Chairman at the Punch group of newspapers. This did not make the task of inevitable forceful intervention in a threatened company easier. When you are chairman of a company without executive powers, you are forced to lead by example and the force of personal integrity. This is a classic example of the drama of “soft” leadership playing itself out with great consequences in a small corner of Nigeria.

    In the circumstances, public perception and company perception of the leader matter a lot.  It helps a lot and it is just as well then that Chief Ogunshola is an almost obsessive keep fit fanatic who also weighs what goes into his stomach with mathematical exactitude. Even in advanced age, he retains a trim boyish figure which is a product of an excruciating personal regimen which does not entertain gastronomic frills and frivolities.

    All too often in Nigeria, our leaders lose the battle at the door of the management of public perception. If you preach what you don’t practice, nobody is listening to you. Whenever a rotund overfed leader begins preaching austerity and belt-tightening to the populace, you can be sure that he is nothing but a figure of private fun and derision.

    It is understandable that in the business world and private sector, Chief Ogunshola’s  achievement is mainly located in the dramatic revival of the Punch group of papers.  But many in the public and political sectors believe that Ogunshola’s contribution to the development and deepening of democratic rule in Nigeria as exemplified by the heroic defiance of military despotism and stout refusal to placate tyranny of the Punch newspapers may be more enduring.

    It was a tense and fraught face-off which could have resulted in major casualties, but Ogunshola held his ground, refusing all compromise and cajolery.  What was going on was a fundamental collision of altars between two dominant political cultures which frames the National Question up till this moment, despite the current tense alliance between the two ascendant leadership groups of the dominant cultures.

    The military dictators of northern origins who held Nigeria to ransom were also leaders in their own rights. Whatever their circumscribed and suspect worldview, you cannot take certain qualities away from them which in other circumstances could have conduced to exceptional leadership. Being products of classical feudalism, they had been trained to control and rein in the populace. As products of a military culture, they are drilled to dominate their environment.

    This worldview, authoritarian and harshly hierarchical, seeking to control and dominate, is bound to come into potentially fatal contradiction when contesting national hegemony with another world view which is more liberal and permissive of progressive dilution of ancient tradition and which has invested massively in western education for almost a century. And which can also fight its corner in its own unique way when roused to fury and indignation.

    Ajibola Ogunshola is one of the finest products of this nascent Yoruba civilization and a proud Ibadan aristocrat to boot. The son of one of the leading Ibadan educationists of his time and a mother who was reputed to have been the second richest Ibadan person in the fifties and sixties, the young Ogunshola would have wondered where these military upstarts were coming from. Where were they when he was setting records in the School Certificate Examinations in 1961 at Government College, Ibadan, the Baroyin of Ibadan would have rued.

    But the emergent military Caesars, products of another culture and mindset, would have viewed the adamant Punch chieftain as a vexatious and irritating nuisance who is contemptuous of constituted authority, a self-important fly destined to be swatted at their pleasure.  This fundamental collision of habitus has continued to frame the National Question and has in turn conditioned Chief Ogunsola’s subsequent involvement in national politics and abiding indignation with the “aulde enemy”.

    By now if we are sure of what untitled leadership is all about, we are still not sure of what leadership itself is all about. We have even brought together contradictory and contending notions of leadership in a dialectical confrontation. As we have seen, leadership in one culture may become a curse when the frontiers are expanded to incorporate contrasting and contending cultures in a multi-national state. It may also take different leadership qualities and requirements to nurture a company and even a country at different stages of their development.

    But whatever the stage or whatever the company, culture or country, there is a consensus that leadership cannot be hidden. There is a transcendental aura, a magnetic quality, an almost mystical mist about leaders which make them stand out. You can always recognize a leader when you see one. It is not unlike being marked or touched by the badge of special destiny.

    Yet as we have seen, no matter the special intuitive gifts and whether in the private or public sector, the modern leadership process must begin with an arduous and rigorous process of education, self-education and the development of what Awolowo has called the mental magnitude commensurate with the job at hand.

    As the tragedy of some of our rulers has demonstrated, no matter the raw cunning and the native intelligence of a ruler, he will always come a sad cropper if he lacks the mental magnitude for the job at hand. Leadership does not just burst into the open with the unveiling of the curtain. It must have been germinating away from the prying eyes of the public. First seek yee the kingdom of the mind and every other kingdom will be added.

    We cannot conclude this piece without hazarding why it is possible in the same nation-space for the private sector to continue to throw up exceptional gems and extraordinary figures like Chief Ajibola Ogunshola while thepolitical leadership recruitment process after the titans of the First and perhaps the Second Republic seems to have atrophied up to the point where it can only churn out a sad pedestrian rabble.

    Once again, the key for unlocking the mystery and terrifying disconnect appears to be education and relentless self-improvement. Ogunsola is a product of this milieu, a star student in secondary school as well as in the university. His own father, Chief James Ladejo Ogunsola M. B.E, had been a mentor to Adegoke Adelabu, the stormy petrel of Ibadan politics. An intriguing entry in his 1937 diary showed Salawu (as Adelabu was then known) coming to teach his pupils at Kudeti School in Ibadan.

    In civilized societies, the leadership products consist almost entirely of people recruited into the system from the top elite schools in the countries.  Exceptionally talented leadership materials may occasionally come in through the ranks, but the elite schools still account for the bulk of leadership materials that adorn the pinnacle of politics.

    If we take a look at most of the CVL honourees, they are like Ajibola, products of the best education available in this country and elsewhere. But the Nigerian system is badly damaged. Many of those who have looted the country dry have managed to procure good education for their children. Sometimes it works, and the family name and honour are redeemed as present infamy recedes into the clouds of historical amnesia.

    But more often than not, it does not as the children are forced to fight for political relevance with those who have been educated on the streets and are more politically savvy.  This is the bitter and bare knuckle contention going on out there between children of the old monied class and the noveau riche. Before some kind of parity is restored and the national contradictions worked out, the ring will echo with the crying of the children of the rich as they get bludgeoned by heavy duty blows to the body.

    For now, the Nigerian political coliseum is not the best place for the effete elite.  Here is wishing Chief Ajibola Ogunshola many happy returns.

  • Gadfly el-Rufai needs moderation and restraint

    Gadfly el-Rufai needs moderation and restraint

    Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State told his agitated and grumbling audience in Kaduna State last week that President Muhammadu Buhari was advised not to let governors nominate his ministers. Even though he did not elucidate on who the ‘we’ who gave the advice to the president were other than to say they were a collection of governors, he was taken to task when it became public that his apolitical foster sister, or as some put it, his cousin, Zainab Ahmed, was appointed minister representing Kaduna State. Mrs Ahmed’s husband was a close ally of former Vice President Namadi Sambo.

    The grumbling began when it seemed Gov el-Rufai’s appointments were skewed. Rather than mollify their anger, the governor’s outburst worsened the pains of the complainants. While answering questions at the 4th Town Hall meeting in Kaduna Central, the bristling governor was absolutely irreverent. “If you are not happy with appointments made, you can go and climb Kufena mountain and fall.” he began furiously. “It was what you voted that you got because we are aware that there are peo­ple who did not vote for us, in fact they worked against us. But now they claim to be All Progressives Congress (APC) members and loyal to the party. We know such people. And so there is no way they would expect anything from us. You didn’t vote us but you want appointments. What you will get is zero. It is politics, and in whatever we do there is politics.”

    It is not just Gov el-Rufai that is speaking out of turn, or governors like him who ignore the virtue of restraint and moderation, even the All Progressives Congress (APC) as a party appears to be at sixes and sevens. If the president would avoid appointing governors’ nominees into his cabinet, then he should have set in motion the means of ensuring that the best and most appropriate nominees were put forward. There is not much confidence that the president’s appointments showed that that was done. And if like Gov el-Rufai says, there is indeed politics in everything politicians and governments do, it behoves the president and his advisers to take cognisance of that politics. Yet, even Gov el-Rufai did not take advantage of his own counsel. Did he mind the politics of his appointments? If he did, why would his audience take exception to many of his appointments and describe them as unfair? And rather than speak peaceably to them, he railed against them, suggesting they should go and commit suicide with their grievances.

    The nomination of the governor’s foster sister, despite her husband’s apparent political affiliations, may have unwittingly given the impression that Gov el-Rufai is closer to the president than he has confessed. He and the Sokoto governor, Aminu Tambuwal are thought to wield some influence with the president. Whether this is true or not, his audience seemed to believe it. But what is more important is that the president and governors must act in such a manner that stakeholders  would feel that justice and equity had been served in appointments and in any other state matter. It is impolitic to angrily denounce complainants. It is not clear now who was echoing whom. But it is striking that both President Buhari and Gov el-Rufai had suggested that those who didn’t vote for them, or who voted for them marginally , could not expect to get as much attention as those who voted for them compellingly. This is not only bad politics, it is bound to backfire, even if the country should end up being run successfully. The APC must worry about its unforced errors, and the alienation it is fostering.

    In particular, the tempestuous Gov el-Rufai must watch his steps and language. He had barely been sworn in when he announced he would begin demolition of properties to clean up the state and restore its master plan. He has started the demolition, but without the redeeming features of remedial measures to tackle the politics and economics of his actions. In his customarily impulsive  manner, he also attempted to remove beggars from the streets without first preparing a place for them. He forgot that it is not everything that is lawful that is expedient.

    Gov el-Rufai is anxious to move Kaduna State to great heights, and to sanitise and remould it. The state will benefit tremendously from his energy and brilliance. But he must resist the temptation to be arrogant and irreverent, which his outbursts  suggest. He is after all running an elected government, not a military regime. As chief executive of Kaduna State, he must see himself not only as the number one citizen, but as father of all. What he says and how he says them are as important as the quality of his policies. So far, he has spoken offensively, and has given the impression of an immoderate, unrestrained politician unable to manage the enormous power and goodwill put at his disposal by the electorate. He must come down to earth and listen to his people, and persuade them of the justifiability and altruism of his actions and the enormous benefit his actions would bring to the state if allowed. Like Nigeria, Kaduna was not ruined in a day; it will take more than a day to rebuild  it. Gov. el-Rufai can begin the process, but if he is willing to accept counsel, he must be careful what kind of foundation he lays. For, whether he likes it or not, the integrity of that foundation will depend largely on the extent to which he has overhauled his own attitude and ennobled his utterances to create a great culture and tradition for Kaduna.