The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Buhari needs new ethos and paradigm

    Buhari needs new ethos and paradigm

    In its response to accusations of sectionalism and even nepotism in determining federal appointments so far, the Buhari presidency has confidently indicated that balance would soon be restored, itself an admission  of existing disequilibrium. Presidential aides went on further to reassure the country that President Muhammadu Buhari, a changed and firm leader and democrat, harboured no sectional agenda, whether hidden or open. They also added that all the appointments made so far were done on merit, without explaining why merit can’t seem to be widespread, or why it seems to the government expediently localised. There is no statistical proof of how many people are persuaded by the president’s response, but there is at least evidence that most Nigerians, assured by the government’s overwhelming response to the anti-graft war and other laudable steps taken so far, are prepared to give the president the benefit of the doubt.

    Why the president did not deem the controversy weighty enough to merit his direct intervention and explanation is hard to fathom. Last week, given the intensity of the migration crisis inundating Europe, not to say the evocative and iconic images of distressed, dying or dead migrants, some of them infants, the British prime minister, David Cameron, felt compelled to urgently and directly respond to accusations of British lukewarmness on the plight of refugees. Germany foresaw the scale of the disaster early enough and indicated preparedness to accommodate more than its fair share of refugees. Britain reacted a little late, but at least Mr Cameron finally stirred himself. A leader cannot react to everything, but he must have the judgement or at least the intuition to know matters weighty enough to require his direct intervention.

    President Buhari’s governing machine may just be revving up, as he and his aides have generously asserted. But he has an urgent responsibility to define that machine and open the understanding of the public to its fundamental attributes. Other than his travels to assemble a coalition against Boko Haram, and a few words now and again on his anti-corruption war, he has not made either concrete or symbolic trips to the geopolitical zones of the South to deliver a few great messages about himself, his government, and his country. There is nothing on the ethos of the country, those ennobling characteristics of the nation that manifest in the cumulation of national attitudes and goals. Nor is there anything yet on his governing paradigm, that indispensable fulcrum of policies. But perhaps he is still in deep contemplation.

    One hundred days in the life of a government may be an arbitrary figure advertised by unreflective and populist military governments. But it is not so short a period for the public to begin to have a feel of the fundamental direction of the Buhari government in terms of a political manifesto, social charter and economic philosophy. These charters go far deeper than the anti-corruption war he appears besotted to, than his platitudes on the rule of law and other liberties, and than his promises of the good life for everyone, especially the poor. What, in short, these times call for is the enunciation of a new ethos and paradigm for Nigeria. These are the two fundamentals required to drive his vision in the next four years. These are the fundamentals that will define him as a leader and sculpt an image of him in the public mind. These are the fundamentals that will shape and refine the country, and give it a personality in the world, in the same way an individual is defined and shaped by intrinsic ideas and inscrutable personal responses to experiences.

    Recruiting advisers and presidential aides, and making other key appointments into his cabinet, are not an end in themselves. They are just a part of the building block. What should engage the president is the kind of building he wants to construct and the use it would be put to. When critics assailed him over the 30 or so appointments he had made so far, accusing him of insensitivity and insularity, it was not because they already dismissed his government. The enlightened among the critics were only alarmed that the appointments did not give an indication of the change and future Nigerians want to see, or that President Buhari possessed the depth and innovation needed to remake the society on a scale that rivals great countries in other parts of the world.

    This column advocated this point a few weeks ago. Who are we? What do we stand for? How costly is the life of a Nigerian? What is the leitmotif of our existence? Do we have a leader who embodies the ambition and worldview of Nigeria? This column’s engagement with these issues, especially the recent presidential appointments, is anchored on historical facts. As far back as 6th – 5th century BC, Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon, recognised the importance of widening his empire’s leadership recruitment base by casting his net far and wide to include promising captives of his many wars. The empire boasted of a template to sieve and assess talents from far and wide, a function he obviously placed great emphasis on. It was in that process that Daniel the Jewish captive was discovered. He would later become Prime Minister of Babylon.

    President Buhari must possess an acute sense of history, particularly Nigerian history, in order to function above the common mediocrity and self-created restraints that past leaders had entangled themselves with. World history is important to him to the extent that the lives and achievements of great world leaders and countries can ennoble his own actions and inspire him with great and incomparable examples. But to him, Nigerian history must be indispensable to the extent that in one sweeping and wholesome breath he would personify the life and ambitions of Nigeria.

    Once a Nigerian leader reaches that esoteric level, he becomes inured to the giant obstacles and barricades — some of them ethnic, and others religious — that create artificial divides between the people. He will then aspire to produce a definition of Nigeria within which he can situate a definition of himself, making the two inextricable, the one personifying the other. He will go on to synthesise the concepts of citizenship and individual rights without which Nigeria can never be great, not even if everyone achieved sainthood in a corruption-free country. Nigeria’s past leaders struggled with depth, unable to do more than enunciate a code of superficial and artificial behaviours for the country, and at various times devote either a department or a ministry to champion what they described as a reorientation movement. But their ethical revolution and national reorientation were nothing but sentimental and wasteful drivel.

    A cursory study of Roman history would have shown these leaders how to develop a new ethos, and nurture it. Roman Empire citizenship was so valuable that it was not even lawful for anyone, no matter how highly placed, to strike a Roman without a trial. (A Roman citizen could not be tortured or whipped, nor could he receive the death penalty, unless he was found guilty of treason. If accused of treason, a Roman citizen had the right to be tried in Rome, and even if sentenced to death, no Roman citizen could be sentenced to die on the cross). Paul the Christian missionary had reasons to remonstrate this point with Roman officials during his illustrious proselytising career. But more than two centuries later, Nigerian leaders have been unable to formulate an inspiring, practicable and disciplined concept of Nigerian citizenship, and have consistently sought to hide their incompetence and mediocrity behind the mask of bureaucratic and political skullduggery. Nigerian leaders and their security forces, nearly all of which cannot draw a line between private security interest and national security interest, possess probably one of the worst and most contemptible views of citizenship. Without a revolutionary conception and enforcement of the rights of the Nigerian, it is impossible to harness the country’s energies for national redefinition, growth and greatness, let alone to mobilise the people behind the government for country and glory. Two centuries ago, it meant a whole lot to be a Roman citizen. Today, it means virtually nothing to be a Nigerian.

    President Buhari was elected against the wishes of millions of sceptics who never really believed he had changed for the better or was capable of changing. He will be president for the next four years. So, it may be imprudent to give up on him until he gives up on himself. He will of course be criticised, counseled, admonished and reproved until he becomes a much better man and leader, even at 72. If he wants to mobilise the people behind himself, he will need to do more than just fighting corruption, remoulding the economy and instilling discipline. He must fundamentally rethink many national concepts, using a study of historical examples as a stepping stone. He must take contributions from his brilliant aides or his own private readings on how the concept of the German, American, British, French, Russian, and Chinese persons, among others, evolved and were nurtured over the centuries. He can learn from them if he wishes to leave the country a changed nation, far better than he met it.

    In a Sunday Times of London extract from his new revelatory and shocking book, The Outsider, due for release this week, the author Frederick Forsyth disclosed how he spied for Britain during the Nigerian civil war. His spying was not much different from the pushy but guileful manner many Western countries’ diplomats ferret information out of top Nigerian business, cultural and political leaders. The disturbing fact is that nearly all Nigerian leaders dissolve into molecules in the presence of white leaders, especially of the industrialised democracies. Though he has not started well, given his hasty visit to the United States even before he had time to recognise his own soul, President Buhari must begin to find ways of hardening his resolve against foreign interferences, and carving out a brave and independent idea of his country and unleashing and propelling the sublime geniuses of its peoples, whether they are writers, artists or musicians. That a leader does not grovel at the feet of white leaders does not mean that, like late Gen Murtala Ramat Mohammed, he is rebellious or defiant. His independent posture can also be interpreted as confident and self-reliant. If Nelson Mandela could do it, other African leaders can also do it, even if not on the same scale.

    Eight years of Olusegun Obasanjo was a gross national waste and misadventure. He had the opportunity to lay a solid foundation for Nigerian democracy, albeit a minor component of the needed national ethos. If that was all he was capable of, the country would today be grateful for that modest contribution. But he lacked the intellect and the discipline to fulfill that great and noble mission. Umaru Yar’Adua was a painful, emasculative hiatus. And six years of Goodluck Jonathan proved more than enough to purge Nigerians of any great hope for the future and infuse them with the most enervating pessimism ever. Between the three former leaders, not counting the about 40 years before them, Nigeria has managed to waste 16 whole years.

    If the next four years will not be another needless waste, President Buhari must take counsel far beyond his inner, and sometimes limited, reaches. He and his party enthuse about how well he has started. It is not clear what kind of measures they are using. But he needs to conceive and implement fundamental policies that will touch every nerve and organ and hidden crevices in the body politic. He has neither conceived nor implemented anything substantially evocative of the ethos and paradigm his government and this country sorely need. Even the anti-graft battle he is waging has not taken cognisance of the political economy of corruption, let alone devising formulae to ensure a lasting impact on the society, economy and polity.

    It is time Nigeria stopped frolicking with the peripherals of politics and government. President Buhari must dig deeper, with the help of his aides and advisers, into the purpose of government to bring out the ethos and paradigm Nigeria needs to fulfill its manifest destiny. Much of the little good Chief Obasanjo did in his eight years in office were quickly reversed because they were neither substantial nor impactful of the lives of the people in an unchangeable, unalterable way. President Buhari will undoubtedly do some good, but whatever things he does seem fated to become meretricious rather than consequential and ramifying — an obsession with provision of milk and bread, etc. rather than life- and destiny-changing ideas and policies in a way no one can dismantle for hundreds of years, not even with a succession of incompetent rulers, such as the Ottoman Empire endured after Suleiman, and Rome fitfully experienced after Julius and Augustus Caesar.

  • Misguided letter

    Misguided letter

    Jonathan’s ministers’ self-assessment is in bad taste

    When a lizard falls from a wall and no one around seems to appreciate what it has done, the lizard nods in self-appreciation of the feat it has performed. That was what struck me when, last Sunday, the Minister of National Planning in the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, Dr. Abubakar Suleiman, issued a statement asking President Muhammadu Buhari to give his principal his “due respect”. Suleiman said he was speaking for himself and other ministers who served in that discredited administration.

    Little wonder the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, described the former ministers as “members of the country’s latest trade union formation, the Association of Ex-Jonathan Ministers”. Shehu ought to have qualified the pack as ‘association of sad or disgruntled ex-Jonathan’s ministers, to make it complete, because that is what they are. And we should understand where they are coming from and what it is that has made them sad or disgruntled, or both.

    According to Suleiman, the efforts of the Buhari government have been to portray all members of the Jonathan administration “as corrupt and irresponsible, in an orchestrated and vicious trial by the media,” which he said had created “a lynch mentality that discredits our honest contributions to the growth and development of our beloved nation.”

    Suleiman speaks further: “We, the ministers who served under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, have watched with increasing alarm and concern the concerted effort by the Buhari administration and members of the APC to condemn, ridicule and undermine the efforts of that administration, in addition to impugning the integrity of its individual members. While we concede that every administration has the right to chart its own path as it deems fit, we nevertheless consider the vilification of the Jonathan administration, to be ill-intentioned, unduly partisan, and in bad faith”.

    He added, for effect: “We are proud to have served Nigeria and we boldly affirm that we did so diligently and to the best of our abilities. The improvements that have been noticed today in the power sector, in national security and in social services and other sectors did not occur overnight. They are products of solid foundations laid by the same Jonathan administration.”

    We congratulate Dr Suleiman and Co. for these wonderful achievements. But it would appear they conveniently forgot in the course of their assessment of their better-forgotten administration that President Jonathan spent more than five years in power as president, having inherited about a year of his predecessor’s tenure when the latter died, whereas the usual tenure is four years at a go, unless a president is reelected. So, if the former president spent five years preparing the grounds for what Dr Suleiman and his fellow ex-ministers want us to see as stellar performance that the Buhari administration is getting the glory for, and if I may add, undeservedly, when would he (former president) have begun to actualise same? Definitely, something is not adding up here; that one government could have started all these wonderful things without being able to bring any into fruition.

    We should give it to Dr Suleiman though, that he was charitable to admit that there have been “improvements that have been noticed today in the power sector, in national security and in social services and other sectors”. The other leg of the story that he failed to add is that these have been possible because of the public perception of President Buhari as a no-nonsense president. At least one of those heading the power sector confessed that much in a media chat, that, for them as with many others, zero tolerance for corruption is the beginning of wisdom now.

    The truth is that President Buhari might not have added a single megawatt of electricity to what he met on ground; this fear is what has made many people to sit right. The same applies to the refineries that had witnessed several turn-around in the past without any benefit; some of them are now working. Again, Buhari might not have done anything to add to what he inherited on May 29, the fear of jail is doing the magic. Perhaps it is only in the area of national security, particularly the terror war, that the Buhari government might have added some arms and ammunition to what they met on ground, the war is better prosecuted now not necessarily because of what the former president did but more because of the support the country has been able to get from the outside world which now sees the country as being in the hands of a better manager; and one they can conveniently do business with.

    While one concedes the right to the ministers to give themselves distinction during their tenure, and even see their principal’s government as the best thing to happen to Nigeria, the ministers should know that it is only facts that are sacred; comments are free. The fact that the former president conceded defeat even before the conclusion of the announcement of the results officially showed that he was aware that Nigerians had spoken and had said a loud “no’ to his reelection bid. Maybe Dr Suleiman was away from the country when Nigerians gave their verdict. Because if he had been around, he would not have been romanticizing their failed and corrupt government they way he did in the letter to the president.

    Without doubt, some of the former ministers might have done fairly well, but overall, the team was a monumental disaster. Indeed, the perception out there is that good men could hardly have lasted in that regime, especially with the unceremonious exit of the Minister of Power then, Prof Barth Nnaji. In other words, one must be comfy with the ungodly things being done in the Jonathan years to stay long in that government.

    Perhaps Dr Suleiman’s letter might have made sense to some people if he had spoken for himself alone, but he messed it all up by trying to tell us the opposite of what we know about their government. If that government was not corrupt, or those who served in it are yet to admit this much, then we can see where the former president himself got the idea of making a distinction between stealing and corruption. He and most of his ministers were all gone; far gone. Apart from the fact that their so-called best was not good enough, their government would have a pride of place when we talk about corruption in this country and even beyond.

    I never said so, says Itse Sagay

    Mr Adegboyega, I never said at any time that the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) was finding it difficult to get judges of integrity. It is a newspaper (not THE NATION) source that is supposed to have said so. So, the very premise of your presentation is wrong. – Prof Sagay.

  • Governors’ security details and police ‘mai guards’ for big men

    Governors’ security details and police ‘mai guards’ for big men

    The question that is likely to still remain on the minds of most citizens is why governors elected by citizens in a free and fair election would need 62 security details, sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship.

    The police has recently announced its decision to cut security details for governors from 150 to 62. The decision was sequel to calls by President Buhari for liberation of hundreds of police men and women meant to protect the community from serving as Mai Guards in the homes and cars of powerful men and women in the society. The question that is likely to still remain on the minds of most citizens is why governors elected by citizens in a free and fair election would need 62 security details, sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship. Citizens are also worried about thousands of police officers attached to retired ministers, commissioners, and even local government chairmen in a country where the only time citizens see police men or women is on highways and street corners where police ask motorists for their driving and vehicle permits, preparatory to extorting them.

    In a way, the recent reduction of governor’s security details from 150 to 62 smacks of some commitment on the part of the IGP to the ethic of change. In the past sixteen years, governors and their wives, and often, children have experienced the generosity (or prodigality?) of the state. There was a time in the recent past when governors’ wives travelled with 40 security details and aides on the same day their gubernatorial husbands were on another assignment that required at least 60 state protectors. Should children of such governors also need to be somewhere else at the same time, they too were entitled to police men to secure them on their way to clubs, bars, or friends. It is still a common sight to see governors alight from their cars in the midst of 50 or more security details, even now that change is in the air.

    A few years ago, the governor of Dubai was featured on CBS 60-minute Sunday documentary, riding a horse and stopping to talk to citizens and driving his own car and stopping to chat with citizens. It was a moving scene of love and admiration between the ruler and the ruled. When asked why the governor would risk a foolhardy mingling with citizens without heavy police protection, he said that there was no reason for him to fear those whose interest he was working to protect and promote. In the governance style that we have in Nigeria, it certainly will be suicidal for most of our governors to see their guests off from their sitting rooms without tens of security details suffocating them and their guests. Such behaviour is typical in most post-colonial African states from Cairo to Cape Town and from Dakar to Dodoma. Our rulers in post-colonial Africa still see themselves as successors to the colonial governor and district officer who needed to be protected from the wrath and jealousy of blood-thirsty primitive natives God had brought them to Africa to civilise.

    The mention of jealousy of colonialists by the colonised is not to imply that there is no jealousy or even envy between those who rule and those who are ruled in Africa in the post-colonial moment. In countries under military rule, the rulers need protection against the electorate whose elected governments they displace by violence, more so when such military dictators repeat the political and economic sabotage of the state for which they dismiss elected civilians. Given the bellicose nature of multiparty politics in Nigeria, especially the hostility between ruling and opposition parties in a system that is characterised by an electoral culture in which the ruling party sees remaining in power as a life-and-death matter, post-election politics often requires that winners be given adequate protection. The need for special protection for governors and other holders of political appointments may not necessarily have anything to do with the behaviour or policies of governors. Even in a properly constituted democratic government, it may be foolhardy for governors with people-friendly policies and programmes not to take precaution, as the thugs of political parties that lost elections are still around to cause mayhem.

    It is thus understandable that governors be given adequate protection, but 62 security details are still too many in a country with less than 400,000 police to protect 180 million citizens, not to talk of state and personal property that requires round-the-clock protection by security personnel. I have heard those who said that 62 security details should not be considered too outrageous, if we truly recognise that our governors, regardless of the quality of their governance require protection against evil doers. Reducing governor’s security staff by 88 per governor leaves the country with additional 3,168 to return to the general pool to protect citizens. This is also a good time to seek more rationalisation in the allocation of state security personnel to non-gubernatorial big men and women as personal security guards.

    The IGP ought to know (and if not, needs to be reminded) that there are thousands of citizens perceived by the government as value-added super men and women who have police protection in their homes, cars, as well as in the cars of their spouses. In many cases, such police men are seen carrying the bags of their oga’s wives to and from the market, standing behind them in party halls, and standing at the doors of beauty parlours each time such wives of extraordinarily value-added men choose to paint their nails. Under the category of men and women of political power, the culture is that those who had served as ministers, commissioners, speakers, and in other ‘high-wattage’ political offices have police attached to them for life. The list includes surviving ministers from governments overthrown by military dictators since the sudden end of Balewa’s government for unacceptable level of corruption. Even individuals who served under military governments in what is considered in the country’s political culture as larger-than-life capacity between 1966 and now are also being protected at the expense of the state. Even three months into the government of change, members of the previous executive and legislature are still being protected by police men in cars that have no tags and those that carry NASS plate numbers.

    There must be a better strategy for protecting citizens who had held political appointments before than just reducing the number of security staff attached to them. While governors and current ministers may have some reason to fear for their lives, there is no reason why the state should be spending taxpayers’ money on special protection for individuals who ordinarily should not be in harm’s (or ‘arms’?) way months and years after leaving office. In an ethos of equality before the law and equal opportunity for all citizens, there is a need for the new National Security Adviser to think anew about how to make former political office holders feel at ease after leaving office.

    There is also no logical reason to be renting government security staff to economic giants or billionaires who also feel unsafe, to the extent of requiring special police to watch over them in their living rooms and bedrooms. In the universities twenty-five years ago, vice chancellors did not have policemen running around them and their wives. But today, a vice chancellor without a police orderly is a rarity. Even some vice chancellors of state and private universities are now seen in public with police orderlies sitting beside their drivers on highways while it is impossible for any citizen to get police to respond to stress calls.

    There is so much advantage that advances in technology can provide to support governments’ efforts to protect the life and property of current and past political office holders, more so that electricity supply is improving by the day. Electronic surveillance, home alarm systems, security presence in communities rather than in the homes of individuals with political or economic power are some of such devices to release thousands of police men working as Mai guards for politicians to protect communities.

  • Scholar-Diplomat Extraordinaire: Adebola Adefuye (Aka “Ade Blow”) (1947-2015)

    Scholar-Diplomat Extraordinaire: Adebola Adefuye (Aka “Ade Blow”) (1947-2015)

    First, from Accra, Ghana, Femi Osofisan forwarded the news to me, asking me if I thought it was true. Incidentally, the very week before in Berlin, Germany, he and I had been talking about him, about the eternally youthful “Ade Blow”. Then Olu Ademulegun sent me the same inquiry, this time more anxious, more desperate: is it true that “Ade Blow” is gone? And then finally, from John Ohiorhenuan in New York: “BJ, do you know what took him away?”

    I start this tribute to my departed friend in this manner in order to underscore one point: almost to the last person, everyone of our circle of friends, acquaintances and members of our generational cohort who knew Adebola Ibidapo Adefuye somehow did not in the least expect that he would go before any of us. Nearly all the way from primary school through high school to the University of Ibadan as an undergraduate, he was nearly always the youngest in the class, quite apart from also nearly always being one of the brightest. But more than this was what appeared to be his perpetual youthfulness: he looked much, much younger than his 68 years and had consistently looked younger than his age at any time in the last two decades since we, members of his generational cohort, entered our middle-age years. Yes, we have all been joking in the last decade or so that we were all now in the departure lounge of life, but the last person amongst us that we thought would take that “flight” was “Ade Blow”. And indeed, such is the tragic irony of life, of Being itself.

    In my sorrow, my heart goes out to his family: his widow, Sola and his three children, Bunmi, Tolu and Baba. I have many friends who are very devoted family men; Adefuye was quite easily one of the most devoted of such husbands and fathers. It may seem that in saying this, I am merely repeating a comforting cliché that is normative in tributes to departed friends, but in this case, it happens to be far more than a customary expression of condolence to the family; it is an incandescent truth. To all who met him, he was the essence of kindness, considerateness and generosity: I think these virtues in his life and work had their roots in the sort of life he shared with his family, with his wife and children. How they will cope with his loss seems unimaginable to me. All I can say, all I wish to express to members of his family and all who knew and admired him as a friend, acquaintance and colleague, is that he left a rich legacy that should be a source of comfort and solace for his loss.

    The standard obituary notices and editorials have given the bare bones of his achievements; I repeat them here and will then considerably add finer details of texture and nuance to these achievements. At the University of Ibadan, he graduated from the History Department on top of his class with an Upper Second Class Honors degree. By the way, at the time, I and others speculated that the only reason Adefuye wasn’t given a First Class Honors degree was because up to that point in time in 1969, the History Department at U.I. was “famous” – or “notorious” – in never giving anyone First Class, period. All the same, Adefuye went on to complete all work for his Ph D within four years, then and now something of an amazing achievement. From this he rose steadily from Lecturer 1 to Senior Lecturer, Professor and Head of Department of History, all at the University of Lagos. I think it is on record that when he became Head of Department, he was one of the youngest ever to have acceded to that position in Nigeria. Here, it is pertinent to observe that this was a period when meritocracy was still strong in our universities and the post of H.O.D. was not yet the mostly administrative and highly politicized position that it is today in our universities. To be an H.O.D. at that time was to be a solid source of professional and intellectual leadership within the given department itself and in the wider circles of the profession. Perhaps one way in which I might give an apt illustration of these observations on the academic achievements of Adefuye would be to give an account of what I discovered about him as a distinguished historian in our country’s diplomatic service when I visited him and his family when he was our High Commissioner in the English-speaking Caribbean based in Kingston, Jamaica.

    His invitation to me came when, through a phone conversation, he learnt of my interest in, and ties with the Caribbean. I was then at Cornell University and had developed strong political and ideological connections with the workers’ movements in that region of the world, especially Trinidad and Jamaica where I had many friends and comrades. I am not sure of this now, but I think in fact that Adefuye’s invitation to me came as a result of his having met some of my friends in Jamaica who had spoken very warmly about me to him and he had told them that he and I were friends and cohorts at U.I. At any rate, about a week after my arrival in Kingston, I finally made contact with these Jamaican friends. Dear reader, imagine my great amazement and pleasure when these friends recounted to me, with an awe bordering on hero-worship, the “revolution” that Adefuye had carried out in the Jamaican educational system through his introduction of African history into the curriculum of all primary and secondary schools in the country. Adefuye had not kept this information completely hidden from me; he had only in his characteristic humility hinted to me that apart from his diplomatic duties, he had been doing some unpaid work teaching African history in Jamaican schools. But what the Jamaicans themselves told me was something of epic proportions: Adefuye had had systematic discussions with teachers and educational administrators about how to make African history part of the curriculum of Jamaican schooling; he had brought in relevant texts, courtesy of the Nigerian government; he had travelled the length and breadth of the island nation giving lectures and talks; and his activities had begun to redound to some of the other island nations in the region.

    This story, this narrative which at the time seemed to come from a deeply redemptive response to the long, worldwide ignorance of African history, would be incomplete if I don’t link it with the effect that it had on Adefuye’s standing among all the other diplomats without exception in Jamaica when he was our man in that country, that region of the world. Simply stated, Adefuye was the most highly admired and respected diplomat of any country in the Caribbean at the time. The other Ambassadors and High Commissioner saw the great esteem in which the Jamaicans and the other countries of the Caribbean held Adefuye; they more or less had to “fall in line” with the situation. Two days before I left Jamaica on that visit, I went with Adefuye to a dinner at the home of one of these ambassadors at which virtually all the others were present. The high regard for Adefuye was more than palpable; it was electrifying. Everyone was duly impressed when Adefuye introduced me as Professor of English at Cornell; but they all quickly turned away from me to my friend, each one regaling me with his or her particular story about Adefuye’s enormous popularity in Jamaica and the Caribbean. Adefuye was clearly the unelected doyen of the diplomatic corps in Jamaica. About two years later when Emeka Anyaoku became the first and so far only African Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, it was largely thanks to the fact that through Adefuye’s work in the Caribbean, all the votes in that region went to Nigeria’s Anyaoku.

    In bringing this tribute to my friend to a close, I would like to end by exploring deeper ramifications of the link between history as a discipline and the place of diplomacy in the modern world with specific regard to jokes and conversations that I had with Adefuye over several decades concerning politics in general and socialism in particular. This needs to be told delicately and with becoming circumspection.

    Now, Adefuye belonged to one the two well known Nigerian schools or formations of historians and historiography, these being the Ibadan-Nsukka school and the Ahmadu Bello University school. Frankly speaking, the Ibadan-Nsukka school to which Adefuye belonged is much better known worldwide. Its three main driving ideas are, one, that Africa, like any other region of the world, has a history; two, this history of Africa did not begin with the coming of the Europeans and of writing to Africa; three, this history of Africa is part of the history of the world without which world history would be incomplete, truncated. You could say that the ABU school of history also accepts all these ideas of the Ibadan-Nsukka school, but it goes one step further by raising fundamental questions about how history in general and world and local histories in particular are written in order to advance the interests of dominant groups.

    Adefuye knew that though both of us are products of U.I., I was more inclined toward the ABU school of historians. And from this arose his good-natured but merciless teasing of me on account of a pre-recorded message that I had left on my phone answering machine when I arrived at Cornell in 1988. The message said: “I greet you in the name of socialism; please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible”. Every single time that he either saw me or spoke with me on the phone, “Ade Blow” would start the conversation sarcastically by repeating that recorded message. As a retort, I would say, I wish I could greet you in the name of the capitalism or the bourgeoisie whom you serve as a diplomat, but you know that I don’t think the future lies with either capitalism or the bourgeoisie.

    Well, everyone reading this tribute would recognize immediately that my retort was too long, too clunky. And at any rate, it is not something attributable to Adefuye himself. He was not the subservient tool of any government, any abstract ideology. He treated all with whom he came into contact with a deep respect of their innate dignity, whether or not they were rich or poor, the powerful or the powerless. I can report with great pride about my friend that more than any other ambassador we have ever had in Washington Adefuye made the embassy in D.C. the most welcoming place for all Nigerians from every part of the country and of all social and economic groups. The tremendous respect that he enjoyed as a diplomat was reflected in the kind of place the embassy in DC was under his ambassadorship; both in turn, derived from his sense of the place of the history of Africa in world history. How many of our diplomats and political leaders have that sort of rich intellectual background?

    In his play, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare famously wrote the following lines to be delivered by Mark Anthony, the dead Caesar’s friend: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar”. To that I say: No, not with Adefuye. The good that he did will be remembered, with gratitude and with solace in the recognition that when he was here, he made a big difference. My condolences, Sola, Bunmi, Tolu and Baba. May you and other members of the extended family be comforted by fond memories of who and what he was.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • The Buhari administration: Prospects and problems

    The Buhari administration: Prospects and problems

    It is said that thunder hardly strikes twice at the same spot. If the now civilianized former military ruler from Daura is remembered for little else, he will be memorialized as the man under whose watch thunder struck the Nigerian political firmament twice. It is no mean achievement. Let us now elaborate on this political conceit.

    In March 1984 and after the first hundred days of his first coming, it was clear that the lean ramrod straight infantry general meant exacting business. Now thirty one years apart, and after another hundred days of the new civilian regime headed by the selfsame but now retired general, Buhari has again shaken Nigeria to its political foundation. A brief historical detour is in order.

    At the close of the month of December 1983, a group of senior military officers led by Major General Mohamadu Buhari , as at then the General Officer commanding the Third Division of the Nigerian Army based in Jos, overthrew the  civilian regime headed by Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari. There was widespread jubilation and applause across the length and breadth of the nation. The joyous mood of the nation was captured in the enraptured refrain: “Happy new year, and happy new regime!!”

    It is interesting to note that when Buhari was toppled twenty months later in a palace coup spearheaded by the then Chief of Army Staff, Major General Ibrahim Babangida, the applause, if any at all, was muted.  There was no general jubilation except among disaffected factions of the political class. As far as the general populace was concerned, it was a play of giants among military juggernauts in which Nigerians were nothing but spectral spectators.

    But as fate and divine destiny would have it, thirty years after his ouster by his colleagues, Buhari has been returned to power as a civilian after another major ruling class implosion and this time on the cusp of a pan-Nigerian revolt against corrupt and inept civilian rule. This was after three storied attempts in 2003, 2007 and 2011 which ended in tears and much gnashing of teeth.

    This time around, nothing could have stopped the Buhari momentum as it swept the cobwebs of elite mischief and ancient feuds before it. Never in Nigeria’s history has the national multitude rooted and rallied valiantly for one individual. Since no one can argue with a political volcano, the utterly remiss and renegade Nigerian ruling class quietly slunk away after one last ditch attempt to torpedo the entire process.

    It should be noted that the old military coalition which swept Buhari to power was an inchoate, contrary and contradictory amalgam comprising of careerists, rightwing power venders, professional coupists and a sprinkling of genuine nationalists officers. Very soon, the stress and strains began to manifest and it was clear to the discerning that a military showdown was all but inevitable.

    It was said that Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the ousted and absconding former civilian president, aborted his precipitate flight around Lafia upon learning of the headship and composition of the new military junta. It was not a revolution, so to say. It was an orderly revolt among military orderlies of the oligarchy.

    Demonstrating astonishing political virginity, General Buhari himself did not help matters. A devout  traditionalist obviously insulated from the then prevalent national mood and temperament, he addressed a press conference denouncing those who were insinuating that Alhaji Shagari was brought down to Lagos in chains. This was at a time when Shagari’s deputy, Alex Ekwueme, had been hauled into detention where he developed a beard that would make Nebuchadinazeer wince in fearful admiration.

    By the time Buhari was ousted, what was perceived as the less than evenhanded handling of the cases of corrupt self-enrichment and other sensitive national matters had cost the administration considerable elite sympathy particularly among the Southern factions. The powerful ASUU gave up after dismissing the junta as the military wing of the NPN.

    Wole Soyinka, soon to be ennobled—or ennobeled—was on fearsome rampage tearing the administration to pieces at every available forum. Two respected civil war stalwarts from the west tore into the administration. In a coup de grace, the inevitable General Obasanjo gave a lecture at UI in which he warned that Nigeria was not the exclusive property of a section and must not be so ruled. It was the beginning of the end.

    In retrospect, it can now be seen that just as the military amalgam that originally brought Buhari to power was inchoate and irredeemably conflictual, the civilian coalition that has brought him to power almost thirty two years after is even more inchoate, contradictory and roiling with mutually exclusive political tendencies. It has already occasioned much stress and tension in the polity. The senate is lost to a desperate counter-revolutionary group who do not care a hoot about Buhari’s messianic mission.

    It is only a mere hundred days into Buhari’s civilian administration and writs are already flying all over the place. Investigative organs are being legally defanged or disabled on a daily basis. The masses who are still solidly behind Buhari do not own either newspapers or electronic organs of counter-revolutionary dissemination of virulent nation-tearing propaganda and they can only watch in fearful dismay. It is obvious that if thunder can strike twice, so can retrogressive reaction.

    What remains is at this point is to take a prospective analysis of the balance of forces, the problems that may fatally entrap Buhari this time around as a result of certain persistent political peccadilloes and the political formations that will shape up in opposition to the retired general in all their structural, systemic, ideological and institutional dimensions. This should serve as a political primer and mnemonic device for the retired general as well as a handy manual for a chronically conflicted nation.

    In a brilliant, profoundly ironic comparison of the two Bonapartes, Karl Marx once observed that history often repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy and the second time as a farce. In an interesting gloss on this passage, Terry Eagleton, the notable Anglo-Irish Marxist literary theorist,  has noted that it was not just that Louis Bonaparte was a pathetic parody of his more illustrious uncle but that that was the way Napoleon Bonaparte himself would have appeared had he shown up around that time: A regressive caricature of his former self. In other words, time changes everything and change also must time itself.

    It is important to save General Buhari from becoming a self-parodying caricature of his former self. The first time he ruled Nigeria, it was as an absolute military autocrat with all the power, the symbolic aura and paraphernalia of military despotism. This time around as a civilian ruler, he can no longer tap into or avail himself of such wide, untrammeled powers. Military rule is passé and the international community abjures autocratic civilian rule.

    But besides all this, and much more importantly, the National Question, in the intervening decades, has been critically exacerbated and Nigeria has become a roiling cage of contrary nationalities clawing at each other to death.  The Nigerian post-colonial state is completely demystified and desacralized. Nothing is sacred or sacrosanct anymore.

    President Buhari should therefore not be surprised or miffed if every step he takes to bring succour and solace to Nigerians irrespective of tribe, creed or region is subject to stringent scrutiny and every appointment is viewed from ethnic, religious and regional prism. Many will cock a snook at him just for the fun of it. Others will try to derail him out of bitter primordial malice, and he cannot resort to extra-constitutional measures in a just bid to sanitize the nation without calling into question the fragile national fabric. The Nigeria political elites have never been this bitterly polarized.

    Yet it is a scary and precarious situation when a seeming revolution cannot employ revolutionary methods to deal with a historic mess. The former general just has to get on with the job within the circumscribed and constricting ambit of law and order.  Unlike the first time around when he was able to slam a tense somnolence on the nation by sheer military muscle, many more writs will erupt this time around as his sense of justice, evenhandedness and fair play is called into question by ethnic barons and ideological charlatans who have suddenly found their voice after keeping quiet when Jonathan’s misrule appeared to favour their section.

    However, one thing Buhari has going for him which his military regime did not enjoy is massive international support and global approval. Having helped to bleed Nigeria senseless through its tacit support for executive pickpockets, the west is now showing some remorse about the fate and tragedy of the greatest conglomeration of Black souls in the world. Buhari should be able to leverage this global opprobrium for looters of our national patrimony irrespective of their status as the internal battle against corrupt enrichment gets underway.

    But character is fate as the ancient Greek sages noted.  What may eventually derail President Buhari are certain character traits which may be admirable when viewed in isolation but which when viewed holistically may represent a classic instance of how personal virtues may become political handicaps in the ethnic hotbed and political bedlam of fractious nations.

    For example, Buhari’s contempt for the Nigerian political class is legendary .This contempt is well-deserved and shared by many patriotic Nigerians. But such was this contempt that the first time around,  it didn’t allow him to even contemplate a Transition Programme for a return of the country to civil rule. The enemies who would eventually oust him pounced on this.

    This time around, the same contempt is driving Buhari to throw the baby away with the birth water by stiffly ignoring the call for another look at the structural misalignment that has hobbled the nation’s march to authentic nationhood. The president sees it as mere political irritation but it may eventually be discovered that without this drastic structural surgery, good governance and probity may simply not be enough.  An opportunistic but expired faction of the political elite has already latched on to this as causus belli, knowing how it resonates with wide sections of the nation.

    The other problem is Buhari’s seeming inability to transcend a confining cultural and religious milieu. Nobody can grudge a man for his fidelity to the spiritual and cultural conditioning of his political habitus. This is in the nature of human acculturation. But to rule a fractious multi-national nation like Nigeria requires far more cosmopolitan gamesmanship and metropolitan expansiveness than the president has shown. No one is asking him to admit contrary elements into his inner spiritual chambers, but he needs to widen and broaden his political associations in order to avail himself of the political, economic and spiritual intelligence that he will need in the struggle to redeem Nigeria.

    If he has not been told, then he must be told that he could not have come to power without this .That critical political intelligence, economic surveillance, cultural patrolling and intellectual trouble shooting will be quite decisive as the battle to redeem Nigeria shapes up in the months ahead. The first time around, General Buhari did most things right, but left his military flanks exposed which proved fatal.

    This time around, President Buhari has been doing most things right while leaving his political flanks exposed which may prove equally lethal. The senate fiasco ought to have taught him a lesson. Even as the benefits of his nationalist reforms are beginning to kick in, he will still need a countervailing patriotic political cadre to shield him from political hyenas and to serve as the conduit pipe and transmission belt of a new national consciousness. It is morning yet after a mere hundred days and whatever the elite carping about posts and postings, Mohamadu Buhari is doing very well.

  • Dr Vincent J. Palathingal: Honour so truly deserved

    I must thank His Royal Highness for this honour done a worthy Dr Palathingal, not for monetary considerations, as is mostly the norm among the Nigerian royalty, but for services rendered to the very poor in society.

    It was a magnificent outing at the palace of His Royal Majesty, Oba Alamu Oloyede Onikosi, Ketu, Lagos on Saturday, 5 September, 2015 as his highness honoured the genial,  almost self-effacing  medical doctor  with the chieftaincy title of  Are Basegun and his wife, Elizabeth,  Yeye Are Basegun,  of  Ikosi/Kosofe Land, Lagos.  I met Dr Palathingal not too long ago at the upscale Michel Dental Clinic located within the Alausa Shopping mall along Obafemi Awolowo Way, Ikeja.  Notwithstanding the huge  number of patients waiting to be attended to that day, Dr Funso Afelumo, the Medical  Director,  did not  just introduce us but went all the way into the massive humanitarian services Dr Palathingal has rendered in several parts of Nigeria since he arrived the country some 40 years ago.  His current work, he said, is the free surgical operations for cataract for those who cannot personally afford the cost. Listening to both Funso, and the doctor reel out all he has done, and continues to do in Nigeria, I was not surprised that I took to him like fish to water.  Neither was I surprised when, a few weeks later, he invited me to grace his installation as the Basegun of Ikosi/Kosofe Land, by His Royal Highness, the Onikosi. I daresay Dr Palathingal and his wife of over four decades -they got married in 1972 – are eminently worthy of this honour.  I must thank His Royal Highness for this honour done a worthy Dr Palathingal, not for monetary considerations, as is mostly the norm among the Nigerian royalty, but for services rendered to the very poor in society.  To qualify for the surgery, Dr Palathingal’s only condition is inability to personally fund it. Except in some Catholic eye centres where they are hugely subsidised, these surgeries ordinarily cost between N300 – 400, 000.  He has facilitated more than 50 of these and plans for the next batch are already under way.

    Dr Vincent, from Kattoor Kerala, India, was born in 1943 and, according to him, it was obvious from early in life that he was destined to live a life of assisting the needy.  It was in the full knowledge of this that he headed to Africa in 1974, just two years after completing his specialist training in medicine. He had graduated from the well regarded Medical College of Allepey, Kerala, India, in 1972 and completed his internship a year later.  While working at the Holy Cross Hospital in Kerala, he met Elizabeth, to whom he got married in ’72.

    They arrived Nigeria in 1974 with Adazi Nnku, some twenty five kilometres from Onitsha in the then East Central State, as their first point of call. His employer was the Catholic Church under the headship of Cardinal Francis Arinze of the Catholic Arch Diocese. Adazi Nnku community in those days was nothing but a sprawling population of people heavily in need of medical help given the rudimentary nature of medical services in Nigeria in the ’70’s. Apart from  attending to that horde of  medically in need, Dr Palathingal did a lot  to promote health education and in organising preventive medical programmes  throughout a cluster of villages in very remote areas of the East Central State. For 15 years, he remained in the East and relocated to Lagos only after their two children have grown up and needed to go to higher school. Both have since returned to India for their university education.  Dr Palathingal also worked at Ihiala, Ozubulu, Idemili, Onitsha and Uga. I am sure many of those reading this  would remember the kind-hearted, easy-going Indian doctor who came like a God-send angel to help them out of their medical challenges.  Those who remember him are, right now, most probably saying some well deserved silent prayers for Dr Palathingal and his family. They absolutely deserve such prayers from a grateful people.

    In Lagos, he worked in several hospitals, one of them being the Jajo Hospital, Ikeja. To date, Dr Vincent has been in medical practice in Nigeria for 40 years. Although this is enough to earn him our utmost appreciation, he has additionally been involved in several philanthropic activities. I specifically asked him to list out these for me. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

    • Village adoption: In his words, most Nigerian villages do not have access to hospitals or medical care. He, and his team under the banner of what he calls WMC, Nigeria Province, decided to adopt Akure village near Agbara estate in Ogun State, to which they make periodic medical visits complete with medications and injections for treatment and they also undertake routine medical tests. This is done in collaboration with the community whose leaders assemble persons in need of medical treatment ahead of their arrival. These treatments are free of any charges.
    • During his tenure as chairman of WMC, he facilitated the provision of potable drinking water to the Akure community in Ogun State.
    • He regularly provides assistance to the medical camp and consultations conducted by the Rotary Club of Palm grove Estate, Lagos.
    • Dr Vincent and his team provide fashion training apprenticeship for young, under privileged girls in remote villages, and, on completion of training, gives them sewing machines at no cost to them
    • Under the KCA free eye cataract surgery programme, he organises, with the assistance of a certain Dr Erikotolae, free cataract surgeries. At the last count, 51 persons have benefitted from the programme and plans are under way to conduct the next exercise for a batch of not less than 50 persons in the Ikosi/Kosofe area of Lagos State.
    • In association with the Kano Heart Foundation, and working through the KCA, Dr Vincent arranges for some children of poor Nigerian parents to have heart surgeries in India.
    • According to him, discussions are ongoing with some Indian hospitals to send specialist cardiac teams to Nigeria to conduct heart surgeries for persons who cannot afford the cost.

    As a mark of appreciation for Dr Palathingal’s services to Nigeria and Nigerians, the Nigerian-Indian community, including a representation from the Indian High Commission, was fully involved in the celebration of one of their own. At the reception which held at  the Cardinal Anthony Okogie Hall, St. Agnes Catholic Church, Maryland, Lagos, a  very interesting cultural performance was staged by a group of young Indian children. At the event, a member of his family, the Revd Father Palathingal, who came for the event all the way from India, proposed his brother’s toast.  All these were intended to show appreciation for how well Dr Vincent has represented, not just the Palathingal family of Kattoor, Kerala India, but the entire good people of India.

    It is kudos and congratulations to His Royal Highness, the Onikosi, who, in this era of change in our country, has demonstrated a paradigm shift in how it is much preferable to appreciate and honour services to the community over and above transient financial considerations.

     May your kind increase in Nigeria, Kabiyesi, and may this worthy example translate into the new template for bestowing chieftaincy titles on worthy individuals by your brother Obas.

    I sincerely congratulate the new Basegun, Dr Vincent J.Palathingal, and his adorable wife, the Yeye Basegun, on the occasion of this well-deserved honour. I wish them God’s continuing uplift as I hope and pray that they will continue to extend their philanthropic services to the needy in Nigeria.

  • Akin Ambode, a nice chap finishes first

    Snooper has been watching and following the intrigue-soaked, fiendishly quicksilver political milieu of Lagos with quiet animation. In the Fourth Republic, Lagos has gradually replaced Ibadan as the epicentre of progressive politics. It is the nerve centre and engine room of the transformational politics that has taken the old west and now the rest of Nigeria by storm. Have political brains and will travel. As the column never tires of positing, the artillery of knowledge is superior to knowledge of artillery.

    But all over the world and particularly in post-colonial societies, progressive clans are a fractious troublous lot, quarrelling openly and quietly making up behind the scene even as the machine constantly purges itself of unworthy accretions. It is in the nature of radical organizations seeking changes to be riddled with even more violent contradictions than the status quo they seek to supplant.

    Early in life, snooper developed a mantra which often sees him through political turbulence. It is that no matter what happens, the party is supreme. You may quarrel viciously and violently before decisions are taken, but once they are taken you have to abide by them. This mantra was taken from an old western political warhorse whose one-liner retort to internal protest was: (Wo, parti o gbodo fo!) Look, the party must not break up, no matter what!

    This is why it is meet to congratulate the Lagos state governor Akin Ambode over his sweet victory at the electoral tribunal. Now that the electoral hurdle has been scaled, it is time for the calm and methodical fellow to unfurl his bag of surprises for Lagosians.  Humane, polished, cultured, sincerely solicitous of other people’s wellbeing, and impeccably well-mannered  , Ambode is quite a revelation in the coliseum of political roughnecks.

    In the course of the last electioneering campaign, snooper sat down alone to drill the then gubernatorial aspirant and found his logical and intellectual grasp of issues, political, economic and even cultural, a tad short of prodigious. His answers were extensively well-researched and deeply thought out, shorn of pomp and pomposity. His quiet unassuming mien belies a ruthless streak which does not take hostages when sufficiently roused. Well-educated, well-travelled and very cosmopolitan in outlook, Ambode should take Lagos state to the next level after the labours of earlier avatars.

    Here is wishing the governor a successful tenure. Good guys also finish first.

  • For want of N1,500, this widow got raped to death over a long night

    Just think of the horrors this woman endured for an entire night in the hands of this excuse of a man because of this amount. It makes me so ashamed that the litany of failures of my country led to and enabled this kind of behaviour.

    Let me paint the scenario for you once again, dear reader. Recently, there was a story in the newspapers that a widow was allegedly raped to death over the night by a man somewhere in Ebonyi State. If this story is true, it means, dear reader, Mrs. Ogodo Egede, 34, of Egwudunagu village in Amachi community literally spent her most horrendous, longest and last night in the hands of a senseless, low-level, hideous and heartless male assailant who brutalised her mercilessly throughout the night. What was her offence? She owed him 1,500 Naira and could not pay.

    Since the story broke, unfortunately, not many Nigerians have been able to keep their level of indignation high enough. Rather, all of the nation’s indignation has gone into upbraiding Buhari for appointing mostly northerners to fill national offices. Only the police have been left to sigh, heave up and haul the brutish philistine to join his kith and ilk in custody.

    I cannot get over the shock though. I cannot get over the shock that something, anything that pretends to go in the shape of a human being can take another something, anything that goes in the same name and subject it/him/her to such a long and horrendous violation. Worse, I cannot get over the shock that Nigerians are not screaming blue murder and demanding the swiftest judgment over that reprobate. I am in shock that we all who go by the name Nigerians have failed this soul and are going about our normal business castigating the president as usual.

    Oh yes, we all failed her. To start with, while this woman was going through this atrocious and horrific experience in the hands of her appalling assaulter, most of us were…. asleep, while some were… making money… yeah well, making something anyway. So we’ve got her on our collective conscience as a nation and as individuals, though some more than others. The question we should be asking ourselves is what could have brought a widow to the point that she could not offset a debt of N1,500 and had to pay with her life? This is more pathetic when you consider that this is a country where leaders use champagne to brush their teeth and wash down yesterday’s beer and then sniff all kinds of costly things with the money that could have kept this woman alive.

    We could start with the fact that she is a widow which means that her husband failed her by dying. That can’t be helped; as they say, when you gotta go, you gotta go. In saner climes, that fact alone normally invites sympathy and offers of help, but not to our assailant. In place of sympathy, he offered brutality. The woman’s own father was also said not to have helped much. As the story went, the woman’s daughter fled to her grandfather that night and told him what was going on in their house but the man did not raise hell or rouse the village to help his daughter. He has his reasons, but let’s move on.

    What about her councilman and LGA chairman? Oh yes, they also failed her. Can you imagine the colossal amount of money that have been released into each LGA in this country but which have not been used to make life a little more comfortable for the people? Perhaps, if those monies had been judiciously used, factories could by now be dotting the landscapes of Nigeria, rural and all, and Mrs. Egede could by now be holding down a job of a sort that would at least pay enough to keep her out of the claws of heartless monsters.

    Now, add to that list her State Assemblyman, Federal Representative and Senator, all of who have been too busy fighting to be put on one juicy committee or the other to know what is going on in their constituencies. True, they cannot be expected to know all those who ‘voted’ them in. They can at least know and intervene in the plights of vulnerable groups such as widows or children or battered wives or unemployed youths, etc., in their jurisdictions. It is their job and duty so to do.

            Our assemblymen should not just limit their sights on the high and mighty offices they are aspiring to. After all, we grant that they are humans still seeking the maturity that will enable them know that all pursuits in this life still end in grand futility, making all our stabbings at life one big grandstanding. Camus said it; Becket said it, to mention a few. For now, let us pretend our assemblymen have not heard it said. Until then, they are entitled to their pursuits. However, they should occasionally lower their sights on the lesser mortals whose problems they are expected to help solve.

    The list is not ended, reader. The governors of her state, past and present, and the presidents of the country, past and present, have failed this woman. In their various failures to address the developmental problems of their areas, they assist in throwing the delicate and vulnerable into the waiting hands of the roughnecks and philistines in our midst. When there are no jobs and people have to eke out their living literally with their fingers from a reluctant earth, more vulnerability creeps in and human dignity flies out the window.

    Women and children are the most vulnerable groups in any society; but as of now, very few laws have been put in place to protect them. Regularly, widows are battered by kith, kin and others of brutish ilk, and few come to their rescue. But for the gallant youths of this Amachi village who arose as one man and fished out this callous monster for the police, he would have continued to gad gaily about in his father’s compound where he was captured, all on account of state failure.

    Please don’t get me wrong. All over the world, people’s wrong choices and bad turns of luck unwittingly place them in the hands of loan sharks, money lenders, blackmailers, pimps, etc., but it is not often that people get this kind of attack for owing N1,500, an amount that is less than $10. So yes, people are being killed daily in the world even for owing less. Yet, just think of the horrors this woman endured for an entire night in the hands of this excuse of a man because of this amount. It makes me so ashamed that the litany of failures of my country led to and enabled this kind of behaviour. These state failures must be addressed because they are killing the citizens.

    There are too many examples in Nigerian leadership that are telling the citizens that it is all right Jack; you can take the law into your hands. Just look at your political office holders. It is generally believed that many of them rigged their ways into office and are still using the same mago-mago and wayo-wayo ways to get fixed up into juicy positions. These behaviour patterns kind of tell the general citizens that the means justifies the end and any behaviour that produces desired results is aye o.k.

    With that mindset, the country clearly is endangered. We are not preaching morality here. We are rooting for good governance where leaders should know that they are directly and indirectly responsible for the long-term actions of their citizens because they provide the examples to follow. When they fail in their duties, the state fails and the people fall. Mrs. Egede fell because of the failure of her leaders; May her soul rest in peace.

  • Fayose: How not to deal with civil servants

    Last Tuesday, Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, paid an early morning surprise visit to the state secretariat during which he locked out civil servants who arrived late for work.

    As usual, the governor’s media aides eagerly circulated pictures of the latecomers either kneeling or prostrating, pleading with their principal.

    Though he earlier threatened to punish the erring civil servants, the governor has mercifully forgiven them but warned that he will continue to pay surprise visits to government offices and schools to catch late comers who will not be spared henceforth.

    Generally, civil servants nationwide have been known to be lackadaisical about their work. It is either many of them report late for duties or close before the official closing time.

    Even when they report for work, not much is done due to the structure of the system that allows for workers to work at their pace, and the bureaucracy involved in penalising offenders.

    Unlike in the private sectors where productivity is the basis for payment of monthly salaries, many civil servants get paid for doing little or nothing. Since government pays the bill, the salaries of the civil servant do not depend on income generated by ministries, department and agencies.

    I remember being a holiday staff in a government agency years ago and being told to slow down on assignments given to me.  Left to me, the assignment could have been completed in a week, but I had the latitude to stretch it for a month which was the prevailing culture among the permanent staff.

    It is against this background that Governor Fayose has good reasons to be angry with the attitude of the civil servants who reported late for work when he called at the state secretariat. With the dwindling funds available to states which make it impossible for some to pay workers, it is necessary to ensure that civil servants take their work more seriously and justify their pay.

    But for the fear of backlash from workers unions, governments at all levels will not mind trimming the bloated civil service.

    Over the years, employment into the civil service has not always been on merit alone. Many got employed on the basis of who they knew in government even when there was no vacancy to fill.

    However, enforcing discipline in the civil service has to be done within the limits of the law and civility.

    But for the carryover of the military mentality which makes civilian governors want to behave like military governors, there is no need for Governor Fayose to turn himself into a school principal who needs to catch late comers.

    There are penalties for various offences within the civil service, however mild, which can still be enforced by superiors of the erring staff. All the governor need do is to make his position clear on compliance with the civil service regulations and not continue to reinforce the impression that he likes to play to the gallery.

    While he might not have forced the latecomers to prostrate or kneel down for him as shown in the pictures of his visit, the negative impression of the treatment the workers were supposedly subjected to is not in the interest of the governor.

    His media aides obviously wanted to score cheap publicity by circulating the pictures, but they now know better – the public is not as gullible as they think.

  • Will members of Buhari’s cabinet be ‘Septemberists’ of destiny?

    Will members of Buhari’s cabinet be ‘Septemberists’ of destiny?

    The month of September is around the corner; it is almost upon us. If they haven’t already started, speculations will soon start on when Buhari will actually announce the members of his federal cabinet and what women and men will be in the cabinet. In starting this week’s column with these observations, I do not myself wish to start what, for the most part, I consider idle speculations. There isn’t anything special about the President’s choice of September, more than three months after his inauguration, as the month in which he would announce the members of his cabinet to the country. I mean, for all we know, he could as well have chosen August, October or even November. But he did choose September and I for one wish to give him the benefit of the doubt that September was not a random choice. And this is why I am invoking the trope of “Septemberists” in this article to explore the possibility, the necessity even, that members of Buhari’s cabinet might turn out to be women and men that in experience, abilities and impact, will be unprecedented in our country’s political history. What does this trope of “Septemberists” allude to; what does it mean? And why am I invoking it here when I am absolutely certain that Buhari and his advisers do not have the events in European and world history to which the trope alludes in mind at all?

    Our comments on the “Septemberists” will be shorter. Known in the Portuguese language as “Setembristas”, they got their appellation from their successful revolt of September 9, 1836 against Queen Maria 11. Their revolt was essentially against the terrible inefficiency, corruption and backwardness of Portuguese monarchical rule in the period of European colonial and imperial overseas adventures. In effect, they were liberals and “modernizers” who wished to lay the foundations of sound and efficient constitutional rule in feudal Portugal. One of their most notable actions was the prohibition of slavery in Portugal itself and all overseas Portuguese colonies. Ultimately, their success was short-lived, the British joining forces with the Portuguese crown to crush them.

    In order for this excursion into European and world history to have any pertinence to the subject of this essay, this being the potential impact of Buhari’s cabinet to be announced in a September that is only days away, we must be able to discern in present-day Nigeria a movement among our politicians and technocrats that can be adjudged to have the same liberal, progressive and modernizing worldview, values and dedication as the “Septemberists” of Portuguese revolutionary history. Please note that “September” happened to be merely incidental to the more substantial nature and impact of Portugal’s 19th century “Septemberists”. If their revolt had taken place in the month of October, they would have been called “Octobrists”. In this case, we are in the happy circumstance of being able to match the month of the announcement and institution of Buhari’s cabinet with a term that already exists in world history as a term with quite portentous significance. In other words, by their deeds ye shall know them: if Buhari’s cabinet proves to be exceptional in relation to all the cabinets we have ever had in this country, it will be our closest equivalent to the “Septemberists” of history.

    Last week, in his column in this newspaper, Tatalo Alamu declared assertively that we are more or less in “revolutionary times”. I do not wish to take issue with that declaration; I merely wish to reflect on it with specific regard to the issue of those who will be on the ramparts of the administrative machinery of governance for the next four years. Will they make a difference in the lives, the yearnings, the aspirations of the majority or generality of Nigerians? Will they make a substantial departure from the mediocrity, the corruption and the inefficiency of the PDP era that reached the peak in the Jonathan administration? If it is the case that we are now living in revolutionary times, like all revolutions the Buhari “revolution” must have its revolutionaries. But so far, in the National Assembly and in the agencies and parastatals for which the President has appointed managerial heads, no “revolutionaries” have surfaced. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that in the National Assembly, the exact opposite is what we have seen: the seizure of power by counter-revolutionaries.

    Concerning the President as head of state and head of government, Buhari has himself humorously and rather fetchingly acknowledged the fact that Nigerians have given him the nickname of “Baba Go-Slow”. He is difficult, he is challenging to read. He is not exactly like a closed book, but neither is he an open book. He contested for the presidency four times and only won the fourth time. Thus, he had all the time in the world to work out a vision of what he wanted to do, what he wanted to achieve with power. For unlike military coups where you seize power first and then scramble around trying to find out what to do with it, in an epic electoral quest lasting more than twelve years, Buhari should have come to office prepared from day one with a clear sense of what to do and where to go. And if we grant that with the doctrine and the practice of separation of powers Buhari could not have done much to avert the seizure of power in the National Assembly by the “counter-revolutionaries”, it has to be admitted that the President is in full control in the executive branch of government. If that is the case, nearly four months since his election is a long time to wait to find out what caliber of men and women he will select for his cabinet.

    Ben Nwabueze has suggested that the long delay in Buhari’s announcement of the members of his cabinet is nothing other than the manifestation of a lingering holdover of autocratic predilections from the time when the President was a military dictator. This may or may not be true. Definitely, there are other rather more mundane explanations for this long delay. One of such explanations is the fact that country was left so broke, so close to the edge of bankruptcy by the Jonathan administration that putting a cabinet in place right away after electoral victory was not one of the priorities of the new administration. This is certainly true of many of the state governors, many of whom, finding totally emptied treasuries in the state capitals when they took over from the departing former governors, actually “saved” a lot by deliberately being slow, being unhurried in appointing members of their cabinets: if you don’t have commissioners, special advisers, personal assistants and protocol officers, you don’t have to pay their huge salaries and allowances.

    Sooner or later, sooner rather than later, Buhari will announce the names of the members of his cabinet. I am not betting on it, but I hope that they will be like the “Septemberists” whose role in a short episode of European and world history I have invoked in this essay, together with their legacy. I am in particular looking forward to the people who will fill the slots for two Ministries, these being Justice and Education. In the last four weeks in this column, I have focused rather single-mindedly on how the law, through the agency of senior lawyers, magistrates and judges became the perfect and almost inviolable shield and protector of those who looted our national coffers on an unprecedented scale. With the passage of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 into law, the new Minister of Justice and Attorney General will have a powerful, almost invincible weapon against this entrenchment of Bar and Bench in service of corruption in Nigeria. Only someone in the mold of the “Septemberists” can be expected to make this possible. Let us recall here what the “Septemberists” stood for:  a liberal, progressive and modernizing overhaul of the inefficiency, corruption and backwardness of the monarchical order of feudal Portugal.

    To the last of my days on this side of the grave, I shall remain in bafflement why not one of the Ministers of Education in the PDP era failed to declare a state of emergency at all levels and areas of our educational system – primary, secondary and tertiary; private and public; denominational and non-denominational. Pupils were failing at historically astronomically high rates and yet not once did any Minister of Education seriously express a sense of crisis. And ironically, some of the Ministers concerned were themselves members of the academic profession!

    These two Ministries are not alone, they do not stand apart from the general rot; they are indeed symptomatic. The last impression I wish to leave is that the cabinet, the ministries exist in isolation and can therefore be “saved” by supermen and women that in this essay I am calling “Septemberists”. The historical “Septemberists” were not individual technocrats or politicians seeking to make a name or a fortune for themselves; above all else, they were members of a movement in Portuguese politics, culture and society with a pronounced and consistent dedication to liberal, progressive and modernizing values and ideals. Do we have such a movement in our country at the present time? That is the question. I happen to think that we do; however, I also think that individuals who correspond to this type in our society tragically generally tend not to see themselves as part of a movement, a trend.

    Ultimately, the bottom line is this: Is Buhari himself cut in the mold of a truly progressive and modernizing statesman and will the Party of which he is Head by virtue of being the President be a party of destiny that will do what needs to be done at this particular moment of our history? In another month or two, we shall begin to have the outlines of a plausible answer to this tantalizing question.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu