The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Jonathan’s Freudian slip

I guess the president wanted to say he and his aides would be prosecuted; not persecuted

Speaking before God and man at a thanksgiving and farewell service organised in his honour at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Life Camp, Gwarinpa, Abuja, last Sunday, President Goodluck Jonathan stirred the hornet’s nest when he said that he and his ministers and other aides would face a lot of persecution after leaving office on May 29. “If you take certain decisions, it might be good for the generality of the people but it might affect people differently. So for ministers and aides who served with me, I sympathise with them, they will be persecuted. And they must be ready for that persecution.

“Quoting Tai Solarin, may your ways be rough. To my ministers, I wish you what I wish myself. They will have hard times; we will all have hard times. Our ways will be rough,” the president said at the service.

Many Nigerians have since then been wondering when the president became a prophet. But those who remember the tale of the professor and his driver would know that when leaves have stayed too long in soap, the leaves too become soap. President Jonathan, by now, we must realise has stayed too close to many prophets; so, he might have tapped the anointing for prophecy from some of his prophet-friends. But that is not where I am going today.

My point is that even if the president is now gifted with the power of prophecy, what he saw concerning himself and his aides could not have been ‘persecution’, but prosecution, after he might have stepped down from office. The last time I checked the meaning of ‘persecution’ in the dictionary, it defines it as ‘hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs; oppression”. For me, the operational words are “hostility”, “ill-treatment” and “oppression”. Do Nigerians have any cause to be hostile to President Jonathan and his team after handing over on May 29? The answer is ‘yes’. Do they have the right to ill-treat the president and his aides? Again, the answer is ‘yes’. Do they have to oppress the president and his team? I am afraid, again, the answer is ‘yes’.

If President Jonathan had said that he and his team would be prosecuted after leaving office, not many people would have expressed consternation, because that is what many of them deserve after messing up the lives of millions of Nigerians. So, the onus, as things stand, is on President Jonathan to explain why they should not be prosecuted. If not for the fact that we are in a democracy, we should have done what one of our Number Two citizens said in the military era when talking about some people involved in fraud. He said they (the government) would jail them (fraudsters). “We would jail them”, he said. When one of his aides reminded him that that was not due process and that people are first prosecuted and jailed, only if found guilty, the Number Two retorted, “yes, we would prosecute and jail them!” If the president wants to be told the truth, the fact is that in the court of public opinion, they are already guilty as (yet to be) charged. The average Nigerian would not mind if most of his officials are first persecuted before being prosecuted.

When President Jonathan won his first election ever and became president in 2011, the exchange rate was less than N170. Today, it goes for over N200 to a US dollar. Indeed, just how profligate his government can be is shown in his disbursal of funds in the Excess Crude Account (ECA). In February 2010, Dr Jonathan, then Acting President, gave the federal, states and local governments $2bn to share from an earlier balance of $6.2 billion, leaving about $4.1 billion. Again, in March 2010, he approved the disbursal of a further $1 billion from the account, leaving about $3.1. The move brought to $3 billion the total amount of Nigerian oil savings that Jonathan approved for disbursal to the country’s 36 states and government agencies in one month! When the government was accused of trying to pacify the states with the reckless disbursements, the government denied. But it would seem the states had seen the fiscal indiscipline at the federal level and therefore asked for their own share of the pie. None of these disbursements would have been painful if the government had spent the money judiciously, say on regenerative projects. Sadly, we lost a substantial amount of these earnings, aside the regular earnings that went into the Federation Account, to the government’s incompetence and massive corruption, which, rather than tackle headlong, the president regarded as ‘mere’ stealing.

Which sector of the economy is the government leaving healthier than it met it? The government keeps celebrating the fraudulent increase in the megawatts of electricity that are not producing light for Nigerians. The oil and gas sector is corruption-ridden, and that is why we cannot make refineries work here and resorted to importation of fuel, with the shameful record of the only crude oil producing nation that does that. Yet, our leaders are not ashamed. They were even at a time celebrating non-interruption in fuel supply for years.

The whole thing becomes the more nauseating when some of the people in the government begin to talk of the government’s achievements as if these are invisible as Abdul’s fabled shoes. For instance, it was in the midst of this demoralising milieu that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy, went on a trip of self-glorification by telling Nigerians that the Jonathan administration would be leaving behind ‘solid economic legacies’. One wonders what the ‘solid economic legacies’ are and where they are. Do these ‘solid economic legacies’ include the 400,000 barrels of crude oil lost daily all through the Jonathan years, and before? Even at the rock bottom $50 per barrel price of crude oil in the international market, that translates to a lot daily. We can only imagine what we lost daily when oil was selling for well above $100 per barrel before the fall in prices late last year. Was there nothing the government could have done about this? Or, was it simply a case of the government looking the other way when the stealing was going on because its cronies were involved?

I guess the drastic fall in the price of crude oil when it did, and the worsening exchange rate are God’s own way of showing disapproval of the prodigality of the Jonathan government and the massive looting of the treasury that it permitted. So, God completed the mission by ensuring that the government was defeated in the presidential election because it would have been suicidal for the country to continue along the line of perdition that the government set it on. That was one of the reasons why the entire world was interested in seeing the back of the Jonathan government because we would simply overrun our neighbours should Nigeria implode; which was almost certain if the president had been reelected. The truth is, Dr Jonathan hasn’t the faintest idea of how to run a modern state, not to talk of wean a great country off its perpetually potential greatness to that actual greatness that it was destined to be.

And, instead of the people in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) burying their heads in shame for the rudderless and corrupt manner their party steered the affairs of the country thus far, they are busy fishing for excuses on how and why they lost the election, an election they should not have had any chance of doing well in in the first place, but for the new lows that they sank the country.

The point is that President Jonathan’s government is worse than that of a former military governor in the country who said he met the state treasury empty, and left it empty. Dr Jonathan cannot say that. He met the treasury with some cash and left it not only empty but also with a lot of debt for his successor. It is just that politicians are incurable optimists. I do not envy the president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari at all, knowing the gargantuan mess he is inheriting. Although President Jonathan had prayed for himself and his team, saying their roads be rough, I do not want to say ‘Amen’ to that. But our president who feels fulfilled after leaving us worse than he met us should understand that Nigerians may neither pray for him nor curse him and his team, but their mouths would not be idle either.

May 17, 2015
Fuel Subsidy: Time to slay the sacred cow

How apt that the final images of Goodluck Jonathan’s shambolic presidency, is a nation camped out at petrol stations in desperate search of fuel! For long stretches of his tenure it seemed as though the queues had disappeared for good but the malaise was only being kept at bay by artificial solutions.

In the last few weeks the experience of the average Nigerian trying to purchase petrol for his car or generator has been hellish. Very few bought at the official rate of N87 per liter. The product sold for between N150 and N250 per liter depending on location and intensity of the problem on a given day.

The latest crisis has revived calls for the removal of fuel subsidies which different administrations have struggled with over the last two decades. The very suggestion that the incoming Muhammadu Buhari administration could discontinue a system that guarantees artificially cheap petrol has provoked a predictably hostile response from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

The union has always been the vanguard for resisting hike in fuel prices over the years. It successfully stared down a succession of presidents – from Olusegun Obasanjo to Jonathan – over the issue.

The almost visceral reaction of labour and other activists revolves around the sense that the bulk of Nigerians who subsist on less than $2 per day would be hurt by the removal of subsidy. They also argue that this is the only benefit that this vulnerable segment of society gets from government and should not be touched.

These arguments might be appealing emotionally and politically but they are becoming increasingly indefensible. Our experiences during these never-ending cycles of fuel scarcity demand that we re-frame the basis for the discussion.

Also, the ongoing prosecution of the offspring of highly-placed members of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and their associates over subsidy payment scams raises the question of who really is being subsidised.

On paper the subsidy is supposed to protect the less economically empowered in the society. But every time marketers throw a fit and refuse to import, we all – rich and poor – end up paying outrageous prices for petrol and carry on with our lives. In fact, the most powerful continue to get the products at subsidised rates because of their connections while those in the lowest rungs bear the brunt.

Kerosene is supposedly subsidised for the poor and should sell for N50 per liter. But nowhere in Nigeria is the product retailed for less than N120 – and that is when you can find it. Meanwhile, the marketers keep getting paid billions of naira that doesn’t translate into a subsidy for impoverished citizens.

Nigeria isn’t the only country on the continent that has operated or continues to operate a regime of fuel subsidies. But over time many have come to the conclusion they could no longer continue to do so. The latest to announce it is ending them from September 30 is Angola.

Angola, just like Nigeria, imports virtually all of its fuel despite being Africa’s second largest producer. This is because of its insufficient local refining capacity. The result is she spent four percent of her 2013 budget on subsidies.

Justifying the move, a government statement said: “Gasoline now joins the free price system, ending the burden on the state of the cost of subsidies. The ongoing effort to adopt realistic prices will help strengthen social programmes and reduce inequality, since subsidies benefit the most favoured groups and encourage fuel smuggling to neighbouring countries.”

It is interesting that the Angolans make the point about those who really benefit from the subsidy regime. What an irony that when labour unions oppose attempts to change the existing system, they are actually helping the emergency businessmen feeding fat on it to continue taking us all for a collective ride.

The point at which we find ourselves in Nigeria today the issue isn’t just whether subsidies that ostensibly benefit the ‘poor’ are good and desirable. The equally relevant question is whether they are affordable and sustainable. Can a country that is borrowing to pay workers and contractors continue to pay out trillions of naira in subsidies that don’t subsidise?

The problem is compounded by the changing revenue profile of the country. In the boom years the payments may have been bearable, but with oil prices crashing to unprecedented lows they no longer make sense.

And it isn’t as if the figures have remained static. Between the Obasanjo years and the Jonathan tenure they ballooned from an average of N300 billion that was being spent yearly up to 2007 to N 2.7 trillion by 2013! From a little over N400 billion under President Umaru Yar’Adua there was a quantum leap to over N1.2 trillion in the first year of Jonathan’s presidency.

Even more embarrassing is the fact that between the Federal Government and the marketers there’s no agreement as to what is currently owed to them. While they claim N200 billion as outstanding, the Ministry of Finance says the figure is N131 billion.

Whatever the true figures are it doesn’t make sense paying out N2.7 trillion to subsidise consumption. Petrol might be an important product which price ultimately affects the pricing of other goods and services, but it isn’t the only variable that determines that.

That raises the question of how to move forward. First, we need to accept that the market doesn’t respond well to unnecessary political meddling. We need to review and repeal all legislation regulating the petroleum industry whose construction was not based on purely economic considerations.

One of the pillars of the subsidy regime is the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) Decree of 1975. It was created to equalise the cost of transporting petroleum products from depots to filling stations and ensure that they are available at uniform prices throughout Nigeria. Elementary economics, however, tells us that distance will impact the price at which a product is ultimately sold in different locations.

Even at the best of times, in spite of the existence of this legislation, petrol always sold at prices higher than the official rate in Nigeria’s extremities. Meanwhile, the marketer who has delivered his cargo, dutifully queues up to collect PEF payment (subsidy) for a product that the poor man in Damaturu buys for N120 per liter or more.

Times have changed and the unions also need a reality check. The NLC has argued in the past that while it isn’t opposed to ending fuel subsidy, it wants certain measures put in place before such an action can be contemplated. Among other things it wants the refineries working, an efficient public transportation system as well as other welfare measures in place first.

While these are not unreasonable demands they are not very practical. Fixing the existing refineries or building new ones could take anything from 24 to 36 months. Those who would like to see new refineries sprout also have to realise that investors are not philanthropists. It is a non-starter to think they would be attracted to a system that expects them to pour billions into a project only for the state to fix the price at which they sell what they produce.

Again, putting in place the sort of mass transit system that could move millions daily at a cheap rate could take up to five years – if not longer.

In the interim as we wait to create the perfect conditions for a painless exit from wasteful subsidies, we are forced to continue with payments that the country cannot afford! It is a vicious cycle and not the right way to go.

Putting palliatives in place must go hand in hand with the necessary reforms. Imagine how many buses or train lines N2.7 trillion can buy. Just think of the number of refineries that can be built for that amount. You can build countless roads, schools and hospitals for what we throw away yearly.

Religion is a touchy subject but the more I think of the subsidy the more I am reminded of India where there’s so much poverty and yet well-fed cows roam free because they are considered sacred. We’ve made the fuel subsidy into an idol that must not be touched. Unfortunately, it is our commonwealth draining away yearly while leaving the mass of the people untouched.

The only way forward is to confront this cancer headlong. Nigerians are already paying outrageous amounts for petrol and I doubt whether deregulated prices can be worse. Indeed, if you were to poll our longsuffering population and offer them regular fuel supply at higher prices or intermittent scarcity at existing rates, they would jump at the former.

Most of these arguments are not new. What has been lacking has been the political will to do what is necessary. Previous administrations were not able to convince people that the subsidies should go because they were sleaze-infested and distrusted by the people. That was why the argument that the subsidies were the only things the poor benefitted used to resonate.

But against the backdrop of the exposure of massive scams dogging the scheme, the incoming administration has an uncommon opportunity to tap into peoples’ frustrations arising from the pains of scarcity to remove the subsidies once and for all.

There is no right time or pain-free way to do so. The trouble with us is we desire to get to heaven but want to be saved the trouble of dying first. We want to have lovely babies but want to be spared the pains of childbirth.

May 17, 2015
Redefining political persecution and national cleansing

In his controversial remarks at a farewell and thanksgiving service held in his honour in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan, among other dubieties, prepared the minds of his ministers and aides for what he felt certain would be their lot soon after he vacates the presidency. Prejudging President-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s modus operandi, Dr Jonathan insinuated that his successor would needlessly execute policies and inaugurate inquiries both designed to afflict officials of the last government. Addressing his loyalists on the implications of conceding defeat to Gen Buhari, the president had said: “If you take certain decisions, it might be good for the generality of the people, but it might affect people differently. So for ministers and aides who served with me, I sympathise with them, they will be persecuted. And they must be ready for that persecution.”

The president obviously conflates a panel of inquiry into clear or suspicious wrongdoings with persecution. He regards Gen Buhari’s suggestion to investigate a few individuals and government agencies, particularly the NNPC, with hefty insufferableness. There will, however, be a number of inquiries, though the president-elect has said he will not be bogged down probing his predecessor. No matter what warnings have been given by the outgoing president, some of his aides and ministers, especially in agencies where humongous sums of money were illegally taken for the purpose of funding Dr Jonathan’s reelection, will be probed. Indeed, contrary to the president’s apprehension, the suspicion in many circles is that Gen Buhari will struggle not to probe agencies and ministries where a lot of stealing took place. But because the scale of stealing would probably be huge, he will have no choice but to probe, even at the risk of categorising the process as a deliberate and calculated persecution of opponents or something more sinister.

Importantly, as is typically Dr Jonathan, he often engages in insouciant, definitional imprecision. But persecution involves harassing and punishing someone who has done no wrong, or because of his political, religious and cultural beliefs and persuasion. Inquiries, on the other hand, implies an effort to serve justice after wrongdoings had been investigated and blames apportioned where necessary. If there is a thin line between the two, it exists either only in the minds of those crying wolf where there is none or where indiscrete and selective probes are ordered to punish a target, prove a point, or stigmatise the opposition. Gen Buhari will likely conduct himself above suspicion, given his antecedents and his recent philosophical convictions.

In any case, persecution or no persecution, the public will leave their elected leaders in no doubt what is expected of them. Gen Buhari was not elected to sympathise with those who under Dr Jonathan, or perhaps earlier, undermined the peace, security and financial wellbeing of the nation. The president-elect probably understands that, and being a hard man himself, will very likely refuse to be incommoded by the feelings and sentiments, or even the persecution complex, of his predecessors and opponents. He knows why he has been elected to preside over the affairs of Nigeria in this most dangerous and inauspicious of times. He will discharge that responsibility with considerable aplomb and defiance, even if it kills him.

May 17, 2015
Still about the outgoing PDP government

It is imperative for the incoming administration to do something revolutionary in the area of Energy which successive PDP governments has turned to a sink hole, with billions of dollars sunk with only monumental failure to show

It is no longer news that the campaigns were thoroughly engaging. Long before the Peoples Democratic Party , out of unremitting pressure from the APC , worsened by the Bauchi intra-party stoning of a Presidential rally, graduated into a festival of hate , with the First Lady – she actually turned a neuroscientist, pronouncing on the status of opponents’ brains – and Femi Fani-Kayode leading the pack, this column had taken its position very early: stay ramrod with the APC budding campaign, avuncularly propagating those sterling qualities that made the President-elect stand out so distinctly one was n’t ashamed to suggest he should be adopted as the consensus presidential candidate because, defeating and sending PDP into political oblivion had become a moral obligation for any truly patriotic Nigerian. Just as well, as the APC Presidential primaries would later come to see the erstwhile governor of Ekiti state, Dr Kayode Fayemi, lead his colleagues of the election committee gave the world, unarguably, Nigeria’s best presidential primary election of all time, far from the shambolic one coordinated by a one time Foreign Affairs Minister for the Peoples Democratic Party. The party’s ruination of Nigeria, snippets of which we are beginning to see with Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s , unarguably, first ever candid statement about the Nigerian economy -that the Federal Government now borrows to pay salaries -, has become so complete that another four years of a Jonathan administration would have meant disaster on an industrial scale.

One of my most engaging readers who wrote in from tel. no.080745729—sent in the following highly nuanced reaction to last week’s article: In An Era Of Change, Nigerians Expect To See Credible and Measurable Changes.

Happy reading.

Sir, you were very right in your analysis today but may I add that there is a great need for the incoming administration to do a painstaking audit of the liabilities it is inheriting and it must let the public know its findings as a matter of urgency. The Director-General of BPE, Mr Dikki, said what most of us who refused to be fooled by this government’s economic team knew all along. And it is interesting to see the President’s appointees sing a new song now. Where was Dikki all these daysk when they were telling us tales about ‘’rebasing the economy’’, ‘’double digit economic growth’’, ‘’double digit foreign direct investment’’ etc, whereas the reverse is the case for the economy. Unlike the rest of them, the National office of statistics, all through the years has been releasing figures that portray the correct position of our economy without minding the harassment from the vindictive PDP Federal government. In fact, Prof Soludo quoted profusely from the data received from that office in his confrontation with the Finance and Co-ordinating Minister, Dr Okonjo-Iweala.

Despite the suffocating pleas to the President-elect to be magnanimous in victory, it is of utmost importance that he deals away with the heads of most of the para-statals and commissions under this present administration in order to bring in fresh and untainted hands who can deliver the Change the APC has promised Nigerians. Nigeria has an agency or commission for virtually every matter under the sun, but, what have we got? The National orientation commission has been turned into a PDP propaganda mouthpiece at a time there has been no greater need for a new rebirth, and a new discuss on what our values were, and should be. There is the Nigerian communications commission which is meant to regulate telecoms and digital communication, but all we get is a non-existent regulator. I can go on and on, but my point is that we cannot afford not to completely overhaul these agencies just because General Buhari is being enjoined to be magnanimous in victory.

It is imperative for the incoming administration to do something revolutionary in the area of Energy which successive PDP governments has turned to a sink hole, with billions of dollars sunk with only monumental failure to show. The Buhari administration will score a big plus if it is able to do something cogent and visible in the power sector. One of the reasons for President Jonathan’s massive defeat in the last election is, without doubt, the incessant lies being told Nigerians about the exact situation of the power sector in the country. The incoming government must ensure that Nigerians know, at all times, what the problems are, and how soon they intend to get them rectified. There is also an urgent need for a complete, and radical, reassessment of our economic policies to bring down the exchange rate as well as guarantee food on the table of the common man. Nigerians are aware of the booby traps being laid for the incoming government by the outgoing one but President Buhari, once sworn in, must not shy away from UPROOTING the traps, no matter whose ox is gored.

It is man’s inhumanity to man for the Petroleum Minister to claim that there is a subsidy on kerosene. She should check out the dispensing prices everywhere, to see that it has never been less than N100 per litre. And this has been so for the past six years, that is, through the entire Jonathan administration. I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems confronting the incoming President but he has reached a point of no return. Did you, for instance, see how these PDP people shared our common heritage running into over 2 trillion naira to prosecute an election in which they were thoroughly bought low?

That is God at work.

Another evidence of the government’s totally amoral way of doing things came from a totally unexpected quarters during the past week. A N155 million-election largess is allegedly at the center of a fierce legal battle between two members of the President’s Ijaw ethnic group. The plaintiff is asking to be paid a whopping sum of N155 million for political services rendered the defendant in relation to the President’s re-election bid for which the latter is alleged to have been paid about N20Billion. The case, filed at an Abuja High Court, is now scheduled for hearing on Thursday May 28, 2015.

But so what? Didn’t ‘Cry Baby’, and his ‘Auto Mogul’ brother fight dirty over a bank loan running into billions? The case, simpli cita, is therefore of little or no interest to this columnist. Rather, what interests me, and should worry Nigerians, now that we are heading into austerity times, is how symptomatic it could very well be about the manner in which the outgoing presidency gifted friends and cronies sweet heart deals. What should, therefore, bother us are the following disclosures accusing the respondent of abandoning numerous contracts awarded him by the presidency. The following contracts were cited as examples: Sand-filling of the Bayelsa State Cargo Airport worth N10 billion, the Maitama extension (infrastructure) worth N150 billion; the supply of engineering materials at N67 billion; the Waterfront Shore protection at Otuoke and Ayakoromo at a cost of N5 billion; the reclamation project at Akipilai community at the cost of N5 billion; the internal road networks at Otuoke at N4 billion; Construction of 2000 hostel rooms at the Federal University, Otuoke at a cost of N4 billion; and the construction of the Opume/Okoroba seven mile road at the cost of N10 billion. What is worse is the allegation that the gentleman has since changed the name of his company.

Since impunity confronts one whichever direction you turn your gaze, I do not think the in –coming government needs any further evidence to put in place a Failed Contracts Committee to investigate such failed contracts which must run into thousands in PDP’s 16 years of the locust. This will have the added advantage of enabling persons so accused to clear themselves, failing which every penny must be recouped, with interest. They should, in addition, be blacklisted by both the Federal and state governments throughout the country. It would be a big shame, if it turns out true that somebody allegedly so close to the President, continues to be patronized by federal agencies even after he had severally abandoned multi-billion contracts awarded him by the same Federal Government. The least the President can do is to have this matter of contract abandonment, not the bit in court, by somebody described as his close ally to be thoroughly investigated and appropriate steps taken.This story does not in any way elevate the presidency at all.

May 17, 2015
So what if Harvard is not Ajegunle?

Ha, the travails of deadline pressures on writers of weekly columns! The deadline for this columnist is 6:00 pm every Friday. Now, I am an unretired, full-time teacher and researcher, with full responsibilities for teaching and mentoring both undergraduates and graduate students. In order to be able to keep writing this column and, especially meet my deadline, I have more or less trained myself to compartmentalize my work and time. Thus, for about four to six hours every Friday morning wherever I am in the world, I set aside everything and concentrate completely on writing my column and sending it off before the deadline. But immediately after that, I shut out the column and turn to other things in my life and my work. In general, this arrangement has worked well and productively for me. But occasionally, things don’t go so smoothly as was the case last week. How so?

Well, last week, in a phrase that I recognized as rather unfortunate not long after I had sent off my contribution to the Editor of this newspaper, I compared Harvard University to Ajegunle, more or less implying that the rabidly obnoxious statements that were maliciously credited to Wole Soyinka in the lecture he gave on April 29 at Harvard were far more likely to be made at Ajegunle than at Harvard. By the time that that realization came to me, it was past my deadline and therefore too late for me to have the unfortunate phrase removed or changed. Well, as I feared, along came an email to me from a resident of Ajegunle taking strong exception to my invidious comparison of Ajegunle to Harvard. This proud denizen of Ajegunle was not impolite or unkind to me; rather, he merely wanted to have me know that Ajegunle is the abode of hardworking, upright citizens most of whom are not prone to expressing the sort of hateful sentiments that I wrote about in my column. To cap his remonstrating comments, our doughty Ajegunle resident offered to be my host should I be moved to come to Ajegunle and get to know the place better!

Well, I wrote back to say that the offending phrase is much regretted. In innate human worth and dignity, Harvard has no advantages over Ajegunle, none whatsoever! My point in making the comparison was simply that in places like Ajegunle in comparison with places like Harvard, people generally don’t watch and monitor what they say, what they express about their neighbors. Harvard is, you might say, a cathedral of learning. As in cathedrals of worship, in cathedrals of learning, you don’t simply open your mouth and say anything at all that pleases you, especially in a public lecture. But that also means that what you gain in propriety you lose in human spontaneity and perhaps also camaraderie and solidarity. At any rate, let it be known that throughout my adult life, I have been equally at home in places like Ajegunle and Harvard. Indeed, Oke-Bola in Ibadan where I reside when I am in Nigeria has become in the decades since I was born and raised there, an “Ajegunle” in miniature!

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

May 17, 2015
To tackle the problem of education, we need a fishing hook…

The school system in Nigeria is itself not a reflection of the national aspirations but of the decrepit state of the society. I believe that no system can be better than its society

Dear reader, I came across a piece of news some days ago that began with the following: ‘A think tank established by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to study critical areas of the economy and make recommendations to guide the incoming government on a smooth take off Thursday submitted its report to president elect, General Mohammadu Buhari…’ First, Obasanjo commissions a group to conduct a study. The report of that study is presented directly to Buhari not to Obasanjo who commissioned it; and Buhari accepted it! Wonderful! As Sherlock Holmes would say, something does not quite sit right there, Watson!

Anyway, that was just an aside. Today, we want to talk about something that is not sitting right with the nation right now: education, and well, fishing. Fishing is one activity that I love, from a distance. I don’t fish and can’t fish. But, I admire fishermen. They are schooled to have an infinite amount of patience in order to be able to tackle the equally endless but elusive schools of fish parading the ocean, lake and pond floors. I have seen people camp overnight to catch one fish. Arhh! That is so much beyond me. I am in that school that believes that when I call once and the fish don’t bite, then we should amicably go our separate ways.

By now, I think everyone acknowledges that the educational sector of this country is in dire straits. While everyone sees that the system has gone awry, the populace does not seem agreed on the possible causes or even the possible cures. The situation is a little like the patient who seeks a first, second, third and fourth opinions on his ailment. Now, tell me, what does he expect to hear? One day, he will wake up on an examination table to find all four of them congregated and looking down on him. Clearly, he knows the news can’t be good for his health.

I am of the school that believes that the woes of the educational system in this country can be traced to the neglect of our public primary schools. I think I have said this before. Those of us who grew up in the sixties, seventies and eighties would remember going through school systems that were responsive to the needs of the pupils and the society. The schools led the environment wherever they were located, not to talk of the reverence given the headmaster.

The schools’ environments called many a toddler to desire schooling, even before reaching the age of pulling the other ear. Usually, in the village or any environment, the schools had the best lawns (ever green), the best flowers and solid good buildings (both very colourful). When I was growing up, there was no end of admiration for the head who presided over this establishment in his ramrod straight posture, agility of movement in his fine shorts and rolled stockings, and readiness for action as he supervised the growing of plants and pupils. If you misbehaved then, that figure would become even straighter.

Then also, schools’ populations did not try the limits of the teachers. Today, however, the country has on its hands exploded school populations, decayed infrastructures and a social structure that is much frayed and torn on its moral edges and body polity. Let us take them one after the other.

Primary schools and school children are no longer what they used to be. No more do you get the well constructed block housing two or three classrooms in which neat rows of desks are arranged. I hear it on good authority that classrooms now contain triple their capacities. When you have six or seven arms, each containing seventy and above pupils, you are bound to have a situation where they only meet when they queue to collect their testimonials, maybe on graduation day.

I have driven through many towns and villages across this country and I have observed that school blocks appear to be the most dismal things in many towns and villages. The walls are peeled and worn down to the very mud, sands and cement used to construct them. Many have spaces for windows but no window panes; spaces for doors but no such wooden things grace their entrances; and many do not even have blackboards. I have been in a classroom where I could not get a seat to sit on. There were seats all right but they were in various advanced stages of decomposition. Unfortunately, secondary schools are no better: too many pupils, not enough schools.

The situation is compounded by the fact that the teachers who are expected to handle these crowds are not paid their remunerations regularly. I think between the federal, state and local governments, the monthly dues of teachers have been allowed to dwindle and slide into the land of ghosts. Gradually, teachers have been made to look like beggars after performing their statutory functions.

However, there is the fact that somehow, the system of recruiting teachers has been clogged down by the malicious Nigerian factor which says it is whom, not what, you know that determines recruitment or promotions. I hear that there are primary school teachers who can hardly read or write but cannot be sacked; those who can read and write are poorly motivated; and so on. Remember the problem the Edo State Governor had when he tried to bring the state’s teachers up to par in terms of quality and how the NUT stood in his way thinking he was trying to sack its members? Well, that’s the kind of thinking we are talking about. No one is ready to bring in Mother Quality.

Yet, Mother Quality must be brought in if we are to get anywhere in the educational system. The tender years of primary school are the years in which children’s cognitive systems can be properly tuned towards brilliant performance in adulthood. It is the period when facts are imaginatively presented and children’s fancies are allowed to roam. They learn about becoming part of a system bigger than themselves and also how to put back into the system they draw from. Without the teacher’s sound knowledge of educational methods to rely on, these years end up draining away and the child is left to gather what he/she can through peers, internet and on the streets. In most cases, it’s the streets that win and the society loses, as it is doing now.

We should also note that the school system in Nigeria is itself not a reflection of the national aspirations but of the decrepit state of the society. I believe that no system can be better than its society. Indeed, every system within a country is a microcosm of the larger social system. So, the school system cannot miraculously be cleaner, more moral or more efficient than the society. What we are witnessing is that it has just yielded to the general decay in the society. We run a society where corruption is standing boldly in the way of funds allocated to repair and build classroom blocks, pay and train teachers, furnish and bring up to international standards the insides of classrooms at the primary and secondary levels. Yet, we expect good results. Seriously?!

Right now, every concentration is on the university system (and it is poor enough at that) to the detriment of the primary level. In order to get the desired goals in the school system, we have to go fishing. We have to plunge in at the deep end of the river with our fishing hook and net and roil out the dirt and sediments that constitute problems in the system. Then we can begin to build on what is left.

May 17, 2015
PDP’s moment of angst

Led by the vituperative and mendacious Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, many top Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) officials have started to call for the heads of their party’s National Working Committee (NWC) members, especially that of the party chairman Adamu Mu’azu. Perhaps they will have the heads on a platter. But without needing to be sympathetic to the PDP chairman, it is well known that Mr Fayose lied when he said he had evidence the embattled chairman was in league with the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the last polls to bring President Goodluck Jonathan’s reelection project to grief. Mr Fayose is a disturbed mind; he will rock the boat of his party for as long as he remains either in the party or as a governor. The accusations and counteraccusations between leading PDP officers came moments after both Dr Jonathan and Senate President David Mark futilely warned that unrestrained acrimony could destroy the party.

Opponents and haters of the PDP have exulted over the destructive rage going on within the party. They surmised gleefully that all it took to unnerve the self-styled largest party in Africa was just one loss, a loss that has now so discomfited the party that it is sundering dangerously at the seams. They observe that such bitter and acrimonious fights are symptomatic of a defeated organisation, be it a country or a political party. Some PDP members, including Mr Fayose, have latched on to that logic by suggesting that it is customary for party officials who lead their parties to defeat to fall on their swords and give way for the emergence of new leadership. Their arguments are reinforced by the quick resignation that rocked the losing parties in last week’s British election. Alhaji Mu’azu and his colleagues on the NWC, however, retort that the provisions of the PDP’s constitution, unlike the post-election convention in Britain, are clear on how leadership changes should be effected.

It will be naive to expect that the battle to enthrone new leaders in the PDP would cease simply because some concerned party leaders admonish their colleagues to embrace peace and think altruistically of the best interests of their distressed party. The PDP is unaccustomed to defeat. They will need to establish a convention, sans their party constitution, on how to behave in victory and defeat. We are fairly conversant with how they celebrate victory, and how the spoils of war are shared among them. How they mourn or cope with defeat, however, remains the grey area of their party culture. Dr Jonathan himself, in descending on his appointees with the fanatical zeal of the Spanish inquisition, axing and beheading those who crossed his emotions and drew his brittle ire, appears to be laying a curious, somewhat malevolent precedent. With practised ease, almost as if he had forgotten he would be vacating office in less than three weeks, he has also appointed new state officials. He is unconcerned about what his successor might do to or with his last minute appointees.

The internal battles within the PDP may get worse before they get better. With men like Mr Fayose in the PDP, unscrupulous, impertinent and acerbic, the party will be constantly roiled by brutal internecine conflicts to assert hegemony. And with men like Alhaji Mu’azu who can call their souls their own, there will be no let in the war. Alhaji Mu’azu and his colleagues will give much more than they can take, and they will also be unsparing. But no matter how vicious the war, the bone of contention, to wit, who is to blame for the defeat, will never be resolved. Even a harmonised, face-saving and fence-mending sitting of the combative officials is unlikely to produce peaceful resolutions or agreements. The next few weeks, full of figurative bloodletting and bitter recriminations, will be the PDP’s greatest moment of angst.

Both sides to the PDP war are of course wrong to presume, judging from their analyses and what they have said, that they appreciate the real reasons for the PDP’s woeful performance. Mr Fayose’s vindictive scaremongering is of course far from the truth. Neither Alhaji Mu’azu nor any other PDP NWC member schemed against his own party. They might wish that the PDP should not be rewarded for hateful campaigns, given the portentous electioneering embarked upon by divisive and petulant characters like Femi Fani-Kayode, Doyin Okupe, Mr Fayose himself, and more tellingly Dame Patience Jonathan. But it would be far-fetched to argue that the urbane leaders of the party actually worked for the APC’s victory. It may also be true that some northern leaders of the PDP, particularly governors, pulled their punches in the campaigns, but it is unlikely they did so simply because they loved the opposition or their candidates, especially Gen Buhari. Given the context in which the March and April elections were held, particularly the northern milieu, there was little any PDP leader in that region could have done to stymie the revolutionary momentum unleashed by the candidature of Gen Buhari.

Conversely, too, it will be simplistic to suggest that hate speeches and campaigns alone undid the PDP and doomed Dr Jonathan’s reelection chances. While hate campaigns contributed immensely towards the failure of the party, the voting pattern in the last polls suggests quite clearly that a number of other factors were responsible for the revolutionary outcomes never before witnessed in these parts.

Rather than bicker, and because the country needs a virile, sensible and credible opposition, the PDP must be encouraged to engage in hard-nosed analyses of why they failed. There is nothing wrong in the ongoing internecine battles within the PDP continuing for a little while. These battles are needed to enable the party produce real and intelligent leaders for the next four years of its life, at least in the first instance. Once produced, the new leaders will impose discipline on the party, restore unity, and redirect the party to work for and achieve realistic goals and salient objectives. While the party will need to sanitise its internal mechanisms and codify its methods and values, there is little doubt it will also need internal opposition, the kind vaguely represented by Mr Fayose. But the party and its new leaders will have to determine whether Mr Fayose is not a dangerous and needless throwback to atavism.

It is not immediately clear to outsiders who among the many claimants to the PDP leadership is suited for the party’s next decade. It needs party philosophers, but we cannot immediately see any in its ranks. It needs a disciplinarian, but the sensible, disciplined and moderate Alhaji Muazu has a chink in his armour by reason of the defeat it was his lot to lead the party. It needs new values, new sets of beliefs and programmes, and new national focus, but we cannot see anyone enunciating, projecting and championing these. And until they produce great men and leaders who can aggregate these principles and values whatever wars they fight will only bathe their party in blood rather than the revitalising elixir sorely needed to move the party forward and offer credible and toughened opposition to the victorious and fairly more ideological APC.

By all means then, let us encourage the soul-searching and war of attrition going on in the PDP. No one takes perverse delight in weakening or destroying the PDP. The fact is that the country needs a strong PDP; but this new PDP will not come without the party passing through the furnace in order for itself and its ideas to be refined. The process of renewal and rebirth is not of course inevitable. If it chooses to bicker to the death rather than be refined to a new life, then perhaps a new party, rather than the PDP, would be needed altogether.

May 10, 2015
Epilogue to a Nigerian nightmare

History is a nightmare from which one is trying to wake up, James Joyce, the great Irish novelist, once memorably noted. As an insurance against the horrors of history, the old Dubliner wrote as if history does not really exist, indulging himself in grand mythic narratives and outlandish literary fireworks forged from the smithy of the harassed and harried soul. It seems to have worked for him, insulating the great literary genius from the terrible fiascoes of actual reality.

As Nigerians begin to count the cost of sixteen solid years of authoritarian misrule by the PDP, there will be plenty of time for weeping and gnashing of teeth in the land, and for mass escape from bitter reality. It all reminds one of a great reggae song of the mid-seventies. “Weeping and wailing and mourning and gnashing of teeth, do you hear now?

Nigeria has been taken to the cleaners by the PDP. Every institution in the land has been ravaged or completely destroyed. The judiciary is badly desecrated, and there are judges who should be in jail. The military has been destroyed by corruption and indiscipline. The police force has imploded with the proliferation of criminals in its rank and file.

The Nigerian legislature, bar a few exemplars, is a haven of gluttonous crooks. Technocracy is a synonym for kleptocracy. The treasury is so badly burglarized that economic collapse is a dire possibility. Never in the history of civilized humankind have so few wasted the lives so many, and without any feeling of shame or remorse.

And there shall come a time after the plague when humanity will begin to envy their animal cousins. Such times have come upon us. It is true that humankind first civilized on the plains of upper Africa, but they have not continued to do so there, particularly in Nigeria. Political, economic and spiritual cannibals roam about in Nigeria hunting down their hirsute brethrens.

Hell is no longer an abstract concept. It is here with us in its throbbing and traumatic reality. On his deathbed when Justice Adewale Thompson was asked whether he would like to return as a Black person and a Nigerian, the great mystic and pan-Africanist savant retorted that he had had enough of both. A man cannot be a glutton for unremitting punishment.

With the advent of a new political order, there is the possibility of a miraculous reprieve. But General Mohammadu Buhari has his work cut out for him. Very encouraging noise is coming from him, but the omens are still not very clear. Although there is revolutionary ferment in the air, what has brought the general to power the second time is not a revolution per se but a negotiation of power between two state parties aided and abetted by the vast majority of the Nigerian multitude.

The general cannot seek revolutionary concessions from a non-revolutionary ascendancy. The attempt to impose a revolutionary reprisal against the AIT swiftly backfired and there will be more of such to temper and tamper with Buhari’s radically reforming zeal in the months ahead. To put it in legal parlance, relief not sought cannot be granted. The testy alliance will be sorely tested. It is precisely at this point that revolutionary expectations will come into a fatal collision with non-revolutionary momentum. The general will need all his political skills and street savvy to deal with a problematic situation.

As Nigerians commence a difficult period of acute soul-searching and critical interrogation of what went wrong with their nation; as they mourn and bemoan their loss of political innocence, there will be plenty of political and economic analysis of what went wrong. But one thing that will be critically absent is the psychological and clinical analysis of the mental conditioning of the men and women who have put the nation through this orrery of horrors and historic torture wrack. The Nigerian political class deserves a psychiatric evaluation.

This is why this morning, this column is turning attention to a great Nigerian who got to the juncture almost a quarter of a century ahead of his compatriots. It is the phenomenon of the healer as a seer. It is the obituary of the greatest psychiatrist ever thrown up by Nigeria and Africa. Please join us in celebrating once again the exemplary Thomas Adeoye Lambo.

May 10, 2015
Okonjo-Iweala and states’ unpaid salaries

No one is certain what the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, hoped to achieve when she explained why some states were unable to pay workers’ salaries when they fell due. The federal government, she said happily, was not owing its workers, contrary to speculations in some quarters. But states which owed their workers, she added, disregarded advice offered through the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee to prioritise salary payments. According to the minister: “Regarding difficulties in salary payments, certain governors are trying to blame the Federal Government for their predicament. This is wrong. They had been told through the FAAC to prioritise salaries but they chose not to do so, hence the backlog that some states are experiencing. The 50 per cent drop in revenues simply means that salaries should be prioritised. The Federal Government should not be blamed for avoidable mistakes made at the state level.”

Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s explanation is patronising and tendentious. Was it simply the drop in revenues that accounted for the cash crunch Nigeria is facing? Many analysts suggest that there are other reasons for Nigeria’s financial woes. Some of these are: humongous waste of national resources, intolerable mismanagement of what is not frittered away, and unpardonable corruption, including unlawful election spending and bizarre and indefensible fuel subsidy payments. The minister of course cannot offer any explanation for these. She assumed it was enough that a cash crunch problem already existed, which states should take for granted and mitigate by forsaking all other priorities. One way the federal government has done its own mitigation is to suspend capital budget disbursement since the beginning of the year, the minister said, without bothering to understand whether states would find that option sensible, tolerable or even practicable.

More importantly, the minister also disclosed that the federal government had had to borrow about N473bn to fund recurrent expenditure, including salaries and overheads, a sum estimated to be a little less than half of the N882bn budgeted for borrowing in 2015. At that rate of borrowing, what are the guarantees that budgetary projections would not be exceeded? And if the federal government had access to such huge borrowings, do states have the same or near half that luxury? Clearly, Dr Okonjo-Iweala’s recipe is not so inspiring. What is at stake here is the reputation of the federal government’s financial managers. While states could have done much better than they have done to lessen the problem of the cash crunch on their people, the federal government has not placed the country on financial ‘war footing’ partly because their laxity has brought the country nearly to its knees.

The incoming president, Muhammadu Buhari, has his work cut out for him. The economy is prostrate, not simply because of the about 50 percent drop in revenues, as the Finance minister casually said, but largely because of the mismanagement of the economy. The federal government, despite patronising militants to the detriment of the security agencies, has not been able to put a lid on large scale stealing of crude oil, nor on the appalling abuse rampant in the downstream sector. In addition, the federal government has woefully failed to curb its extravagant spending habit. Nigerians know it, despite the government’s best efforts to disguise the catastrophe, and the world also knows it, for they are deeply astounded by the Nigerian government’s poor financial management, policy miscarriage, and general indiscipline. Revenues may have dropped by more than a trillion naira, but the real and bigger problems lie outside oil market volatility.

Dr Okonjo-Iweala should keep her gratuitous advice to herself. It is obvious that had President Goodluck Jonathan won reelection, as she hoped, many of the country’s assets would have been sold. She alluded to that option in proffering a solution to Nigeria’s cash crunch. On assuming office, Gen Buhari will have to examine all the options available to his government before making a choice. No one expects the current subsidy regime to be maintained. And it is likely some national assets will not be left untouched. But above everything, there will be a number of inquiries into what went wrong in order to have an understanding of how the country came to this horrific pass. It is only after that has been done, and blames apportioned, and punishment meted out, that the public will support the belt-tightening measures the new president will probably place before the country. And to think starry-eyed states creation campaigners hungered for a few more states, a condition upon which they based their support for Dr Jonathan.

May 10, 2015
Implications of change manifesto (4)

Jailing corrupt people after due judicial process is one effective way to fight corruption; borrowing from the tradition of shaming persons who misbehave is another

President-elect Buhari recently promised Nigerians that he is set to kill corruption before corruption kills Nigeria. People at home and abroad put credence in his words on account of his moral cleanliness, probity in public life and austerity in private life. Buhari has already started to demonstrate his no-nonsense approach to governance; he recently ordered his aides to desist from the flaunting of power for which people in public office are known: pushing other vehicles off the road to give political office holders a right of way they do not have. From a short field research before the presidential election, I interviewed some regular Nigerians that can be referred to as folks in the technical sense of the word, asking them why they would vote for General Buhari. The answer I got seven out of ten times was “Because we know he would fight corruption, even if he did nothing else.”

While going through my files for the fourth piece on Implications of Change Manifesto, I came across an article that appeared in this paper about four years ago, shortly after President Jonathan assumed power after winning the 2011 presidential election. This was after President Jonathan’s assurance during his visit to Washington to fight corruption as part of his Transformation Agenda. At that time, just like now, transformation was viewed by many as change. I have chosen to take the liberty to re-present the article, at a time that the nation is also full of expectation and hope about the imperative of fighting corruption. Despite the fact that President Jonathan had little space for fighting corruption in his Transformation Agenda, I am taking the liberty to re-present the article in today’s column, as part of the avalanche of suggestions to General Buhari on how to deal with the hydra-headed monster that corruption has become in our country.

Our new president is certainly aware that the culture of corruption in the country he has recently accepted to lead or govern is the primary source of the embarrassment that Nigerians face outside Nigeria daily, the reason for the stigmatisation of the country (and the perpetual call for re-branding the nation by our ministers), and the deepening of poverty in the country. I believe Mr. Jonathan was confronted with some hard facts about Nigeria’s oversize corruption during his visit to Washington. It was during his visit that a CIA revelation about Nigeria stated that Nigeria had lost more money to corruption than any other country on the continent. The report said that $89 billion was illegally removed from Nigeria’s treasury between 1970 and 2008.

If international agencies are able to trace $89 billion to political and bureaucratic corruption in the 28 years under review, it will be safe to assume that four times this amount must have been stolen, with some taken out without being noticed while some is kept for use inside the country by those who are afraid to be caught exporting such stolen funds. It must have been Mr. Jonathan’s recognition of the magnitude of corruption, like the magnitude of darkness that covers the country every night, that he announced in Washington that he would fight corruption during his presidency.

The country’s criminal justice system is unduly slow. There is some value to the slow wheel of justice in the country. It is usually better to err on the side of justice by being slow than to have a speedy adjudication system that puts an innocent person in jail. It must be because of the recognition of the slow criminal justice system that anti-corruption gurus are asking for establishment of special courts to handle cases of corruption. President Jonathan needs to respond to the challenge of fighting corruption in a country where everyone generally suspects the person in front or behind him of being corrupt. Too much of the nation’s funds that could have been used for providing good roads and adequate energy for development are being held by some of the few individuals that have had access to political and bureaucratic power in the country. There is need for creative response to the mother of Nigeria’s problems.

Preventing corruption is, like preventive medicine, likely to cost less than fighting corruption in the traditional way that we have done in the last few years. Most Nigerians would not be surprised if the money collected from those charged with corruption in the last few years does not justify the money invested in fighting this scourge. Using the present criminal justice system to prosecute the hordes of corrupt people in government and corporate governance may not be fast enough to bring many corrupt people to justice in their lifetime. More importantly, the existing mode of prosecuting and adjudicating cases of corruption may not assist the country to recover most of the stolen funds that are hidden in foreign countries or have been used to buy houses in Dubai, London, Washington, Pretoria, and even Accra by individuals that had taken money illegally from the nation’s treasury.

The need to get money back from fraudulent politicians and civil servants to provide electricity, rail transportation, globally competitive education system, and life-saving health care makes it reasonable for the president to take another leap in the dark: offer amnesty to corrupt men and women who had stolen and taken out of the country so much of the nation’s funds meant for development. The EFCC and ICPC need to be re-energised through adequate funding, sincere commitment to the fight against corruption at all levels of government, and genuine cooperation with international graft-fighting institutions. With all these, it should not be hard for a re-invented EFCC to have accurate data on the places in which past fraudulent leaders have hidden and are still hiding the money they had stolen from Nigeria. It is with a list of such fraudsters in hand that the president should openly call on all past leaders that had stolen money to register for Corruption Amnesty. A deadline for registration should be set.

The offer of amnesty must include allowing thousands of politicians and civil servants who had looted the treasury between 1960 and 2009 opportunity to buy freedom from prosecution by surrendering 80% of the money they had stolen. Like the Niger Delta amnesty, those who voluntarily surrender the required percentage of their loot should be free from any judicial stigmatisation while those who refuse should be made to face the court of speedy justice in special anti-corruption courts.

Nigeria cannot afford to forget 400 billion dollars in the hands of looters and their descendants. Doing so can only fuel the cycle of corruption and impunity and deepen poverty. Even if corruption amnesty does not lead to total deterrence, it will clear the way for anti-corruption institutions to deal with fewer cases and to buy appropriate technology that can make preventive measures more efficient and effective.

In his own case, President Buhari is not new to fighting corruption. He must have thought out his plan of action for his own war against corruption. Many voters (if not most) have shown that political and bureaucratic corruption is one of the reasons they voted for Buhari during his fourth shot at the presidency. Trying and punishing every corrupt political office holder or public servant is an onerous thing to do for a government that also has Boko Haram and mass unemployment to fight. Jailing corrupt people after due judicial process is one effective way to fight corruption; borrowing from the tradition of shaming persons who misbehave is another. Corruption Amnesty may bring back the culture of shame that has disappeared from public life in our country for decades. Both forms of intervention can deter future offenders. To attempt to jail all corrupt past politicians and civil servants will require enormous expenditure because corruption has been the core of governance for too long in the country. Amnesty is a variant of Plea bargaining that can bring shame to corrupt persons while bringing back much of stolen funds to the country.

May 10, 2015