The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • How far can the customer go?

    How far can the customer go?

    Coscharis vs. client as case study

    When towards the end of last year, I wrote a piece on two half-filled bottles of a particular brand of soft drink sold to a consumer in the country, someone who had lived in Germany for years called to tell me how the situation would have been handled there. The person had lived in Germany for years and even had a German wife; so he was eminently qualified to speak on the matter. He said all the manufacturer of that drink would have done was to quietly offer the customer two cartons of the product, probably with an apology, and that would have settled it. In other words, I should not make an issue over what should otherwise not be a serious matter. I was stunned because I had thought hell would be let loose because of what I then perceived as the high level of consciousness in that environment.

    Of course, what prompted my interest on the matter then is this concept of the ‘customer is king’. In the last few weeks, there has been another matter between a customer and an auto firm, which I guess must have been beclouded by the general elections. It is the story of Mrs Ebele Marie Omorodion, a German married to a Nigerian. Mrs Omorodion bought a BMW X6 from Coscharis Group, the representative of BMW in Nigeria, on August 1, 2012, for N16m. Not long after, she discovered that the DVD was faulty. A new one was ordered. The new one too was faulty and a new one ordered on June 27, 2013. And, as she put it, “Just while I tried to begin to enjoy my car, six months later I was driving out of the Chevron toll gate at 100km/hr when all of a sudden the car stopped on the high way with no prior warning”. This was blamed on Mechatronic gear box failure. The car was about 15 months then. She had a similar experience of the car suddenly stopping on motion, at times in the night with her kids in the car, on another occasion. Then the reverse camera (Ultrasonic system) too started malfunctioning.

    These, no doubt, are not funny experiences. Of course, the company appears to be aware that there could be issues on its products sometimes; but these apply to virtually anything mechanical or electrical. Hence, it makes provision for courtesy car for their customers having issues with their cars for the duration of the repair. The company said it made one available for Mrs Omorodion which she allegedly did not use well.

    Anyway, while the example of the soft drink is not exactly the same with the BMW issue, the point running through both is that of the customer being the king. I guess that is why Coscharis Group has restrained itself from joining issues with its customer on the pages of the newspapers that she has taken her case to; a decision which makes business sense. In most relationships, personal or business, there would always be cause for disagreements. And when they occur, they are bound to be settled whether by adjudication or through the legal process.

    The problem, in this instance, could jolly well be from the manufacturer. It could be from the customer. But, if the company gave out a courtesy car as is the standard practice; and if it is true that all repairs covered by warranty were carried out under warranty at no cost to the customer, but at the expense of BMW AG and Coscharis, then, it might have proved good faith. Anything could have happened down the line.

    Indeed, there are a lot of issues in this matter. One, different people have different attitudes to handling and maintenance issues. Two people may buy the same brand of cars the same day and in six months’ time, if both products are put up for sale, the prices offered for them, even if they are to be bought by the same person, would differ. The prospective buyer would make his offers after examining the two, based on his assessment of how they had been used and maintained. I have seen many instances where people were given the same brand of official vehicles at the same time and in less than a year, one would not believe that the vehicles were given out the same day, seeing that some of the vehicles have become jalopies due to bad handling and maintenance. While some of those given the vehicles would treat them as eggs, some do not care, even if their children turn some of the features to toys, it is simply a case of ‘the kids are playing’. Regrettably, this kind of attitude is a luxury where some of these modern cars are concerned. They are too complex to be handled with levity. Then, there is the question of the Owner’s Manual that many people do not bother to read. They just assume that since they have been using the brand for some time, they should have been conversant with its features. This may not hold true in all cases with some of these cars whose technologies change frequently.

    Now, what is the way out of this quagmire? The pragmatic thing to do, for me, is to look for a middle course that would not short-change either party. Here, the idea of trade in would be more like it. I said this because it is going to be difficult for the customer to insist on getting a 2015 model of the same car that she bought in 2012, for several reasons. Firstly, the warranty period is long over. Secondly, it is not realistic to ask for a brand new car in lieu of a car purchased three years ago; the prices must have changed. Thirdly, if cars are replaced for every customer in that manner, then it is only a matter of time before the company would close shop. Of course, the only situation which could make that possible is if it is proven that the model is defective beyond replacing, at no cost to the customer, the faulty parts; or if the car or model should have been recalled outright from the market. But if it is just one such experience among the lot, an argument for replacement with a brand new car of the current model could be a difficult argument to sustain.

    Now that Mrs Omorodion has taken her case to the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), it could decide to look into whether her experience with the BMW X6 is one-off case or the issues are common with the model and proceed to offer its opinion. That is more like it; CPC is likely to give a verdict that would yield result. This the media cannot do.

    Anyway, all said, if Mrs Omorodion or even Coscharis Group is still not satisfied after the CPC might have given its opinion on the matter, the only option open is for the dissatisfied party to seek redress in a court of law as against that of the public opinion (which the newspapers that she has been using represent).  It is the courts that would sift the wheat from the chaff, sift sentiments from sensible business decisions and juxtapose them with the issues of safety of the customer and fairness on the side of the two parties, and deliver an incontrovertible judgment that would be binding on both parties, whichever way the judgment goes. But the judgment would be a classical one not only for jurisprudence, but also, and more fundamentally, for this notion of the customer being king. The customer is king, yes; but with what powers? Asked differently, how far can the king go?

  • Implications of Change Manifesto (1)

    Implications of Change Manifesto (1)

    What is billed for change is not diagnosis of Nigeria’s ailments but the efficacy of the treatment of such ailments

    While the history of the decline of the PDP as the largest political party in Africa, particularly the reasons why the party lost to the APC in all the elections waits to be written, the belief in many quarters—elite and folk— is that majority of voters who chose the APC over PDP in all the elections did so because of the promise of change by General Buhari and the APC. Just as the president-elect has started to inform citizens about policies he would introduce to herald change, so are many politicians and even public servants acting and talking in a way to suggest that they do not understand what a manifesto of change means. Even after most Nigerians have opted for a new ideology of governance, many of those who have benefited over the years from a government that has little attention for citizens’ welfare still behave as if Buhari’s change manifesto is mere rhetoric.

    It is clear to the average observer that the most appealing aspect of Buhari/APC campaign is not as much the focus on issues (as distinct from the preoccupation of the ruling party with smear campaign) as it is the desire of most Nigerians for change. Nigerians were fed up with a governance ideology and style that had failed and wanted to have a socio-economic experience that is different from what had obtained for the past sixteen years in general and the past six years in particular.In effect, Nigerian’s desire for change and Buhari’s promise of a socio-political experience that is different from the socio-economic menu of the past sixteen years coalesced to bring what used to be the opposition party to power.

    It is, therefore, not surprising that the President-elect has since March 30 been introducing doses of policy change that is expected to move away from the traditional way of governing the country. Even after General Buhari has said that anyone interested in becoming a minister in his government must be prepared to declare his or her asset, those who have been poster-boys and girls for corruption in government are very loud in announcing their desire to work with Buhari. Individuals who are running away from the laws in other lands and those who should be in court answering to EFCC charges are in the forefront of those advertising their support and selling their expertise toBuhari, as if change is only about content with no connection to form.

    Many of the dimensions of governance that Buhari and APC have promised to change have been part of the rhetoric of government in the last sixteen years: corruption, poverty, infrastructure, education, health, national security, and the country’s political structure and culture, to name a few. What is billed for change is not diagnosis of Nigeria’s ailments but the efficacy of the treatment of such ailments. In other words, Buhari and his party want to move away from rhetoric to praxis. In doing so, it is obvious that it is not just content that should require the attention of the new president but also form.

    As today’s piece promises to be one of many on the implications of Change Manifesto, the rest of today’s column will focus on what should be changed about the fight against corruption. Fighting corruption requires the integrity of a leader who himself or herself is averse to corruption. What is known and propagated about General Buhari is encouraging for the reason that he is the kind of leader that is favorably placed to take the fight against corruption from its present highly rhetorical level to a noticeably practical level. As it is with any desperate problem that requires desperate solution, corruption has both cause and effect.

    The effect is often material or tangible and thus identifiable. For example, having a candidate for governorship or ministerial appointment declare his assets is capable of addressing the material aspect of corruption, especially if such candidate is unable to prove the source of the pre-engagement income he has declared or if at the end of his time in office, he is unable to explain changes in his income at the point of exit from office. Secondly, character flaw can help to facilitate corrupt behavior on the part of office holders. Individuals with moral weakness and poor ethical standards are more likely to be more corrupt than disciplined and morally upright persons in positions of power. So, making sure that only individuals with high ethical standards are appointed as ministers and into other positions can assist the fight against corruption.

    But the cause of corruption deserves as much attention as its effect. Strong institutions and a political system that is not designed to facilitate corrupt behavior are matters that should be of concern to the Buhari administration. Without mincing words, the distribution of power and responsibility between the central and state governments over the years has contributed to the growth of the culture of corruption in the country in the last forty or more years. The rise of political and bureaucratic corruption that has earned the country the stigma of  being one of the most corrupt countries on earth in the last thirty years has links with the descent of the country into a modern form of hunting and gathering culture that has been in vogue in the last forty or more years. What is often referred to in modern political and economic vocabulary as rent collection from petroleum sale is a modern variant of hunting and gathering as sources of livelihood.

    By replacing the relative productive sector in place in the early part of the postcolonial phase with rent collection from petroleum, Nigeria created a socio-economic and political culture that fostered alienation of the citizenry from the country’s rulers. Under a system that is characterized by running both national and subnational governments on allocations from rents collected from petroleum, citizens’ efficacy was eroded. Citizens ceased to be actors (tax payers) and became consumers of what is passed down to the states from the federation account.  Overloading the central government with powers and functions that do not have to be performed principally because of the absence of strong institutions and primacy of the rule of law, those charged with the power to run the country have had so much pork to use to bribe or silence citizens, and to cripple dissent. Impunity consequently grew to an endemic level at the centre, just as it also became part of the culture in states, especially those that are governed by the same party in power at the center. There are many telling examples all around us till today.

    The culture of ruling with impunity and consuming with recklessness on the part of those in power became part of the economic and political culture of the country, to the extent that finding honesty in public and also private sectors has become like finding a needle in a hay-sack. The effect is the penetration of corruption to every level and aspect of life in the country.It is, therefore, salutary that INEC has helped to bring the first corrective step to the culture of impunity and corruption in the country. Having a free, fair, and credible election that made it possible to make citizens’ ballots count to the point of replacing the political party in power with the opposition party for the first time in over sixty years is a remarkable boost in citizens’ political efficacy. It is therefore appropriate that the President-elect has chosen to focus on fighting corruption. But the first step in doing this effectively is to return the country to a productive economy that shuns the dependence on fossil energy. Easy flow of petroleum dollars has also made it easy for states to become fiefdoms that also depend on manna from the federation account, rather than the productive centres that the regions were up till the end of the civil war.

    Cutting recurrent expenditures must include creating a budget that does not need revenue garnered from selling of petroleum. Whatever money accrues to the country from petroleum can be devoted to infrastructure building and renewal, rather than allowing revenue from petroleum to provide resources for the running of our government at the national and subnational levels and the interminable ballooning of recurrent expenditures fomented by those who see political appointments as license for infinite acquisition.

    To be continued

  • Ayo Fayose: Before it is too late

    Ayo Fayose: Before it is too late

    Of  all those I spoke to, not a single one  was convinced Governor Fayose would honour his word…

    Let me state from the outset that this is a dangerous undertaking I am getting into; not from the point of view of safety of life – that is in God’s hands – but rather from the multiple interpretations that could be given to what you will be reading in this article.  The Yoruba, in their millennial wisdom have this saying: oun to wa lehin ofa, o ju oje lo – which can literally be translated as there is so much that is unknown.  I expect that Governor Ayo Fayose, as a free born Yoruba, should understand that perfectly.

    Left to those watching the  running, macabre drama playing out in Ekiti from a distance, the governor is not only well loved by Ekiti people,  he has, in fact, become a demi god. After all, didn’t he win the June 21, 2014 governorship election 16:0, followed it up with two successive wins in the  2015 general elections and capped it up with the victory at the Supreme Court; serving as  an icing on the cake? And by the way, didn’t the whole city of Ado-Ekiti poured out on his victory parade through the state capital? At a stage in his life, Charles Taylor could have had the entire Liberian population line up the streets, in scorching sun, to sing panegyrics in his honour. But on Thursday 26, September 2013, Charles Taylor lost his appeal against a war-crimes conviction as judges confirmed a 50-year jail term against the Liberian ex-president for encouraging rebels in Sierra Leone to mutilate, rape and murder victims in its civil war, holding that “the  primary purpose was to spread terror, and that brutal violence was purposefully unleashed against civilians with the purpose of making them afraid, afraid that there would be more violence if they continued to resist.”

    On that day, not  a single one of  his  crooning Freetown crowd was anywhere in sight as Presiding Judge George Gelaga King pronounced those words. Lesson: Governor Ayo Fayose should desist from encouraging acts of brigandage in Ekiti state.

    I am aware that Governor Fayose has reacted, soberly, to his Supreme Court victory and among other things he said, and I quote: “to my opponents, I plead with you to sheath your sword and join me in the development of Ekiti State. If truly our struggle is about service to our dear State, it is time to come together and channel all our resources towards the development of the State. I am irrevocably committed to the protection of all, including the opposition in the State. Nobody is infallible, and I am not a perfect being. The only one that is perfect is God…”

    Before I set  out to write this piece at all, knowing my views could be given a million interpretations, especially at a time PDP  could not  have completely expended all its dollars, I consulted a variety of Ekiti stakeholders, deliberately avoiding speaking with any of  our politicians. Of  all those I spoke to, not a single one  was convinced Governor Fayose would honour his word, going by what they claim to have come to know about  him. When I posited that a wise one like him should understand, and appreciate, the  probable consequences of  May 29,  one of the individuals, a Consultant Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeon who told me he had  studied Fayose closely since his first coming,  told me: Oga, with all due respect, you would believe anything  if  you took the governor’s words for it.

    I consider these testimonies a major character flaw and a possible hindrance to how much my suggestions  would go in resolving the logjam since they would require trust and  fidelity on both sides of the divide. Trust is of the essence as,  without it, Ekiti as well as its poor people would literally rot in this unfortunate conundrum.

    On  the Ekitipanupo web portal, an indigenous intellectual forum , Wednesday, 14 April 2015,  a forumite, Port Harcourt-based Tope Ojo, directly asked from me: ‘What is the way forward,’ in this long running, profit-less battle between PDP and the APC, each  of which has ruled Ekiti for 8 years? I replied, with some editing, as follows:

    ‘Thanks Tope. Let me react to the most important part of your  mail: the way forward. Honestly, effective from today, given the Supreme Court decision, I will candidly advise as follows: Let everybody, party, organisation and individuals reach a consensus that governor Fayose should run his term. Let him in turn climb down from his high horse, apologise  to Ekiti  people, via a television broadcast,  for all the obvious illegalities he has committed and promise that henceforth, he will conduct Ekiti affairs  decently like any other governor in the country. I am sure that  those who neither like nor trust him will be willing to forgive while those who love him will do so the more. Let him try everything, together with all stakeholders, to return peace to Ekiti.  On the other hand, let the G.19 drop the impeachment process all together in the full knowledge that four years, even ten, is not a life time. We cannot fight one another forever as we have done for the last 10 years at the expense of the state’s overall development. It is time to sheath our swords’.

    ‘There is a lot more to do for genuine peace. For starters, Governor Fayose should pay all outstanding emoluments due to the G.19 as well as pay the outstanding salaries, and severance packages, of the political appointees of the last administration. Whoever was relieved of his/her job for political reasons should be promptly recalled.  The governor must genuinely set out to restore peace to Ekiti. It has been shown abundantly in the bible that God can use anybody for His purpose. Governor Fayose should not see the Supreme Court judgment as an opportunity for gloating. Rather, he should use it to usher in peace and cordiality in Ekiti. We have lost a lot. We have become the butt of jokes worldwide. Let him initiate a rapprochement, first with all the former governors, and then, with Ekiti leading lights across board. Let the interest of Ekiti take centre stage. He must make the first move for others, our Obas and leading lights in commerce, church and community as well as the people, in general, to join him in starting a new era of peace and understanding in Ekiti. He is not a sole administrator and must never see himself as such. I have been a constant Fayose critic but I think we must now put a closure to all that for the sake of Ekiti. May the good Lord help us. Amen’.

    Nobody needs be told that there has been nothing like governance in Ekiti in the past six months. Enough should be enough. The era of brigandage should be over. Governor Fayose must provide an enabling environment for every arm of government  to operate and Olugbemi and his  gang  of  7- man rogue parliament must be put exactly  where they belong.  I regret being a member of the state ACN screening committee that cleared that man for elections in 2011. The G.19, as w all saw in the recent elections, must have realised that in politics, as in life generally, you cannot win all the time. They too must embrace peace. Ekiti has suffered enough and  one of the topmost Ekiti lawyers I spoke with does not think the impeachment attempt stands a chance in a million of being concluded before the end of their term. That is even, if all approaches to their hallowed chambers were not to be barricaded as we have once seen. It should be time for governance which many of those I spoke with said Fayose is incapable of. He must now prove  such people wrong. He must realise he is the face of Ekiti and come May 29, he would look for, but not see any of those roughnecks currently at his beck and call if they do not want to spend time in jail.  Governor Fayose, in case he does not know, is himself under some close watch by the Human Rights community, whatever the braggadocio of his spokespersons.

    Finally, I plead with all well meaning Ekiti, across board, to buy into this peace process and let us see Ekiti take its rightful place in the progressive and totally development-oriented government General Muhammadu Buhari is set to usher in effective 29, May 2015.

    Ure Ekiti a soju kete ra o. Amin.

  • Beyond May 29: as one ruling party replaces another, five things to keep in mind

    Beyond May 29: as one ruling party replaces another, five things to keep in mind

    On May 29, 2015, the Jonathan administration will hand over to the Buhari administration and the APC will replace the PDP as the ruling party. As everyone knows, this will be a historic occasion in our country’s political history because it will mark the very first time that a ruling party at the centre of power in Abuja would have been replaced, not by a military coup but through relatively free and credible elections. There were profound doubts that this could ever happen in Nigeria but all things being equal, it will literally come to pass on the 29th of May.

    For a long time, this column has been asserting vigorously that an eventual replacement of the PDP by the APC through an electoral victory would be a replacement of the party, the government in power but not of the class in power, the ruling class. I lent my support to this eventuality by relentlessly calling for the defeat of the PDP, but in a decidedly critical spirit. This is because history abundantly teaches us that when a ruling class throws out a ruling party and replaces it with another ruling party, there will be changes which may or may not be significant but which will not lead to a fundamental reordering and redistribution of power and resources between the rulers and the ruled, the haves and the have-nots. With this historic caveat in mind, I offer the following FIVE points as things to keep in mind as we move with euphoria and hope towards May 29, 2015. As a final prefatory note to these five points, let me add that the first TWO will substantially move us away from the worst and most nation-wrecking aspects of the PDP era while the last THREE points will, in all probability, prove to be very daunting and perhaps even insuperable challenges to the APC as Nigeria’s new ruling party.

    One:

    We can expect and will probably get a great reduction in the levels of corruption, waste and squandermania of the PDP era, especially at its terminal point in the Jonathan administration. Nigerians expect it and the whole world waits for it; our country’s notoriety as one of the most corrupt nations on the planet has in the last three decades been truly global in scale. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala infamously asserted that corruption in Nigeria is so deep and wide, so endemic that it could be reduced by no more than 4%. Expect Buhari and the APC to do much better than that! Expect a reduction in the fleet of the presidential jets. Expect a massive reduction in the size of the entourage that used to accompany Jonathan and the other PDP presidents to international meetings. Even expect the wasteful sponsorship of private citizens to pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem by state and federal governments to be discontinued, not gradually but “with immediate effect”.

    Do not expect, but don’t be surprised if Buhari moves to slash the astronomical salaries, allowances and emoluments paid to our law-makers, these being the highest in the world. Finally, don’t expect but do not be surprised if Buhari also moves to substantially reduce the recurrent expenditures of the state and federal governments while concomitantly increasing capital expenditures for development projects. Expect these changes in the scale of the culture of corruption and waste of the PDP era because these are the “easy” challenges that corruption poses to us as a people. Don’t expect that Buhari and the APC will take on, and if they do, will be able to successfully engage the structural aspects of corruption at the present time. For that, compatriots, you must wait for a future stage in the emergence and evolution of the APC as a new and truly progressive ruling party in our country – if that ever happens.

    Two

    Expect a noticeable change in the style and culture of governance in a post-PDP Nigeria. We are rid, hopefully forever, of the thugs, the nonentities and the glorified “area boys” who more or less represented the expressive face of power and sovereignty in the PDP era. The Fayoses, the Fani-Kayodes, the Obanikoros, the Orubebes, the Ubahs and the Okupes will go into the night and vanish from the seat of power in Abuja after May 29 and it is highly improbable that APC will promote its own large corps of thugs into the same kind of eminence that they had in the PDP era. It is highly unlikely that Aisha Buhari will be anything like Patience Jonathan, since in fact no Nigerian “First Lady” ever remotely approached the level of uncouth and maniacal love and display of power of by the infamous author of “dia ris god o”.

    The new rulers are no saints; indeed, many of them decamped from the moral sinkholes of the PDP only at the very last moment and so they carry with them the miasmic scent of the ordure within which they wallowed for so long in the defeated ruling party. But don’t expect the level of barefaced, cynical lying and deceitfulness of Jonathan himself, the chieftains of the PDP and the official and unofficial spokesmen of the party and the government. We will not get from the APC ringing declarations that millions of jobs are being created while, in fact, scores of millions of our youths are jobless. Hopefully too, we will not get from Buhari and the APC the level of impunity with which the PDP responded to the revelations of the Ekiti-Gate scandal, an impunity which I converted to the phrase, “wetin una fit do?” from Nigerian Pidgin. We are unlikely to get true bourgeois or even traditional African civility with the coming into power of the new ruling party, but at least we will not have a new breed of neo-fascist megalomaniacs in Aso Rock.

    Three    

                   The change in the relationship between the incumbent president and the presidency as an institution will not change much if at all in the months and years after May 29. This is because the APC does not present us with a meaningful departure from the degeneration that has completely overwhelmed political parties and the party system in Nigeria in the last three or four decades. Perhaps the most consequential effect of this decay is the fact that incumbent presidents in our country since the end of military dictatorships in 1999 have all had far greater power and authority than both the ruling party and the presidency as an institution. This highly personalized and patrimonial structure of governance, this extreme concentration of power, authority and patronage in one man will not change significantly under the APC, unless of course the party undergoes a profound transformation from its origins and antecedents. I may be wrong, but nothing that the APC has said and done so far convinces me that this will happen. The only slightly hopeful portent that we have is the fact that there are a few genuinely bright and humanistic thinkers and visionaries in the party. But their ranks within the party are too thin, their critical mass too insubstantial.

    Perchance Buhari will smile more often than he did as a military dictator; perchance he will listen more to his advisers and be more accountable to the populace than he was when he governed as an unelected, absolutist ruler. But such hopes rest dangerously on the unspoken and unacknowledged acceptance of the supremacy of the president over the presidency and the ruling party. This is more or less a feudal, pseudo-bourgeois conception and practice of democracy. The big question here is: will Nigerian democracy move into the modern bourgeois or post-bourgeois age under the APC?

    There is also the feeling that with Buhari’s victory, power has returned, so to speak, to the North having stayed in the South for more than a decade since the return to formal civilian democracy in 1999. Coupled with this is the fact that one of the three historic power blocs in the country, the Southeast, is largely absent from the electoral plurality that enabled the political victory of the APC over the PDP. If the party system remains unreformed, if the president remains supreme over the ruling party and the presidency, and if the presidency itself remains unreconstructed, these two particular issues will prove extremely fraught for the peaceful, united and equitable functioning of democracy in the post-PDP period.

    Four

                   Ultimately, everything comes down to genuine and far-reaching economic and social reforms in the post-PDP era. The most apparent and urgent site of these reforms pertains to the complete overhaul of our infrastructures, with special regard for the generation and distribution of power and the construction and maintenance of good, motorable roads across the length and breadth of the country. Don’t we all dream of the day when modernity would have finally taken root in our country and power would be reliably and affordably available to all our peoples?

    Beyond such fond dreams, infrastructural transformation in the power and transportation sectors of the economy can act as the ultimate guarantor of job, food and health security for the vast majority of our peoples beyond the narrow circles of the economic and political elites. In other words, beyond the inherent and incalculable benefits of complete and effective electrification of all our towns and cities, all our villages and hamlets, cheap and available power can and should act as the engine of growth and development for the entire West Africa region.

    The great obstacles to this potential are the relentless looting and the squandermania through which “legal” and illegal massive transfers of the bulk of our national or collective wealth are made to the private coffers of the few at the expense of the vast majority of our peoples. The classic economic term for this is primitive accumulation. Can the APC as a ruling party historically take Nigeria and its economy outside and beyond primitive accumulation? This question is not as abstract as it seems. Posed differently and concretely, the question asks us to wonder when the day will come when the vast majority of our men and women of great wealth will make their fortunes from genuine and productive entrepreneurial activities and not from legal and illegal handouts from government. No policy statement, no vision of economic growth and development that I have personally read of or heard about from the policy wonks and spokesmen of new ruling party indicates that the APC recognizes that the ‘legal”, structural forms of corruption are just as harmful and condemnable as  the illegal, sleazy and much talked about forms.

    Five

              Nigeria in the post-PDP era will command respectful and beneficial attention from the oil conglomerates working in our extractive industries and the world of global capitalism in general if and when our oil resources are converted into engines of growth and development in our country and in our region of the African continent. In the short run, the inanities of the PDP era will perhaps be overcome and both our trading partners and the world at large will stop taking advantage of our self-inflicted weaknesses while staring in mocking unbelief at the scale of our rulers’ corruptibility and mediocrity. But at this point in time, it is a debatable proposition whether under our new ruling party we will become one of the national economic powerhouses in Africa and the developing world, one of the truly just and egalitarian bourgeois or post-bourgeois democracies on the planet.

    In the weeks and months ahead, this column will return in greater detail to each of these five points. Meanwhile, let us hope that May 29 will at least lead to the eradication of the worst features of the long misrule of the PDP at the centre of power in our country.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Shifting cultivation among the Nigerian political class

    Oh boy, oh boy, Nigerian politicians are something else. Whilst we are still on the subject of the death and disintegration, has anybody noticed the epic migration going on among the Nigerian political class since the PDP gave up the ghost? We do not know whether this is an attempt to evade death duties or the fear of imminent hunger which has induced the disease known in Northern Nigeria as Sokugo or wandering psychosis among Nigeria’s dissolute and irresponsible political class.

    What we know is that since the death of the PDP was announced, there has been a Gadarene rush to jump ship or to flee the sinking hulk of the biggest party in Africa. Hordes of internally displaced political prostitutes, homeless ideological destitute, rank-shifted renegades, politically homeless vagrants and other hobos and yobos of reactionary politics have taken to the road to Bourdillon as if it is a new highway to Babylon. In Yoruba folk parlance, it is known as eni ori ba yo odile. (If you survive, we shall meet at home)

    Among these wastrel wayfarers is a notorious political scoundrel from the old Adamawa province who has betrayed just about anybody in contemporary Nigerian politics including the illustrious MKO even while mouthing meaningless Marxist mumbo-jumbo about pending and impending class conflagration. Another is a fugitive from American justice who seemed to be permanently encamped at the gate of the Lion of Bourdillon. Thrice he had attempted to gain forcible entry and thrice the fat fool has been driven away.

    Snooper has a political theory for these unprincipled gyrations and shameless gallivanting. It is taken from soil science. When native farmers exhaust the nutrients of a particular plot of land due to incessant and relentless cultivation, they simply abandon it and move on to the next plot of land until the entire farming space is crying for mercy. We are looking for a worthy son of the soil to marry soil science with political science in a compelling treatise on the habits and habitats of the Nigerian post-colonial political class.  So long then for shifting cultivation among contemporary Nigerian politicos.

  • Like father, like son

    Like father, like son

    Babajide Obanikoro: like father, like son. But we have the woman who bravely confronted him at the polling unit where he was not supposed to be in the first place last Saturday. But we also have to thank God for her. If she had done that in places like Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, the least she would have escaped with were gunshot wounds. She might have died for daring to confront the son of the honourable Minister of State for Foreign Affairs 2, who happened to be working for self and his father’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party, albeit illegally.

    Lest we forget, his father is also enmeshed in the Ekiti rigging video saga of last year, where he and his fellow accomplices were reportedly ordering an army general about on how to rig the election for the ruling PDP. Who can blame Obanikoro Jr. He is merely learning the ropes early so that his father’s shoes will not be too big for him by the time he is to step into them.

  • Missing persons index: mum is the word from a mumu

    And whilst we are still on the subject of the hordes of displaced political refugees flocking the highway of politics, it is meet to file a missing person report from another department. It would seem that our man, the Kirikiri canal columnist, has committed hara-kiri. Snooper has been waiting in vain for his response to the electoral triumph of General Mohammadu Buhari, the man he claimed to be simply unelectable and Senator Bola Tinubu, the one he excoriated so callously and unremittingly.

    A dark cloud has since enveloped his even darker visage. While the dyspeptic diatribe lasted, it was a classic case of the column as unrelenting calumny and shameless hate sermons. Snooper was happy to watch from the sideline knowing that it will all end in a fiasco. Only in the annals of psychotics can a man who claims to be a pastor be so consumed by hatred and malice towards fellow mortals no matter the opposition to their politics and person.

    Yet a cursory glance at this mishmash of misanthropy reveals nothing but jejune emoting and the sophomoric canards of a mind so superficial, so incapable of analytic rigour, that a robust engagement is out of the question. You cannot argue with unarguable lunacy. For those who know their history, this is not the first time the fellow’s hate platform would collapse under the weight of its own troubled contradictions. The first time around, he disappeared for a long spell. Here is hoping that this time around, the spell will be much longer.

  • Three lessons from 2015 elections

    In many ways, the just concluded 2015 general elections was exciting and will remain memorable for long.

    From the realignment of forces by the opposition political parties with disgruntled members of the Peoples Democratic Party, the primaries for electing candidates to the campaign and the elections there was so much to keep Nigerians interested discuss about the political future of the country.

    As we all savor  the outcome of the largely successful and peaceful elections, there are a number of lessons we should take note of, reflect on and take necessary steps to better our lives.

    Don’t give up easily

    After losing the 2011 presidential election, it was almost certain that General Muhammed Buhari would not be able to fulfill his ambition of becoming president of the country. Media analysis based on available facts predicted his loss in 2011 just like in his previous attempts. He also indicated that he may no longer vie for the presidency.

    As it turned out, the alliance of opposition parties gave him a stronger platform to challenge PDP’s 16 year-hold on the presidency and now, Buhari is President in waiting.

    If you are one of those who don’t believe that they can make it to the top in their endeavours , Buhari’s steadfastness should inspire you to not give up easily.

    Your best efforts sometimes may not appear good enough to get you to where you think you should be in the profession, but you should not be discouraged or look for what seems to you the easy way out.

    Sometimes, we are closer to our breakthrough without knowing.

    Good name and  reputation counts

    Critics of General Buhari have a number of facts that they put up to fault his suitability for the presidency, but what they cannot deny is his reputation as being a honest and very disciplined person. He is one past leader of the country who is not known to have enriched himself with government funds.

    The questions you should ask yourself are : what impression do your colleagues, people you live and work with have about you? How ethical are you in your practice? Are you a ‘cash and carry’ professional ? Are you qualified and competent for the position you are eyeing?

    Politicians are not worth fighting over

    One of the very disturbing feature in the campaign for the elections was the disagreement between members of the public, many of whom are not members of any parties  over who they supported for the presidency.

    Instead of respecting the rights of everyone to support the candidates they preferred for whatever reasons, many engaged in bitter exchanges on social media over one another’s choices.

    They engaged in all kinds of name calling and abuses, and in some extreme cases, deleted friends and colleagues from their accounts.

    While the main presidential candidates were busy signing peace agreements and respecting the terms after the election,  many have remained ‘sworn enemies’.

    We can disagree over our positions on any issue but it does not have to degenerate to the level where we sometimes behave worse than politicians.

  • In remembrance of things to come

    In remembrance of things to come

    To flee your fate is to rush to find it, so observes a famous Arab proverb. It is just as well. Ethnic termites are crawling out of the woodwork in Nigeria.

    In the hostile psychological jungle of multi-ethnic nations, ethnic chauvinism is a psychic weapon against adversity. But since it stifles the inter-ethnic cooperation and collaboration necessary for envisioning a new order, it is also the surest formula for continuing underdevelopment.

    After the elections comes the demon of ethnic chauvinism and its implications for the national project. The euphoria of a record breaking election and its record breaking aftermath had hardly subsided when a nasty ghost stole in to jolt us out of our reverie, reminding us of unfinished business. These old ghosts can be very remorseless and implacable indeed.

    An apparently off the cuff remark by Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the influential and irrepressible Eleko himself, to a visiting group of Igbo notables has sparked off an ethnic firefight the like of which has not been seen in recent times.

    In a manner reminiscent of Lagos circa 1948 when the deadly duel for political ascendancy between the Yoruba coastal aristocracy and the emergent Igbo elite first reared its ugly head, the current elites of the two remarkable Nigerian ethnic nationalities both at home and in the Diaspora simply lined up behind tribal ensigns presaging the eruption of ancestral animosities.

    It was not a pretty sight. General Buhari has just been shown a sneak preview of the nation he has inherited. He has his work cut out for him.

    Yet by the end of the week, it has apparently turned out to be a storm in a tea cup, or a repression of the returning. Common sense and political sagacity intervened on both sides.

    The problem with ethnic chauvinism is that it is such a deep-seated and entrenched group feel that it cannot be resolved by political fiat but by social engineering and the working out of implacable national contradictions.

    Anybody of Yoruba extraction familiar with royal rhetorical flights of fancy, its metaphorical flourishes should be able to contextualize Oba Akiolu’s fire and brimstone fulminations in all their grim, terroristic hectoring as nothing but instances of royal yabis. How many military divisions does Kabiyesi have? When was the last time an Oba of Lagos herded human beings into the Lagos lagoon?

    All of this, of course, would amount to cold comfort to an Igbo native who is culturally alien to Oba Akiolu’s flamboyant signifiers and who is bound to grasp the import of the message in its hair raising, horror-dripping literalness. You cannot blame such folks. The Igbo community is right to express a legitimate outrage.

    But it would seem that some Igbo sectors in spite of their legitimate outrage crossed the boundary into churlishness and tribal contumely by demanding an apology from the Oba of Lagos.

    This is an illegitimate affront on the Yoruba race. A Yoruba Oba does not apologise to anybody. This is the whole meaning of Kabiyesi. (He who cannot be queried or questioned)

    It is, admittedly, a dialogue of the deaf. To a non-Yoruba person, this might sound like some meaningless cultural gobbledygook; a dogged mystification of a profoundly secular matter. It seems we are back to the very constitution and contradictions of the post-colonial subject in a modern nation-state.

    The secular and rational plank on which an apology is demanded from the Oba of Lagos is that Nigerian is a republican state and not a monarchy.

    Yoruba nationalists might retort that Nigeria may be a republican state but there are monarchical enclaves within the nation-space and there is nothing anybody can do about that.

    In pre-colonial society, the Oba had a fatherly responsibility to all subjects under his domain. Everybody was free to ply his trade, religion and creed but with the signal proviso that there must be substantial compliance with the cultural ethos and ethics of the host community in order to maintain societal harmony and cohesion.

    Whosoever steps out of line is immediately whipped back either by physical force or by metaphysical agencies and enforcers acting as ideological apparatchiks of the native state.

    Some traditional cultures take this to another level by summarily banishing prospective settlers to the outer margins beyond the city walls.

    In their culturally circumscribed imaginary, these are nothing but citadels of sin and permissiveness where they can indulge in what looks to the indigenes as cultural shenanigans as long as they do not disturb the walled sanity of their host community. If they do, the infraction is met with swift and severe reprisal that did not exclude mass expulsion.

    The advent of colonialism and the modern nation-state has whittled down the power, influence and authority of traditional institutions. In truth, no one who has tasted the liberating tonic of modernity would wish to return to the dark days of traditional despotism.

    Yet that notwithstanding, the Yoruba people and most Nigerian nationalities  retain a great respect and reverence for their traditional rulers.

    The unintended consequence of the sacrilegious insult to the Lagos throne is to rouse a dormant Lagosian Yoruba ultra-nationalism in a way it has not been roused since the late forties. It has led to a sense of a great siege among a normally tolerant and accommodating people.

    Apart from the long term possibilities of ethnic tension leading to an unimaginably apocalyptic tribal conflagration, snooper will eat his tongue if this does not increase the size of Akin Ambode’s winning margin this Saturday.

    In a multi-ethnic nation, tribal narcissism often provokes tribal narcissism as a countervailing, self-protecting measure. As it was the case in Georgian Lagos which directly led to the ascendancy of Obafemi Awolowo as an avatar of his people and in 1966 when it led to pogrom and a civil war, so it may well be in the emergent conjuncture. The past is a dark mirror for remembering the future.

    Yet all of this would have been unnecessary had the enlightened Igbo community put on their thinking cap, and if their political leadership can be more politically discerning and be less consumed by irrational hatred of the Other. The history of human migration and shifting demographic complexion of an improbable megalopolis favour them in the long run.

    In about a hundred years to come, the dynamics of a tumultuous mega-city would have altered the current demographic balance of power and the kind of meeting which took place last week at the Lagos palace would be virtually impossible.

    If the dynamic, resourceful, adventurous and relentlessly advancing Igbo people continue along the same pattern and the Yoruba populace, as a result of empire hangover, remain lethargic, incurious, insular and unadventurous, the pattern of ownership and land distribution would have changed forever and it will be a new ball game.

    But that is only if Nigeria remains a single country retaining its current format; that is only if unscrupulous greed and the penchant for political short-termism among the current dominant faction of the Igbo leadership do not topple the country into the abyss of chaos and disintegration. To whom much will be given, much is also expected. Otherwise by that time, we would be talking of stiff immigration control and tighter internal regulation of prospective emigrants.

    From time immemorial and particularly since the advent of the post-Wesphalian modern nation-state, ethno-nationalism and ethnic chauvinism have been the bane of the human society. The British often dismiss the French as frog-eaters while Napoleon famous put down of England as a nation of shopkeepers still rings a bell. The French contempt for what they consider as America’s lack of culture and finesse finds epic summation in the short pithy putdown: “Les Americaines!”

    The good thing about this European tribal fencing is that they take place within the confines of respected borders. The world would have ended a long time ago were the British, the Germans, the French and the Americans to be packed into the asphyxiating cage of the same nation. Even then beginning from 1870 when the Germans memorably drubbed the sophisticated French to 1914 when the First World War erupted with the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, western nations chalked up among themselves about thirty one wars of ethno-national supremacy.

    African , Middle East and Asian nationalities are not so lucky having been boxed into convenient colonial cages of apocalyptic contraries against their will and wish. This is not even a question of strong states and weak states. As we have seen in the tragedy of Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, strong states which try to liquidate the national question by forcible suppression merely postpone the apocalyptic meltdown.

    It has been said that mankind is principally a political animal. But humankind is primarily a homo economicus with economic warfare often disguised as political hostilities. Nigerians should ask themselves why it is so that the most vicious and virulent strains of ethnic nationalism rear their head whenever there is an ongoing brutal contention about who controls what economy.

    This is precisely what happened around 1948 with the advent of Yoruba nationalism in the nascent nation, in 1962 with the attempted take over of the buoyant economy of the old west and the summary liquidation of Awolowo’s ambition, in 1993 with the dramatic annulment of Abiola’s victory because it was an economic threat to northern plutocratic generals, in 1999 with the rise of Obasanjo and Sharia as mere decoy and now in 2015 and the dramatic dethronement of the ruling party which has led the Igbo political elite holding the wrong end of the stick. It can now be seen in immediate retrospect that Oba Akiolu’s fatwa and the hysterical reaction to it is all part of a complex struggle for economic control of Lagos.

    Yet as we have noted, without inter-ethnic cooperation and collaboration, without the consent and consensus of a fractious political elite, Nigeria cannot be envisioned anew or be made amenable to radical surgery and major re-engineering necessary for the greater wellbeing of the greatest majority of Nigerians.

    As we have said last week, General Buhari has his work cut out for him. The task ahead requires not just a strong political will but exemplary political skills and great dexterity. He can no longer rule by military fiat and therefore a creative and proactive presidency is mandatory. As a first step, the general must take a look at the current structural configuration of the country which has made it impossible to liberate the complementary genius of our various people or for power to be wielded for productive purposes.

  • Democracy armed and hooded; time to begin to disarm and strip away the hood

    Democracy armed and hooded; time to begin to disarm and strip away the hood

    It took me a long time to get a full grasp of why the heavily armed and hooded civilian thugs and paramilitary operatives of the Department of Security Services (DSS) that were used by the PDP to cow the opposition and intimidate the general electorate in the Ekiti and Osun states’ gubernatorial elections of 2014 angered and revolted me beyond what words could express. At the time of these elections, I was far away in Germany as a Senior Research Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. For this reason, the distance from home perhaps greatly accentuated the emotions stirred in me by the accounts that I read and the images that I saw on the internet of these armed and hooded civilian and paramilitary thugs. It was bad enough, I thought, to use the privilege of incumbency to deploy men of the DSS to overwhelm the opposition. But why use hooded disguises? Did it not matter to the PDP that hooded and heavily armed men in the uniform of the state’s security services looked completely out of place in elections meant to be free, fair and open?

    Indeed, many questions raged in my mind. Why did the government, the PDP need to hide the faces of some operatives and not of others?  Were the hooded men actual members of a special unit in the DSS who had to be masked, who had to be hooded precisely because they were placed above all professional, legal and constitutional constraints – as some opposition politicians alleged? Were the hooded men even members of the DSS? Were they not civilian thugs deliberately hooded to hide their clearly illegal and sinister deployment within the DSS? After all, at the height of the Ekiti and Osun 2014 elections, many PDP chieftains went around with heavily armed and hooded thugs. What sort of democracy is it that openly and brazenly paraded and used hooded thugs right in the storm centre of armed state security operatives at the critical moment of elections intended to consolidate the moral and constitutional legitimacy of our democracy?

    It is important to emphasize here the fact that all these questions and the brooding musing that they stirred in my mind in mid-2014 all occurred before the revelations of the Ekiti-Gate scandal. With Ekiti-Gate, we finally found out that to the now defeated ruling party, there were absolutely no demarcations in the use of the army, the police, the DSS and the personal thugs of PDP chieftains to rig the Ekiti governorship elections; they were all not only interchangeable but closely coordinated. In other words, things that had baffled me in the images of the armed hooded goons of the DSS and the chieftains of the PDP became palpably understandable after the revelations of Ekiti-Gate. What do I mean by this assertion?

    Remarkably, the PDP was not only completely unembarrassed by Ekiti-Gate, the party in fact became emboldened by the revelations. After an initial denial, Fayose quickly admitted that it was his voice that the world could hear in the audio clip of Ekiti-Gate. He asked the opposition party to take the matter to court and see what happens. Jonathan went one step further and sent the name of one of the election riggers identified in the audio clip to the Senate for confirmation as a Minister in his outgoing cabinet. It was at that point that I came to the realization that the figure of the armed hooded thug, in uniform or in mufti, is the quintessential sign or symbol of democracy as incarnated by in PDP in general and Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in particular. Before bringing this piece to its conclusion with a succinct profile of this armed and hooded democracy of the PDP era, perhaps it might be helpful to deal briefly with the semiotic presuppositions of my reflections in this essay.

    In cultural theory and literary criticism as the principal areas of my professional, academic specialization, the field of semiotics interests me a lot but I confess that I am not a specialist in the field. This is why, as a sort of amateur semiotician, I limit myself to perusal of only the most resonant and iconic signs and symbols down the ages. Some of these include the Christian Crucifix, the Crescent of Islam and the Star of David of Judaism. To the adherents of these religions, these symbols evoke deep, even transcendental intimations of the ineffable. Far more secular but almost as soul-stirring for hundreds of millions of people for much of the 20th century was the Sickle and Hammer of the Communist movement, especially when supplanted on the normative bright flag of the movement. The Nazis reached all the way back to European antiquity to pluck the stultifying symbol of the swastika and it became nearly unprecedented in the symbolic power it could evoke both among fervent supporters of the Nazi movement and its most implacable opponents. In each and every one of these symbols, the image became so naturalized that the very moment one sees the symbol, like an automaton one thinks of the religion or the political movement.

    As a final word on this short review of the place of signs and symbols in some of the most influential religious and political mass movements in ancient and modern history, consider the following fact in the rather peculiar history of the Christian crucifix. Initially in Judea as a province of imperial Rome, the crucifix was regarded as the ultimate sign of a death, a fate that was so shameful, so full of ignominy that relatives and friends of anyone crucified in line with the universal perception that this was the colony’s worst from of capital punishment was more or less disowned by all connected by blood or friendship with the unfortunate victim who comes to his end on the cross. No form of death was considered more unfortunate, more destructive of one’s life and the memory of that life. It is thus one of the greatest ironies of religious and cultural history that this same symbol has been transformed into a potent and transcendent symbol of hope, redemption and grace.

    No such miraculous transformation will ever come to the image of the hooded, sinister thug in uniform or mufti as the quintessential symbol of the time of the PDP in power as the ruling party in our country. This is no doubt due to the fact that the official symbol of the PDP is the umbrella. But of greater significance is the fact that, at least as far as I am aware, no clear and indisputable image has emerged, has crystallized as the defining symbol of the years and decades of the PDP in power. There is the image of hundreds of people blown to bits in explosions that take place while the masses of poor people are scooping petrol from burst pipelines. But this image predates the coming to power of the PDP. There is also the image of the countless incidents of mass carnage on our roads. But this also did not begin with the coming of the PDP even if arguably, it rose to unprecedented levels in the PDP years.

    But think, compatriots, of the heavily armed and hooded men of the Boko Haram. That, indisputably belongs squarely and unambiguously to the PDP era. And it not only belongs to the era of the defeated ruling party, it in fact was appropriated by the PDP and used, as we have seen, by both the security operatives of the state and the thuggish chieftains of the PDP. Thus, I confidently predict that in the years and decades ahead when people think about the PDP, especially at the end of the line in Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, it is to this image of the armed and hooded thug that their minds will revert.

    It is symptomatic of the moral and functional bankruptcy of the hooded democracy of the PDP and Jonathan years that the recent successes and gains of the counterinsurgency campaigns of our armed forces were made possible primarily by hired foreign mercenaries and not through the work of the men and materiel of the armed forces themselves. The PDP and the DSS appropriated the hooded masks of the Boko Haram but lacked the morale and the effectiveness of that jihadist terror campaign. This bankruptcy, this lackluster non-achieving mediocrity was replicated on virtually every level and front of governance. The party, the government claimed to be fighting and defeating corruption even as the scope of corruption ballooned beyond all preceding levels. Claims of the creation of millions of jobs were made even as unemployment levels rose exponentially, especially among the youths, the human and demographic majority of our populace. Jonathan tirelessly mouthed his respect for law and order even as surrounded himself with an inner circle of lieutenants who showed and expressed maximum contempt for legality. Even as Jonathan himself and many of his megaphones touted his dedication to curbing waste, mismanagement and squandermania, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the most powerful and authoritative technocrat in Jonathan’s cabinet, stuck to her assertion that corruption was so endemic, so vastly entrenched in the government that she would be satisfied if by the end of her term in office she might have reduced the level of waste and corruption by 4%.

    Is it symptomatic of things to come that the President-Elect, Muhammadu Buhari, has expressed open contempt for the use of mercenaries to defeat the Boko Haram insurgency? I suggest that we must see the use of mercenaries by the military under Jonathan as another form or variant of the deployment of hooded and armed men in elections. The “hood” in this case is symbolic, not literal: most knowing commentators are aware of the existence of the foreign mercenaries but very few are talking about them. It is a very high benchmark for the dismantling of Jonathan’s hooded democracy that Buhari is setting himself by asserting that his administration will defeat the Boko Haram insurgents not with foreign mercenaries, but with reorganized Nigerian armed forces. One thing is clear and that is the fact that Buhari and the incoming administration will have to take the stripping away of the “hood” beyond the armed forces and its confrontation with Boko Haram to virtually all the other areas of governance and accountability in our country. This monumental challenge will be the topic of our reflections in the coming months and years as one ruling party succeeds another and clears the path for its own successes and or failures.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu