The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Polytechnic Education: A recipe for visionary leadership and governance in Nigeria

    A nation is a permanent project in progress. No leader can solve the problems of a nation at once. Any leadership that believes that it can solve the problems of a nation at once is merely delusional. Often, some of these problems are unanticipated side-effects of progress and modernity itself, particularly in nations emerging from the trauma of colonial subjugation. Sometimes, they are also product of self-inflicted folly.

    What is important is for a national crisis to throw up its organic leadership with the creative endowment and visionary intellectual wherewithal to solve the crisis. But the structural disequilbrium of Nigeria is such that it throws up the wrong leader at the wrong time leading to a perfect mismatch. It is in this aspect that Nigeria has been critically challenged and shortchanged since independence

    Given the deliberate stigmatization and conscious inferiorization of polytechnic education in Nigeria, the very idea of polytechnic education as a recipe for visionary leadership appears on the surface to be incongruous and fatally flawed. How can something come out of nothing, we may ask?  How can the bargain basement stock of polytechnic education as it has been made out in Nigeria be a recipe for such a noble and exceptional phenomenon as visionary leadership?

    Yet as we shall argue in this convocation lecture, it is a profoundly ironic that the very denigration and defamation of polytechnic education in Nigeria is a pointer to the failure of visionary leadership in the country and a practical demonstration of inept governance. A leadership which slavishly follows the trends and educational patterns of other countries however advanced without first addressing the specific needs of its own people cannot by any stretch of the imagination approximate the sterling virtues of visionary leadership.

    It may be fashionable and modish to ape western parameters of educational development but it is also instructive to note that while the systematic devaluation of polytechnic education proceeds apace in Nigeria, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientific genius of the modern epoch, was a product of polytechnic education.  When we pay tributes to this preeminent avatar of human advancement, we are also paying tributes to the virtues of polytechnic education.

    With the hordes of unemployed and unemployable youths who have been sent on a wild goose chase of unviable “higher education” in universities and polytechnics with obsolete curricular and even more obsolete disciplines, alienation is leading to frustration with the entire system. The social fabric of the nation is stretched very thin and anomie looms. The social pathologies of this educational crisis are already here with us in the rise of the phenomenon of graduate armed robbers, educated malcontents, sophisticated deviants and well-polished outlaws. The society is being set up for a huge social explosion.

    This ominous background is the best context to introduce the topic of the day. In the circumstances, how can a polytechnic education serve as a recipe for visionary leadership and visionary governance in contemporary Nigeria? As it has been famously observed, the worst university in Nigeria is more recognized than the best polytechnic.  Several commentators have noted that there is an official seal to the systematic denigration of polytechnic education in the country.  This is at best the worst dereliction of official responsibility arising from a lack of visionary leadership.

    But what is a polytechnic?  As the name implies, a polytechnic is not a university. But this ought not to be a crime but a mere emblem of distinctive identity. In its classical state, a polytechnic  is a non-university higher educational institution focusing on vocational education. There are three factors at play here which often account for the erosion of parity and esteem when the polytechnic community is compared to the university community.

    First, is the false notion that because polytechnic education is mainly vocational, it is merely functional and work-driven. This notion ignores the fact that in certain disciplines, a polytechnic education is more rigorous and quality driven than their university-based counterparts. This explains the preference of employers in fields such as Banking, Finance, Engineering, Accounting and Technology for polytechnic graduates over their universities counterparts. In these fields of human endeavour, the polytechnic graduates often arrive “perfectly tuned” and programmed for easy and immediate absorption.

    The second is the binary divide traditionally erected between university education and polytechnic education which makes one inaccessible to the other. Although a carry over from our colonial heritage, this divide ignores the reality  of cross-breeding, cross-carpeting, cross-fertilisation and the transfer of talents and human resources between the two types of education that have existed across age and human societies.

    The third factor arises from the fact that entry-level qualifications for polytechnics tend to be lower than those for universities and the staff generally less qualified. While this is true, this stigma ignores the human capacity for self-improvement and continuous exertion. There are sandwich degree programmes and other avenues for self-realisation for those who start the relay race of education at a disadvantage.

    In certain circumstances, teachers with lesser qualifications, because they have more to prove, are generally more focused and more ferociously determined to impart quality education than their better qualified colleagues. Although there is usually no short cut to pedagogic distinction, it is so that under the right atmosphere, these disadvantaged students and teachers often come into their own, and it is where you end up that matters rather than where you begin from.

    The example of Albert Einstein again readily comes to mind. The German-Jewish genius was a famously lazy, sloppy and inattentive student. But this was not because he was mentally challenged but because the precocious boy had greater issues on his mind. Einstein was bored to death by the banality of his teachers and as he was later to put it: “Since I hated authority so much, God made me an authority”. How many potential Einsteins would have been destroyed in the grinding gridlock of the Nigerian educational system?

    In Nigeria, the stigmatization and discrimination against polytechnic education began right after independence when the first Cookie Commission of Enquiry set up a salary differential between university graduates and their polytechnic counterparts. Even worse is the fact that in universities, you cannot join the council in congregation unless you are a degree   holder.

    In 2006, the Nigerian federal authorities took what at first appeared as a bold and courageous step to harmonise  and consolidate tertiary education in the country by virtually abolishing polytechnic education. Inaugurating the technical committee, Ufot Ekaette, the then Secretary to the Federal Government, noted that no country could achieve scientific and technological breakthrough when less than fifteen per cent of the populace have access to university education. According to him, the existing facilities were so oversubscribed that the entire educational system faced an apocalyptic meltdown.

    With less than three per cent of the Nigerian populace having access to university education, the situation was very dire indeed. Consequently, all polytechnics were to be abolished with the minor ones becoming campuses of proximate and contiguous universities while the Yaba College of Technology and the Kaduna Polytechnic were to become City Universities of Lagos and Kaduna respectively. Crowing jubilantly about the development, the then Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, noted that the development would lead to the creation of half a million additional university placements and immediately ease the bottlenecks that have come to be associated with JAMB.

    On the face of it, this seems to be a revolutionary and radically innovative development; an admirable example of visionary and proactive governance. But on closer examination, there seemed to be something sinister and radically obtuse going on. There is no evidence that the momentous conclusions were arrived at after a holistic, exhaustive and comprehensive study of the country-specific needs of tertiary education in Nigeria. Had there been a more crucial interrogation of the dynamics of technological and societal under-development in the nation, the conclusions might have been different.

    Far more disturbing however is the suspicion that as usual, Nigeria might have been aping developments and trends elsewhere particularly in the colonial metropole without any conceptual linkage to the country-specific crisis of education. Even the names given to the new polytechnic-turned university came with a colonial imprimatur. It will be recalled that when polytechnics were transformed into universities in Britain, many of them were given the prefix of “metropolitan” simply to distinguish them from existing universities based in the same cities. Thus was born Leeds Metropolitan University, Sheffield Metropolitan Universities etc.

    Yet Britain was actually responding to country-specific needs based on the unique trajectory of education in the country.  Polytechnics in England came with a class-slur. As dumb-down vocational centres for middle-level manpower, they were regarded as the natural habitat and havens for the educationally challenged and the socially disadvantaged flotsam and jetsam of the society. Naturally, this binary divide bred a lot of resentment and fuelled social tension.

    Eventually, the contradictions matured into an impossible systemic lock down. As better educational facilities at the secondary level led to greater successes, pressures on scarce university placements naturally led to a millennial bottleneck.  As more people gained higher educational qualifications, surplus quality staff meant for the universities had to be deflected to the polytechnic. The lack of vacancy at the professorial level due to strict establishment ratio and the fact that quality staff now marooned at the polytechnic could not be expected to reach the pinnacle of their profession led to widespread intellectual disillusionment with the system and an internal brain drain.

    Every shrewd societal engineer realizes that the presence of a radically disaffected intellectual class is a recipe for anarchy and rebellion.  In 1992, the British authorities finally caved in to the pressures. Under the Further and Higher Education Act, the old polytechnics were abolished and transformed into degree-awarding universities. Britain had attempted to solve its unique educational crisis in its own unique manner.

    If this was the trend and development in other lands that the Nigerian authorities were aping, it is clear that we have missed the boat again. Every country is unique in its educational specificity. You cannot slam on a country developments from elsewhere without first analyzing the country-specific dynamics. In this regard, ASUP’s critique of the committee decision is spot on.  Ruing over why such a momentous decision should be coming at the very tail end of the Obasanjo administration, the union of polytechnic staff dismissed the whole exercise as a superficial and retrogressive charade.

    Had the committee had more than a glancing acquaintance with the phenomenon of genuine branding and not the superficial shibboleths of Nigerian officialdom, it ought to have occurred to them that Yaba College of Technology and Kaduna Polytechnic were already successful brands in their own rights. Turning them into “city universities” actually devalues their brand. It is like asking Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech, Imperial College,  London School of Economics etc to drop their gloriously unique brands and become universities.

    In a remarkable stricture, ASUP noted that the committee was filled with establishment bureaucrats, equal opportunity consultants and other racketeers out to preserve and promote vested interests. In any case, we may wonder, what is the point of adding hordes of glorified graduate illiterates to an already saturated labour market?  This can only compound an already dire situation, fuelling social discontent and ultimately inviting anarchy.

    It is noteworthy that while Nigeria was trying to abolish its polytechnics, the Singaporean authorities were strengthening theirs based on a rigorous evaluation of country-specific needs.  In a remarkable speech at the closing ceremony of the annual Polytechnic Forum on 8th October 2009, the Minister of Education and Second Minister of Defence, Dr En eng Hen, outlined with engrossing perspicuity the vision behind the retention of polytechnic education in his country.  Among the reasons proffered, four are particularly compelling.

    (1)The law of supply and demand. With over 40 percent of the primary cohort demanding for quality polytechnic education, the authorities had no choice but to grant the demand of the populace. (2)The fact that the polytechnic work-force arrive “industry ready” and is readily available to fill opening vacancies in industries through what is a close symbiotic relationship between the forces of labour and the forces of production. (3)The rate and vigour of what he chooses to call “disruptive technology”. In a rapidly modernizing and increasingly globalised world new technologies intrude into our life on a daily basis which demands the constant upgrading of obsolete curricular and the constant introduction of new courses based on emergent technologies.

    For example, a polytechnic in Singapore has begun to offer Bachelors’ degree course in Computer Games Software. There is also a degree programme in Culinary Arts. Finally, there is the need for existing workforce to be retrained, retooled and even re-certificated. Rapidly evolving technology renders a degree obsolete and antiquated during the life time of the degree holder. The cure-all and once-for –all time paper qualification is no longer tenable. A person that holds a 1979 degree in Computer Science would no longer understand what is going on the profession by 2009.

    According to the minister, polytechnics are there for “jobs yet to be invented and challenges not yet foreseen”. Finally, “being autonomous, these universities can chart their own destiny, differentiate themselves and pursue revolutionary innovations”. By creating themselves anew, they re-create and reinvent the society on the basis of ceaseless self-surpassing.

    This is a radically innovative educational policy based on visionary governance and pro-people policy. The dynamic is powered by country specific needs and a close study of the Singaporean society and culture. When there is a perfect congruence between the educational policy of a nation and the societal needs, there is a positive equilibrium between the parts and the whole. Little wonder then that within only one generation, Singapore has moved from the Third World to the First World.

    Without innovative thinking, there can be no innovative and cutting edge industry for that matter. Even transferred technology requires considerable innovative thinking to be “tropicalised” and domesticated. And without revolutionary technological innovations, there can be no expanding economy. Any society caught up in a technological rut will always play host to mass unemployment and a glut of unproductive work force.

    This is the basis of Nigeria’s contemporary plight. Let me now begun to tie up the loose ends as we arrive at the conclusion. As we have seen from the above-going, it should now be clear that the virus of unoriginal thinking is more dangerous and potentially more lethal than the virus of unemployment. This is because unoriginal thinking is the original form of unemployment; a critical disengagement of the thinking faculty.

    Yes, as we have read from above, Nigeria needs polytechnic education as a recipe for visionary leadership and governance. The can do spirit, the rugged determination, the energetic networking, the constant struggle to improve self-capacity, the urge to pull oneself up by the bootstraps such as we find in the polytechnic community are all heroic ingredients of visionary leadership.

    But before these fertile resources can be milked and harnessed for national greatness, Nigeria itself will need a generous dash of visionary leadership to rescue it from the present morass and millennial  under-development. I thank you all and wish the graduands the very best in the current circumstances.

     

    Excerpts from the 19th Convocation Lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, Tuesday, March 8th, 2010

     

  • On another father’s day…

    Sadly, there are many fathers who are not on talking terms with their children, and vice versa. The rule is, if we cannot heal, we must not fracture

    Have you noticed that June is the month of confrontation? It is the time of the year when the heavens and the earth meet in one long conversation that ends in downpours the likes you haven’t seen since the year began. It is also the time in the year when the earth’s plants and the sky’s sun begin their hide and seek game to bring out varied colours of flower sprigs so bright and fair Othello’s Desdemona would be green with envy. Above all, it is the month fathers and children look at each other and confront some hard truths: why in the world do they resemble each other in every way particular, even to the repeating of the same damned mistakes of the fathers? Is it just a hormonal thing or is it psychological: that we are all compelled to repeat our parent’s mistakes? Or is it a matter of the family’s share of the grey matter gene not being efficient?

    Whatever it may be, it is important to note that the world is celebrating all fathers today. You know what they are, don’t you? They are those generally oak-like beings who hover around the house, growling their needs and displeasure (in one breath) at nearly every moment and are forever issuing commands. ‘You, get me my newspaper! You, get me my pen! You, come outside and get me a stone to hurl at that lizard! What do you mean you are inside and I’m outside? What has that got to do with anything?’ Naturally, with reasonable attitudes like that, you are not surprised that world wars are fought daily in many homes, and the United Nations can do nothing to help.

    Seriously, there are more fathers and children living in fractured relationships than you can imagine. Forget Freud and his psychoanalytic theory of Oedipus Complex or Rex that causes unnecessary and useless competitions; forget his student, Jung, and his even bigger theories about the inner workings of the (in)human mind. Fractured relationships are fractured relationships. Something causes them; it is certain that something can mend them. But what do these relationships fracture over?

    It is not certain but disagreements over what each takes to be the stuff of life helps. That is what makes one go, ‘YOU BETTER TALK TO YOUR SON; HE SAYS HE WANTS TO BE A WRITER WHEN HE CAN BE A LAWYER. WHAT DOES HE WANT TO LIVE ON, EH, WHAT? HE WANTS TO GO AND STARVE. OR DOES HE THINK I’M GOING TO SUPPORT HIM THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE? YOU BETTER TALK TO HIM!’ And the other goes, ‘Why can daddy not understand? Why is he behaving as if he was never a young man himself? Can’t he understand that I’ve got my life to live? It’s my life after all!’ With a stalemate like that, the mother can only do one thing: continue to swivel her head from one speaker to another. Hers is such a placid, peaceful life.

    Watching father-child interactions gives one a better understanding of the war of the worlds than any book or film can. It is a veritable collision of courses where everyone thinks he/she is just and the other a malevolent monster. What is a child but a being sent from the other world to come and plague you, said a father. And another asked his son: ‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘A daddy, with a lot of luck’, replied the son, as he watched his father struggle to balance the family’s accounts.

    Then there can be failure to appreciate the stuff that each is made of. One can go, ‘Mummy, why is Daddy such a hard man? No matter what you ask him, the answer is always ‘NO’. ‘No’ to shoe allowance; ‘no’ to make-up allowance; ‘no’ to summer holidays abroad when all my friends are going. Why can’t he understand that our times are different from his?’ And the father goes, ‘You better talk to your daughter. In this house there is no room for any spoiled child. My parents did not spoil me; why should I spoil any yeye child?’

    That reminds me of a story I read in a magazine. The son of the house had asked to borrow the car for the weekend. The father had agreed on the condition that the son would first mow the lawn. He agreed and the contract was signed, verbally. When the father returned from his own weekend trip, the son complained that he could not find the car key. ‘Funny,’ said the father, ‘I tied it to the handle of the lawn mower myself before going away.’

    Of course, disagreements over properties are normal, everyday occurrences. Once Junior learns to drive, the question of who really owns the car becomes mute. Nobody asks it; only the father grumbles about accruing mileage, increasing fuel costs, and having to pay for the pleasure rides of sons who should be studying or working. ‘After all,’ father concludes his tirade, ‘at his age, I already owned a car. He just better not think that he is going to own this house’. Now, that is war.

    I believe I have told this story before but I will tell it again for the sake of those reading this column for the first time while the old hands can enjoy it again and also because I enjoy repeating jokes. Once, a father and son were quarrelling, and at a heated point of the exchange, the father peremptorily asked the son to leave his house. The son replied that he was going nowhere because he was in his father’s house. His father could go and look for his own father’s house if he wished and stay there.

    I’m not quite sure but I seem to think that report cards may also have something to do with it. That’s another ‘at your age…’ syndrome that can cause fractures. You know how fathers are forever going on and on about how they always came first in their classes in their primary school days? Well, one such bragging was brought to an end recently when some children discovered their father’s primary school report card in some very old box that appeared never to have been opened. In black and white, the report showed daddy coming second from the rear. When the children confronted their father with the evidence, he summarily sent them out of the house. The silly things, he grumbled; let them not go and read their books instead of going around searching old boxes!

    Anyway, an analyst has suggested that men who always claim to have come first in their primary school days actually believe the lie they tell themselves. By the way, there are many self-deluding fathers who believe many other things: that their children are as well behaved outside the house as they are within it; that everyone lies against their children out of envy; that their children fail because teachers hate them, not that they are lazy… Well, time to wake up.

    On this column last year, we greeted the fathers and prayed that they would help their family members reach their best. This year, we are praying that fathers, as well as, if not better than mothers, can be fracture healers in their families. Fractures can heal with a great deal of patient and loving handling; and so will fractured relationships. Sadly, there are many fathers who are not on talking terms with their children. The rule is, if we cannot heal, we must not fracture.

    Secondly, this column prays fathers to be encouragers of their broods for a healthy family relationship. The health of the Nigerian family is in the hands of both mothers and fathers; neither is indispensable.

  • Is the fundamental question a weakened centre or a just and workable centre? (1)

    Is the fundamental question a weakened centre or a just and workable centre? (1)

    The question that forms the title of this week’s essay comes from the underlying assumption of current debates concerning the survival of our country as a federation of many ethnic nationalities and a political and economic power that works for the good of the West Africa region in particular and the African continent in general. This is the underlying assumption: the center of power, authority and resources in the federalism currently in force in Nigeria is too strong, too bloated and needs to be dismantled and replaced with a center with greatly reduced concentration of wealth, power and authority. It is not that there are no advocates for a center that continues to be strong and powerful in relation to the federating units. The fact is they do not have a strong, compelling case. There are two separate but interconnected reasons for this. One, the strong center at Abuja is not working well at all, either for the political class itself or for the generality of Nigerians. Indeed, this is an understatement: the strong, bloated center of power at Abuja is one of the worst under-performers in governance in Africa and the world; it is so totally mired in mediocrity and corruption that but for the fact that oil revenues continue to sustain it, the abysmal quality of its bad governance would have doomed it a long time ago. Secondly, this strong and bloated center generates a destructive, endgame struggle for its control among our political elites, a struggle that is always and forever on the brink of destroying the country as a one federal unit; sooner or later, this endgame struggle will end and that end may very well be a calamity that is unprecedented in its scale in our part of the world. Already, the perpetual doomsayers of Nigeria’s inevitable demise as one country are projecting 2015 as the final battle in that endgame.

    This essay is based on another assumption that is completely different from the very bad case for a strong center for federalism in Nigeria as it has been entrenched and practiced in the last three or four decades. What is this assumption? It is the belief that because the case for a strong and bloated center is very weak, we do not have to think hard and creatively on what kind of centre should replace the existing behemoth at Abuja. More specifically, I am arguing, pleading in this piece that side by side with the case against the present bloated and dysfunctional center in Abuja, we must make a case for a just and workable center that can hold all our peoples together and at last begin to work for the economic wellbeing and social progress of all Nigerians and the peoples of the West Africa region.

    I make this plea, this argument on the strength of the simple but profound fact that a just and workable center of governance in Nigerian federalism will not automatically arise on the ashes of the current strong, bloated and corrupt centre in the manner in which, in the order of nature, day always comes after night. We are part of nature, we are in nature, but human political and social processes don’t operate as do the workings of nature. Everything that we have gained from, and in nature, we have had to work and fight for. The struggle for a just and workable centre of a reconstituted Nigerian federalism in the 21st century will be no different. This calls for some strong and perhaps rather extreme measures that are hardly ever discussed in the current national conversation on whither goes federalism in Nigeria of the present and the future. Let me give a few telling illustrations of this contention.

    It is apparent that corruption, waste and squandermania that are so rife in Nigerian federalism of the present political order will never, never go away unless and until some rather very drastic and effective constitutional provisions are made to substantially curtail, if not entirely banish them in the present order of governance in our country. Thus, it may seem harsh, but is it not as clear as day that corruption being so rife and perpetrated with such impunity in our country, only capital punishment for looting national or public coffers can stem the tidal waves of this cardinal crime and sin of our predatory republic? Any sum of money above 100 million naira should fetch the guilty public official the death penalty; guilt for lesser sums below 100 million naira should fetch long prison terms with hard labor. And it is fundamental that these provisions should be written into a new federal constitution. Philosophically, I happen to be against capital punishment. But also philosophically, I believe that the brazen and unconscionable looting of the national or public coffers is a form of social cannibalism: for every 100 million naira that is looted from the public purse, the lives of thousands of our peoples are made poorer to the point that the loss often extends to needless, avoidable deaths on roads that are death-traps and hospitals and clinics that are places in which to go not to be healed, but to die and be taken to the mortuary.

    It is very necessary for me to emphasize at this point in the present discussion that I am making this argument, some of whose implications go against some of my most dearly held philosophical beliefs, because I am convinced that we need both a just and workable centre for our federation and that we must think hard and deep about how to achieve it. There are those among progressive thinkers and activists in our country, especially in the South, who have given up entirely on the possibility, not talk of the necessity, of working for and bringing into being such a just and workable centre of governance in our country. In connection with this conviction, let me state as strongly as possible that it is not out of sentimental patriotism that I urge and plead that we should strive for a just and workable centre of governance in our country. Rather, it is out of what I deem a hard-nosed, hard-headed grappling with our given historical and political realities. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is the fact that for at least half a millennium now, all the peoples of our country and our region of the continent have been living together in strong ties of cooperation and competition in economic, commercial and cultural ties, so much so that it is not fanciful or mistaken to expect that these ties will remain for many millennia ahead of us.

    Let me express this last observation as a series of very simple assertions. First, we will always need a centre or centers; this is a fundamental law of history and politics. Second, it is good, it is beneficent that ours be a center or centers that are just and workable. Third, like all other peoples and places in history, we must work hard for such just and workable centre or centers. Fourth and lastly, just and workable center or centers of governance come either through peaceful means or as the consequence of bitter and disastrous warfare. We must seek the path of productive peaceful solutions over war and strife.

    The thing that worries me the most in reflecting on these matters concerning the nature, effects and ramifications of the tragic and predatory federalism that has been in force in our country in the last few decades is how very little interest those who are against the strong, bloated, dysfunctional and federation-wrecking centre in Abuja have shown in what I would call the unhappy unity of hardship, suffering and despair throughout the country, from north to south, east to west. It is true that some geopolitical and socio-economic zones are a little – and only a little – better off than others. And it is equally true that there is a bi-polar hegemony in political influence shared by two power blocs, these being the so-called “Core North” and the Southwest, with the Southeast that was a pre-civil war contender with them being for the present historical moment rather sidelined. Also, it is true that even after the frenzy of state creation that brought us dozens of additional  states within two decades disaffected “minorities” still exist everywhere in the country, again north and south. But hard and terrible poverty exists everywhere in the land and in gargantuan proportions. The educational system, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels, has collapsed utterly and now languishes in malign neglect, again everywhere in the country. Finally, what of the youths that constitute the human and demographic majority in all parts of the country without exception? Do they not have now in the present and as future prospects expectations of hardships the likes of which were unimaginable in our own youths, those of us at the late stages of life?

    No, compatriots, the fundamental argument is not between a strong, bloated centre and a centre with greatly reduced concentrations of power and authority. There are and will always be centers in the present-day federal political orders of the world, just as there have always been. Thus, the crucial question is how just and workable the centre or centers are. Beyond the proposed constitutional provision of the death penalty and long prison terms for, respectively, the big and the small looters of our national coffers, in next week’s continuation of the series I shall explore some other constitutional and institutional arrangements that can secure a just and workable centre of governance for the Nigerian federation of our dreams and aspirations. As we shall see, the underlying premise will be a re-federated Nigeria that works for the benefit of all Nigerians – especially the excluded and impoverished majority – and is also an economic powerhouse in the West Africa region.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Military impunity, creeping fascism

    Military impunity, creeping fascism

    A day after President Goodluck Jonathan lectured the media to desist from celebrating terrorists, particularly the Boko Haram sect, the military, probably reading his lips, launched an all-out offensive against the print media in ways that harked back to the worst years of military dictatorship. The president not only lectured the media, he virtually harangued them, suggesting they adopt crude forms of developmental journalism. Speaking through the Information minister, Labaran Maku, during a book launch in Abuja last week, the president enjoined the media to educate and persuade the public to join hands with his government in fighting terror. He said nothing of the astonishing inability of his government in combating the menace. He also said nothing of the chaos that accompany the military campaign in the Northeast, the overarching intelligence failure that has doomed the war, the infighting in government, and the tactical inadequacy that seems to elongate and complicate the war.

    Instead, the president appears to reason that if the media could be made to conform to his wish, the anti-terror war would not be as shambolic as it has evidently become. What seemed uppermost in his mind appears to be the insults he has received globally over his poor handling of the anti-terror war, a battering he thinks was instigated and fuelled by the feistiness of the local press. He glossed over the painful realisation by many newsrooms in the country that foreign print media had trumped them in publishing some of the most damning and telling stories on the Boko Haram conflict, including brilliant human interest stories that agonisingly bring into the open the torment being experienced by the abducted Chibok girls and their longsuffering parents. Even if the local media were to foolishly cooperate with the Jonathan presidency, and wear the cloak of a propaganda consortium, how would that prevent the ubiquitous and untrammelled  social media and online publishing outfits from circulating damning details of the war in the Northeast, some of them either inaccurate or evocative of the civil war years?

    During the Abuja book launch, Mr Maku, representing the president, had said: “Terrorists need publicity to be recognised and they depend on the media, but they do not deserve the type of publicity the media is giving them…The media should sensitise the public with their reports so that they can unite and fish them out thereby bringing terrorism to an end quickly. I am not saying that you shouldn’t report when there are, say, terrorists attacks on innocent citizens but we must report from the point of view of arousing society to reject their message, to unite society against what they are doing. I am still calling on all of us to be able define the thin line that exists between the urge to report and the need to protect. We need to really come to a definition of what the responsibility of the media should be to organisations and persons whose major objective is to destroy society, to incite hatred among normal people. I have said it that if we black out terrorism for a period, I am sure it will go down.”

    The president is unrealistic to expect, in this era of globalisation, that the Nigerian media could on their own choose to downplay open stories, many of which the foreign media even accompany with exclusive photographs to the dismay of the local media. He is too idealistic to expect that the media would choose to black out news about Boko Haram attacks even for a moment. In fact, in one vacillating breath, he himself acknowledged the difficulty of evading the publication of open news. But he then cruelly mocked his office by suggesting that in place of effective policies and the adoption of the right military strategies, a compliant press would help deal death blow to terror.

    It was in this appalling context of poor reasoning and immature handling of the security emergency in the Northeast that the military has apparently targeted a few opposition papers and marked them down for intimidation and harassment. The sweeping nature of the military harassment enacted in the past three days is unprecedented, the kind never seen before, not even in the darkest days of the Gen Sani Abacha dictatorship. The aim, it seems, is to cripple the opposition media, make their operations economically unsustainable, and hope that they could be browbeaten into submission and hamstrung as a supposed outlet of Boko Haram exploits that paint the military and government as ineffective. But even if the entire so-called adversarial press were to be obliterated, surely there must be enough officials in government who are smart enough to know that that would neither help them defeat terror nor render an ineffective government effective.

    Yesterday marked Day Two of the vicious extra-legal crackdown on the local media. That measure will not only fail, as other crackdowns in the past did, it will definitely tarnish the image of the military which appears to lack the officer corps with the mettle to resist unlawful orders. Worse for Dr Jonathan, the crackdown will complicate and worsen his poor standing globally. The world did not need the Nigerian media to come to a unanimous conclusion that the Jonathan presidency was slow in responding to the Boko Haram menace, and especially the Chibok abductions. The world, including some African leaders, have criticized Dr Jonathan and dismissed him as unfit for the office he occupies. Now they will even be more merciless on him. They will wonder from which Pleistocene past we managed to unearth Dr Jonathan and inflict him on a country struggling to catch up with the rest of the world and also fit into the modern era.

    It is pointless discussing the reasons given by the military for disrupting the circulation of local newspapers. No one believes their arguments that it has nothing to do with the content of the newspapers. No one believes the military was merely being proactive in preventing newspaper distribution vans from being used to transport terrorists’ explosive devices. And no one believes the military was not ordered to stifle the press and violate the constitution. By trying to strangulate the press, it is clear which direction the Jonathan presidency is travelling. It has since lost the argument in open discourses; it will lose face everywhere even more. It has now become a danger to itself and to the rest of the country. It is expected that the Jonathan government, like all previous Nigerian governments nearing the end of their tethers, would embark on more dangerous and counterproductive measures from now on. The public will be prepared for the government’s worst shenanigans. What is not clear is whether the National Assembly will recognise that this government is devoid of integrity and credibility, and is comprehensively undermining democracy and endangering the peace and stability of the country, first by its incompetent handling of the anti-terror war, and now by its attempt to castrate the critical press.

    The National Assembly must recognise this massive harassment of the media as unprecedented, and an outright subversion of the constitution. From all indications, the country is well on the road to fascism. Neither the Jonathan government nor the military is above the law. They must, therefore, be reined in now. The National Assembly Committees on Intelligence and Defence must summon the military hierarchy for explanation, even if their explanations will be untenable. If the government will not relent in its open and flagrant abridgment of the right to free speech, the legislators must begin impeachment proceedings against a president that increasingly shows gross disrespect for the constitution. Boko Haram leaders, it will be recalled, also at a time attempted to muscle the local press. They were resisted. The press will also resist this disgraceful attempt by the government to castrate it.

    The Jonathan government apparently no longer cares about its image. But Nigerians still care about their country’s image long sullied by the government’s helplessness in the face of the Boko Haram abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls. And for sure, the foreign governments assisting Nigeria to rescue the Chibok girls will come under pressure from their people and media to dissociate from Dr Jonathan’s extraordinary and extra-legal measures. It is also apparent that the Jonathan government, long regarded as vacuous and visionless, may have been inspired by events in Thailand and Egypt among others, where the press and democratic institutions have been castrated. But Nigeria is different. The Jonathan government may feel that some amount of intimidation might not be irreconcilable with the domesticated tenets of the Nigerian constitution. However, as previous governments have found out, Dr Jonathan will find out too late that he is grossly mistaken. He has not won the anti-terror war, and seems quite unable to find a way to even make a huge dent on it. Now he has opened another front. This new front will complicate matters for him and doom his presidency.

  • Making a general mess of things

    Making a general mess of things

    Better to douse one’s head in a boiling pot than curry the favor of a wicked king.

    Three years have passed since the Arab Spring wafted transient hopes of democracy across the Maghreb. Through the oft jubilant protests centered in Tahrir Square, Egyptians inspired themselves into believing they could supplant the sclerotic dictatorship that had ruled their nation for decades. They would instill modern democracy in this ancient land. The Nile itself would be watered and renewed by the outpouring of the popular will.

    The Libyan trek quickly turned less irenic. Gaddafi would brook no replication of Tahrir in his land. Yet, his opponents would not be easily suppressed. Aided by an incongruous, informal alliance of Western nations and itinerant jihadists, the Libyan opposition would graduate from demonstrations and protests to armed insurgency. The nation descended into grim civil war in vain hope that the exit from this plunge into darkness would lead to the light of democracy.

    After three years of taking different paths, Egypt and Libya have returned closely to where they started. In an election characterized by languid voter turnout, the Egyptian people resigned themselves to a return to governance civilian in form but military in soul and substance.

    In Libya, the fight against Gaddafi was portrayed as one pitting democracy against authoritarian order. With Gaddafi gone, order has vanished with him. Yet, democracy also has failed to arrive. The place has turned into a house madder than it was when ruled by the alleged madman. Libya is no longer governed by his mercurial spirit. Though a desert nation, it now operates by the law of the jungle. Factions and factions within factions now fight battles within battles and wars within wars. Tripoli is the capital but the writ of government extends no further than the buildings it occupies. Libya is not so much a nation but a patchwork of tiny fiefdoms competing for local supremacy. Benghazi would be an independent city state except that it is now too anomic to be considered a cohesive entity. Amidst the confusion, a renegade former general/present warlord has launched battle against the government he vowed to serve as well as against the contumacious, anti-government jihadists in Benghazi.

    What happened to these nations pains the heart but should not surprise the mind. In both instances, reformers fell prey to the unintended consequences of their incomplete and idealistic exertions. They recognized neither the enormity nor complexity of the task they assumed. For the truly democratic reformers, august motives were betrayed by a superficial political strategy evidencing a startling lack of depth about the nature of their societies and how to reform them.

    At a most fundamental level, they failed to understand that suppressive government does not retreat. It responds to reformist challenge with doubled force. Every stab at reform begets conservative backlash. If the reformer is unprepared for the political fusillade to come, he will melt into a position inferior to that which he sought to change.

    Because of this strategic weakness, reformers gave themselves over domestic and international forces stronger and more cunning than they at the craft of power wrangling. As such, they became pawns in the game they initiated. Tragically, their exertions have blown back in their faces like wildfire captured by an ill wind. That which they sought to change has reestablished itself as if a wall of crumbling plaster reassembled itself into reinforced brick.

    In Egypt, the reformers thought all they needed was to oust Mubarak. They trounced Mubarak but what they now have may have taken them further away from genuine democracy. Mubarak was an increasingly frail octogenarian whose life force had diminished. Approaching the end of his days, he dreamed of dynastic succession; he hoped to place his son in the seat. This would have rankled senior members of the military, splitting the officer class between those supporting and those opposing the dynastic option.

    Instead of being faced with the weakened son of Mubarak, the missteps of Egyptian reformers have made it possible for the reincarnation of Mubarak through the presidential election of former defense Minister Fattah el-Sisi. The new president has the energy, scope and ambition of Mubarak in his prime. The new leader may actually be a tad more ruthless and cunning. While the sun was setting on Mubarak, it is but high noon for el-Sisi. Take it for granted that he believes elections need not be democratic; to him, they are modern-day coronations of a leader already anointed in the most old fashioned of ways: by brute power allied with established money.

    He has it in mind that he will win every election he enters and that he can easily shred constitutional term limits as easily as one can shred the paper upon which these restrictions have been solemnly inscribed. This man envisions himself as leader for decades to come. In effect, the vernal tumult ignited a process of alternating hope and disappointment that would bring the nation full circle. It was as if Egypt had gotten rid of their version of an aging Ivan the Terrible to replace him with a virile Stalin. This is worse than a bad bargain for it was paid for and made possible by collective activity and sacrifices intended to steer the nation in the opposite direction. Intentions are no substitute for wisdom in strategy; once in the field of actual struggle, belief in the rightness of cause is less valuable than political cunning.

    Reformers should have targeted the military as an institution. Their mistake was to view Mubarak as the problem instead of seeing him as the mere personification of a deeper malady. Thus, they concluded that by ejecting Mubarak, they solved their governance problem. This is akin to believing that by lopping off the crest of a wave one has controlled the entire ocean.

    Because they failed to realize the limitations of individual power, they came to underestimate the intransigence of institutional power. It was not so much that they misfired but that they took accurate aim at the wrong target, wasting all their finite ammunition on minor target.

    The real nemesis was the military’s role in government. Pull the military from government and Mubarak would have folded. However, removing Mubarak did not mean the military would fold. In fact, it was the military that finally told Mubarak to walk the plank as he had become a detriment to their continuity.

    To them, removing Mubarak was not surrender. It represented a tactical retreat as the prelude to counterattack at the propitious moment.

    The so-called reformers were outwitted by military officers they considered their intellectual inferiors. What this shows is that the politics learned in the classroom is a different animal from the one that walks the street. Political science is a fiction not to be heavily relied upon. The contest of competing subjective human thoughts, emotions and ambitions can never be reduced to formulaic expression. In actual politics, we discount the academician’s fluffy words and laboratory observations for they reduce complex real-life figures to lab rats which teach us very little. To master the task of reform, we take our cues, not from the lab, but from those who understand and flourish in the badlands that comprise the true topography of actual politics.

    The military cunningly kept itself intact as the fulcrum of Egyptian politics by taking a backseat role momentarily. By doing so, it wedged itself between the secular reformers and the Muslim Brotherhood. This caused the two civilian camps to become estranged. When the Muslim Brotherhood won the election, it garnered the majority of the wider public but it was a minority government in terms of support among the political elite. Thus, it had to bend and rely on the military in order to have two of the three political groupings on its side. Imperceptible to the reformers, the military had become the indispensable powerbroker between the two opposing civilian camps. When an arbiter becomes indispensable, he ceases being a broker. He assumes another name: master.

    The time to strike came when popularity of President Morsi and the Brotherhood hit low ebb. The military pulled its support from the Brotherhood and promised to ally with the secularists. The military deceived the secularists into believing the secularists would be allowed to take the helm from the Brotherhood. The secularists joined the military to harness the Brotherhood. Here was their great error.

    They failed to realize the Brotherhood was the second most powerful group behind the military. Sound long-term strategy called for a rapprochement between the Brotherhood and secularists against the military. Two and three combine to contain number one. This was not to happen. What occurred was three joined one to impale two. The military achieved what it wanted. It would have had a difficult time taking down the Brotherhood without the implicit support of the secularists.

    With the Brotherhood checkmated, the military simply ignored and walked over the secularists; by themselves, the secularists constituted an insufficient threat. The secularists had been maneuvered to where they stood alone for they had betrayed the democratic mandate given the Brotherhood. They military was free to reclaim what their exalted position and they wasted little time transforming el-Sisi into the second coming of Mubarak. In the cycle of earth’s seasons, spring follows winter. In Egyptian politics, it was winter that replaced spring.

    In Libya, things were less convoluted but also less home-grown. If left solely a Libyan undertaking, the uprising would have been extinguished in weeks. Gaddafi would still be in power. Mali would not have come to increased turmoil and Boko Haram would not be so endowed with lethal materiel. However, foreign jihadists came by land, joining in informal but effective alliance with Western power by air and sea. The effort against Gaddafi was hijacked from its domestic authors to largely become a foreign affair. Thus Gaddafi’s fate was sealed as was Libya’s. The entire nation would be reduced to a brawl.

    Libya is now an unalloyed mess. Governance was by the barrel of a gun or not at all. The nation has become a festival for warlords and misery for the rest. Enter former general Khalifa Haftar. Once a Gaddafi aide, Haftar fled to America. He lived there for years until returning to participate in the drive against Gaddafi.

    It would be naïve to think his arrival and quick return to prominence is unconnected with his stay in America. The general likely has amiable connections with American counterparts. Thus, it is unlikely he has embarked on his two-front battle — mutiny against government and fight against the jihadists —  without the backing of those in control of Washington’s geo-political and military strategy. Haftar may ultimately prove to be his own king but for now he will spend significant time as a pawn of others. In effect, Libya went through its dark sufferings just to replace one strongman with another. The only significant difference is that while Gaddafi was the self-styled apostle of African unity and a thorn in the West’s side, Haftar is a client of the West who will likely prove a thorn in the side of his people for years to come.

    Because both el-Sisi and Haftar are conservative militarists with no political ideology beyond the lust for power, the West feels comfortable with them as with Mubarak, Pinochet and those of that ilk. Even Israel applauded the election of el-Sisi. For Tel Aviv, el-Sisi promises a return to business as usual after the rather uncomfortable Muslim Brotherhood interregnum.

    Sadness drapes both nations. Despite the hard work and sacrifice, reform has been vetoed by retrogression. The situation in both nations shows the difficulty of exacting reform. Not only must reformers have a visionary idea, they must have the political acumen to see it through to completion. They must have the wisdom to outwit rival political forces but also the ability to garner support among society’s undecided and ambivalent. This does not come by happenstance nor are all these gifts likely to be deposited in one person.

    Necessary are thorough organization, discipline and correct strategy drawing clear distinction between tactical goals and strategic objectives. So is a bit of luck. Even here, fortune is more apt to shine on those better prepared to take of its advantage. Luck and fortune detest squandering themselves on the unready. As such, those who embark on reform are obligated not to underestimate the task they assume. To do so, is to place the nation they love on a weak and bending limb.  If that limb breaks, the nation may find itself in a condition worse than when the climb to reform began. At the end of the day, the attempt to climb to a better place should never land us in a deeper pit.

    0806340825 (sms only)

  • Ekiti 2014: Of  sophists and despots

    Ekiti 2014: Of  sophists and despots

    Fayemi whose integrity has qualified him as the blue chip asset to our state needs another term

    Today, Phil Aragbada, a respected journalist and former newspaper editor, gives his perspectives on the Fayemi phenomenon and the impending governorship election in Ekiti. Happy reading.

    A “loving fear”, writes Gunder Anders, is not fear of the dangers that lie immediately ahead but for generations yet unborn. This is what underlies the current political landscape in Ekiti; a panoramic view of the interrelated transactions going on between the different entities across the land of honour which would, ultimately determine the future of the state. The future is a sacred trust held by the present generation. Yet, it is not an abstract concept. Rather, it is determined by the consequences of the decisions a people take in their separate but inclusive inter-relations.

    This poignantly brings to the fore, the forthcoming governorship election in Ekiti which has attracted gladiators at both intra and inter-party levels, thus reflecting the latitude, and, indeed, the beauty of democracy. Democracy, in spite of its attraction and elegance, however, has a major drawback in its systemic sifting process which, if care is not taken, can end up foisting on the people, clowns, spoilers, sophists, urchins, even, an outright criminal.

    The consolation is that politics, like religion, in spite of its tolerance of pretenders and the ignoramus, has a moderating fiat: the Judgement Day. In Matt. 13:24-30, Jesus told his disciples the story of the weeds and the wheat and declared, “let the wheat and weeds grow together until harvest, and at harvest time, I will tell the reapers: gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” Surely, the harvest day for political contest is Election Day. There is no doubt Ekiti people already know the weeds and the wheat and on 21, June 2014, Dr. Kayode Fayemi will be the anointed wheat of the people which the Bible calls the son of the Kingdom.

    Without a doubt, the massive transformation which has manifested in Ekiti since his emergence cannot but palpitate those who have in the past hindered Ekiti development as the natural reaction of evil-minded persons to any form of change, as is currently happening in the state, is to obstruct the path of change. This should be expected as the beneficiaries of the old order and the propagandists of obscene deceit are bound to be scared out of their wits. But man must live with change and those, who throughout history, have wrought changes on their environment despite daunting challenges and excruciating sacrifices have always turned out to be men of destiny.

    There is no doubt that Fayemi is a man who has a date with history. His path in life is strewn with multiple achievements that can only be ignored by incurable pessimists and pernicious scoffers who are incapable of being impressed by any form of success arising from brilliance, courage, resilience, integrity and measurable hard work.  Try not convincing these people as they are already trapped in their closet of pathological ignorance.

    Governor Fayemi, conscious of the groaning pain of the aged due to poverty, commenced a welfare package for senior citizens who have attained the age of sixty-five years. He also introduced free medical care for this category of Ekiti citizens. Despite paucity of funds, Fayemi, critically aware of the place of education in socio-economic development, ensured the complete renovation of all primary and secondary schools in the state, made education free to secondary school level and supplied students with free laptops to enable them connect, that early in life, with technological modernity. The tertiary institutions in Ekiti State were leveraged in the areas of infrastructure and funding to make them meet global standards. The immediate dividend of government’s investments in education is the ground-breaking 2012/2013 Bar results of Ekiti State university students who shone like a thousand stars at the last Law School exams.

    Fayemi’s empathy for the grassroots is palpable. His proximity to the rural dwellers is evinced by his novel State Assisted Community Projects Initiative acronym-ed SACPI in contradistinction to one of his opponent’s ‘Boli and guguru’ –roasted plantain and groundnut eating shenanigans, which has resulted in sundry socio-economic developments all over the state. The beauty of this project lies in the ability of the governor to personally meet community dwellers, feel their pulse and pains and get the state to assist in providing their needs. This evolutionary strategy has resulted in the provision of 1,906 SACPI socio-economic projects in 131 towns and communities, each executed, directly by the beneficiaries.

    Relying on verifiable records the Fayemi administration has not restricted its road revolution to state roads alone. Rather, it took upon itself the burden of rehabilitating some federal roads as a way of minimising the transportation problems in the state. About 1000 kilometres of federal, state and local government roads have been constructed / rehabilitated at the last count.

    For a state that has long suffered from the pangs of industrial aridity, Fayemi’s revitalisation of ailing companies like the Iree Burnt Bricks and the Road Materials Company (ROMACO) which also provides jobs surely deserves accolades and a guaranteed cheque of continuity. Of course, the impetus injected into the tourism sector through massive investments in various tourist centres, especially the now world-class Ikogosi Tourist Resort has tremendously expanded the economic base of the state. The youth volunteer scheme has also provided a source of livelihood and hope for thousands of young men and women. This is besides the YCAD programme which has witnessed a trained Medical Doctor veer into commercial agriculture as one of thousands of young men and women enlisted in the programme.

    The performance of this human Trojan has not gone unnoticed by international bodies as epitomised by the following:

    •The Human Development Report (2012) rated Ekiti State as the most conducive environment to live for long and healthy living with a life expectancy average of 55 years (10 years above the national average).

    •The state has the lowest infant and maternal mortality rate in Nigeria.

    •It has the lowest HIV and AIDS prevalence in the country.

    •It has the lowest mother-to-child transmission of HIV and AIDs in the country just as it boasts

    •The least out-of-school children (2%) in the country.

    As the saying goes, you do not change a winning team; indeed, no sane people will dissolve a winning team. Ekiti can, therefore, not be enticed with juvenile braggadocio, illiterate pomposity, and some funny appeal to phony populism. Fayemi whose integrity has qualified him as the blue chip asset to our state needs another term. A people who once experienced a culture of economic haemorrhage and ‘janjaweed’ rule in the hands of a despot and kleptomaniac will not dare attempt a repeat.

    A shining star in the firmament, Fayemi remains a moral tone of his generation. A man of credible pedigree, he would always stand on the side of the truth even at a cost to his political popularity. A typical example was his plea to the teachers a few years ago to pay their 27.5% professional allowance as soon as the state finances improve. This, he has since done, thus bringing to a happy end, the festering acrimony between the state NUT and the government. This has again confirmed him as a promise keeper, thus re-affirming the people’s sobriquet for him: O WI BEE, SE BEE.

     Ekiti must stand up and be counted. A vote for the APC is a vote for continuity. A vote for an assured future for our children; even for generations yet unborn. A vote for tranquility. A vote for economic leverage and, a vote for everything that is good for humankind. Come Saturday, 21 June, 2014, the good people of Ekiti must troop out, refuse to be intimidated by the federal police and army lock down and vote Kayode Fayemi overwhelmingly. Enemies of the people must be permanently shamed.

    Phil Aragbada, Governor’s Ajasin’s Special Assistant in the ‘70s, is a veteran journalist, newspaper editor and a retired Bank Executive.

  • Hungry for knowledge

    Hungry for knowledge

    Nigeria’s tertiary education crisis in perspective

    Depressing. That is the way to describe the three stories that appeared on pages 8 and 9 of this newspaper on Wednesday. “Lecturers, Amosun differ on OOU funding”, “OAU defends increase in school charges” and “LASU students’ protest grounds Lagos”. And, just about when this piece was being put together, news filtered in that University of Lagos students were demonstrating over school fees that have just been hiked in the school. I hear Obafemi Awolowo University; Ile-Ife, students too are having issues with their authorities. Perhaps what makes the matter the more depressing is the fact that this is not an exception; it is rather the rule. Such stories about tertiary education in the country are a daily feature. We are either having student unrest or lecturers unrest. Either case, the implications are grave: the quality of academic work suffers even as academic calendars become unpredictable. Many students have become ‘deans’, so to speak, in some of these institutions affected by these unrests due to no fault of theirs. At the heart of the matter is funding.

    Yet, Nigerians are hungry for knowledge. This explains the huge number of candidates seeking admission into our universities yearly. Yet, it is not that the country is not rich to make knowledge available to them at a relatively cheaper cost. The problem is the mind-boggling corruption. President Goodluck Jonathan alluded to the fact that there is no poverty in the land. But we have since told him he was dead wrong. Indeed, he spoilt his own case with the example of the number of private jet owners in the country that he gave to buttress his point. Thank God, President Jonathan’s aides had not seen the story published in The Punch of June 2, to the effect that “Nigerians own 70% of most expensive buildings in London”. They would have added it to the points to give the president to cite as evidence that we are a rich, blessed and potentially prosperous nation. The same way they would have told him that the fact that Nigeria is today placed third on the list of countries with the highest number of students studying overseas is evidence of our prosperity because studying abroad does not come cheap.

    Forget Boko Haram’s position that western education is sinful. Even if it is, it is a sin many Nigerians would be glad to commit. No family worth its salt wants to be without a graduate; at least in the southern part of the country. Even in the north, barriers are being pulled down that hitherto restricted especially the girl-child from going to school. Unfortunately, there are not enough places in the universities to accommodate the about 1.5million school leavers who sit yearly for compulsory entrance examinations into 150 public and private universities in the country whose approved carrying capacity is 600,000 students.

    It is this same insatiable quest for knowledge that has forced many Nigerians to look beyond our shores in search of the proverbial Golden Fleece. A study quoted by a national daily on Tuesday last week indicated that there are at least 75,000 Nigerian students studying in Ghana. What is happening is that those who cannot find space within naturally look for space without, hence, to Ghana and other African, European countries and the United States of America many of such candidates turn for university education; at least for those whose parents can afford it.

    And they pay through their nose.  In a public lecture Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), revealed the numbers and cost implications for students. “Although there are no comprehensive data on the number of Nigerian students abroad, recent data have shown that there are about 71,000 Nigerian students in Ghana paying about US$1 billion annually as tuition fees and upkeep, as against the annual budget of US$751 million for all federal universities. In other words, the money spent by Nigerian students studying in Ghana with a better organised system is more than the annual budget of all federal universities in the country,” Sanusi said. He should know; because requests for overseas remittances, including students’ fees and allowances pass through the CBN.

    This is for Nigerian students in Ghana alone. If we consider our students in other parts of the world, the cost implications would be staggering. Now, the question we may ask is ‘if Nigerians are willing to pay this much for their students abroad, why can’t they pay half as much at home? The answer is simple: even if they do, what is the assurance that their wards will graduate to time, with all manner of strike and other issues which make academic calendar unreliable? Again, what will be the worth of their degrees?

    In the midst of this confusion, Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) has advised the Federal Government to take over some ailing private universities in the country. Chief Babalola’s (himself founder of a private university, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti) talk will be good talk only if the Federal Government universities themselves are exemplars of what universities should be in contemporary times. The impression created by Chief Babalola is that it is only some of these private universities that are sick and require surgical operation. This is erroneous. Many of the universities owned by governments, federal or state, are chronically sick too; this is the truth. So, how can someone who has not been able to put his own house in order help somebody else do same? Isn’t it good that you look at what the person promising to give you a dress is wearing to know whether he is capable of fulfilling the promise? If the universities owned by the Federal Government are healthy, how come only one of them is in the list of the world’s first 5,000 universities? The premier ones were recognised worldwide in the past, but no more.

    When we consider what the governments, particularly the Federal Government is doing to education, we will see that it is the real Boko Haram; the difference is that it is not carrying bombs to kill education like Boko Haram. But it has its own ‘suicide bombers’ who are killing education with their mouths and actions. Since September 2013 that Professor Ruqayyah Ahmed Rufa’i was removed as education minister, there is no substantive minister in charge of this important sector. Nyesom Wike, the supervising minister in charge of the ministry is more of a politician than education minister. How else could a government have killed education?

    Now, we are in a situation where universities are finding it difficult to pay their bills and they have to turn to the students who in turn must turn to their parents for an answer. Unfortunately, much as some of the parents would have readily embraced poverty if only to ensure their children get university education, the economy is unhelpful. At this point, the question that comes into mind is what has happened to the scholarship boards? Many of those who are now making things difficult for the younger generation of Nigerians enjoyed one scholarship or the other. As a matter of fact, some had the privilege of more than one scholarship in their time. Now, having emptied the treasuries, having messed up the various scholarship boards, having stashed so much ill-gotten wealth in foreign banks, having bought up the best of mansions abroad where even the ‘sons and daughters of the soil’ cannot afford the mansions, they are now singing that there is no money to fund education. What a pity!

    A situation where qualified people cannot go to university because they cannot afford it is as potentially explosive as the situation where graduates cannot find jobs. I cannot see much difference. The implication is too grave to be contemplated.

  • The master and the Maracana

    The master and the Maracana

    Once again, the fourth June is here with us and there is excitement in the air.  Every four years in the month of June, global attention is riveted on the round puffery leather stuff that soccer sorcerers stroke and push round the field in a bid to outwit each other. The Mundial is the greatest sporting extravaganza in the history of friendly competition.  Yet it has once led to an actual shooting war in Latin America, and in Brazil this year it may herald the eruption of uncivil hostilities.

    But it is just as well that this year’s edition is taking place in the greatest footballing nation the world has seen, and in the greatest human monument ever built for the game: The iconic Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. As far as eerie symbolism goes, nothing can beat that. We live in a world where symbols mock cymbals and associated ramparts.

    Football has become a global opiate. It has virtually replaced religion as the opium of the people. For the gifted poor, it has also become a Baghdad flying carpet to stupendous wealth. Ask the new generation of Third World soccer Mafiosi who have played their way to magical riches.

    But it is also the case that football is the talisman of incompetent rulers, particularly in blighted and benighted Africa where human condition has deteriorated so sharply in the past quarter of a century. It seems that the more underdeveloped a country is, the more overdeveloped its football is. Once the Green Eagles are playing, and playing very well, Nigerians are willing to suspend hostilities, their endemic animosities and mutual loathing.

    It often comes to point when patriotic activists secretly pray that the Eagles would lose so that we can get on with the serious business of storming the Bastille once and for all. In 1985, General Muhammadu Buhari suspended his annual leave in order to welcome home the victorious younger eagles, One still recalls the youthful General Gowon donning jerseys with the green Eagles after their continental triumph in 1973. Apart from the military, football is the glue that binds the nation together.

    There is one fabled genius who will be absent for the first time when the soccer fiesta opens in Brazil in a few days time. He is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian master fabulist and one of the greatest novelists of all time who shed mortality for immortality a few weeks ago. But what has football got to do with writing? Plenty. When they reach the rarefied summit of human ingenuity, there is something absolutely magical about great soccer and great writing.

    Soccer is poetry wrought with the legs. At its most sublime moment, the master cadences of soccer, its finely calibrated momentum, the sheer bravura of its melody and the dazzling symphony reminds one of the greatest instances of prose writing. It is like watching a world-historic orchestra and having an orgasm. On that astral plane of human genius, there is nothing to separate great artistry, and there is no point setting up a division of labour.

    In novel after novel of stupendous beauty and extravagant lyrical power, the late Colombian wizard took us on a magical excursion of a fictional world in which myth and magic collide with modern science. Yet that was also the grim reality of Latin America. With its rich overlay and interweaving tapestry of native Indian and imported African cultures leavened by hegemonic western civilisation, Marquez’s Macondo could well be any Latin American country. The historic lot fell on the great Colombian to produce the most heady cocktail from this discordant witches’ brew.

    The irony of it all is that the real Brazil in all its contemporary chaotic splendour could well have been one of Marquez great fictional creations, minus the crazed Caudillos. Remote in the extreme, sprawling, far-flung and always with more than a generous hint of dark and anarchic possibilities, it is in Brazil that the collision of native Indian and African cultures with western civilisation has produced the world first soccer superpower.

    It is not surprising that the creative genius unleashed by this collision of cultural altars in Brazil should find its ultimate expression in the game of soccer. With his lithe and supple physique which can defy gravity in endless acrobatic possibilities, the typical Brazilian footballing prodigy often reminds one of a combination of barmy ballet and mad matador.

    There is also a hint of the joyously possessed Yoruba bata dancer and of the jaguar in the Amazon jungle. The names, at once outlandish and alluring, are altogether a different ball game. Garincha, Tastao, Pele, Revelino, Zico, Junior, Socrates, Eder, Rivaldo, Romario sound so delicious in their mellifluous musicality. Across the globe, they have spawned wild imitators. Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s former maximum ruler, was known as Obe the Pele in his football playing days.

    But of late, the magic has begun to wane. The hosting of the world cup has also coincided with huge social eruptions in Brazil. It would appear that while the people do not mind the soccer, the sex and the samba, they would want more of the science and social engineering which translate into life more abundant and the uplift of more people out of the poverty trap. Brazilians are discovering that no country has ever lived on soccer. Protests are erupting everywhere.

    Brazil will need all its luck to keep the hounds at bay. The Maracana stadium has been a site of a great national tragedy once before. That was 64 years ago when the Uruguayan national team unexpectedly piped Brazil at the world cup final sending the entire country down a spiral of mourning and wailing. If the masses storm the Maracana this time around, the Columbian master novelist, a great friend of the poor, would be chuckling to himself in his grave. Not even the greatest Latin American novelist could have come up with such a weird plot. Life is a great novel indeed.

  • Okonjo-Iweala and governors’ performance: the noise, silence, and wisdom

    Okonjo-Iweala and governors’ performance: the noise, silence, and wisdom

    The assumption that underlies the disclosure on how much these 10 states received last year is that the states may not have done what is required of them

    Some of those who are aware that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been minister of finance twice within the last fifteen years are likely to marvel at the sudden burst of anti-corruption wisdom that came upon her during her recent visit to Ogun State. At a commencement speech at Babcock University in Ogun State recently, the federal coordinating minister for the economy and substantial minister of finance called on citizens to ask governors in the states what they have been doing with the funds made available to them under the country’s system of feeding-bottle federalism. Others are likely to scream at her for remembering very little and forgetting too much in her call for accountability on the part of those charged with political power and in the process trusted with public funds. Certainly, there is some wisdom, partisanship and evasiveness in her decision to present herself as an anti-corruption radar that captures every nook and corner of the polity.

    In a speech calling on governors to account for their allocations from the federation account, the minister thrilled her audience, saying: “Clearly, the federal government cannot do it alone; we need the private sector to work with us and we have reached out to them in transforming Nigeria. But, in addition to that, we should ask ourselves what is the role of the state and local governments in supporting our transformation….A lot of attention is turned on the federal government. So, we also need to ask what our states and local governments do with the resources they get.” Furthermore, she told the nation how much the ten most endowed states received in 2013 from the federation account in order of magnitude: Akwa Ibom 260 billion naira; Rivers 220b; Delta 209b; Bayelsa 173b; Lagos 168b; Kano 140b; Katsina 103b; Oyo 100b; Kaduna97b; and Borno 94b.

    The assumption that underlies the disclosure on how much these 10 states received last year is that the states may not have done what is required of them. Some audience members of the minister may even think that the states not mentioned by the minister must have gotten too little for performance watchers like the minister to expect much from them. Either way, such thinking does not address the meat of Okonjo-Iweala’s stance on national transformation from the states up to the centre, which to the minister is now the epicenter of economic transformation.

    One point upon which admirers and non-admirers of the minister are likely to congratulate her is Okonjo-Iweala’s enthusiasm to make political leaders at the state and local government levels work for the privileges bestowed upon them. Some months ago at a CNN interview of the minister on the performance of the central government, she was enthusiastic in blaming international communities for encouraging Nigerian politicians. For her to now see that most, if not all, governors are under performing suggests that the minister has bought into the idea that corruption and poor governance are like charity: They begin at home. They may also be like the stench from the kitchen sink that ends in the house. Calling on governors to spend funds allocated to their states on verifiable projects in the state is something to praise the minister for having the energy to do at a time that the rest of the world is pre-occupied with over 200 innocent girls kidnapped and kept incommunicado for over thirty days.

    Okonjo-Iweala as a political appointee must have been working for her pay by making transformation the yardstick by which to evaluate governors’ performance in their states. However, she appears to have forgotten to tell Nigerians in what specific aspects the federal government whose economy she coordinates has transformed Nigeria. A commencement speech would not have been in any way inappropriate for her to roll out verifiable statistics of her government’s achievements with respect to transformation. As the minister in charge of coordinating Jonathan/PDP’s transformation agenda, she ought to identify in what ways many of the governors whose states she mentioned have departed from applying the funds allocated to them to transformational projects. One point that the minister missed to explain is why the message of transformation was not passed to the states, especially PDP states that are in the majority by the ruling party.

    Given the character of partisan politics in the country, over partisan citizens may accuse anyone that calls APC governors to order as bashing the opposition, but nobody will blame a minister or anybody appointed by the ruling party for calling PDP governors to order when they fail to work in rhythm with the transformation agenda of President Jonathan, particularly after some of such states were reported not too long ago of getting some special allocations from the president and author of the transformation ethic.  According to citizens’ reports, many changes have taken place in Rivers, Delta, Akwa Ibom, and Kano in the last four years. As most of the states were PDP states until recent migration of the governors of Kano and Rivers to APC, the minister ought to know if those changes fall within the transformation agenda for which she has cited the federal government as the model for all states to follow.

    One point of wisdom in the minister’s graduation speech at Ilishan is captured in her advice to citizens to be critical of their governors, commissioners, and local government leaders if they want improvement in the quality of their lives and not be fixated on the performance of the federal government. It is true that media emphasis has been on the failure of the central government to make any visible use of the over 56% of the nation’s wealth that it expends. The minister has a point in asking that other levels of government that are allocated about 46% of the federation’s funds are also watched as critically as the federal government.  The structure of ownership of most media houses can be blamed for the little attention paid to governance at state and local government levels, especially the latter about which citizens hear virtually nothing. State television and radio stations have over the years become amplifiers for statements from governors and their wives, rather than being allowed to serve as barometers for measuring governors’ performance. Local government chairpersons are out of the media’s watchdog radar most of the time. This may be because most so-called national newspapers are stationed in Abuja and Lagos while most subnational governments are afraid to encourage establishment of newspapers to watch their performance.

    Borrowing from the finance minister’s worries about the use of federal allocations at the subnational level, delegates at the national conference may need to look more critically than (most of the conference committees have done so far) at the issue of revenue generation and distribution. It is necessary to change the current system that gives funds to subnational governments from revenue obtained at the expense of the health of citizens in the Niger Delta. States should be made to generate the resources they need through taxation. The current system that creates a parasitic dependence by all levels of government on revenue generated from the Niger Delta ought to be reformed. Allocations from the federation account funded by all the states should be changed to grants that are attached to specific development projects for central and state governments alike. Citizens who create the wealth at the disposal of states under such system will also have more say in how their taxes are used by those who govern them at all levels. Some measure of civic democracy has started to emerge in Lagos State, where taxes bring more funds to the state treasury than allocations from the oil and gas revenue distributed from the federation account.

  • Who is afraid of the media?

    If you get to read this column, you are probably one of the lucky Nigerians who have not been denied access to newspapers following the shocking crack down on media houses by the military.

    Since Friday, nationwide distribution of newspapers has been disrupted by armed soldiers and other security men who claimed to be acting on instruction to search for explosives in circulation vehicles.

    In enforcing the directive, newspaper distribution centres have been raided, vendors harassed, vehicles impounded and media houses’ vehicles seized.

    True to the soldiers claim, the defence headquarters has confirmed that its men were acting on an intelligence report which indicated that dangerous materials were being moved through circulation vans.

    “The general public and affected organizations in particular are assured that the exercise was a routine security action and should not be misconstrued for any other motive,” Director of Defence Information Major General Chris Olukolade said in his statement on Friday.

    Considering the state of insecurity in the country, it is understandable why the security forces should be at alert and take every intelligence report seriously. They have come under a lot of criticisms for not being able to contain the sporadic attacks across the country by terrorists and other criminal gangs and should be seen to be doing  everything possible to live up to the expectations of the people.

    It is the duty of the government through the security agencies to ensure the security of lives and property and any step in this direction should be commended.

    However, if for any reason there are indeed  intelligence reports about use of newspaper distribution vans for moving explosives  around the country, the searches could have been better done without leaving room for the motive of the military to be misconstrued.

    Except the military believes that the managements of the media organizations could be party to the use of their vehicles for carrying the dangerous weapons, one would expected that the owners and managers of the affected organizations would have been contacted on the intelligence reports to seek their support to arrest anyone who may be using their vehicle without their knowledge.

    Since the exercise has nothing to do with the content, operations and personnel of the media organizations as the defence spokesman said, there was no need to have stormed the distribution centres and stopped the distribution of the papers even after searching and finding nothing incriminating in the vehicles.

    If the Friday seizures were the handiwork of overzealous soldiers acting beyond their brief as Major General Olukolade’s press statement suggested, why did the crackdown continue on Saturday and affected more newspapers.

    Now that no dangerous materials have been found in the vehicles of the affected newspapers,  who pays for the losses the media house have to incurred due to the inability to sell the seized copies.

    The media and Nigerians deserve more explanation on what is really happening to warrant the undue assault on the freedom of the press under a democratic government.

    Anyone or organisation , with enough evidence found liable of colluding with terrorists should not be spared.  However, a situation where the media is being given a bad name for no justifiable reason to hang it is rather unfortunate.

    For all the media has done, still doing and will do, in the efforts to end the reign of terror in the country, it should be regarded as a partner and not an enemy.