The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

NHRC, Apo killings and the Nigerian Army

After what it described as extensive investigations into the killing of eight members of the National Association of Tricycle and Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association (NATOMORAS) by a combined team of soldiers and secret service agents in Abuja, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has concluded that the victims were in fact not members of the Boko Haram sect. The secret service had claimed the victims were terror suspects and had called on the Army for back-up in flushing them out of the uncompleted building in the Apo/Gudu exclusive part of the Federal Capital City (FCT) where they were taking shelter. The NHRC directed that the government should pay hefty compensations to the victims, living or dead. In addition, it suggested an urgent review and harmonisation of the security agencies’ rules of engagement in order to eliminate the kind of error and gross violation of human rights that occurred in Abuja in September last year.

It is not clear what kind of challenge the military and the State Security Service (SSS) would mount against the NHRC report. But a military spokesman has argued that forensic examination was required to establish the guilt of the Army. Whatever challenges are mounted, however, are unlikely to erase the widely held suspicion that the security agencies did in fact use more force than was necessary in either evicting or arresting the NATOMORAS squatters. When the incident happened, and given the account of the spokesperson of the SSS, the public had called for investigations on the premise that many of the accounts of the killings, or what the security agents called exchange of fire, did not quite jell. The investigations have finally yielded fruit.

The efforts of NHRC must be commended. The outcome of the panel’s report is likely to reinforce public confidence that Nigeria can be made to work, and that when there is a fault somewhere, the inbuilt corrective mechanisms can step in. For a long time, the security agencies have not been quite as successful in dealing with infractions within their folds as the public would wish. There have been too many attempts to cover up atrocities in order, in the logic of the security agencies, not to denude the image of the security organisations or call to question the competence of the officer corps in the various services. The security agencies should see the NHRC report as a call for urgent reforms not only of the rules of engagement, but also in the general running of the organisations and their responsiveness to security and public relations issues. If they have good grounds to challenge the NHRC report, the Army can go ahead and do so. Otherwise, they should let bad enough alone and seek for more professional and less emotive ways of doing their jobs.

Sometimes organisations, whether security or regular, have behaved quite awkwardly in reforming themselves, especially when their leadership is shorn of the right ethical values and are too incompetent to envision great heights to which they must aspire. The country’s political leaders have a huge role to play here. They must create the right environment to engender the right leadership for the various security organisations in the country. Had this been done, for instance, it would have been unlikely for the military in the 1990s to tolerate generals like Sani Abacha, let alone foster the conditions that propelled him into power undeservingly.

April 13, 2014
Devolution or federalism: which way for Nigeria?

Proper relationship between national and subnational governments in a federal system should be a case of give-and-take between the two levels in a context of free negotiation between the two tiers

The conference modalities passed by the Secretary to the Federal Government to delegates and the day-to-day response of delegates to the modalities continue to deconstruct the unitary constitution upon which the central government and the President derive their powers to discuss the problems that have made the country’s unity and peaceful development precarious over the years.

Delegates are not freely chosen representatives of their people; they are nominated by the President and governors at the instance of the federal government. They cannot determine number of committees nor choose chairpersons of committees. More importantly, delegates are not free to determine what they deliberate on; they are handed a list of topics to consider by the agency that convenes and sponsors the conference. The rules to guide the conference include what they cannot discuss: dissolution of the federation. They also include what delegates can discuss: devolution, federalism, regionalism, etc.

Exercising control of the power of signification characteristic of unitary governments, the federal government even chooses concepts that delegates should examine. An example of such semiotic or semantic confusion or control is the listing of federalism under Devolution of Power and also under Political Restructuring.As trivial as this may sound or look, it has the capacity to create confusion for delegates and reduce their focus on what should be the matter at hand: freeing the country from unitary model of governance and endowing it with a federal system. It is important for citizens observing the proceedings of the conference and waiting for some results to know ahead of conference deliberations that Devolution is not synonymous with Federalism. It should not even serve as a set that includes federalism as subset.

Devolution does not automatically lead to federalism. It is, simply put, the shedding of functions by any central government – unitary or federal— to subnational government levels. A unitary government that feels overburdened or over-pressured can choose to transfer some of its functions to any subnational government without losing its superintending authority. So can an existing federal government devolve new functions to subnational governments to carry out in compliance with whatever standards the central government establishes for performance of such functions by the tier of government to which new responsibilities have been devolved. Such devolved functions are funded through grants or special allocations from the central government. France is a good example of a unitary government that devolves a lot of functions to other levels of government.China is another example. Closer to home, Ghana operates a unitary system that delegates some functions to provincial governments that are seen as subordinate to the central government. An abiding aspect of devolution without federalism is that the central government reserves the right to take back whatever functions it delegates to subnational governments. Such devolution is generally not embedded in the constitution and is not subject to negotiation between federating units.

If delegates had been elected as representatives of communities, they would not have been under any obligation to base their discussion on the paradigms handed down by the central government. They would have been given issues to negotiate by their communities. Elected delegates would have been briefed that the crux of the matter and raison d’etre for the conference is federalism, not mere devolution of responsibilities by an overarching central government. It is still not too late for delegates to be reminded of citizens’ assessment of the cause of the failure of the central and most state governments to deliver public goods that can enhance the quality of life of citizens. It is obvious that communities have no power to hold delegates accountable, having not had a hand in how they get to the conference. But it is proper for delegates to know that citizens are capable of detecting subtle efforts (via modalities handed to and adopted by conference leaders) at constraining discussion at the conference.

What was taken away by military autocrats and sustained by post-military constitution and rulers is proper relationship between the central government and subnational governments. Federalism has been removed since 1979 from the form and content of government in the country. This cannot be remedied by mere devolution. It can only be restored through establishment or re-establishment of federal system of government. Whether this is called political restructuring or restoration of federalism, what is at issue is having a proper share of powers between the central government and regions or states as federating units.

Proper relationship between national and subnational governments in a federal system should be a case of give-and-take between the two levels in a context of free negotiation between the two tiers. Thus, the relationship between national and subnational units must be framed as constitutionally guaranteed interaction and transaction between coordinates, rather than superordinate and subordinate. The two levels are not to share just functions; they are to share sovereignty including resource sovereignty. It is not the incumbent central government that should determine unilaterally which power to transfer to regions or states. It is both levels of government that should negotiate which powers to leave for the central government for the common good and which to leave for regions or states for effective delivery of public goods and services to citizens.These are the central issues that pertain to constructing a federal polity.

Knowing that the ongoing national conference is not sovereign and does not have the power to determine what to discuss and how to turn the outcome of discussion into a constitution, the only thing left is to appeal to delegates to find time to listen to members of their respective communities about what to do to re-launch Nigeria.For example, agreeing to just transfer a few functions from the current Exclusive list of the central government to regions or states and adding 5% to funds from the federation account to subventions to states may not solve the problem that stimulated convening of the ongoing conference. Creation of states is not as much of a problem as sharing of powers between the two principal levels of governance: central and state. Turning an essentially local matter, the role of traditional rulers into a federal matter is not necessary. Nigeria as a unit does not have traditional rulers. It is local communities that have traditional rulers. Delegates must avoid spending precious time on such distractive topics as local government administration. Local government administration, like traditional rule, is a matter to be determined by states in their own constitutions. What should take delegates’ time is sharing of responsibilities and powers between federal and regional or state governments.

April 13, 2014
Of books, bookworms and illiteracy

I read of someone saying during the week that if the poor in Nigeria benefit from a Nigerian government’s policy, it is completely accidental, or something to that effect. I’m sure you and I agree with that statement, if you know what it means. On my part, I interpret it to mean first and foremost that Nigerians (both government and people) have ways of conceiving ideas that benefit only a small number of people, say the government’s men (and women too). So, in this country, the uniform of, say the police or traffic wardens, is changed for some government relative’s sake. Even the president’s diet is changed so that someone close enough can make the supplies.

Don’t let us take this interpretation thing further, or else I might begin to think the statement may also mean that the roads you and I have been travelling on have not been meant for us but since we are such good thieves that the government cannot get rid of… Worse, even the education you and I have received so far have not really been aimed at us but we somehow stood in the way. Really, government’s policies have never been directed at improving the lot of the poor; everything it has done has been for itself. Talk of anyone being self-serving.

You know of course that the converse will also hold true: that everything the government has failed to do has also been for its own benefit. Take the failure to revive and develop the railways, for instance. That is one colossal failure for which the government needs to cover its face in deep and great shame. The wonderful thing is that I can never for the life of me fathom out the benefit it is deriving from that failure when many nations in the world are being sustained by such social services. All I know is that one of the greatest benefits of modern living is still the train, and it is being denied us the poor in this country. But we are not here to repeat ourselves today; let’s leave that for a rainy day.

Oh yes, I remember, the rainy days are here again. How do I know? Oh, because I can see various governments scampering around trying to fix leaky potholes and blocked drainages. You thought I would say because I can hear the rains falling down, down this way? No, I can’t say that because most times when it’s raining, I am too busy wading through flooded roads. When I’m not on the road, however, I pick something up and read. That is how I have come to read so many things: newspapers, comics, drug literatures, books, dog’s teaks (sorry, that’s counting), stars… I would willingly have read the dog’s liver (just to know the signs of the times) but the dog refused to oblige me. Yeah, that’s what bookworms do: read anything that comes to hand. That’s why the dog now runs away when he sees my hands coming.

Bookworms, goes my Encarta, are enthusiastic readers; people who love reading. The good news is that I am not alone. Indeed, I pale into insignificance when I consider a friend of mine who says he can out-read a reader. Now, that is something. Just mention any title in the classics, he’s at home. Even bestseller lists do not go past his door step. And he lives in Nigeria. And he is an engineer. Once, I teased him that I quite believed if he lived in Britain, he would have been one of those who would camp all night in front of some bookshop just to be able to get a copy of a Harry Potter book. He said he got someone to do that for him. I rested my case, but not before I was struck by two things.

One, I reflected on the rise and rise of Harry Potter and why it has not happened here. To begin with, the book publishing industry in Nigeria is suffering from a grave disease inflicted on it by the government. All over the world, it has been known that revolutions in literacy and information can be accelerated only through making books and newspapers cheap and affordable. I remember being sent to buy newspapers for three pence when I was young. That was some big money then, but I believe that it made news and information to be within the reach of more people than it is now at a whopping one hundred and fifty Naira – daily feeding money for many people now.

Somewhere in the seventies, the trend of information affordability failed and I believe it was entirely the government’s fault: first it introduced SAP, and then it raised importation duties on printing materials. Book and news industries practically crumbled under the weight of the government’s wickedness. So, dear reader, even though Harry Potter is possible here, it will not come in a long while because publishing houses are more interested in fighting for survival than in aesthetics or altruism. Now they work very closely with schools’ curricula.

Unfortunately, those among us who can really afford to finance publishing houses that would not be too desperate for survival are not ready to do so. They are the people who have had easy access to the government’s money. Those are more inclined to quickly take that loot abroad where they hope it cannot be traced rather than invest it in something as trite as making the economy grow. After all, it is not their responsibility to help people improve in their reading and thinking habits; let other people do that. Truly, only a foolish rich ‘un will keep his stolen money lying around long enough for detectives to find or for banks to give as soft loans to publishers.

The second thing that struck me was that the government might have deliberately been trying to keep the literacy level down, much the same way you would keep the noise level down in the house. If I didn’t know the government better then, I would have said it was trying to stifle the people from seeking knowledge, wisdom, information and understanding. Perhaps it was; and well has it succeeded. Congratulations government; you are now presiding over one of the brightest illiterate societies in the world, and you did it all by yourself.

That Nigerians are bright and intelligent, there is no doubt. Just look at the array of their activities: ‘419’ scams, intractable Boko Haram and Niger Delta insurgencies, ‘Yahoo Boys’’ scams, kidnapping businesses, and yes, more 419 scams. These are the efforts of brains put to work. True, these organs are now run by graduates and undergraduates but they were not started by graduates. You see, a dysfunctional society like ours where everything is upside down would sooner than later cause a malfunction of the brain even in the strong breeds.

The present low level of literacy in Nigeria is causing havoc in every way. People are dying every day because they really do not know the difference between uniforms in health care institutions. I hear that general hospital attendants have been known to divert patients to their own home dispensaries because the patients do not know any better. Believe me, a nation’s economic and political survival has everything to do with the amount of knowledge and literacy its citizens have between them. If you don’t believe me, just look at the farming business in Nigeria today: how many mechanised farms can you count? Well, there’s mine, and mine, and mine; that’s all.

Seriously, there is a strong connection between the government’s ‘Vision 2020202020’ or whatever name it goes by, the development of books and reducing the level of illiteracy in the country. That connection is political will. If the government wants a literate Nigeria by 2020, it’s will be done.

April 13, 2014
Fayemi, Fayose, Bamidele and Ekiti poll

After what must rank as the most extraordinary feat of realpolitik ever, former Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, has been made the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) standard-bearer in the June 2014 governorship election in the state. The choice before the party big wigs in Abuja was to either get Mr Fayose elected or appointed as candidate. In the circumstance, neither election nor appointment was applicable or appropriate. He had to be made a candidate by the most pernicious sleight of hand the party could muster. With his coronation on March 22, a crowning that is unlikely to be overturned notwithstanding the grumblings from within the state PDP and from among those who contested the ticket with him, Mr Fayose will in June take on Governor Kayode Fayemi for the now ennobled governorship seat of Ekiti State.

Mr Fayose, it will be recalled, ran a populist campaign from 2001 to 2003 to win the governorship seat. But he was impeached in 2006, a year before his first term in office came to an end. The feisty 53-year-old is a study in irony. He has been out of power for about seven years now, and he tends so easily to overreach himself, not to say exaggerate his puny gifts. In his rather violent but abridged first term, he enunciated and implemented horrendously amateurish policies. Not only did he do very poorly in his three years in office, he also reacted very badly to challenges to his power in the typically intolerant fashion of African rulers.

Though Mr Fayose is still being tried for alleged corrupt practices, it is striking that the same PDP – not a different PDP – has found him a fit and proper person to fly their flag in the coming poll. The manner of his emergence itself may have been dubious, and his opponents in the party either weak and ineffective or embarrassingly ingratiating and unprincipled, however, party bigwigs at the state and national levels have curiously and even joyfully turned a blind eye to the strong-arm tactics he employed in muscling his co-contestants into submission. This has prompted many commentators to judge the real objectives of the party in the Ekiti election to be both deceptively intrusive and brutally detached. It must take a huge dose of cavalier politics, they argue, to plot such intrusive machination, and unprincipled indifference to ignore the salient implications of being represented by a man apparently so shorn of ideas and honour as Mr Fayose.

The only explanations for this strange choice of candidate seem to be located in the unearthly inability of the PDP federal government to be identified with noble ideas and standards. First, it is suggested that what the PDP hopes to achieve is not really to win the governorship, but to have a fighting chance of winning sizeable votes for the presidential election in 2015. If this was the aim, the party would still need a man with some dignity and noble carriage, not to say common sense or native wisdom to prise a healthy amount of votes from the ruling party in the state. It is also suggested that having dismissed Mr Fayose’s co-contestants as incapable of discomfiting the more cerebral Dr Fayemi, the Jonathan presidency was prepared to embrace a roughneck. Since Dr Fayemi is expected to conventionally assail his opponents with much learning and self-assurance, the PDP probably guessed that only a southpaw, a brute and a scoundrel could unhorse him.

The choice of Mr Fayose is however more importantly a reflection of the nature and character of the PDP and the Jonathan presidency. The two entities reinforce each other’s callous disregard for sane and elevated politics. They are obviously not thinking in terms of the great heights the country should aspire to, or of the fine ideas it should project. The image of Mr Fayose is settled. No one disputes his mediocrity or his predilections for strong-arm tactics, or even, as evidenced by his last days in office, of his lack of coordination and composure and of his inebriated and insensate gibberish under pressure. What is in dispute, in effect, are what strange motives gingered the Jonathan presidency into abandoning all pretence to principles, principles the president says are anchored on his frantic Pentecostal theology.

There is a general consensus that Mr Fayose indecently and brutishly secured the candidacy of the PDP for the Ekiti poll. There is also hardly a whisper against the open and indisputable fact that he is the wrongest candidate to represent the PDP in the election. If the state and national PDP expect him to win, they have not disclosed on what ideas, past achievements or even penitence they base their expectations. Mr Fayose has not propounded any idea, nor can he, for he is incapable of the robustness and sophistication that Ekiti has managed to acquire in the past few years. As for achievements, there is none for him to showcase, and he cannot dredge up any even by the uncanniest abracadabra. As far as remorse goes, he has sworn to some sort of personal conversion without indicating exactly in what areas of his indistinguishable worldview he practices newness of life, and has also sworn to some sort of maturity without demonstrating any practical evidence of the wisdom that sometimes comes with age.

If normality prevails, Ekiti is unlikely to dignify Mr Fayose with even 10 percent of the votes. (See box). They were grossly mistaken about him in 2003; they won’t like to be caught with pants down again or, after having achieved some sanity and enviable heights in decorous politics, succumb to the lure and fantasies of the juvenile politics propagated by Mr Fayose. However, his entrance into the race and the helping hand the federal forces are expected to give him, are likely to make the June poll a two-horse race between the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the PDP. For all his faults, Mr Fayose is a colourful politician, exuberant, gregarious but simple-minded. These attributes are unlikely to be vitiated by his mediocre ideas and lack of philosophical depth. And so, he will draw attention with his egregious remarks, whip whatever crowd he is able to rent into some animated frenzy, and hope, like his PDP counterparts in Osun State, that whenever he foments trouble, Abuja will back him up.

The logic of Nigerian politics favours the ruling party in any state except where its performance is woeful. The APC government in Ekiti has brought a lot of practical and implementable novelties to the state. On account of its programmes and projects, the party is certain to receive a good hearing. And having been governed for about four years by probably the most cerebral governor in the country, and notwithstanding the poor finances of the state, Ekiti is not expected to want to fix a problem that does not exist. So, where does this leave the Labour Party whose ambitious candidate is the former ACN/APC man, Opeyemi Bamidele? My guess is that he will be strangulated in the middle. The APC and PDP will hug all the limelight, and the LP candidate will be left in the shadow of the two, shouting himself hoarse and receiving little hearing and sunlight. It is possible Mr Bamidele indeed has a great programme for Ekiti and a passion to do right by the state, but he has the misfortune of facing in one election both a performing APC governor and a federally-backed and boisterously loud PDP candidate. His timing is appalling, and his haste exposes to his many admirers a great flaw in his character – an unwholesome and devastating lack of a sense of proportion.

Dr Fayemi is of course not impeccable. He incredulously began his re-election campaign even before he became the candidate of his party, thereby indicating unnecessary overconfidence. His opponents may have no democratic credentials whatsoever, but he himself will need to polish his democratic credentials, for his distinguishing qualities, nobility and definitive and futuristic leadership claims rest on those credentials. In a country rife with false democrats and open and closet tyrants, Dr Fayemi’s blots are unlikely to diminish his campaign, let alone threaten his anticipated victory. But he must be acutely aware of the need to project his democratic credentials and beliefs with deep, effortless and philosophical conviction. His admirers must not sense that these values are merely expedient rather than intrinsic.

If peaceful elections can be guaranteed – a tall order given the presence of Mr Fayose – the June poll may even end up an anticlimax. Mr Fayose’s scaremongering and PDP’s chicanery can only be effective in a close race. With the passage of years, Ekiti voters have become more aware of their environment than during the Fayose or former Governor Segun Oni years. They will forcefully try to sustain the heights they have attained nationally, for the alternative will be too grim for them to contemplate.

April 6, 2014
The Nigerian post- colonial state in transition

(Hope and hopelessness)

To both its foes and friends, the very idea of Nigeria as a nation has always been a curious but compelling proposition; a mesmerizing paradox. So also is the very idea of the state in post-colonial Africa. The matter is so serious that the arguments about the existence of this elusive but palpable phenomenon in Africa often assume the quasi-religious fervor of the argument about the existence of God himself.

Is this state thing—to parody Bush the First—a savage monster or a caring father? If the state truly exists on this benighted continent, why is it that there is so much suffering and misery, unlike in other lands and climes where it is viewed as a stern but benevolent father? Why have Africans, at least in the past five hundred years, become a mere canon fodder for human history? It was not always like this. In pre-colonial Africa, the state even its rudimentary formation was almost at par with developments elsewhere in the world.

But it can get worse. No human affair can remain stagnant for long. No state can remain static forever. The fate of Africa is a gripping reminder of some unfinished evolutionary business. It has been said that although humans first civilized in Africa, they have not continued to do so there. In many spheres of human endeavours, Africa is witnessing a startling regression into barbarity. It cannot continue like this. Enlightened Africans must put on their thinking caps.

If Africa continues to be deemed a nuisance to the rest of humanity, a minimum form of re-colonization is inevitable. We might just witness another Berlin Conference for the partitioning of the continent all over again. If a column of humans is headed in the wrong direction, like a heady but obtuse column of ants heading for perdition, it must, for its own sake and the sake of humanity, be forcibly turned back in the right direction.

There is no point in looking for solution and salvation in the clouds. Beware of the man whose god is in the sky, Bernard Shaw, the Anglo-Irish gadfly and wit, famously warned. Where Nigeria is headed, and how it is going to get there, can be glimpsed and analyzed from everyday occurrence in the nation. It is a simple exercise.

Admittedly, and like all human affairs, it is a strange potpourri, a turbulently contradictory ensemble; brimming with horror and the possibility of progress at the same time; redolent of hopes encrusted in benumbing hopelessness. But it provides a manual of optimism and the practical possibilities of extricating ourselves from the debris of dysfunction.

As the swollen and testy river of the post-colonial state in Nigerian rushes headlong towards its rendezvous with destiny and history, let us try to isolate in no particular order a few of the social forces that will be crucial and critical in determining the fate of Africa’s most populous country and potentially its most potent human community.

Ironically, it has been in the area of economic development that it has been demonstrated that it is possible to think out of the box of convention in Nigeria. As we have noted once in this column, whenever a fundamental economic crisis is disguised as a political crisis among elite, we can be sure that both the explanations and the solutions offered would be false. The truth of the matter is that predatory politics such as we witness in Nigeria is dependent on predatory economics and the notion of society as a savage and agonistic battle field.

So it is then that it was such a pleasure watching Ben Akabueze, the Lagos State Commissioner for Finance and Economic Planning, fielding questions on television last Monday about the remarkable transformation programme of the Lagos Government. It must be repeated in this column that Lagos State has been the revelation of the Fourth Republic in terms of its modernizing agenda and the revolutionary impetus with which the battle of paradigm shift has been waged so far.

Right from its 1999 innovative blueprint which took so much time in putting together and consumed the energy of the cream of the Nigerian progressive intelligentsia, it was clear that something new was afoot in the old Colonial Protectorate. Never in the history of Nigeria has a government prepared itself so strenuously for office.

Fifteen years into the dawn of new democratic governance in Nigeria, it is clear that the modernizing and transformative impetus of the Lagos State Government has hardly dimmed. If anything, the project has deepened under Babatunde Raji Fashola. Fashola has proved a worthy successor to Bola Tinubu, the original avatar of relentless modernization.

In the light of the exemplary performance of the duo in the field of economic development the question must now be broached. Can modernization be a politically neutral project? Given the fact that neither Tinubu nor Fashola can be considered as flame throwing radicals can modernization be adopted as an ideology and political project irrespective of the personal idiosyncrasies of the political figures?

When the issue is posed this way in a country desperate for development, we leave behind us such sterile and static dichotomies as left versus right and radical versus reactionary that had set the pace for earlier debate. But this is not without some grave moral and ideological consequences. The danger in abandoning the old dichotomies lies in the fact that despite modernization and its gains, it leads to an ideologically neutered politics in which it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between right and left and progressive and retrogressive.

This is not a moot point or a mere academic tiff. Despite the flurry of modernization and the transformation of Lagos City into a glittering and alluring megalopolis, there is some carping and sniffing that the project is too elitist and not people-friendly. The answer to this is that after successfully testing its modernizing template, the Lagos state government must now broaden its conceptual parameter and refine the paradigm with a view to lifting more people out of the poverty trap. The recent Annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium which focused rightly on the plight of Nigeria’s multi-ethnic underclass may well be a sign of a shift of paradigm.

Akabueze was particularly spot on with his linkage of economic growth and development with intense capital projects as opposed to the recurrent expenditure which consumes virtually all of the state budgets in contemporary Nigeria. His laments about low electricity generation as the key structural impedimenta to rapid growth and development in Nigeria must also worry our policy planners. For example, Lagos needs about 10,000 megawatts but currently generates only 1,000 megawatts. It will take a billion dollars to double the output to 2,000. When viewed from this perspective, the problem looks like an insurmountable mess, thanks to corruption and kleptocracy.

With its sterling vision of a new economic nirvana with the Lagos mega-city as its economic and transformative hub, the Lagos State government appears on top of its brief. The old Colony is astir once again. But it faces major constraints from the lax and laggard central government with its sloth and inefficiency as well as the cultural and political constraints of the old regional arrangement.

From its stiff and rigid body language, its polite frown of unease and Governor Raji Babatunde Fashola’s charge to the Lagos State delegation to the ongoing National Conference, it is clear that Lagos regards itself as the leader and articulating hub for the new economic miracle of the Yoruba nation which deserves some consideration and a special status.

May be rightly so, given its gargantuan GDP and sheer population. You cannot step into the same river twice. The old regional arrangement which gave pride of place to Ibadan under Chief Obafemi Awolowo can no longer be sustained given the fact that economic hegemony cannot be divorced from political hegemony.

This is one of the compelling realities of military state creation in Nigeria that we must face. The military strategy, with the bogey of Awolowo and probably the Sardauna concentrating their mind, was to liquidate regionality as a mantra of political identity and regionalism as an ideological instrument of resistance to faulty federalism.

They almost succeeded. But as long as Lagos remains within the progressive orbit, the new contradictions can be managed and overcome. If however it were to be captured by a rival party with no truck with regional integration, the whole edifice can be brought crashing down. Mistaking this token totem of economic progress as a symbol of Yoruba irredentism, the federal authorities are bent on bringing Lagos politically to heel and the nation itself to ruination in the process.

There is a surfeit of other forces in contention for this demolition job which may render the federal efforts quite nugatory. This is where hopes of a resurgent Nigeria give way to the hopelessness of entrenched tunnel vision. While Ben Akabueze was giving his lucid disquisition on the state economy, the Nigerian military was rolling out its tanks in their awesome number in what it describes as a major operation to rid some vital Northern states of Fulani herdsmen. In recent times, these indigenous insurgents have made large swathes of the old Northern Nigeria virtually ungovernable.

Whatever its failings, the Nigerian military remains the most emblematic and powerful totem of the Nigerian post-colonial state and its ability to compel obedience and compliance to its writ and authority. The state, like some powerful deity, evokes terror and a feeling of safety at the same time, with equal ability to protect and to punish.

In its classical incarnation, the state exists to protect the people and to secure them against adverse and hostile circumstances. In exchange for this security, human beings are only too willing to surrender some of their rights and part of their freedom. The alternative is a return to the state of nature from whence they emerged and whose vicissitudes they mortally dread.

This is why in certain societies, the worship and glorification of the state takes on a religious motif. As the linchpin and launch pad of its offensive against adversarial elements and the backbone of its defence against hostility, the military has been constant as the most critical sector of state architecture.

This is why the third isolated force should be of utmost importance to perceptive compatriots. While the Nigerian military was waging a psychological offensive through a display of its awesome arsenal, a delegation of northern Nigerian leaders was asking President Jonathan not to renew the state of emergency in three northern states as a result of the current Boko Haram war.

Their argument is that since the military campaign has failed to stem the tide of the insurgency, it was time to explore other avenues of ending the conflict. The northern leaders came just short of saying that the military has been worsted by the Boko Haram insurgency. For the reasons that we have enumerated above, Nigeria is entering a very dangerous territory.

The defeat and even the demystification of the regular military by an irregular army always have dire and severe consequences for both the state and the nation. We cannot eat our cake and have it. Everywhere in post-colonial Africa where this has taken place, it has led to a drastic reconstitution of the state and occasionally a dissolution of the nation itself.

The list is long and seemingly endless: Ethiopia, Somalia, Liberia, the two Congos, Sierra Leone, Libya, Mali, Uganda, CAR etc. As the country is sucked into the vortex of what is obviously a borderless international war and with numerous internal militias testing its resolve, the question is: can the Nigerian military buck the trend or will it buckle under the threat?

The overwhelming of the Nigerian military will be a momentous event for both nation and continent, if not the entire world. The magnitude of the humanitarian catastrophe is better imagined. An unbroken line of refugees will stretch from one end of the West African coastline to the other. It is going to be an apocalyptic nightmare; a Dante’s inferno.

This is a unique and precarious moment in the history of the post-colonial state in Nigeria and Africa. It is clear that President Jonathan can no longer use the outcome of the ongoing Constitutional Conference as an instrument of radical surgery for the ailing Nigerian state and nation. As a belated convert to the original national clamour, he dithered and delayed long enough for the eventual gathering to suffer a dilution of agenda, a diminution of status and a dwindling of credibility.

If this was his original strategic intention, he has succeeded far beyond his hopes and aspirations. But it is only a temporary respite. He will soon discover that the original problems are still very much with us. Jonathan will be lucky if public revulsion and anger do not mount should the economic and security situation worsen after the conference and its huge bill. But nothing can be completely useless. Jonathan should at least use the conference as a listening post to gauge the foul mood of the nation. Once again tea leaves are rustling in Abuja.

April 6, 2014
Meet the common man, at Tinubu’s birthday

But one VIP who ought to be there was not: President Jonathan

If course Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has always identified with the common man, as numerous ordinary Nigerians have been drinking from his well of generosity. So, it was nothing new that the 6th Annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium, held at the Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lekki Road, Victoria Island, Lagos, on March 29, was tagged ‘The Summit of the Common man’. It was a befitting way to mark Tinubu’s 62nd birthday.

Without doubt, some of those who came to the summit would have been wondering what the common man had to do with such a prestigious hotel. The invitation card was as simple as it could come, yet beautiful. The common man can still live with that elegance in simplicity. But Lagos Oriental Hotel, where I had to park my car on the fourth floor! Won’t the common man faint on seeing the place? What would be going on in his mind on getting there?

Well, one may need to get into the inner recesses of the common man to find genuine answers to these questions. What is important for now is that as the event unfolded, no one was in doubt as to the fact that it, indeed, was a summit for the downtrodden. Don’t forget, the common man has many names: ‘the downtrodden’ is one of them; the others are ‘the masses’, ‘the hoi polloi’. In some instances they are more derogatively referred to as ‘the wretched-of-the-earth’. The summit turned out not to be the usual avenue for the rich and the mighty to talk to, or look down on the rest of the society, backslap and laugh heartily over champagne even as they decide who gets which oil bloc and which appointments, with due process least in their considerations.

One needed to be at the event to appreciate the effort that was put into it. Kudos to those who conceived the idea of the annual colloquium as a way of institutionalising a platform for discourse on salient national issues. This year’s is spectacular in view of the Boko Haram mindless orgy of violence and the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) tragedy in which 19 Nigerian job seekers perished in their search for elusive jobs two weeks before (the colloquium). Since the common man is most affected by these tragic incidents, it is only fit and proper to ‘hear from the horse’s mouth’, as they say. The common man specially invited to the occasion came from all parts of the country and they also represented every aspect of our challenges as Nigerians, from insecurity to lack of social security even for the Older Citizens, to the chronic unemployment, to lack of capital for those who might even want to start their own business instead of roaming the streets in search of non-existent jobs, etc.

Some of the accounts were as moving as they were gripping. Take the case of 23 year-old Emmanuel who had glaucoma in the secondary school which he needed N200,000 to treat. His parents could only raise N20,000. His dream of reading Sociology and capping it with a Master’s in Theology was seriously threatened as a result of the sight challenge. Emmanuel is currently an inmate in Bethsaida School for the Blind, 31, Agege Motor Road, Lagos, being managed by 43-year-old Chioma who was moved to found the home because some members of her immediate family were also blind. Emmanuel is sad because, according to him, the blind in Nigeria could have done better than the Steve Wonders of this world with the necessary encouragement. As with most similar homes, Bethsaida School for the Blind depends on the generosity of Good Samaritans, like the Tinubus, and at times, the inmates skip meals for lack of enough food to go round. It is a pathetic story that cannot be fully told here.

There is also Mallam Aji who lost his wife and mother of their six children to the Boko Haram sect. As a lecturer, he says he is an endangered species. The armed gang came looking for him twice and had to kill his wife on the second occasion, because they thought she was hiding him from them. Mallam Aji also lost his uncle to the Boko Haram gangs and said that troops only responded after the harm had been done, despite warnings of impending attacks by the deadly sect.

Soprinye Victor, a 2010 chemical engineering graduate of Niger Delta University came to Lagos in search of job. Unable to find one, she returned to Bayelsa, her home state, and began a hair dressing salon. This she lost to flood; she is still searching for job. She cracked a very costly joke which sent many guests laughing at first but later registered as a big indictment on the government, when she said someone told her she was not competent to speak on unemployment, as she is only three years on the unemployment queue!

Mr Ron Mgbatogu was also there to speak for the neglected Senior Citizens. At 68, and after governments have taken his tax for over 40 years, he merely has a roof over his head but not a home of his own. He is lamenting the lack of rebates on goods and services for his category of citizens.

Farmers were also represented by Alhaji Gambo Haladu from Kano State, who spoke about the racket that fertiliser subsidy has become; widows by Mrs. Elizabeth Unah, whose husband died in the attempt to rescue their children from an inferno. Her life has never been the same ever since their breadwinner died. As for fishermen, Chief Eric Dooh, from Goi Community in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State who lost his livelihood to oil pollution, stood in gap for them. The testimonies were rounded off with a video clip on the NIS tragedy. Depressing as the March 15 tragedy was, it was also a good mirror of the Nigerian society, from government’s sheer greed that will make it collect millions from jobless Nigerians, to the brutality of security agencies who treat Nigerians with contempt.

Anyone with conscience must have left that place so dejected and asking how come we are suffering like this in the midst of plenty. Who did we (Nigerians) offend that is making us go through this kind of punishment in the hands of callous leaders that keep recycling themselves?

Although, as expected, the place was jam-packed with the crème de la crème of the society, some of those who really matter were absent. The most conspicuous of them all was President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, thus prompting one to wonder whether he was not invited. If he wasn’t, that must have been a big oversight on the part of the organisers. He needed to be there to see it life, hear it life and probably feel it life. Perhaps what he would have heard and seen would have reminded him of his early childhood and thus prompted him to be more serious about governance. If he had been at that event, he would have known that corruption in Nigeria is indeed underestimated, contrary to his belief that it is exaggerated. His presence at that forum could have made him to ask more probing questions from his minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, when next she brandishes statistics showing that things are looking up in the country when they are actually looking down. I have always advocated that our big people, particularly those formulating policies must take time off their usual cocktail circuits to see and hear some of the things that we saw and heard at the summit. There is no way someone can know what the common man is going through unless the person takes time out to be with him.

Anyway, it is not too late to let the president into the proceedings at the summit. Copies of video recording of the occasion should be sent to the Aso Rock Villa for President Jonathan’s attention and possibly, action. But my take is that the ruling party is already lost and its situation irredeemable; it does not believe Nigeria has serious challenges; the president’s position on corruption is my witness.

But verily, verily I say unto you, the tragedy for the Nigerian nation is for the opposition parties not to do something about the country’s dire situation. The opposition, particularly the All Progressives Congress (APC) must get its axe together in its preparation for the next general elections. The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has sufficiently messed up the seat of power such that Nigerians must be ‘compound fools’ to return it to power. Like the fowl that is defecating in the soup pot, the party does not realise that it is already spoiling its final resting place.

April 6, 2014
Of impunity and lies as campaign strategy

Every town, village and community can point to Fayemi’s developmental landmarks

Fehingbepon and Tipa ti kuku are two Yoruba words that not only have the same etymology but, indeed, mean almost the same thing – i.e impunity. They are words that best describe the PDP attitude to elections in Nigeria, but more especially in Yoruba land. Former President Obasanjo deployed Fehingbepon in declaring PDP victorious in Ekiti in 2007 as in the subsequent ‘Mama Ayoka’s macabre dance of ‘conscienceless conscience’. For this election, two events have proved they hadn’t changed one bit. These are: Buruji Kashamu’s ‘I will make Ekiti an example’ speech at Ibadan and the absolutely irreverent manner he stage- managed Fayose’s emergence acting on the orders of President Jonathan. These are clear indications that the shoeless one has bought into the ‘Tipa ti kuku’ strategy of his hatchet men in the Southwest. We would soon see more of Jonathan’s satanic schemes against mainstream Yoruba interests. In this project, his deployment of the two new Yoruba ministers to security portfolios was no happenstance. He is already primed to begin a massive funding of his captured wing of Afenifere for overt purposes to which elements of Labour and Accord had been financially induced. Arrests of APC leaders and supporters by the police on spurious charges are most likely to begin in earnest just as the PDP intends to embark on a massive buying of voters cards at totally unimaginable prices. This, in particular, should tell Nigerians where the billions being daily stolen under President Jonathan are headed. As if the federal government is just waking up, it will now also begin to pour kerosene to Ekiti and Osun as if the product is going extinct.

As earlier mentioned, PDP is relying on ‘Tipa ti kuku’ which is to be stream rolled, like a war armada, from the Villa. Courtesy the presidency, INEC and ALL the security agencies will kowtow to the PDP. President Jonathan has started that process by making the Police ministry a Southwest heredity. The compromised man in charge will do just about anything they direct. In collusion with INEC, they will do everything to rig in the remote areas, the police and other security agencies will have instructions from headquarters to overlook their evil machinations. On election day, APC strongholds will be deprived of ballot papers and where materials come at all, they will arrive late and in insufficient numbers. Even at its topmost level, PDP will not demur from asking INEC to just simply announce its candidate the winner boasting, ‘nothing will happen’. But a thousand and one will happen because Ekiti will not look askance; not after we have been twice cheated in the past.

For the campaigns in the meantime, the two cousins, Labour and PDP, are employing lies as campaign tools. While impunity is PDP’s preferred option, Labour has the rare distinction of being able to manufacture lies at the drop of a hat. Happily, Ekiti people have come to see lies as consistent with the Labour party wherever it rears its ugly head but certainly worst in Ondo state where it is putting our people through a scorching regime of the very opposite of everything it promised during the last election campaigns in the state. Rather than roads, what they see are abandoned projects and in place of new jobs, old ones are being erased at an alarming rate. It cannot but be a surprise that an oil producing state could be shouting itself hoarse over the late disbursement of Sure-P funds even where there is nothing to show for the billions received.

The PDP in Ekiti has miserably, but unsuccessfully, tried to draw a similarity between Mimiko and Fayemi lying that the latter will behave like Mimiko after his already God-ordained victory. In dismissing this arrant nonsense, I have Ondo-state born Femi Odere to thank for his highly analytical article: ‘Between Fayemi and Mimiko’ –The Nation, Tuesday, 25 March 2014.

Wrote Odere: ‘The innumerable socio-economic milestones that are geared towards the creation of jobs and wealth by the Fayemi administration within a short span of a little over three years in a state that comes second from the rear out of 36 states in terms of federal allocation speak volumes about a leader who knows what needs to be done for his people. Mimiko, in contradistinction, flagged off his administration by announcing the construction of a Dome in Akure about five years ago. As you read this, the Dome is still under construction even after its cost had been reviewed upwards. Mimiko established a Tomato Processing factory somewhere in Akoko during his first term. But no sooner after this factory was commissioned than the place got converted into a pure water factory. Mimiko announced years ago that a cement factory will be built in the state, but the bush where the factory was to be sited is yet to be cleared. Mimiko announced during his first term that privatisation of the state’s moribund industries is the way to go in order to spur economic growth and job creation. Oluwa Glass Factory, one of the industrial flagships of the late Papa Adekunle Ajasin administration which fell under his privatization sledgehammer is yet to produce a single piece of glass years after its privatization. No sooner than the state government relinquished its controlling equity in the Okitipupa Oil Palm Processing Factory, several financial scandals broke to rock the factory’s government-appointed Managing Director. The factory is once again comatose. The Akure-Oba Ile airport road, started during his first term at a cost of several billions of naira, still uncompleted, the mere eight-kilometre road has been re-awarded at a new cost of several billions. The Olokola Free Trade zone, an initiative of the late Agagu administration that could have been a major catalyst in spurring huge economic growth in the state was jettisoned by Mimiko because the politics of the Free Trade zone is more important to him than the economic and job-creation benefits which the trade zone would have created for the people of the State. One can go on ad infinitum’

Ekitis, a very discerning people, need not seek any further than this testimonial to put Opeyemi Bamidele where exactly he belongs. Incidentally he has just upped his game by claiming that ALL the 132 towns and villages in Ekiti have mineral deposits. There is also the chimera of what he calls a welfare package for all the chiefs in the state. Lies, lies and yet more lies! You would think he was addressing impressionable 5-year olds. The PDP, master riggers that they are, are no better; only that their strategy is at variance with Labour party’s Joseph Goebbels’s inspired propagandist lies. They are infinitely more satanic and for them, nothing is beyond conjecture.

On the other hand, however, Ekitis already know Fayemi like the back of our palms. Indeed, his other sobriquet, apart from Ilufemiloye 1, is ‘Owi be e, se bee’ –he who fulfils promises. Fayemi only has to tell you his government would do so and so, and the town, community or individual can go to sleep. It is this trustiability that underpins his annual pre-budget state-wide tours, asking the people what their priorities are for the year’s budget. It is the reason why today, every town, village and community can point to his developmental landmarks.

All these devilish schemes are highlighted that we Ekitis may be prepared to the last man to counter whatever the plans the caterwaulers may have up their sleeves. Equally important is the need for the world to know: the likes of the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, the AU, all of which carry the can of the aftermath of immature and anti-democratic actions of African leaders must, willy nilly, be put on notice as to what is afoot in Yoruba land, courtesy President Jonathan, and, long before the Armageddon.

April 6, 2014
How ASUU joined the NLC: a footnote to an underground and unwritten history

When in 2007 Patrick F. Wilmot published his explosive book, Nigeria: the Nightmare Scenario, I was startled beyond all measure when I came across his bald and bold claim in the book that it was he, Wilmot, who was responsible for the historic merger of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) with the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). As a radical, Pan Africanist senior lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) for many years, the Jamaican-born Wilmot who was married to a Nigerian had been a member of the ABU branch of ASUU. I was the National President of ASUU for part of the period when Dr. Wilmot was at ABU and we did meet a few times during my innumerable visits to Zaria. But even though he was known as one of the ‘campus radicals’ of ABU, in my perception of what was happening at the time, Wilmot was not particularly active in ASUU-ABU. Thus, I was startled when I read the claim in his 2007 book that he had been the man responsible for ASUU joining the NLC by suggesting the move to the late Mahmud Modibbo Tukur who had succeeded me as ASUU National President. Wilmot’s claim is completely false and I shall have more clarifications to make on it later in this piece when I write about Tukur’s reluctance or reservations about taking ASUU into the NLC.

The matter of who was responsible for ASUU joining the NLC in 1983 or 1984 (I don’t have my notes and papers with me in Cambridge, Massachusetts to verify the exact date) came up again last year when my friend and fellow writer, Odia Ofeimun, in his moving and eloquent tribute to Festus Iyayi claimed that it was Iyayi who made the historic move when he was President of ASUU. This also is not true and I called Ofeimun both to congratulate him on the brilliance and eloquence of his eulogy to Iyayi and to correct his mistaken claim that Festus had been the man who took ASUU into the NLC. Ofeimun thanked me for the correction and said that he wished that I had seen the draft of his eulogy before it was delivered so that the error could have been averted.

There was another case of inaccurate attribution of responsibility for the ASUU-NLC merger that was both far more complicated than these other cases of Wilmot and Ofeimun and throws considerable light on the whole matter and this had to do with Dr. Segun Osoba, formerly of the University of Ife, a great historian and a pillar of strength, courage and consistency in the radical movement at OAU Ife in particular and Nigerian universities in general. In a speech that he delivered to a national conference of ASUU after the death of Mahmud Tukur, Osoba asserted that Tukur himself had been the person who took ASUU into the NLC.

When I read the speech I smiled ruefully at the unintended ironies in Dr. Osoba’s claim. This is because while Osoba was factually correct in stating that it was during the presidency of Tukur that ASUU joined the NLC, what he did not know, or perhaps what he had forgotten is that fact that Tukur was actually not keen on the move and it took a lot of persuasion for him to agree to the NLC-ASUU merger. Moreover, Tukur’s reluctance or lack of enthusiasm was based on solid theoretical and ideological grounds that are worth returning to, that are indeed the basis of my going back to the matter nearly three decades later. So to start with, what was the historic significance of the ASUU-NLC merger and what is its enduring legacy decades after Babangida took ASUU out of the NLC?

At the present time when the ties and contacts between ASUU and NLC are so intimate and regular and a good umber of Nigerian university lecturers have a keen and supportive in interest in the NLC and the lot of workers, it is perhaps difficult to imagine the vast distance that existed between Nigerian workers and Nigerian academics in the 60s and 70s before ASUU joined the NLC. The distance was so great the only a few radical academics whose number could be counted in single digits had anything to do with the trade unions. Which is why academics like Ola Oni of Ibadan, Eskor Toyo of Calabar and Ikenna Nzimiro of Nsukka stood out among their colleagues as the friends of labour in our universities at the time. Indeed, they not only stood out, they were regarded on the campuses as oddities, “communists” who were deluded in their association with workers and the trade unions. I can add my own personal experience to this observation because when, as a young lecturer, I began to associate closely and regularly with trade unionists, many of my closest friends and associates in the community of radical writers and critics looked at my trade union comrades with suspicion if not indeed with disdain!

On a much larger historical and global terrain, this was in fact something endemic to virtually all the capitalist societies of the world, this separation of workers from academics, a separation in effect of manual labour from intellectual labour. This fear had and still has a justifiable reality in the fact that an alliance of workers and intellectuals, of workers in the factories and workers in the elite institutions of education in any country in the world often shakes conservative and oppressive capitalist societies to their foundations. This was the larger historical, ideological and political background to the ASUU-NLC merger.

Against the background of this larger historical and global context, the claim that any one person has sole responsibility for, or was the single moving force in the ASUU-NLC alliance is a fatuous and misleading claim. For my generation of so-called ‘campus radicals” we drew inspiration from and followed the examples of people like Ola Oni, Eskor Toyo and Nzimiro. Speaking for myself, long before I became ASUU President, I had been attending meetings of the NLC as an unofficial observer at the then headquarters of the organization at Ojuelegba in Lagos. And I was reporting my observations and experiences at these meetings to the radical groups to which I belonged at the time principally the Socialist Collective at Ife and the Anti-Poverty Movement of Nigeria (APMON) which had branches all over the country. And when I became ASUU President, with the permission and authority of the National Executive Council of the Union, I applied for and got official observer status at the meetings of the NLC and became quite familiar and intimate with leaders of the trade union movement in our country like “Labour Leader No 1” Pa Imoudou, Hassan Sumonu, S.O.Z. Ejiofor, M.J. Sule and Adams Oshiomhole, the current governor of Edo State who was then a middle-level leader in the trade union movement.

Again, I must emphasize the fact that only with temporal hindsight can we see now as logical and inevitable what at the time was a very steep and arduous mountain to climb. As ASUU President, it had been relatively easy for me to get official observer status at NLC meetings because we did not have to take the matter to the entire Union and its branches for approval; all I had to do was get the approval of the National Executive Council and this wasn’t difficult. All along, the ultimate objective was that we had to take the whole Union, ASUU, into the NLC. By “we” here I am referring to radicals and progressives at many of the branches of ASUU across the country. “We” were influential but small in numbers; moreover, the majority of the membership of ASUU always watched our moves and tactics with keen, vigilant interest if not with suspicion.

When Mahmud succeeded me as ASUU President “we” decided that the time had come to make the move. This was because Mahmud was not as strongly “suspected” as a “friend of labour” by the generality of ASUU members as I was. Moreover, it was well known that he was not particularly close to the trade union movement. For this reason, as the Immediate Past President (IPP) with a lot of clout in the Union, I was delegated by the radical left in all the ASUU branches to “work” on Mahmud to make him go along with the objective of taking the whole Union, ASUU into the NLC.

At this point, I must now take up my earlier observation in this piece that Mahmud had important theoretical and ideological reservations about taking our Union into the NLC. The contents of his reservations and objections can be briefly summarized. First, Mahmud thought that both in practice and ideology, the leadership of the labour movement in Nigeria was radical and progressive in name only; he thought their bark was much bigger than their bite. Secondly, he thought that at key moments in the history of the labour movement in Nigeria, this leadership of the trade union movement had sold out to employers and the government. Finally and most important of all, Mahmud thought that while in his opinion, farmers and rural communities were the most potentially revolutionary force in Nigeria because they were far more extensively and cynically exploited than workers, labor leaders in Nigeria had never sought and pursued an alliance with farmers and rural communities.

As indicated in the title of this piece, this essay is merely a footnote to an unwritten history. The whole history will be written some day, hopefully sooner than later in the near future. What remains for me to say in concluding this piece is to report that in my theoretical discussions on the matter with Mahmud, I succeeded in making him pay attention to things that were going on in underground currents among workers, farmers and intellectuals in the country, things indicating that the distances between these groups were narrowing and were being transcended. It was on the strength of this that he agreed to go along with the objective of taking ASUU into the NLC. But even then, he refused to personally represent ASUU in the Central Working Committee (CWC) of the NLC as he should have as the incumbent president of our Union. Rather than take his place in the CWC of the NLC, he delegated that task to me as ASUU’s IPP and for close to three years I attended every meeting of that highest organ of the NLC as ASUU representative.

ASUU was eventually kicked out of the NLC by Babangida but the links had been irrevocably forged such that the formal, autocratic attempt of the dictator to effectively sunder the links failed woefully. Without being a formal affiliate of the NLC, ASUU remains closely connected with the national labour body. The most important expression of the legacy of that historic alliance is the fact that today and well into the future that lies ahead of us, workers and academics in our country no longer see their destinies as separate and unrelated as they once did in the long years and decades before ASUU went into the NLC. A Luta Continua!

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

April 6, 2014
What did Lamido say wrong at the confab?

A national conference dedicated to renewal or reinforcement of territorial unity is not a wrong place for the Lamido and others with courage to ignore history of nationalities

I have heard our people say that we need to openly and frankly discuss our problems and seek acceptable solutions instead of allowing them to fester and remain sources of perennial conflict…. The conference is open for us to table our thoughts and positions on issues, and make recommendations that will advance our togetherness….We cannot join hands together to build a collective vision if we continue to harbor negative biases and prejudices against ourselves….Over the coming weeks, you will be confronted with complex and emotive issues, strong views will be expressed by opposing sides and some disagreements will, in all likelihood, be intense— President Goodluck Jonathan at the opening of the ongoing confab

In the last few days, the Lamido of Adamawa has been reported as threatening to walk out of the conference and as boasting before delegates that in the event that Nigeria breaks up, he has a country to go to in the Republic of Cameroons. He assured his fellow delegates that Nigeria’s disintegration would give him an opportunity to rule over the larger part of his kingdom than the portion he currently presides over within Nigeria. For saying this, some delegates have fired at him with caustic words for not acting in consonance with the grandeur of his office and for mentioning the taboo word,break-up of Nigeria at a conference that had foresworn not to mention such a word of national embarrassment.

Given the admonitions of President Jonathan at the conference, the Lamido has not done anything untoward or unwholesome. He has just expressed his feelings in an overtly emotive manner against the pedestrian or puerile behavior of delegates with opposing views to the rule to make 75% of votes the basis of majority decision.To people who are transitive carriers of culture, the Lamido of Adamawa said what is crucial at a conference designed to re-launch the country. Re-launching has to be preceded by deconstructing what needs to be repaired or transformed.

Was the emir wrong in saying that his emirate extends beyond Nigeria into the Cameroons? Nigerian History101 makes this clear. Lamido is not unique in having pre-colonial kingdoms that extend today into other countries in Africa. The Ooni of Ife and the Alafin of Oyo make similar claims about Yoruba kingdoms in the Republics of Benin and Togo. Several Yoruba monarchs hold annual festivals and rituals that demonstrate the linkage. So can the Obong of Calabar make the kind of claim made by the Lamido. Nothing can prevent the Sultan of Sokoto or Ekanem of Kanuri from making similar claims. During ShehuShagari’s presidency, AlhajiShugaba was deported from Nigeria for not being a Nigerian but a citizen of Niger Republic. Political folklore during the era of military dictatorship even cited several military leaders as having their ancestry in Chad, Niger, Mali, and Sudan. Such is the character of most post-colonial African countries. The Akan of Ghana are the same as the Baoule of Cote d’Ivoire, just as the Hutus of Rwanda also extend into parts of the Republic of Congo. So do the Tswana and Sotho extend beyond the borders of Republic of South Africa.

A national conference dedicated to renewal or reinforcement of territorial unity is not a wrong place for the Lamido and others with courage to ignore history of nationalities.To forget the pre-colonial history of Nigerian nationalities is tantamount todenialism or refusing to come to terms with reality.Denialism as a syndrome came to its head during the military era, when military rulers thought and believed that cultural amnesia would reinforce inter-ethnic unity in the country, the way it was believed, it had done in the colonial army bequeathed to Nigeria at independence by British colonial overlords.

Many highly placed civilians (some of whom General Alani Akinrinademust have referred to during his contribution on President Jonathan’s opening speech as collaborators in the military’s schemes to de-federalize Nigeria) have also promoted denialism as a way of forestalling any attempt to deconstruct the Nigeria constructed by military dictators. It is this attitude that induced some delegates to re-affirm in response to the Lamidothat they came to the conference as Nigerians and not with any ethnic toga or stigma, as if it was not obvious to citizens that President Jonathan did not allow nomination of Ghanians or Beninoise to the conference.

On the political level, denialism or burying one’s head in the sand like an ostrich in order not to confront the unpleasantness of one’s situation, had since 1966 led to categorizing issues for discussion at national conferences into No-go areas and May-enter zones. It is the continuation of this military vision of Nigeria that made it mandatory for the Okuroumu advisory group and President Jonathan himself to repeat the notion of No-go area for the ongoing conference. Nigerians are not allowed to discuss the endangerment of the unity that defines the country. Thus delegates must have been obeying their master’s voice by shrinking or freezing when the Lamido mentioned the fact that he has a country to return to, should this one collapse.

In most countries that had to review their charter of union in the past, serious-minded people had avoided playing the ostrich with such activities. It must not be lost on delegates that there is always a need to break eggs in order to makeomelette. Saying what appears unpleasant to many delegates, as the Lamido of Adamawa had done, does not automatically kill the country’s unity. It shouldn’t if there is already a good reason for the country’s existence. On the contrary, it may end up enhancing it, particularly if delegates choose to remind Lamido and others with his sense of history that a rule that allows 26% or even 31% to annul the wishes of 74% or 69% is capable of further reinforcing the status quo that made the conference necessary in the first place. Accepting a rule that allows less than one-third of voters to rubbish the preference of more than two-thirds can undermine the unity of any country that practices democracy.Delegates need to emphasize that most Nigerians do not live along the border and would not have any other country to run to should this one disintegrate and that the wish of such people requires as much protection as that of Lamido, if Nigeria is to be sustainably united.

Anyone that goes to a conference of this magnitude with morbid fear to speak his or her mind about what ails Nigeria should not have been there or would not have been there if nationalities had been allowed to elect their delegates. Nothing is likely to damage the unity of Nigeria the more than efforts to paper over the cracks by people with hidden agenda or occluded expectations from the opportunity to serve as delegate. As Nigerians love to say: “It is not over until it is over.” Should self-deception define the psychology of delegates, the desire for true federalism (as distinct from mere devolution of functions by a central government that arrogates supervisory authority over subnational governments) will continue to be a part of Nigeria’s political agenda and discourse, for as long as it takes and regardless of the number of conferences called to do so.

April 6, 2014
Osun poll may scarify Southwest politics beyond imagination

If care is not taken, the 2014 and 2015 polls in the Southwest may signpost the collapse of normal politics as we know it. Given the way former Osun State Governor Isiaka Adeleke was choked out of the PDP primary in Osun, it is feared that President Goodluck Jonathan’s plan for Southwest polls may be strewn with all sorts of perils and premonitions. He has placed the unscrupulous Musiliu Obanikoro as his point man in Lagos and empowered him with the position of Minister of State for Defence. Mr Obanikoro has remorselessly begun to use illicit powers to muscle his home state and perceived enemies, and in general to undermine the peace and prosperity of his geopolitical zone.

The president and his party have also placed the impetuous and coarse Ayo Fayose in Ekiti as a countervailing force to Governor Kayode Fayemi, and are prepared to back their surrogate all the way in furtherance of the president’s determination to take the state from the APC. Dr Jonathan is also preparing to seize Osun by appointing into his cabinet the lachrymose and unconscionable Jelili Adesiyan as the Minister of Police Affairs, a man whose nauseous ties to Iyiola Omisore are well known. Between Mr Adesiyan, who was accused of having a hand in the assassination of former Minister of Justice, Bola Ige, and the overambitious Mr Omisore, a former deputy governor, a web is being spun to suffocate the APC and retake the state.

Perceptive south-westerners must however be worried about the kind of politics the president is playing in the Southwest. His point men in the zone are all disposed to violence, and they are all backed by limitless federal power. Their brief is to ‘capture’ the zone, and they will stop at nothing to carry out that brief. In other words, if the Southwest escapes the grip of Mr Obanikoro in Lagos, Mr Fayose will grab them by the neck. And if they escape Mr Fayose in Ekiti, the duo of Adesiyan and Omisore will asphyxiate them. Taking Ekiti and Osun is to Dr Jonathan non-negotiable if he is to win the next presidential poll. He has a point to prove, and an axe to grind, for Dr Jonathan has never really hidden his loathing for a zone that appears to him proud, censorious and denigrating of others. But that zone is incidentally the only zone that still gives a semblance of peace and good governance in the country, a zone which he is nonetheless willing to turn inside out whatever the consequences.

Southwest leaders however appear engrossed with the road to Abuja. They must rethink their strategy if they are not to relive the First Republic all over again, when Obafemi Awolowo embarked on a fruitless journey to the centre and ended up losing the Western Region. Dr Jonathan, I must warn very seriously, is obsessed with taking Ekiti and Osun this year. Since he cannot take them peacefully and on the merit of PDP candidates, he will attempt to take them by force. He will not spare anyone, and he will not care what happens, notwithstanding his sweet words about peace and democracy. The APC must recognise that given the rapid descent to anomie all over the country, the courts are no longer an option as a tool of reclaiming legitimacy. If they do not win on first ballot by making it impossible for Dr Jonathan’s forces to practice their malfeasance, then they should forget it.

Should Dr Jonathan have his way, the consequences will of course be grim and swift. If, as we know, he shrugs his shoulders at the harvest of deaths in the Northeast and elsewhere, he will be prepared to even numb his arms and legs should the Southwest yield to violence. In addition, he will attribute the disaster, with the connivance of amoral and desperate Southwest factions like Bode George, rump Afenifere and Olusegun Mimiko, to the zone’s APC leaders. Since he is not a democrat, Dr Jonathan will always be poised on the edge of tyranny, eager to romp into authoritarianism at the slightest prompting, if we let him.

April 6, 2014