The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Boko Haram: have we learnt any lesson to end the war?

Like most other policies, including the flip-flop on rice import ban and the automotive policy, there is little debate, not to talk of deep, intellectual introspection accompanying the Goodluck Jonathan approach to fighting Boko Haram and terrorism in general. We are conversant with the endless presidential dithering on the menace, but finally, it seems, events and circumstances have compelled the government to stand and fight, instead of yielding, as its natural instincts always dictated. Horrifyingly, however, the government and the populace have decided to do nothing but fanatically fight the terrorist sect almost to the total exclusion of other measures. There is no discussion going on with the sect, as now seems obvious. And there is nothing beyond the trashed panel reports on the sect to show that both the government and the military have a minimal understanding of the sect’s social, political and ideological underpinnings.

This column has always maintained that the sect should be fought with single-minded resolve. But it has also always reminded the government of the need to address the factors that predisposed the Northeast in particular to the revolt, and urged the military to appreciate the kind of tactics required to defeat the sect and other revolts like it. I once reminded the military after the Baga, Borno State debacle that it must begin to furnish itself with the requisite knowledge needed to combat the multifarious challenges to stability and peace in the modern era. The country’s military doctrine, not to say our foreign policy doctrine, should be thoroughly revamped and modernised to take care of modern exigencies.

But given Dr Jonathan’s often inexplicable silence on the war and his reluctance to empathise with the victims, as well as the military’s sometimes exaggerated opinion of its understanding of the sect’s methods and what should constitute the rights and liberties of enemy combatants and victims of the war, it appears nothing is being done to ensure that when the war ends, the right lessons have been learnt and future reoccurrence made nearly impossible. There are a number of elements that show no lesson has been learnt. First, is the all-important matter of justice. Not only has the trial of the policemen who extra-judicially murdered the sect’s former leader, Mohammed Yusuf, been clumsily handled, even the trial judge recently threatened to discharge the suspects on account of state/prosecution apathy. The government is truly apathetic to justice.

Second, all those who contributed to the impoverishment of the region and other parts of the country continue to underplay their guilt and complicity. To show how distracted the federal government is, it managed to allocate two billion naira to address the devastation in the Boko Haram region. And third, and of course very significantly, the Northern political class that inherited the political mantle of the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, without his wisdom, restraint and accommodation, have shown absolutely no contrition for perpetrating decades of religious discrimination that fostered the fanaticism being witnessed today. It was obvious to most Nigerians that they were at first silent over the sect’s bestiality, before waking up to the reality that extremism of any kind and within or outside any faith is absolutely intolerable. Do Northern leaders now have this clear understanding, learning, as it were, from the experiences of Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan, among others?

The military has appeared to find its teeth in facing up to the Boko Haram madness. Hopefully the cessation of hostilities will not morph into scattered and intermittent suicide attacks on selected targets such as take place in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia and now China. However, the factors that sparked and now feed the war can only be denied fuel if the injustices and short-sightedness that serve as its lifeblood are eliminated. Could we trust the federal government and the political elite to take the revolutionary steps needed to remake the northern society and build it into a beautiful tapestry of heterogeneousness, the kind conceived and administered by the late Sardauna of Sokoto? Could we, indeed, trust those saddled with the onerous responsibility of ruling a large and complex society like Nigeria to embrace reason rather than emotions in administering the affairs of the country?

I have my doubts. For, even after Boko Haram is defeated, the absence of a remade and re-engineered society, one anchored on the right mix of liberal values, could yet trigger sporadic outbreaks of sectarian and ethnic wars that may ultimately doom the polity. This is the time for the philosopher-king, if we can find one.

March 16, 2014
Dem dey fight and dem dey chop

(Baba Lekki solves a state riddle)

On Friday morning as snooper nursed his wounds from internet felons who had hacked into his account and sent a message round the globe that yours sincerely was down on his luck in some Ukrainian hovel, Okon crept in wearing a massive scowl. He was brandishing a picture of Nigerian leaders backslapping and grinning from ear to ear at the recent centenary extravaganza.

The centenary celebrations had elicited quite a fierce controversy from affronted citizens who dismissed the whole farce as a misbegotten misplacement of national priorities. A master of unforced errors, Jonathan had chalked up a couple of own goals on that one. Having contributed to the opening debate, yours sincerely refrained from joining the fray. But the crazy boy appeared inconsolable.

“Oga I think dem say dis magomago people dey fight? Come see how dem dey laugh and dem dey yabi after dem done finish dem country. Which kind fight be dis?” the mad boy exploded.

“Okon, go away. Hackers have finished me. They have stolen my password”, Snooper moaned in distress.

“Oga, why you no get failword?” the mad boy demanded. As Snooper chased him away, it was a forlorn and dejected Okon who went in search of Baba Lekki for a solution to the state riddle. The old crook cleared his throat.

“You see Okon, you are a fool. Na dat one dem dey call Sunny Ade and Obey fight” the old man grunted.

“Baba wetin be dat? Abi dem Area Five leaves don scatter your head again?” Okon sneered.

“You see, when you be small pikin and your yeye mama never pick race, he get dem two musicians, Obey and Sunny. Dem dey carry rumour say dem dey fight and we go dey buy dem record yafuyafu. Small time I dey wonder say dis dem Sunny Obey fight, how come one of dem no dey hospital and one of dem no kaput sef? I come follow dem yeye musicians to dem Empire Hotel for Idi Oro where dem dey eat and dem dey make merry. I come lose my mind.. I come order dem make dem dey fight kiakia or I go finish dem. Naim dem come pick race. So na Sunny Obey fight be dat. When crocodile dey chop dem dey cry”, the old man submitted’

“Kai, kai na Amadiora go scatter dis yeye people!”, a deflated Okon yelped and collapsed into a heap.

March 16, 2014
The national conference: things it will talk about and things it will not talk about (1)

Over the last two decades, the calls had been for a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). What has finally emerged is the Jonathan National Conference (JNC). Praise be! Since the JNC is not and can never be the SNC, please don’t bring the expectations of one to the other, the expectations of the SNC to those of the JNC. To clarify what this means, I have outline below the things that the JNC will talk about and the things that it will not talk about.

Money sharing (or “fiscal federalism” and the principles of resource control and derivation): JNC will talk a lot about how oil wealth should be shared between the three tiers of government – the federal government; the state governments; and the local councils. There will be a lot of quarrelling, a lot of squabbling concerning what proportion of oil revenues should go to each of these three tiers. The oil producing states will argue passionately for an increase above the current 13%; the so-called “core” North will vigorously oppose that demand and will insist that population should be the main criterion of the share that goes to each state and each geopolitical zone of the country; the Southwest and the Southeast will in principle support the criteria of derivation and resource control, but it will be a weak, dithering support. Altogether, there will a significant pressure by most states and geopolitical zones for reduction in the share kept by the center, by the federal government.

Money sharing as an issue of great importance at JNC will be completely silent on the paltry and insignificant share of our oil wealth that goes to workers, farmers, the poor, the unemployed, old age pensioners and the millions of jobless youths. This is the fundamental cause of economic insecurity and backwardness in our country, but JNC will not talk about it. It will not talk about it for several reasons. First, the great majority of the handpicked delegates to JNC have never shown the slightest awareness of the fact that the poverty and economic insecurity of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians is a problem, a problem of crisis proportions. Secondly, JNC will not talk about it because the delegates are perfectly satisfied with how our oil wealth is currently being shared, that is primarily among the elites with a trickling down of a mere pittance to the masses through patronage. Thirdly and finally, the majority of the handpicked delegates to JNC are so fixated on ethnic nationality and geopolitical zones as the basis of money and power sharing in our country that where they should see concrete, living and suffering human individuals and groups, they see the “tribe”, the geopolitical zone and the religious community as the only valid criteria and agents of negotiation.

Power sharing (or “political and administrative federalism”): This will almost certainly be the most dominant issue of deliberations at JNC. The effective line of division will be between those who want the present order of a centre that is much stronger than the federating states and zones to continue and those who want considerable devolution of power and responsibilities to the federating units. At the core of this division between what we might designate the “unitarists” and the “federalists” is the presidency itself and the presidential system as compared with the parliamentary system. Jonathan has picked delegates to his JNC with an incontrovertible numerical advantage to the “unitarists” but at the end of the deliberations, concessions will be made to the “federalists”. At any rate, compatriots, expect to hear and read much about a “rotational presidency” at JNC.

But don’t expect that deliberations on power sharing as a subject at JNC will extend to true and genuine empowerment of the masses of Nigerians. Don’t expect to hear passionate and genuine respect for the rights of free association, of assembly, of rallies and demonstrations to be expressed at JNC. Don’t expect calls for building an active, mobilized and civic-minded populace as an inestimable expression of true democracy at JNC. Least of all should you expect that popular sovereignty, as contrasted with the “sovereign” power and authority of the President and the Executive State Governors, will be articulated at JNC. In the last four decades in our country, both the idea and the practices of popular sovereignty have been massively eroded, first by the run of military autocrats and then by their civilian legatees since 1999. Without exception, all the incumbents of Aso Rock Villa since 1999 have greatly feared any mass gatherings of Nigerians in their hundreds of thousands if and when such gatherings are not for religious revivals or in support of the government or a ruling class party. Without exception, when politicians and ruling class political parties in our country think of and talk about power sharing, they mean, quite unequivocally, power sharing only amongst themselves!

Will the terribly backward and ever regressing state of education, science and technology in our country be an important topic of deliberations at JNC? Don’t expect it, compatriots! On a per capita basis, Nigeria is one of the most irresponsible, even most delinquent countries in the world when it comes to public spending, public investment in education. If one makes an exception for a few state governors, spending and investment on physical and institutional infrastructures for education, science and technology in our country are abysmally inadequate. In a modern state – any modern state – this is like deliberately committing cultural and economic suicide. There ought to be an inviolable constitutional provision for this, that per capita spending and investment in education, science and technology that is consistent with UNESCO guidelines for developing countries should be enshrined in our Constitution.

But don’t expect that this will be an important topic of deliberations at JNC. Why not? Well, have any of our rulers, any of our governing elites, shown the slightest concern, not to talk of panic, about the terribly inferior performance rates of secondary school leavers at NECO exams? Have they shown the slightest concern over the fact that Nigerian universities don’t rank high either in Africa itself or in the world at large? Do they have any inkling as to why our university lecturers and professors have not given up but continue to mount protests against this indifference, this neglect – against all the calculated attempts to demonize them and delegitimize their rights of protest and strikes?

Let there be no doubt about JNC and what it portends. About slightly less than a year ago, Nigeria officially overtook South Africa as the country with the largest economy in Africa. Many economist and technocrats, either of the establishment itself or with an establishmentarian mind, rejoiced mightily over this “achievement”. But deep down and below the surfaces of growth without development, this “achievement” means little or nothing, either for the masses of ordinary Nigerians or for the Nigerian economy itself. For in the main, Nigeria continues to lag far behind South Africa and indeed most countries in Africa in per capita income. Nigerians living below the absolute poverty line still constitute the overwhelming majority of the populace, both in the urban centers and in the rural communities. The percentage of installed capacity for industrial production that is working is still very low as the aggregate cost of production, the aggregate cost of doing business in our country continue to be very high. Against the background of this array indices of growth without development, of the largest economy in the African continent that is also the most skewed and lopsided in its operations, our rulers and ruling class parties are extraordinary in their complacency, their mediocrity, their indifference to the plight of the great majority of Nigerians. JNC, in terms of the relationship between the things it will talk about and the things it will not and cannot talk about, JNC is the expression of this defining complacency of our political elites.

I do not in the least with to imply that the things JNC will talk about and those things it will not and cannot talk about are unconnected. For instance, power and/or wealth sharing among the elites and between the elites and the generality of Nigerians should be the concern of all true democrats and progressives. Indeed, I contend that we cannot or should not talk of one without talking simultaneously of the other. This observation has concrete, practical implications. Let me briefly spell out some of these implications in a provisional non-concluding end to this essay that will be more fully elaborated in next week’s continuation of the series. In the first place, democrats, progressives and radicals picked by Jonathan for his “national conference” should go there only or precisely to raise issues that JNC will not talk about. It is also okay for some of such progressive and democratic citizens who do not wish to join the JNC confab to decline the invitation, but to do so not in order to retreat into either silence or a jeremiad against the things that JNC will talk about. The great task before us is to show how power and money sharing among the elites connects to power and money sharing between the elites and the vast majority of our peoples. This will be the starting point in next week’s continuation of the series.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

March 16, 2014
Making Nigeria thrive after its first centenary (3)

Where and when law enforcement officials and citizens speak different languages, public order and law enforcement are bound to suffer

Last week, we encouraged delegates to the national conference to give utmost attention to discussion of full decentralisation of provision of education in the country. We argued that education and culture are interlocked and that in a multinational and multicultural society, it stands to reason that education is designed to respond to the cultural values of the diverse nationalities in the country. We concluded the piece by calling for devolution of provision of education at all levels to the regions or states while leaving the matter of standardisation, quality assurance, and specialised research in the hands of the central government. The focus of today’s article is on public order and law enforcement.

Political discourse in the country on how to achieve public order through proper design of law enforcement has been divided into two schools since the advent of military dictatorship. Just as they did in the education sector, military rulers also destroyed the pre-military multilevel police system enjoyed in many parts of the country until 1966. The Native Authority Police used in many parts of the country was jettisoned by military rulers and the practice of a monopoly of law enforcement by the central government was imposed on the entire country. At the end of the first round of military dictatorship in 1979, citizens and political parties called for devolution of the power to deter, detect, prevent, and punish crime to the states and local governments. The civilian government between 1979 and 1984 refused to countenance such calls. Again, at the end of the second round of military rule in 1999, citizens in various parts of the country called for establishment of state police as part of restructuring of the polity.

Such demands threw up an opposing school of thought, mainly in the northern part of the country. Northern governors, members of the national assembly, and cultural leaders argued forcefully against extending police powers to states and local governments. Many of them argued that Nigeria is not ripe for state police and that Nigerians are not mature enough to handle multilevel policing. Some even said that introducing state police is capable of destroying the country’s territorial unity. The two schools: those in favour of state police and those mortally opposed to it have not failed to engage each other rhetorically since 1999. Now that there is a national conference to discuss how to enhance the country’s unity and examine sources of tension capable of militating against national unity, delegates should not fail to grapple with this important matter in a sincere manner.

Just recently, the Speaker of the House of Representatives brought the debate over how best to maintain public order and make law enforcement efficient and accountable back to the front burner. Worrying about the insecurity in the country, spawned largely by the indiscriminate killing of innocent citizens by Boko Haram terrorists, the speaker raised a few posers that should catch the attention of delegates. First, he wonders if this period of growing insecurity on account of Boko Haram is not the right time to put all national security agencies including the Nigeria Police on first line charge to ensure financial independence and timely release of funds. Second, he calls for encouragement of the Nigeria Police to “institutionalise community policing as a framework for engaging local communities in a partnership for checking crime and terrorism.” Third, he asks whether it is not time for the national assembly to revisit the idea of state police in its ongoing efforts to amend the 1999 Constitution, referring implicitly to earlier decision by the national assembly to remove state police from the list of proposed changes to the constitution. The exercise, in its third year, now serves as the second window to the national conference with respect to constitutional change.

Although the speaker has moved the debate over devolution of powers to maintain public order from the negative side closer to the positive side, his positions are still too far from the kind of reasoning that is needed in a multiethnic democracy. Choosing to approach law enforcement in a multicultural society solely from an administrative or bureaucratic angle has been on the table for long without yielding any positive results. The problem with federal monopoly over policing the diverse communities is much more than when and how the police is funded or whether the existing central police force can establish community policing, a contradiction in terms. However, delegates should take a cue from the latest concerns of the speaker about why the nation’s security is failing: inefficient and ineffective security architecture.

Like education, public order is sustained by shared norms, social values and customs. Similarly, law enforcement also derives advantage from shared values and a common language between law enforcement agents and citizens. Individuals that engage in surveillance to prevent and unravel criminal activities function in specific languages. Where and when law enforcement officials and citizens speak different languages, public order and law enforcement are bound to suffer. Nigeria is a country of diverse nationalities and languages but security officials speak only English or a smattering of it, even when they are investigating or collecting intelligence from individuals who do not speak English. It should not surprise political leaders that there appears to be failure of intelligence and security in the country. Boko Haram may now be the most monstrous organisation. Oil thieves and kidnappers have also created (and are still creating) serious challenges to security in the country.

Delegates should separate the discussion of national unity from that of national security. A country that is territorially united but that is unsecured (and appears ‘un-securable’) stands the risk of destroying or compromising its unity. Delegates need to recognise the paradox that has defined governance in our country for too long. The current constitution gives power to subnational governments to create laws but denies them the power to enforce such laws. State governors are referred to as chief security officers of their states, without having any authority over the police that is detailed by the central government to protect such governors. The recent experience in Rivers State of a rivalry between the governor and the former commissioner of police illustrates this anomaly most graphically.

It is important for delegates to realise that other federations in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Arab world practice a multilevel police system. It is also necessary as delegates prepare for the conference to find out from citizens in their communities what type of police system they prefer. It is puerile to believe that Nigeria’s unity will be at risk if states and local governments are allowed to enforce laws, in collaboration with the central police that should be responsible for enforcing federal laws. State and local government laws need to be enforced by state and local government police.

Delegates should note that adopting the multilevel police system in use in all federal countries and in the United Kingdom, a multiethnic state that operates a unitary system of government, is more likely to reinforce Nigeria’s unity than insisting on the present central police system that many communities and citizens perceive to be designed to promote the interests of those in charge of federal governments at the expense of states and local communities.

Concluded

March 16, 2014
Is anyone inciting the military?

Last week, the Director of Defence Information , Maj Gen Chris Olukolade, accused politicians of making remarks capable of inciting troops battling the Boko Haram insurgency to mutiny. He did not expatiate. But he threatened that the authorities could invoke relevant provisions in the State of Emergency Act to bring offenders to book.

Even if it is true that anyone is inciting troops, the job of cautioning or prosecuting offenders should be left to the Minister of Defence to handle. The way he spoke and the content of his speech, however, show that the military rule mindset has not left the officers.

If the military is frustrated about its inability to quell the revolt, so are we. We are even more frustrated and worried, and fear that the military has not found the right mix of strategies and tactics to deal the insurgency an effective blow. Had we not criticised the military in its relationship with civilians in Baga, for instance, the improvement in psychological operations (Psy-Ops) that followed and won the populace over to their side would not have occurred.

The military top brass must appreciate public worries and find ways of reassuring and conciliating them. Threats are counter-productive. The army general should know that threatening or arresting the so-called inciters is like opening another major, needless and unwinnable front in the war against terror. Gen Olukolade should brief the public on the progress of the war and leave the minister the task of winning over the public and muffling criticisms and complaints.

March 16, 2014
APC road map: brilliant piece of politicking, but…

All of a sudden, politics has become cerebral. With the unveiling on Thursday of the All Progressives Congress’ social contract with Nigeria, in which the leading opposition party spells out in detail how it would govern the country and what the fundamental underpinnings of that government would be, it is hard not to acknowledge that we have finally reached a political watershed. No matter what anybody does now, and notwithstanding the bellyaching and proclivities of the ruling party, political platforms and campaigns must henceforth acquire sophistication and depth. I confess that the APC surprised me. It was well publicised that the party would make some kind of public presentation of a Code of Ethics and what can be properly described as a manifesto, but few expected the exercise to rise above the routine and stultifying level the country had become accustomed to in the past few decades or so.

Divided into many segments, the presentation showed coherence, class, style and consistency. The organisers’ sense of timing was fluidly dynamic and business-like, accompanied by the sort of discipline seldom realised in these parts, no matter how hard the effort. There were a few transgressions to be sure, like the poetic rendition the organisers, not the lady who did the presentation, didn’t manage with maturity, but on the whole, I was shocked by the modernity of the entire exercise. The segments were in fact so finely synchronised and showed depth and undisputed grasp of issues that I thought the whole thing ventured so daringly into uncharted and unsustainable territories. I half expected them to flounder at any moment, but they didn’t.

The speakers were themselves quite exceptional, to a man. When the founders of the party spoke, they did so with gravitas, absolutely shorn of the overbearing carriage and grammatical lunacy that sullied and undid the politics of the past. The progressives had been accused of one-man show, both in the distant and recent past. But on Thursday, the APC carried out a dress rehearsal of the egalitarianism, fraternity and equality they promised would be the credo of their party. No one dominated proceedings; and no one was an underdog. Tom Ikimi wandered a bit in his contribution, struggling for the rousing snobbery that lathered his Third Republic politics, but in general he made his point stoically. Audu Ogbeh, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Bisi Akande and Atiku Abubakar spoke firmly and precisely of the foundations of the party and their hopes for Nigeria. And the laconic Mohammadu Buhari spoke tersely of what APC hoped to accomplish.

There was quite some excitement when the 16 progressive governors addressed the audience. Rochas Okorocha of Imo spiritedly set the tone. Some of the governors addressed the cortex of the audience, and others spoke to their midriff. But they never lost sight of the need to inspire and, in a quaint way, even to rouse. It is hard not to imagine what great things the lot could do if the leadership of the country fortuitously passed into their hands. I doubt whether any other party for now can surpass them intellectually and in political drama. Somehow, too, the party managed to pull off the segment on the 10-point programme presentation. Not only was the content coherent and remarkable, even by international standards, the impassioned discussants, including the boisterously lovable rascal Dino Melaye and the implacable Nasir el-Rufai were classical in their performances.

I thought the keynote lecture ought to have been delivered by a politician of great standing and rhetorical flamboyance, someone with a Clintonian flourish or the mesmerising profundity of the lawyerly Obama. But the APC gave the assignment to the dour and gritty Oby Ezekwesili, who though was brilliant and courageous, did not deliver her excellent ideas with an eye on politics or the excitement of a soapbox artist. Dr Ezekwesili needed to be patient with her audience and carry them along with the sufferance of an mesmerising politician. But when she appeared to be heckled at a point during her lecture she gestured and snapped, and was even impatient and reproachful, thereby creating an anticlimactic dissonance on the APC’s great moment.

What is, however, most remarkable about the APC presentation last Thursday is not even the content of the party’s 10-point road map, as innovative, comprehensive and daring as it is, or the calibre and depth of the party’s leading functionaries. What is most remarkable is the party’s overall show of political iconoclasm, its exemplification, if not embodiment, of new political dynamics anchored on clear, coherent thinking, energetic perspectives and great hopes for the future. The party’s presentation is also indicative of the new politics that is afoot, one in which a truly pan-Nigerian party not encumbered by ethnic and sectional bigotry can be formed and efficiently run. The greatest challenge they will face, however, is how such a party without a strongman as it were, a party whose strength is both its diversity and new egalitarian foundation, can deploy its new-found democratic apparatus to elect candidates capable of winning elections, especially at the presidential level. The APC must be prepared to resolve the conundrum of how to combine its remarkable manifesto and new identity with the ability to elect a winning ticket. The outcome is not always inevitable.

Given the party’s new form, it is no longer possible for it to engage in candidate selections, at least not substantially, nor visibly. It has a new life, a new enthusiasm, a new conviction about politics and about democracy in particular. It is already soaring in its own fancies, determined to replicate the best attributes of Western democracies. It is therefore expected to submit itself to the rigours of the quintessential democratic processes, from ward level to the convention floor, complete with signature campaign frills and lofty speeches, far better than what it displayed last week in Abuja. But when they subject themselves to the demands and strictures of the democratic process, would they have the assurance that the process can adapt to and accommodate the shifting mores of the land, which mores have ethnic, geopolitical and religious configurations and implications?

If APC leaders will be honest, and if they are as eager as some of us to see a new party in power, they must be entertaining some doubts already about the competence of the new processes they have triggered to produce such outcomes as would take the party into Aso Villa. I myself entertain some doubts, for as the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States sometimes show, not to talk of the Conservative and Labour parties in the United Kingdom, parties at times fail woefully in cobbling together the right platform for victory or producing the right candidates. No matter how brilliant the APC’s manifesto, and no matter how suave and democratic its intra-party processes, it is not guaranteed that it can elect a winning ticket; nor that its proboscises are sharp and sensitive enough to read the country’s mood correctly.

One thing that emerged from Thursday’s event in Abuja, however, is that the party has deftly wrong-footed the PDP and showed it up as a political dinosaur. But I have confidence that the PDP will respond forcefully and perhaps violently, for it appears to me to be a party which, in structure and philosophy, is dedicated to strong-arm tactics and is absolutely incapable of the dynamism, intellectualism and exhibitionism so positively and entertainingly displayed by the opposition party last Thursday.

March 9, 2014
Jega’s make or mar elections

If Jega succeeds in saying no, this time around, his name will be written boldly on the right side of history

‘Every time, you use external power to ride roughshod over the will of the people in this country, the trigger for the demise of that fledgling democracy was always in the West. If you think the vehicle to smuggling yourself into office is via manipulation and ‘Anambracadabra’, Ekiti is not Anambra. The Mama Ayoka story is still fresh. What I resent is the kind of contemptuous noise coming from the PDP about the plan to take over the state, to capture the South-west and Ekiti and Osun states being the entry point, the gateway in that ‘operation capture the south-west’. You may succeed in capturing and you may also succeed in sounding the death knell of this democracy. It is not a threat really; it is more of an advice to anyone who might be confusing the President.’ Gov. Kayode Fayemi

In an earlier article – Southwest 2014 elections: will President Jonathan allow history be his guide, Jan 5, 2014– I wrote as follows quoting a co-columnist: ‘we in this part of the country are now much more determined to uphold and show our rejection of electoral fraud – that heinous disease that has periodically brought disaster upon Nigeria since 1964. We are too culturally attached to free and fair elections to tolerate electoral fraud.’

Much more than the much hyped 2015 Presidential election, the Ekiti/ Osun elections offer Prof Attahiru Jega, Chairman, INEC, a distinct opportunity to write his name in gold or infamy. More than any of his predecessors – Eyo Esua (1960-1966), Michael Ani (1976-1979), Victor Ovie-Whiskey (1983), Eme Awa (1987-1989), Humphrey Nwosu (1989-1993), Prof. Okon Uya (1993-1994), Sumner Dagogo-Jack (1994-1998), Ephraim Akpata (1998-1999), Abel Guobadia (2000-2005), as well as his irredeemable immediate predecessor , Maurice Iwu (2005-2010), Jega came into office brandishing the sterling qualities of a decent academic – a University Vice-Chancellor to boot. I took the trouble of naming his predecessors to help him gauge what bile Nigerians have for some of them today.

If on appointment Jega had thought he was settling down into a sinecure, the PDP, past masters at election rigging, soon taught him otherwise. The new Chairman soon began his electoral odyssey when he was suborned to cancel the 2011 opening day election after it had almost ended in several parts of the country. Those who should know have since told us it was all a PDP ploy designed to know where in the North Gen. Buhari was very strong electorally to enable the PDP and INEC deploy appropriate rigging strategies. It will be recalled that days before the presidential election, it was reported in some newspapers that persons with millions of ballot papers were arrested in Abuja. But before you could say jack, the PDP Police, aka Nigeria Police, had shut down the trail and Nigerians no longer heard a word about it. This was the real reason Justice Salami had to be yanked off the Presidential Election Tribunal where he had already granted Buhari access to electoral materials for purposes of a forensic examination but, reversing which, was at the very first sitting of the reconstituted tribunal.

If that cancellation was Professor Jega’s intro into PDP’s maelstrom of electoral perfidy, he should make the Anambra magic his last for the sake of posterity. We pray he does not burn his fingers in either the Ekiti or Osun elections because, truth be told, none of these two states is Anambra. And we are not bragging here. Rather, we are saying that if these habitual election riggers succeed in tampering with elections in any of Ekiti or Osun where the incumbent governors have so impacted peoples’ uprising several measurable and meaningful developmental strides, they will be asking for a peoples’ insurrection of seismic proportions, complete with international consequences that will have the capacity to ground Nigeria.

I urge those of them to whom this may mean nothing, being basically self-centred politicians, to reflect on the following recent comments in the New York Times concerning Boko Haram, which is currently gnawing at the country’s entails: “Boko Haram undermines the Nigerian government, leaving it floundering in ineffectual expressions of sympathy for the victims, vowing to redouble its engagement, with declarations of eventual victory that now have little credibility. Although the group’s aims appear limited or mysterious, it is clearly succeeding in one essential goal: critically undermining Nigeria’s federal government. The boarding school attack seemed designed to bring maximum humiliation to President Goodluck Jonathan, occurring as it did two days before centennial celebrations in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, attended by the French president, François Hollande, and some African leaders. The centennial celebrations went on last week and it seemed as though every rogue, scoundrel and genuine hero, living or dead, from Nigerian history was entitled to an award.” These riggers should understand that the world is watching the chicanery going on here; so bad that groups of women societies had to match through the streets of several cities this past week. Unfortunately, the PDP is grossly beyond shame or embarrassment.

In case this means nothing even to the highest ranks of the PDP, it is our fervent hope that Professor Jega, a scholar, should understand the full implication of this international put-down, and so would elect to stand firm, in refusing to make INEC a PDP rigging partner this time around. Given President Jonathan’s paranoia with 2015 it is obvious he will buy any tales from his Southwest PDP members; people he had literally forgotten for the better part of his five years in office in matters of quality appointments which had gone in their numbers to other parts of the country. Incurable optimists that they are in turn, even when they know their party is thoroughly despised in Yoruba land, they are going about with a swagger, promising billions from discredited sources and awaiting rigging orders from above. Happily, the Yoruba know their leaders as well as which party is working for the development of Yoruba land and the overall happiness of the greater majority of our people. Each of Governors Fashola, Amosun, Ajimobi, Aregbesola and Fayemi has demonstrated such unequalled passion and panache in service to Yoruba land that it has become so obvious the PDP stands no chance of ever winning an election fairly in these parts ever again. Rather than the president permitting himself to be deceived, he should visit any of the Southwest states incognito, even if at night.

I advise Professor Jega not to put his place in history on the line by joining this multitude to do evil. There had been no election since 1999 in which the PDP did not manipulate INEC, using it shamelessly to rig elections even in places the opposition ended up winning. So bad was it in 2003, 2007 that those elections were adjudged by international observers as the worst anywhere under the sun. But because the PDP is simply beyond shame, it has never mattered to its members what international opprobrium they attracted to the country. If Jega succeeds in saying no, this time around, his name will be written boldly on the right side of history. Otherwise, it will be infamy and eternal damnation. The choice is his to make. Under intense pressure to do wrong, he should simply resign and eclipse this government.

March 9, 2014
Georgia on my map

(An evening with the Green Eagles)

Atlanta!!! What a beautiful name , and a beautiful city to match! You must give it to the Americans, whatever other misgivings. They have a knack for coming up with cities of breathtaking beauty, with names infused with brilliant and magical symbolism. Atlanta, Memphis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Los Angeles, New Orleans—which presupposes an old Orleans, and many more. It takes some breathless confidence in one’s manifest destiny as God’s anointed nation to take these old world names and infuse them with new world possibilities.

The Americans thought they were founding the world anew; a new nation with shinning possibilities which will serve as a beacon for others; a great new human citadel on the hills which would be impossible to ignore and unwise to trifle with. It did not occur to them that the foundation of this new world was laid on the brutal expropriation and summary annihilation of some older civilisations. The native Indians themselves had probably pillaged some earlier and older civilisations. This is a classic example of creative destruction which the world will learn to forgive and forget in order to move on.

So, when the cultural hubris of founding a new world works for America, it works spectacularly well, creating beauty out of the ugliness of man’s inhumanity to man and glittering monuments out of the back-breaking labour of the formally and informally enslaved. In the western world, you do not need to be formally enslaved to be a slave, as the white underclass are finding out. All that is required is to be on the wrong side of the economic orrery, which is the case for ninety nine percent of the populace.

When cultural hubris becomes political hubris, it leads to the apocalypse of Vietnam and the Dante’s inferno of contemporary Iraq. It did not occur to America that the Vietnamese are a proud, doughty and hardy race who would not brook being politically dictated to by a young brash country. They had been doing their own thing for almost a millennium before America came to be. The lessons were never learnt.

It was noted by George Santayana, the fabled Spanish philosopher, that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat the past. When America was invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, the old chicken rustler from Tikrit, they were told that it was not easy to change the mindset of a people formed over a thousand years overnight. Democracy cannot be externally imposed. It can only be internally induced through a slow transformation of mindset, attitude and institutional impedimenta. Trillions of dollar after, the result is the apocalyptic mess and roiling carnage of contemporary Iraq and the liquidation of American fiscal liquidity.

Almost two thousand years earlier, the captured and enslaved Israeli tribe had captured the tragic dilemma for humanity and posterity in a moving elegy and on the same confluence of Tigris and Euphrates rivers:

By the rivers of Babylon

Where we sat down

And then we wailed

When we remember Zion

For the wicked carried us away in captivity

And required from us a song

How can we sing King Alpha’s song in a strange land?

But tonight, Wednesday, 5th of March, in the year of our lord, 2014, an arctic freeze had overtaken normally warm and cosy Atlanta. Everybody was dressed like a Siberian wayfarer, and this in early March. Incredible. A glum and icy reserve had taken over the normally jaunty populace. This was not the Atlanta one was used to. A denizen of its more familiar haunts and of the old and imperious state of Georgia itself, Snooper was returning after a ten year leave of absence. Ray Charles, the old crooner of the magical metropolis, would have stirred in his grave, bewildered by the frosty formality.

The great and good thing about America is that it is a land of ceaseless self-invention. You leave a city for one year and upon your return, you are lost in the maze of new developments and glittering new suburbs. Within a decade, Atlanta had undergone an amazing transformation. Tonight, one was beginning to feel like good old Rip van Winkle who had come back from the dead. Could this magical emporium be the new Atlantis? And then panic began to give way to certainty and certitude as the mind locked into the central highway with the sign to Macon and Birmingham in Alabama.

You now had a measure of the old geography. To the South East of Atlanta and about three hours journey by road or an hour by air lay the beautiful historic city of Savannah in all its Gothic gorgeousness. Like a beautiful treasure, Savannah is frozen in time, a classic example of a living city as one vast alluring museum. It was said that General William Tecumseh Sherman was so enthralled by the surreal charms of the city that he refrained from putting it to sword. He had offered it instead as an 1864 Christmas present to Abe Lincoln.

It is not just the weather and urbana that are changing in America. Everything else appears to be changing as well. The Capone Capitalism by which America was able to impose its will and might on the rest of the world appears to have run its course. Some other Capone nations are appearing on the hazy horizons. Good old Babylon and the old Western nemesis of Afghanistan have upended the American apple cart. There is time for everything.

Consequently and even more dangerously, democracy itself appears to be losing its shine and gloss. While China with its state capitalism, its audacious and cheerfully authoritarian system, routinely lifts more people out of poverty and the debt trap into a rapidly expanding middle class, the Obama reform has virtually collapsed under the weight of an institutional gridlock and democratic deadlock. Developing nations are not unlikely to notice the dangerous developments from America.

The Chinese, like some of their fabled generals of literary lore, appear content with watching America slowly dissolve under the weight of its own historic contradictions without firing a single shot. The Russians are not so sanguine or strategically savvy. Under Tsar Vladmir Putin, it is unlikely that the west has heard the last from Russia. The old Russian bear is not dead after all. It has only recovered from its catatonic stupor. While America is wringing its hand about what to do in Ukraine, its response oscillating between studied equivocation and downright confusion, Putin is relentlessly raising the stakes. Russian hyper-nationalism is proving far more dangerous than communist radicalism.

Lest we forget why we were actually in Atlanta, it was to watch the Green Eagles play their Mexican counterparts. Soccer is unarguably the single most unifying factor for Nigeria and Nigerians. As it ever so happens with the nation itself, most Nigerians who follow the Green Eagles are gluttons for punishment often enduring disastrous defeats or dismal self-destruction on the field of play. Four years earlier after watching the Green Eagles in Durban plunge to the very nadir of their fortunes in a remarkably inept display which saw to their ouster from the World Cup, yours sincerely had vowed never to have anything to do with the national team again.

But hope springs eternally from the Nigerian heart. Besides, there is no killing the eagles. They have ratcheted up some fine and impressive performances under the able generalship of Stephen Keshi. They have emerged from the depths of despair and destruction to give some outstanding displays. For Snooper, what did it was the moment Mba’s winning goal crashed through the Ivorian defence on the team’s way to winning the last African championship. It was a marvelous outing. The eagles of yore were back.

By a remarkable coincidence, Atlanta was also the scene of the Eagles greatest triumph till date when they won the soccer gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Snooper had been watching the classic game against Brazil with his son in faraway in England. It was past midnight when Brazil suddenly went three goals up to Nigeria’s lone goal. With an angry scowl, the boy headed for bed claiming that he was tired of further punishment.

In one of the most remarkable upsets and incredible come-back in footballing history, the eagles went on to beat Brazil and to outclass Argentina in the final . Eighteen years later, and at the same venue of the Eagles greatest triumph, one was hoping for another outstanding performance against another notable Latin American footballing nation. The atmosphere was electrifying.

Strangely enough, the massive din from a million Mexican vuvuzela reminds one of the end of the Aztec empire when a handful of Spanish adventurers put the ancient civilisation to sword. It could have been part of the military strategy of the Aztec warriors, but many believed that the din could only have come from the offended Gods of the Aztec people. This evening, it is the Aztec hordes that seemed to have invaded America. It was as if Mexico itself has emptied into the massive Georgia dome in Atlanta and spilled over to adjoining areas. It was an endless column of men, women, the young and the old, all draped in green.

The Green Eagles refused to be fazed by the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Mexican supporters. Even at the nadir of their fortunes, something could always be said for the superb confidence and militant self-belief of these boys. It is a self-belief that often tips into overconfidence and sheer irresponsibility. But they seemed to have reined this in for now.

After some opening cautious probes from both sides, it was obvious that the match was evenly poised in terms of physique and flair. The Mexicans have had some outstanding successes with their junior teams, and some of these boys are now beginning to come through and into their own. Ranked nineteenth in the world soccer pecking order as against Nigeria’s forty seventh, the Mexican whizz kids could be forgiven for initially thinking that this was going to be a routine work out against inferior opponents.

In the event, it was the Eagles that first took the battle to their opponents, but the Mexicans immediately responded. This culminated in a series of misses on both sides. Judging by the dramatic manner in which the vuvuzela went quiet, it was clear the Mexican crowd were not expecting the kind of robust response and daring incursions from an African team. But towards the end of the first half, the Mexican team increased pressure on the Eagles and the goalkeeper was forced to make a series of brilliant saves.

For most of the second half, the match stalemated into a technical affair with some good chances fluffed by both teams. The Mexicans in particular did not appear to have much appetite for adventurous forays, preferring to catch the Eagles on the offensive rebound. At the end of 90 minutes, there was nothing to separate the two teams. Although the match ended in a goalless draw, it was by no means dreary and unexciting.

Yes, Stephen Keshi seems to have the nucleus of a very good team. This was not the dismal eagles one watched in Durban, South Africa almost four years ago. Some of the new eagles, particularly Leon Balogun, held their own. But a lot of work still needs to be done. Legendary failings persist. The strikers still seem to lack the killer instincts of all predators. Rather than calm marksmanship in front of goals, there were too many blind and wild shootings.

Mikel Obi had a good game, but he is too much of a defensive ball-holding midfielder to function as a creative playmaker. The Eagles still need that visionary libero and game-changer who can impose his will on the midfield even as he determines the tempo and pace of the match with perfectly weighted passes. Let the eagles’ officials watch this match again. The forward often had to drop deep to collect the ball while making their way forward. It points to the absence of the master midfielder. It is our prayer that Keshi finds this supremely gifted Nigerian before June.

On and off the pitch, what cannot be taken away from Nigerians is a natural flair for the dramatic. You cannot beat Nigeria when it comes to what is known as chutzpah. The classic instance of chutzpah is the case of the young fellow who killed his parents but then went on to ask the court to be lenient with him on the grounds that he was an orphan. On Wednesday morning in Atlanta, Snooper made discreet inquiries about the Minister of Sports, Bolaji Abdullahi, an old pen-pusher on the back page of This Day. The Nigerian official chuckled and then grunted: “Sir, he has just been fired!!!.”

Your mind immediately raced to WAWA, the colonial acronym of frustration about the impossible ways of Africans. WAWA means West Africa Wins Again. You cannot win Nigeria, as they will say in pidgin English. But this sudden political execution notwithstanding, Nigerian officialdom was at its most impressive and productive in Atlanta thanks to the likes of Demola Olajire, Ayodeji Tinubu, Chris Green, Musa Ahmadu the Secretary of NFF and Honorable Godfrey Gaiya, the Chairman of the House Committee on Sports.

With his understated old world charms and civility, Aminu Maigari, the Chairman of NFF, stands a very good chance of leading the Nigerian Football Federation to greater glory. It has been a beautiful night in Atlanta. Georgia will be on the mind for a long time to come.

March 9, 2014
No surprise Nigeria stagnated for decades

Much more than the mileage the Jonathan presidency hoped to achieve with the emblazoning photograph of past Nigerian rulers wearing their medals and displaying their centennial award certificates late last month, the picture actually tells a far more poignant and iconic story. There were seven of them: Abdulsalami Abubakar, Muhammadu Buhari, Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida and Ernest Shonekan. Smack in the middle was, of course, President Goodluck Jonathan himself. Given his predilection for sham celebrations, it is surprising he did not seize upon the same argument of the centenary to award himself a certificate of honour. In any case, Dr Jonathan was the only one in the pictures published on March 1 newspapers not brandishing a certificate. Others dutifully wore their medals and/or displayed their certificates, thereby indicating their concurrence with the queer and questionable philosophy behind the centenary as well as the disgraceful rational for picking the honourees.

The photograph, though powerful and resonating, nevertheless tells the very depressing story of futile uniformity and lack of rigour. It tells the story of former rulers whose unquestioning perspective and fondness for the meretricious led them to embrace a project as wasteful as it is truly and totally mendacious. None of the seven questioned the ideological basis for the centenary, nor joined issues with the financially oblique accounting system that made the celebrations possible. None of them was politically conscious enough to appreciate the centenary’s distortionary effects on our history and identities. There was none of them with enough sagacity to disprove the base and conflicting logic that underlined the compilation of the list of honourees, thus indicating that the former rulers were insensitive to their own individual legacies and unable to disambiguate legacy as a word and concept.

The group photograph of former rulers should illustrate the power and glory of Nigeria, of our best men and leaders, of the rich custodians of our politics, culture and essence. Instead, the group photograph illustrated something so surrealistic it is a miracle the country has not collapsed under the weight of their collective obscurantism. They had no idea what our history says, of how we were humiliated and traumatised with a lasting injury by colonialism, of how Lugard’s foundational rule and years of self-misrule combined to misshape our values and enthrone a vicious form of mental and economic slavery. It was therefore okay by them to celebrate, and to carry out that sickening exercise in company with one another, the liar with the perjurer, the tyrant with the murderer, the inept with the experimentalist.

The photograph inferentially tells the numbing story of how and why the country decayed so badly for decades, and by their admission, now needs revolutionary work to salvage, if indeed, as one of them said, it can still be salvaged. If they could not question Dr Jonathan’s frivolity and rebuff it, if they did not understand the history of the country they led for decades, and if they were unable to share its pains and sorrows, how indeed could they fashion brilliant and workable plans for its development and greatness? How could they make it the pride of the black race? To participate in Dr Jonathan’s revelry, they must have gone to extraordinary lengths to muffle their consciences, and to shut the tap of remorse which a clear mind and ample soul sometimes lead a decent man and patriot to demonstrate.

The photograph of the eight men reminds us how our country was ruined. Gowon dishonoured his word and rendered it impotent; Shagari’s stolidity and indulgence clogged the national arteries until we choked; Buhari had little or no appreciation of the rights and freedoms of man, and how man is ennobled by these attributes; Babangida was the inappropriate watershed between the age of innocence and the age of vice, as he gave birth to the worst in us; and Shonekan was the bemused and amoral inheritor of a stolen legacy. Abubakar’s misguided and messianic reign produced the highly schizoid Obasanjo who had, and still has, no capacity for differentiating between truth and falsehood. And Obasanjo archetypically begat meddlesomeness in such a manner that the country’s ruin was complete under his predecessors.

Yes, it was just one simple photograph published in newspapers. But, alas, it told a million sad stories, unknown to the former rulers who lined up quizzically for the photograph on February 28, and perhaps unfeeling.

March 9, 2014
Making Nigeria thrive after its first centenary (2)

In this series devoted to raising ordinary citizens’ concerns about what ideas delegates chosen for their states should take to the forthcoming national conference, we focused last week on taxation. We argued that the practice inherited from military rule that privileges ‘fiscal equalisation’ or even development over fairness in generation and allocation of revenue should be jettisoned. Giving states spending responsibility without commensurate revenue-raising authority only leads to inefficiency or non-performance of state governments in provision of public goods and services. We called for a new taxation system that will give the power to tax to states which will give nationally-agreed upon percentage of tax revenue to the central government to cover cost of attending to its functions and that such functions should not be as wide as they are in the 1999 Constitution. We concluded that changing the taxation powers will prepare the country for an era in which non-renewable energy may no longer be profitable, even when it is still available and that it will also empower citizens and improve their efficacy in relation to participation in democratic governance. The focus today will be on how to restructure education.

Since 1975, Nigeria has been suffering from too much federal presence in education provision. Regional universities were taken over by the federal government; colleges of technology were established by the federal government; and special secondary schools known as Unity Schools were also created and managed by the federal government. This dominant federal presence in education led to ancillary policies that affected the provision of education and left traces of decline in the quality of education. School calendar became a federal matter. It was no longer possible for states to determine when schools would be in session. In the south, schools were made to go on long vacation during the coolest months in the year, as distinct from the three short vacations that defined the school calendar until the advent of military rule.

In addition, a raft of education bureaucracies was established by the federal government: JAMB, NECO to rival WAEC, National Orientation Commission, NUC, etc. The federal government also changed school curriculum and used its national language policy to impose second Nigerian language learning on students. The traditional practice of giving first six years of education in children’s first language or mother tongue was replaced with the use of English as the language of instruction for all levels of primary education. All these policies grew out of the military rulers’ belief that forging a sense of unity among the diverse cultures in the country would not happen until all traces of cultural diversity are erased.

Even with centralisation of education provision and creation of education bureaucracies, the federal government had been unable for decades to spend up to 30% of what UNESCO recommends as the minimum required for countries to turn the corner into modernity. On the whole, the outcome has not justified the changes wrought by military rulers and sustained by their civilian successors till date. The quality of education in evidence in the pre-1975 era has disappeared, as public education has been ruined to the point that Nigeria has more hardly regulated private schools and universities per square kilometre than any other country in the world. More children carry credentials than before but not any skill set in the use of standard English and communication in mother tongue had yielded prime of place to pidgin across the nationalities. The innovativeness that educating children to grow up to be informed, engaged, and critical citizens induced in other countries of the world and that was part of the culture of education in the pre-military era has given way to mindless imitativeness. The result is that both foreign investors and Nigerian companies look for foreign-trained graduates, after a one-time federal minister announced that Nigerian graduates are not employable.

Delegates to the conference need to pay attention to education, as no substantial progress can come to the country if this sector remains as confused and comatose as it has been for decades. Many philosophers of education, from John Dewey to James Bruner and Babs Fafunwa, have demonstrated that there is an umbilical connection between culture and education. In a multinational society, there can be no federal culture. The cultures in such societies must be distinct cultures practiced by the nationalities. Such cultures must have influence on beliefs about education, the value of education, and participation styles.

It is not unfathomable that specific cultural beliefs must have induced the philosophy of Education is a Sin being propagated by adherents of Boko Haram. There is no doubt that culture must have impact on the belief that women can marry at 12 or 13 years of age, instead of remaining to complete secondary school education. Without cultural differences, there would have been no basis for such specialised schools as Nomadic and Almajiri schools. All these point to the fact that a functional federal system, especially in a multiethnic context, does not have to aspire to have a homogenised and pasteurised education system such as the country has experienced for decades. This may be an appropriate time for delegates to look at the German constitutional model.

All levels of education in Germany are under the control of the lander (the states or provinces). The federal government has responsibility for research and monitoring of educational standards. Germany is not politically any less united because of the devolution of education to the states. On the contrary, this allows the federal government in Germany to attend to other important aspects of post-war development of the republic. Similarly, leaving education to the lander does not diminish technological, cultural, and industrial development in Germany. On the contrary, it has made Germany the most efficient and richest country in Europe and one of the eight most successful countries in the world.

Devolution of more revenue-raising powers (discussed last week) to the states or regions must also be accompanied by devolution of more responsibilities that include total control over education. This will allow the federal government to focus more on foreign affairs, national defence, and building effective regulatory frameworks to ensure that each state delivers public goods that improve life chances, such as education and health care. Operating a system that creates competition between half-starved states and over-funded federal government in the areas of education and health care has not produced any efficiency in the two sectors. The federal government does not have citizens that can hold it accountable for what it does or does not do. State executives are under undue pressure for the little public goods and services they are able or choose to provide from the donations they receive from the federation account.

Putting education under the control of states will enable states to create new curriculum that can re-establish and improve mother-tongue instruction in primary school. The current system of making students learn a second Nigerian language when no system ensures that they master their mother tongues is creating avoidable confusion in a society that needs to emphasise mother tongue communicative competence and mastery of a language to participate in the global civilisation that Nigeria is now a marginal part of. More importantly, states will be in a position to find a point of intersection between culture and education in their curriculum, pedagogy, and research, the two Siamese twins of development. The education that has been made possible by the 1999 Constitution is so unanchored to any value system. An education system that is effective cannot diminish the country’s unity; it can only enrich it.

To be continued

March 9, 2014