Category: Ropo Sekoni

There is need for a wholesale reform of the electoral system before another four years.

Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it—Albert Einstein

If yesterday’s presidential election was free, fair, and credible as copiously promised and if you voted yesterday with a clear conscience, you would have fulfilled your civic obligations respectably. When our president, not known for many words, called in Owerri and Ogun in the course of electioneering on the electorate to vote according to their conscience, he must have offended many politicians for asking voters to vote for him unconditionally and to vote for gubernatorial candidates in the two states only according to their conscience, he almost gave the impression that he did not believe in multiparty democracy. What is expected in mature democracies is for all voters to have unfettered choice to surrender their right to govern to others in a system that insists on “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Just as President Buhari started out in 2015 “not being for or against anyone,” he expressed neutrality in Imo and Ogun at the end of his first term in office.  For those who voted yesterday according to their sense of right and wrong, they would, regardless of whichever of the over 50 presidential candidates finally wins yesterday’s election, ought to have calmer nights for the next four years than those who felt compelled or suborned to vote for any of the candidates.

The Yoruba word for voting is Dibo. Translated to English, dibo means to choose between alternatives. This means that to the Yoruba, voting is a friendly action to take, because two or more persons asking to be offered the same opportunity are presumed to deserve similar chance to market themselves.  And as persons considered as alternatives, they too should not feel bad if one of them emerges winner after adding up the number of votes cast by choosers who see themselves as free agents or citizens, and not subjects. Going through caustic words used by supporters of each candidate in respect of the other, one would have thought that the country was ready to unravel. So gloomy was the situation, that many pundits called for finding a new way, other than elections, for installing politicians in power. Many even asked for a search for an African way of selecting leaders that can save public funds and save citizens from the tension thrown up by ‘do-or-perish’ candidates.

But readers who are at peace to read this column today, like the author, will be right to congratulate people who had survived what many might have thought to be an Armageddon in the making. This column congratulates the reader for staying back to give electoral democracy a chance, instead of escaping from the country, as many might have done to avoid violence from thugs of political parties or from the Right Hand of the State itself. So much for a catastrophe that failed to happen, in the name of electing a president for a country that had already had six elected presidents from Shagari to Buhari.

To return to the focus of the day, those who voted in tune with their conscience yesterday have every reason to feel good, regardless of whether their candidate wins the presidency or not after vote counting is completed. That the much-feared election has finally come and gone without causing any mayhem which gave foreign countries more concern than many politicians in the race themselves. Foreign countries are rightly worried about refugees while sons of the soil felt at peace with the superstition that Nigerians have the flair to move back from the edge of the cliff without needing anybody’s help. The sense of foreboding that reigned since December, principally between the two major political parties, must have been induced by what looked like ‘do-or-die’ approach to what should have been a peaceful ritual of choosing between alternatives in a live-and-let-live environment, such as the North where both candidates are of the same ethnic and religious background and not far apart ideologically.

While those who voted for candidates on the basis of any manner of material inducement may be afraid to participate in post-election debates, those who preferred to own their PVCs and use them according to dictates of their conscience ought to feel emboldened to join in the search for solutions to the hyperbolic tales of corruption propagated in the social media until the eve of   the presidential election. Such people will be freer to criticise their preferred candidates in the years ahead while those who have been paid for their votes are likely to keep mum about how they are governed, having lost their souls in the process of selling their PVCs.

Given the number of Monster tales told in the social media in respect of the just concluded presidential election, the credulous reader of social media may expect staggering revelations about yesterday’s election as we move away from campaign into governance, from the side of both winners and losers. Such revelations are likely to unearth neck-stretching anecdotes that may make good ingredients for political epics. Although the jury may be out on what percentage of votes has come from voters with conscience, it is conceivable that most of the 84 million carriers of PVCs are likely to be voters who chose candidates largely on the basis of their convictions about their candidates.

It is those voters who vote without receiving anything from anybody that can rescue Nigeria from its mythical status of an ever-fertile ground for criminal and corrupt electoral practices and from the status of one state that requires extraordinary global surveillance at election times. Ironically, it is also such voters that can become instrumental to starting a demand for future electoral reforms, if properly coordinated. This group of voters is the most neglected or ignored voting block in most democracies, more so in Nigeria, where they form majority of non-literate but enthusiastic voters who may not necessarily understand the issues at stake or the difference between the text and subtext of manifestoes. It is people in this group that expend more energy on voting and in the process run the risk of losing their lives to thugs or stray bullets from security men in the event of crisis.

Many of such voters are the most excited about voting every four years, without asking questions about what the votes cast four years earlier have meant for their well-being. With such voters in the majority, it should not surprise anybody that issues at elections from one season to the other remain virtually the same. There is need for a wholesale reform of the electoral system before another four years. Under the current system, a lot of energy is expended on those who trade with their votes while majority of voters, without whom no electoral manipulation can work, is often taken for granted. It is voters given to voting according to their conscience that need their conscience to be re-educated, not just about how to thumb print in the polling booths but to ask why they should vote on the same issues or promises every four years.

Put more directly, the kind of political literacy that the average citizen requires to make democracy work and make elections meaningful needs to be given to all citizens through informal and formal socialisation at home and in school.  The reason voters in the country do the same thing over and over and expect different results is not only because corruption is bound to fight back. It is also because each government that comes to power faces a tiny group of critics that can make such government responsible and accountable, most of whom often avoid coming out on election days.  Even without the tension thrown up by those scheming to induce voters in the last three months, the country’s millions of voters not schooled about advantages of democracy would still have given the country leaders they admire or those who they believe in. Such innocent voters across the country need to be given better education that can make them more discerning than they currently are.

Even though the Electoral Law forbids using campaign for political office to slander an opponent, the content and tone of the ongoing campaign between APC and PDP suggest that issue-specific bipartisanship that exists occasionally in advanced democracies may not exist in 2019. And continued polarisation of the polity largely by campaigners may affect chances of cooperation between the parties after elections.

What separates the two major political parties in 2019 seems to be personalities rather than ideological differences. In 2015, APC was the only party that promised to fight corruption and that made the party popular among the masses. This election season, the PDP flag bearer markets his ‘efficiency’ to get things done better while the APC presidential candidate flaunts his integrity to wage successful war against corruption. But looked at critically, both parties have manifestos that are not radically different from each other: fighting corruption, fighting terrorism, ensuring security, completing Mambilla power project, improving quality of basic education, etc. The ideological differences between APC and PDP today are not as pronounced as what obtained between AG and NPC, UPN and NPN, SDP and NRC, or more recently between AD or ACN and PDP.

Lack of sharp ideological differences makes selling both parties to the voter in a way to make voters feel more excited than three years ago more difficult for campaign designers. The favourable part of this difficulty is that the 2019 campaign has been shorter than what it was during the last election season. Otherwise, there might have been many more slanderous personal comments. President Buhari had been quick in calling for an election without frills:  less intense and less expensive electioneering, no presidential debates, and no personal attacks. The two contestants vowed not only to refrain from dirty campaign but to also ensure peace before, during, and after the elections. But campaign designers for both contestants have not been as restrained as the two major presidential candidates, and by so doing, seem to have polarised the nation more than in 2015.

Generally, campaigners for both parties have said things that a profit-chasing lawyer could have called slanderous. For example, the PDP has referred to Buhari as a liar and a pretentious leader. Campaigners for PDP have accused Buhari and his family of joining other relations in buying Keystone Bank or 9-Mobile, without providing proof to support these allegations. Similarly, their counterparts in the APC have referred to Atiku as a bribe giver. He has been accused of buying his United States visa. Some even said he had sent a bank into bankruptcy, again without providing any proof. Even Atiku once claimed that Buhari was not a true Fulani man and some campaigners have claimed that Atiku is originally from the Cameroon. For those who were around in the 1970s, the case of Alhaji Shugaba started with such claims before the ruling party of the day exacerbated it, to the extent of deporting Shugaba from Borno. It is remarkable that nobody has been slated for deportation this time. But enough bad blood has been created.

When campaign messages are venomous to the extent of impugning the integrity of any of the candidates, as one has learned from the last presidential election in the United States, working out a friendly relationship between the parties to the extent of predisposing the two leading candidates or political parties to want to cooperate with the winner after election may become problematic. Just as we observed last week, an acrimonious campaign in which the opposing candidates demonise each other can weaken existing guardrails of democracy, as is currently happening in the United States. Carrying the bitterness of electioneering into post-election governance in countries with important tasks to complete can harm not just the new government but the progress that citizens might get from issue-specific cooperation between such parties after elections.

One consolation about the Nigeria Factor in all matters, especially in post-election periods, is that bipartisanship between the winning and losing parties may not be necessary. Members of the political party that loses may migrate in droves to the winning party almost to the extent of throwing the country into a one-party system. Individual PDP party members who defected to the APC during the last election season turned the PDP into a minority party, just as the same defectors has attempted to do with APC in 2018.

There are many factors that encourage mass defection from one party to the other in our country: poverty on the part of low-income voters, greed in respect of material or political benefits on the part of party leaders, and lack of clearly distinguishable party platforms. All other sources of conflict such as ethnicity and religion generally disappear after elections. However, even parties with distinct ideological positions, such as the Republican Party and the Democratic Party can still take advantage of bipartisanship, where interests of the nation so demand, except in the last two years in the United States. But often in Nigeria, political party culture is so weak that the winner-take-all opportunities in the presidential system pushes ideologically weak political parties to trade their party loyalty for benefits immediately after an election. Even the winning party, which prefers to govern with little or no challenge from any strong opposition once it is in power, also often in our country woos members of the opposition to defect to the ruling party. Citizens should not allow themselves to be used to cause any violence during and after the elections, as many of their sponsors may become members of the winning party soon after the election.

Ironically, a time that Nigeria could have benefited from a third-force is when politically-minded citizens who disagree with the two major parties that have controlled the political landscape since 1999 also choose to subscribe to the philosophy of letting a thousand political parties fly, regardless of how many of such parties have wings to fly. According to INEC, there are 31 presidential candidates seeking to become president on February 16. Such ritualistic disposition to freedom of association on the part of 29 political parties makes it hard for the country to have a third viable political party to give the current major parties a serious run for their money or desire. In the last two decades the country’s political culture has been one in which many politicians do not want to be in opposition, except briefly during election seasons. For example, shortly after the 2015 presidential election, APC and PDP members closed ranks to the extent that the two parties easily shared the positions of Senate president and deputy president without any challenge. Already, Social Democratic Party and Allied Congress Party of Nigeria and a few others have adopted the incumbent president as consensus candidate, without having to take the risk of waiting until after the election when the queue for enrolling or re-enrolling in the ruling party may be too long. Consequently, the virile culture of political opposition that existed between UPN and NPN had not existed since 1999 and may not exist after February 2019, after which a new a flurry of defections may erase the line between most APC and PDP politicians.

The danger in this political culture is that citizens who stand for democracy and development may be alienated not only from governance but also from electoral politics in the country. Such citizens often get frustrated and withdraw from voting, thus unintentionally furthering the nest of power-besotted politicians. Such loss of trust in relevance of elections encourages some voters with understanding of what is at stake to prefer sitting at home on election days and others to sell their PVCs, thus strengthening the vicious circle of corruption, poverty, poor governance, underdevelopment, and disunity.

Some even worry if democracy can survive in a country that seems very divided by worldviews and values.

Many people in and out of the country are worrying about Nigeria, on account of what looks like a deep division, not only among political parties but also among guardians of institutions designed to nurture or sustain democratic governance. Some even worry if democracy can survive in a country that seems very divided by worldviews and values.

But some scholars and public intellectuals elsewhere are interested in what endangers democracy all over the world and how democracy can be prevented from collapsing in different parts of the globe. For example, two Harvard professors of political science, Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in a recent book, How Democracies Die, identify, analyse causes of weakening of democracy while also recommending how to prevent threats to democracy from destroying democratic governance across continents. This book raises many issues that should attract attention of observes of Nigerian politics, not only in days preceding election but also at other times. Copious references to the book in today’s column is driven by my belief that Nigeria’s federal system can benefit from a Yoruba proverb: Nibi ti iya omo baa ti n gba omo re ni iyanju, omo ti ko ni iya a maa fi eti ko oro naa (an orphan should take advantage of being within earshot when parents of their associates advise them about how to behave). If American scholars and public intellectuals are worrying about survival of democracy in a country that was once known as an exceptional practitioner of separation of powers, Nigeria should not be averse to borrowing paradigms and insights that can help secure the country’s fledgling democracy.

Authors of How Democracies Die claim that it is not only a country’s constitution that guarantees survival of is democratic governance, adding that there are norms (not necessarily documented) that are indispensable if democracy is to survive and thrive. Let us hear directly from the authors: “Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy. For one, constitutions are always incomplete. Like any set of rules, they have countless gaps and ambiguities. No operating manual, no matter how detailed, can anticipate all possible contingencies or prescribe how to behave under all possible circumstances.” The fragility of the constitution may be worse for Nigeria where the constitution is not a product of citizens’ input directly or indirectly through representatives with mandate from citizens to negotiate a democratic constitution in a multi-ethnic state.

However, the authors quickly add: “But these (i.e. constitutions) work best, and survive longest, in countries where written constitutions are reinforced by their own unwritten rules of the game. These rules or norms serve as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing day-to-day political competition from devolving into a no-holds-barred conflict.” They add that norms do not depend only good character of political leaders and that they are codes of conduct that are shared within a polity or society. Such codes are generally “accepted, respected, and enforced by members of the community or society.

How Democracies Die reveals the two major norms that reinforce constitutions in democratic countries as Mutual Toleration and Forbearance. The authors explain mutual toleration as “politicians’ collective willingness to agree to disagree.” Before and during elections since the beginning of post-military rule and imposition of a constitution by departing dictators, members of political parties in Nigeria have acted as if members of other parties are less patriotic than their own members and consequently deserve to be maimed or killed. Otherwise, why should there be thugs that harass members of opposing political parties at will in a country with a national law enforcement agency? If the principle of mutual toleration applies to partisan politicians, shouldn’t it apply to individuals operating as managers of the various arms of government in a checking and balancing governance system? If it does, should the matter between the executive and the judiciary vis-à-vis Justice Onnoghen’s violations of code of conduct in management of his personal account be made to look as messy as it has become?

Forbearance, which the authors define as patient self-control and restraint, expecting political party leaders or leaders of branches of government to avoid actions that, while respecting the letter of the law, obviously violate its spirit. Institutional forbearance expects politicians not “to use their institutional prerogatives to the hilt, even if it is technically legal to do so, particularly when such action “could imperil the existing system.”  In the ongoing crisis thrown up by the speed with which Justice Onnoghen was arraigned and suspended, it appears that leaders of both arms of government seem to have jettisoned institutional forbearance by failing to act as leaders of two separate, but equal, branches of government in a presidential system.

Had there been a closed-door meeting between President Buhari and Justice Onnoghen before media announcement of allegation and arraignment or suspension, a more mature settlement of the issue could have prevented in a federal and presidential system the tension of the last two weeks. The point at issue is not the size of the power in each branch of government, it is the capacity of each branch to recognise the nuances of a deliberative presidential system of government. Applying some wisdom to managing this kind of crisis without sacrificing fairness and justice and saving the system of deliberative democracy could have been achieved, without throwing up so much of the subconscious of our multiethnic and partisan political system.

Undoubtedly, the tension in the polity, particularly since the arraignment and suspension of Chief Justice Onnoghen, has accentuated the fragility of the country’s democracy and the fact that no constitution can anticipate all problems, more so a constitution, like Nigeria’s, that was not created with the consent of the people. The political tension of the last few days has also unearthed a dearth of political skills on the part of the ruling groups charged with managing a deliberative presidential political system designed to rest on checking and balancing among the three equal and separate arms of government. There also seems to be less readiness on the part of rulers to be sufficiently sensitive to the role of guardrails of democracy as a means of stabilising democratic governance.

If scholars and intellectuals are getting concerned about the future of democracy in the United States, once the poster child of federal and republican democratic governance, their counterparts in Nigeria have more reasons to get worried. Recent developments in the conduct of leaders of the three branches of government in our fledgling multiethnic democracy may need to work harder on cultivating the norms of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance that the two authors of How Democracies Die characterise as “guardrails of democracy.”

If the presidential election yesterday was free, fair, and credible, Nigeria as a country would have moved very close to its destiny of a peaceful, stable, unifiable, multi-ethnic modern state that is pro-development. The euphoria ignited by a free, fair, and transparent election would be of immense pleasure to the nation as a corporate body, its citizens and friends across the globe.

The distance between the country and its destiny since independence can be traced to several factors. One was the desire in the first republic for a one-party state by a ruling party that wanted to dominate the rest of the country. Another was the rise of military regimes that succeeded in changing the character of the country from federal to quasi-unitary system of governance, most of which in the process became more corrupt than the civilian regimes they ousted from power.

The last factor was recurrence of fraudulent or manipulated elections between 1959 and 2014. It is on record that the 1959 election supervised by the departing colonial master was rigged in favour of the section of the country that Britain preferred to succeed it. Similarly, the 1964 federal election was rigged in favour of the ruling party, just as the 1979 and 1983 presidential elections were adjudged by many citizens to have been manipulated in favour of the ruling party at the centre. The June 12, 1993 presidential election claimed by its organiser, General Ibrahim Babangida, as the freest in the nation’s electoral history was also ‘rigged’ against the winner, MKO Abiola at the end through annulment. The other four elections: 1999, 2003, 2007, and even 2011 were all perceived by national and international observers as below the average standard of democratic elections in the so-called third world. No wonder, one of the earliest promises of President Jonathan after he assumed the presidency in 2011 was to ensure conduct of free and fair elections. If 2015 elections were free and fair by national and international standards, President Jonathan would have pushed the country in the direction of its destiny, but more on this later.

In many ways, corruption, believed to be the cancer that has been destroying the country, cannot be isolated from the type of governments that the country has been saddled with since 1959: military dictatorships and civilian administrations brought into being by questionable elections. Citizens for too long have known that a government created by fraud cannot but be fraudulent. Consequently, many citizens, if not most, view all the governments since independence as lacking in legitimacy. Such citizens see corruption as part of the political fabric of the country and joined their leaders on the bandwagon of political and bureaucratic corruption. If by chance or design 2015 elections were free, fair, and transparent, legitimacy would finally come to the governments that grow from them.

The first vital step in rebuilding governments at all levels in the country is a free and fair election. It will stop the tradition of personalistic and neo-patrimonial state that has been in existence in the country’s independent life till now. In other words, the culture of impunity that has raged for decades will be over. Citizens’ consent to their governance produced by free and fair ballot will further energise them in their demand for full accountability from those who govern them. Not only at the executive level will a new culture of responsive governance emerge from fair election, the legislative culture in the country in the last sixteen years will have to bow to the expectations of citizens who own the mandate, now freely given to the executive and the legislature.

Whether the incumbent is the winner or loser of a free and fair election, he will come out as the moral winner. He will write his name in gold as the first president that respected citizens’ fundamental human right to choose their leaders in an unfettered election. President Jonathan will, despite the muscular and vitriolic campaign of the last two or so months by his supporters,  be able to beat his chest in any part of the country and say that he has become one of the builders of a free modern polity. If he loses, he will be one of the many democratic leaders across the globe that failed to win re-election, something that has never happened in our own country before him.

Should General Buhari win a free and fair election, he is likely to be humbled by the trust of the people in giving him the opportunity to rule the country several decades after he had ruled it as a military dictator. He will no longer see his power as deriving from the barrel of guns but from the hearts of voters across religious and ethnic lines. Further, he will be more likely than not to listen to the wishes of the electorate, knowing full well that without them, he could not have become president in the last quarter of the life of an average ruler. There would be no space in his government for any manner of ethnic or cultural domination but only for the building of a modern democratic multiethnic nation.

As for the average citizen, he or she will feel invigorated by free and fair elections. The feeling of political impotence on the part of the electorate which has created a nonchalant attitude over the years will disappear. It will become easier for the electorate to demand accountability from their president and lawmakers. It will also become easier for citizens to join policy debates about how much should their lawmakers earn directly and indirectly. Citizens will have more opportunities to bring the issue of re-federalizing the country for unity and development to the table, with the hope of stimulating a process that is inclusive in terms of how to make the country united to work for progress and development.

International friends of our country will likely become more active partners than they have been. Our immediate neighbours in the ECOWAS will feel relieved that the giant of the region has finally risen to the challenge of accepting the values of democratic process and governance. No longer will our West African neighbours feel threatened that post-election violence will create another wave of refugees that can destabilise smaller countries in the region. A Nigeria that has finally joined the ranks of Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin, etc., in moving away from the culture of impunity to one of accountability and the rule of law will certainly become a friendly lever of economic power in the region.

With respect to our other international friends in Europe, the Americas, and Asia, Nigeria’s free, fair, and transparent election will disabuse their minds about the facile generalisation about Nigeria being largely a rogue, failing, or failed state. The feeling in the outside world that a country that cannot conduct a free and fair election lacks legitimacy and cannot be trusted to respect accountability will diminish and gradually disappear as the culture of allowing citizens to choose their leaders grows in the country.  Nigeria will be able to see more genuine investors, instead of hearing about them on government-controlled radio and television. Finally, millions of Nigerians at home and abroad who have been worried stiff about the future of the country will now sleep without worrying about what to do if things suddenly fall apart.

• This piece was first published a few weeks to the 2015 elections.

In general, the relationship between those in charge of governing the country at all levels and the citizens they govern appears to avoid the principle of social or political contract. Complying with the principle of democracy that expects citizens to yield their power to govern themselves to representatives and in the process expect those authorised by elections to govern the society to provide public order and commit to welfare of citizens hardly lasts beyond election time in our country. Nowhere is the condescending attitude of government to citizens more evident in recent times than in the decision of the Federal Road Safety Commission to impose purchase of speed limiter on citizens.

Road safety touches everyone, not just drivers of vehicles. And precisely because it affects everybody, there is no one single policy to cover it. Instead, the common sense approach is to look for a collection of means and policies which, while aimed at different groups, will together contribute to the overall goal of accident prevention on our roads. Sadly, compelling motorists to install speed limiter may not be one of them. There are numerous examples, including those of best practices across the world that Federal Road Safety Commission and other promoters of speed limiters or governors can copy or borrow.

The history of FRSC is too well-known to be repeated here. The agency in its infancy was to provide services that the regular police force could not provide because of its own technological and moral deficit. At that time, as now, police on the highways created roadblocks to extort money from drivers in the name of checking their ‘road particulars.’ Under the military, the FRSC grew phenomenally to the point of becoming a major Internally Generated Revenue earner during the last sixteen years of post-military rule. First, under the guise of enhancing the unity of the country, the agency took over functions that belong to local governments in most federal democracies: issuance of driver’s license, vehicle registration, and approval of schools to issue certificates of completion of courses on traffic rules and etiquette for driver’s license.

The latest of FRSC’s commercial ingenuity is the policy (now law) compelling citizens to install speed limiters that all vehicle owners must purchase if they want to drive without molestation by FRSC traffic police. The reasoning behind this new law is rooted in the supposed empowerment of the commission by the National Road Transportation Regulation (NRTR) 2012, enacted to replace the FRSC Act of 2007. Without doubt, citizens and the media must have been half awake when this law was enacted. In addition, lawmakers sent to the National Assembly to represent the interests of voters must have failed to brief their constituencies adequately on such an important regulation. But that a law is already on the book does not mean that it can be used to embarrass citizens without just cause. This FRSC-driven law includes the power to stop motorists on the highway to prove they have installed speed limiters, whether they exceed speed limit or not.

The law that passes the responsibility of government to citizens and enjoins citizens to spend money to provide a service that their tax money was designed to provide needs to be reviewed. This regulation may be entrepreneurially wise, especially in view of FRSC’s boast that, if properly enforced, it can bring about N1 billion to the agency in the first instance. But in terms of democratic culture, it is a decision loaded against citizens who are being asked to pay for enforcement of safe driving twice, through tax and through purchase of speed limiter.

That one of the functions of FRSC is to prevent or reduce accidents by enforcing speed limits does not make it necessary to impose the responsibility to buy devices to limit speed limiters is just one of many devices for reducing speed. What is required of citizens in the context of social contract is for citizens to act as responsible members of the society by driving in compliance with the posted speed limit. Such discipline is acquired through civic education and proper training of aspiring drivers in road etiquette and proficiency in driving. On the other hand, it is the duty of FRSC to first provide visible speed limit signs along the roads and to enforce speed limit by taking other steps that countries that manufacture speed limiting-devices do to ensure road safety. In the first place, speed limiting devices do not prevent cars from moving beyond certain specified limits. If speed limiter works like magic, it will perhaps be more cost effective for FRSC to insist that vehicles that come to this country are built by manufacturers with engines that cannot go beyond a specified speed limit. Manufacturers of such devices recognize that speed limits vary from one neighbourhood to the other.

Secondly, FRSC acts in a way to make citizens suspect that the desire to generate revenue is more important than investing in law enforcement by an agency charged with providing safety on the road. If speed limiter is a magic wand, why would a government agency insist that there are specific kinds of such device that vehicle owners must buy? If different cars can be driven in the country, shouldn’t it be expected that speed limiters manufactured by various companies in different parts of the world can equally provide efficient service, like the vehicles imported to the country from all corners of the globe? If car owners can create their own device, why should that not be acceptable to FRSC? What is the reason for FRSC’s insistence on a particular brand (or brands) of speed limiter? Such insistence disrespects citizens’ right to choose the goods they want to spend their hard-earned money on. FRSC might as well legislate on the brand of car citizens should drive.

Thirdly, by insisting on the use of speed limiter to enforce speed limit laws, FRSC acts as if it wants to pass the buck. In other countries, law enforcement agencies procure the gadgets they need for making citizens obey traffic regulations. Speed limit signs are provided at strategic places for citizens to see. Radars are deployed to check drivers that exceed speed limit; traffic safety officers are deployed to stop such drivers and slap them with traffic violation fines that they are compelled to pay. Proper vehicle worthiness regulations are enforced by properly equipped agencies and governments at all levels ensure that roads are in good condition at all times. In terms of cost effectiveness, one radar can identify millions of road users while each speed limiter functions only in respect of the vehicle that carries it. It may be better for the government to equip FRSC adequately to enforce speed limits without over stretching the budget of citizens in a country where each citizen is saddled with provision of municipal service—from providing electricity through generators to providing water through boreholes and providing maternity service to pregnant women through praying centres.

As we enter the second year in the regime of change, the government needs to adopt a new orientation that mandates government ministries, departments, and agencies to imbibe the culture of social contract, in preference to pretending, as FRSC has done, to have monopoly of wisdom on traffic order enforcement. The basis of any democratic constitution is belief by citizens and their representatives in the principle of social contract; delegation of power by citizens to politicians through voting and support of the government through tax in exchange for provision of security, public order, and policies that enhance citizens’ welfare.

This piece first appeared in 2016. It is republished with minor changes, in response to the recent announcement about FRSC’s readiness to commence stopping and searching cars to confirm installation of approved speed limiters, without even sharing with the public findings about the impact of the device on commercial vehicles since October 2018.

Currently, students learn in many public secondary schools learn under stress-inducing infrastructure.

Today’s piece is a parable or story about remote realms told to draw attention to immediate situations. Early in 1917, when about 99.9% of residents in Nigeria today were not born, a group of community leaders held seminars (Apero or Ajoro) to discuss the kind of future they would like for children in Ode-Ondo, in response to the new reality being constructed in Nigeria by colonialists.

The topic of the seminar was on what to do with children leaving St. Stephen’s Primary School, the first primary school in Ondo, founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1846. Members of the Planning Committee included Chief Cornelius Awosika, Chief Olatunji Awosika, Mr. Daniel Rogers, Chief Seriki Akinrosotu, Chief G. O. Fajiye, Mr. J. O. Akinwotu, and Mr. Abel Dosekun. These men worked in consultation with M.C. A. Adeyemi, the only Ondo indigene in the early 1990s with a university. Adeyemi was in 1917 C.M.S Education Secretary and Inspector of Schools in the Yoruba Mission Area.

Before 1917 the CMS had already established four CMS Grammar Schools; Lagos (1855), Abeokuta (1908), Ijebu-Ode (1913), and Ibadan (1913). The only opportunity for further education for pupils with Standard VI certificate existed in the four cities. But children in Ondo with desire for education beyond Standard VI had no secondary in the town to cater to their needs. Only those whose parents could afford tuition and accommodation fees in the four cities with CMS grammar schools could travel on foot to any of the schools that offered them admission. Others went to Lagos and Ibadan to look for jobs or looked for jobs Ondo local government.  Available records indicate that one of the first Ondo boys to trek to Ibadan Grammar School was Chief Odofin Akinkugbe, the father of Chief Oludola and Professor Oladipo Akinkugbe.

Obtaining post-primary education in Ondo then had two major constraints-long distance between Ondo and other towns without means of transportation and high cost of tuition and accommodation for young boys leaving far from home. Community leaders realized that secondary education would be for too few people in a town eager for new knowledge to solve old and new problems. First lesson: A community that perceived itself as a small nation came to terms with the imperative of new knowledge to deal with changing reality and commitment to mobilize all resources in the community to seek such knowledge, optimistic that such investment would improve the individuals exposed to new knowledge and communities that were ready to invest in acquisition of new knowledge. Awolowo’s readiness to provide free primary education in 1995 became an improvement on the model for funding establishment of OBHS. Singapore’s education model today is what Nigeria needs. Nothing can be more important than acquiring the knowledge that is needed to solve problems.

With constant encouragement from Canon Adeyemi, the Planning & Co-ordinating Committee members set a goal to establish a high school by 1919. The remit of the committee included raising funds in cash or in kind for establishment of the school. The CMS in Ondo and Benin provinces agreed in principle to provide intellectual assistance. But after donations from the rich and the poor in the town towards meeting the deadline of January1919, the CMS made demands that made Ondo community leaders and members of the committee uncomfortable. The church wanted to impose a principal of its choice who was a fresh graduate from Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone while Ondo community wanted the experienced Adeyemi who had already obtained a second degree in pedagogy from Cheltenham College in England in 1912. The Church agreed to house the school in St. Stephen’s Vicarage, and provide logistical support to the new school to be named Ondo Grammar School and manage the school as if it belonged to the church.

While trying to settle down in the vicarage, a heated discussion ensued between the CMS and the Planning Committee on casting the school as a CMS institution. Christian members on the committee reminded the CMS that two of the members were Muslims and that donations were collected from Christians, Muslims, and Animists toward establishment of OBHS. Secondly, the committee insisted that choice of principal should be left to the Co-ordinating Committee. Negotiations broke down between the CMS and Ondo community leaders who were not prepared compromise the principle of religious plurality in a town in which spouses had no authority over the choice of religion of each other. The Committee moved from the Vicarage, appointed its consultant for the past two years, M.C. Adeyemi, as the founding principal, appointed the Osemawe as Proprietor of the school, and renamed the school, Ondo Public High School.  Chief Sara Oladapo, a Muslim leader and Chief Ayodeji, a Christian leader in the community, donated one house each for classrooms and principal’s housing. Second lesson: Although majority of committee members were Christians and members of the St. Stephen’s Church, they jealously guarded the principle of religious plurality and tolerance. It is instructive that in 1918, just four years after Amalgamation, people of diverse religious persuasions upheld the principle of fairness and inter-faith harmony as means of sustaining peace, justice, and development in a culturally diverse ethos.

As soon as the school started, it introduced a junior school for highly motivated primary school children with ability to pay two pounds sterling for special preparation for secondary education; a boarding school for students from other parts of the country without secondary schools at that time in Ekiti, Edo, Delta, Osun, Kogi, and other places; and community leaders embarked on campaign that landlords should provide affordable accommodation for non-Ondo students; established an admission policy that stressed merit of candidates regardless of their ethnic, financial, and religious backgrounds. It also introduced what today would pass for a comprehensive curriculum, a curriculum that included Latin, Logic, Music, Singing, and Printing, to name a few. The town mobilised resources to offer scholarships to qualified students with difficulties to pay the tuition of six pounds sterling per annum. The school’s commitment to inclusion helped to sustain cooperation and trust among people across income levels that existed during mobilisation for establishment of the school. The school became a meeting point for students from various backgrounds. The Ohinoyi of Ebiraland sent nine of his boys to OBHS, and these included Ambassador Attah and the current Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Ado Ibrahim.  Lesson three: Promotion of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism threw up a less capital-intensive version of today’s Unity School. It brought benefits of multicultural literacy to students enrolled in the school, without the frills that characterise today’s Unity Schools.   Given the heterogeneous nature of most urban communities in the country today, every school in a public education system ought to be nurtured as Unity School.

one hundred years ago ought to be revived by political leaders in the country. The faith that Ondo community members had in 1917 in inevitability of new knowledge to deal with new realities ought to be strengthened by politicians across the country. Our political leaders need to realise that there is no excuse, as Singapore has demonstrated, for not providing good public secondary education for all citizens in the century of global economy. This consciousness should not be hard to get, if one century ago, community leaders in Ondo and many other parts of the country made efforts to expand opportunities for education to citizens.

Happy Centenary to OBHS – students, staff, and fellow alumni—and to descendants of all those who had contributed to development of Nigeria, in the belief that they were building a better society.

Nigerian children deserve more than basic education; they need universal secondary education, like their counterparts in 75% of the countries in the world.

Two of the parties contesting the presidential elections; All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party have made specific mention of basic education in their manifestos. In both cases, one gets the impression that Universal Basic Education introduced by Obasanjo for the first nine years of school is in the view of both parties the highest the government should go in providing citizens with access to pre-tertiary education. Nigerian children deserve more than basic education; they need universal secondary education, like their counterparts in 75% of the countries in the world.

Historically, policy on education took different forms in different regions until the advent of Universal Basic Education (UBE). From 1955, the Western Region of Nigeria, now Edo, Delta, Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, and most of Lagos States had free primary education that was paid for from direct and indirect taxes. Later, the Eastern Region comprising today’s Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, and Rivers also initiated free primary education. The only region that did not have formal free primary education was the Northern Region currently with 17 states. It is believed that the access to free education in Eastern and Western regions has impacted on poverty alleviation and human development index in the southern regions more noticeably than in the northern region.

Free secondary education also started in 1979 in the states of the former Western Region under the government of the Unity Party of Nigeria. It was not until 2000 that Nigeria as a country had a national policy on provision of pre-tertiary education for all parts of the country. Under the presidency of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Universal Basic Education (UBE), designed to provide free education for children (from 6-15 years of age) was launched in 2000 to provide free primary and junior secondary education to young citizens. However, UBE was also not made compulsory, thus accounting largely for why over 10 million children in the country are not literate today. According to statistics, over 9 million of the country’s illiterate children are from the northern states, despite the existence of UBE. Were UBE made free and compulsory, it would not have been possible for over 9 million children born after 2000 to be illiterate in 2018. Most of the 9 million out-of-school children in the North today must have been born before the onset of Boko Haram in 2009. There is a need for a national debate on what type of multicultural Nigeria citizens desire, a partially feudal or pro-egalitarian society.

That the two leading parties have chosen, as is suggested in the two quotations overleaf from manifestoes of APC and PDP, to limit access to public education to nine years shows that there is a need for a national dialogue on what kind of citizens the country as one political unit want to produce to compete with other countries in Africa and the global economy. None of the countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, and North Africa charges tuition for primary and secondary education. This is a sign of recognition by such countries that education is the most effective way to create a productive and competitive economy.

Education is too important to be left to politicians or self-appointed drafters of constitution alone. The most progressive statement in respect of citizens’ right to universal free education appears in Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution: “Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels. (2) Government shall promote science and technology (3) Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end Government shall as and when practicable provide (a) free, compulsory and universal primary education; (b) free secondary education; (c) free university education; and (d) free adult literacy programme.” It is, however, instructive that no section of this chapter of the 1999 Constitution is justiciable.

But leaving such an important social service to the whims of parties in power puts many things at risk: citizens’ capacity to compete in a global or regional economic context; to function effectively in a democratic space; and the country’s ability to reduce inequality and poverty in a world that requires cognitive skills to perform complex tasks required increasingly in an agile economic system. However, the glee with which the two major parties talk about basic education suggests that APC and PDP are not mindful of the importance of the amount of education the average citizen needs in a highly industrialised world. If Nigeria is afraid to sign the African Continental Free Trade Agreement because of lack of competitiveness, how does it with about 20% of Africa’s population hope to compete in the larger market of highly competitive economies: the Asian Tigers, Europe, North America, Singapore, Brazil, and China?

A time that many developed countries are providing citizens free pre-school education from four years of age as part of the strategy to improve cognitive development of citizens is not the time for Nigeria to be complacent with providing nine years of public education in a language that is not even native to citizens. One way to improve the preparedness of Nigerian citizens for complexities of a modern technology-driven world is for political parties to move from nine years of basic education to 12 years of pre-tertiary education for all.  It is surprising that after about 20 years of UBE, none of the two major parties believes that the country’s competitiveness and opportunities to close the equality gap does not deserve a new vision of academic and vocational education in the country.

Given the havoc that illiteracy and poverty have done via Boko Haram, Nigeria should be one of the countries to promote, as Uganda has done with its policy on Universal Secondary Education (USE), a nation-wide free and compulsory primary and secondary education. It is bad enough that Nigeria is already divided in ethnic and cultural terms, but it may be worse to gloss over the role that universal pre-tertiary education can play in enhancing the country’s unity. A country that is divided into North and South by divergent views on the role of education in improvement of citizenry and citizenship may promote unnecessary gap between two regions that ought to have a progressive view of education in a multicultural democratic state.

The route to industrialisation, global competitiveness, and sustainable unity among diverse cultures passes through, as it does in other developed multicultural countries, effective public education system that goes beyond universal basic education or literacy and embraces universal secondary education fully funded by government—federal, state, or local—with revenue from taxes. A system of government funding of UBE that is optional, a tuition-paying high school, and a tuition-free tertiary education by federal or state governments robs millions of deserving children opportunities to benefit from tertiary training. Funds currently invested in tuition-free university education is likely to bring more benefits, if it is spent on provision of free and compulsory UBE and USE.