The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • While waiting for manifestoes

    The timetable on campaign must have slowed down the nine presidential candidates from sharing details of their intentions and plans for governance with many voters who are eager to know what they are to vote for, beyond names and profiles of presidential candidates. An electoral process that limits campaign to 90 days may need to be reviewed after 2019. It is important for citizens to have adequate time to interrogate those to whom they are releasing their own power to govern, but this is not the concern of today’s piece. Ideological conversations among citizens seem to have been more active since Atiku Abubakar won the presidential primaries of PDP. Individuals and groups have been acting as if the candidate to contest on the platform of restructuring has finally emerged. But nothing is clear yet about any of the presidential candidates, largely because none of the parties and candidates have made their manifestoes known to the public, because the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) is yet to ‘lift the ban’ on campaign. But this is a good time for political enthusiasts to speculate.

    Contrary to popular reading of Atiku Abubakar as an apostle of restructuring, many commenters may be in too much hurry about what kind of candidate Atiku is likely to be by the time his manifesto is unearthed. In terms of his pre-primary utterances, Mr. Atiku has gained attention in the last few months as someone committed to restructuring as a means of sustaining the country’s unity and improving its development. In a recent exchange of views between Atiku and Vice President Osinbajo on restructuring, Atiku, to show his credentials as a federalist, advised Osinbajo about the imperative of restructuring: “My advice to the Vice President is that he should choose whether he is for restructuring or whether he is against it and stick to his choice. This continuous prevarication, the approbation and reprobation, helps no one, least of all true progressives who know that Nigeria needs to be restructured and restructured soon.”

    In view of this statement, it is logical for federalists to start viewing Atiku as a candidate committed to bringing federalism back to the country. But the party that he is a flag bearer for has never been known as one that believes in returning the country to federalism. For example, when former President Goodluck Jonathan convened the 2014 National Conference, the PDP, as a party, never said or did anything to support the conference and its recommendations. The same PDP did not show any interest in Obasanjo’s Conference on Political Reforms. Therefore, those who are already jubilating that restructuring as an ideology has finally gotten a presidential candidate in Atiku should not be in a hurry. A political party’s manifesto in both parliamentary and presidential system of government is not the making of the presidential candidate alone; it generally requires endorsement of the party that presents the candidate for office. For example, most of the policies of President Donald Trump since his coming to office seem to have the backing of the Republican Party. With the growing profile of Atiku as a federalist, it is understandable if enthusiastic federalists act as if the PDP has become or about to become a party for restructuring. If not, Atiku’s manifesto may not be allowed by his party to fly at the end of the day.  Political pronouncements and actions in the country in the last three years have suggested that a party can have a manifesto item that the president does not endorse or vice versa.

    For instance, four years ago, the manifesto upon which the APC presidential candidate campaigned included a clear statement on the readiness of the party to re-federalise the country: “Initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit.”  At that time, the PDP kept quiet in its manifesto on the issue of restructuring. But voters in many regions of the country jumped up for APC and its presidential candidate. None of such voters ever thought that restructuring would still be an issue for the 2019 election. Should the PDP co-author Atiku’s manifesto to include restructuring in 2019 and the APC re-presents the pledge it made in the 2015 presidential campaign, the two major parties will become federalist parties for voters to choose from.

    While waiting for manifestoes from all the parties, it is premature for anyone to declare Atiku a candidate for a federalist Nigeria. But it is important for the nine parties with presidential candidates to indicate publicly the views and intentions of their presidential candidates on restructuring, a trope that has sharpened the conflict between “Nothing is wrong with Nigeria as it is” sect and the group of voters who say “Restructuring Nigeria is a task that must be done.” It is also important for party ideologues not to confuse voters by creating false dichotomy between many of the challenges that confront the country.

    For example, such issues as ridding the country of political and bureaucratic corruption, enriching the unity of diverse sections of the country, providing physical, psychological, and cultural security for citizens, and growing the nation’s economy are not as unrelated as they may seem to restructuring as a platform for addressing the conditions under which diverse cultures with diverse worldviews live together in one territorial unit. Many other countries had given thought to such matters in the past in their bid to strengthen, develop, and enrich themselves. Most recent examples are United Arab Emirates, Canada, Belgium, Federal Republic of Germany, and Ethiopia, to name a few.

    It may not look obvious that peace, prosperity, economic growth, and security hinge on a conducive structure for a county in which citizens seek the freedom to realize their potentials in ways best suited to their dominant values. Although it is hard to establish a causal relationship between Nigeria’s under-development and its unitary governance, it is, however, easy to see correlations between consolidation of unitary governance by past military rulers and decline in many aspects of development in the country. Between 1975 and 1999, Nigeria has grown to be one of the poorest countries in the world despite the volume of petroleum and gas flowing out of its soil; it is one of the countries with the worst literacy rate in the world; it is also at the bottom of countries with the highest maternal and infant mortality rates; it is a country in which majority of its citizens do not have access to potable water and modern toilet facilities; etc.

    It is, therefore, logical to assume that the older and more consolidated the unitary system imposed on the country becomes, the more agents of destabilisation and disruption the country produces: Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, violent Herdsmen, etc. Furthermore, there was no demand for secession since the end of the civil war of the late 1960s until recently when groups such as MASSOB and IPOB felt that their progress was being undermined by a unitary system of government. Over concentration of resources in the central government has aggravated corruption, just as it does at the state level, where governors need not generate jobs and taxes to make citizens feel like co-owners of their state. Communities are policed by persons who do not understand the language of the people they are protecting.

    Certainly, persons who are seeking to rule the country need to understand these problems and construct a manifesto that can address them. In addition, presidential candidates ought to present manifestoes that carry the endorsement of the political party that sponsors them for election. Doing this will avoid intra-party crisis over the president’s decision to fulfil his or her pledge to the electorate or the party’s preference that all promises in a manifesto are redeemed. In general, citizens now look eager to vote, but they need to know the kind of future they are voting for.

     

    • Roposek@msn.com

     

  • Two types of naira fear

    The first is the fear by governors to access the funds waiting for them in the office of the Universal Basic Education, for the simple reason that doing so will expose their indifference to children’s future. The other fear of the naira is the one being foisted by the Central Bank of Nigeria on innocent and self-respecting citizens who do what their ancestors did to no one’s disadvantage: gift friends and family members naira during festive occasions.

    Governors who have just announced their plans to campaign on behalf of President Buhari for his second term have also been reported to have avoided in their states a major governance trope: improvement of access and quality of public education. A special fund under the authority of Universal Basic Education (UBE) waiting for governors to access by providing evidence of matching grants from their states is yet to be accessed by most of the states, especially states from the southern regions. This is at a time when UNICEF claims that over 13 million children who should be in school are not enrolled. It is as if the release of the story about governors’ neglect of this important enrichment fund is designed to embarrass governors who are waiting to campaign for their own second term in office. How effective or credible would such governors be if or when they campaign for President Buhari?

    Media houses planning to organize debates for gubernatorial candidates should take note of states that have been kept away by their governors from accessing funds that can become a game changer in the lives of many young children currently in public schools. Given the lack of concern for citizens by governors who shun UBEC’s funds, President Buhari would be taking a big risk to ask governors who have not been able to identify what their own constituents need to campaign for him. The president is not too old to campaign for himself, given the fact that Mugabe and Biya, two much older presidential candidates, took charge of their own campaigns when they needed to do so. Emmerson Mnangagwa did not delegate his campaign in the recent election in Zimbabwe to provincial leaders. And President Buhari himself has not contracted his campaign to governors. Campaigning for office is a cross for each person to carry. Enough of unsolicited advice from this writer.

    Today’s main concern is the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to give teeth to a law that has been dormant for a few years. The urge to stop spraying of naira at social events has been on the federal government’s drawing board for a few years. The legislation was first made during the Obasanjo regime. Elements of the law against abuse of the naira include spraying or pinning the naira on any person; pasting it on the body of any person, stepping or matching on the naira; hawking the naira, etc. Each of these actions is believed to constitute an abuse of the naira. Offenders will be trailed by police who would have the power to arrest such people and ensure immediate prosecution and instant justice at the hands of judges of mobile courts. Punishment to those found guilty will be imprisonment for six months or a fine of N50,000. The law also prescribes punishment of five years in jail for counterfeiting. Citizen journalists on the social media do not appear to have any worries about counterfeiters, just as this writer doesn’t. Social media commenters are justifiably worried about the relevance of gifting of naira in whatever form to friends and family members in a country where politicians drop bundles of naira into the palms of potential voters.

    The law against abuse of the naira seems to be more of distraction from more serious issues facing the country. Many cultures in and outside Nigeria pin, paste, or spray naira at special ceremonies on celebrators. Examples abound in Hungary, Mexico, Cuba, Ukraine, and parts of Poland where people have what they call money dance at weddings. In many parts of Nigeria, coins (where they are available) and paper money are pasted on the body of celebrators or other participants at social ceremonies: naming, funerals, chieftaincy installations, etc. The assumption even in precolonial times when many Nigerian cultures sprayed or pinned money on other people was that money was designed to serve three major functions: medium of exchange, a measure of value, and a store of value. As far as most people outside Nigeria’s boardroom of power are concerned in the 21st century, money still performs these functions in most polities. Such assumption must have made the British not to legislate against use of the British pound in ways that resembled how Nigerians had used their cowries in the past. It must be a similar recognition by the treasury department in the United States and the United Kingdom that had influenced what seems to be the global best practice in management or regulation of currency today. There is no law in the Americas and Europe these and other countries against spraying of the sterling, franc, or the dollar by foreigners, even when citizens of these countries do not practice the culture of spraying or pinning of money.

    The concept of abuse of the naira or the imperative to respect the naira as a national symbol is strange. For example, what does the law mean by hawking of the naira?  Are the tens of people selling naira to travelers at the ports and on highways hawking the naira? Does this law only refer to the young women selling the naira to party goers at the entrance to venues of social events? Can persons who want to sell money at such places obtain a license as operators of Bureau de Change or Bureau de Cadeau?  Will naira notes dropped in dirty bags and baskets in churches and mosques count as abuse of the naira? Will dropping of naira on the highways for beggars or thrown to or at them by motorists constitute abuse of the naira? Would spraying envelopes that contain naira amount to naira abuse?

    Furthermore, is it legal for citizens to spray dollars bought with naira in the country? Will citizens still have the right to consult their lawyers before they are whisked to jail by mobile court judges? If citizens who stole millions or billions from the treasury have the right to hire lawyers to defend them, would those who give their own hard-earned naira notes to their loved ones at parties be eligible to be defended by lawyers?  In addition, would citizens lose their right to privacy at social events they organize? For example, can event coordinators refuse entry to uninvited police and mobile court judges into the halls they have rented solely for their own use and the use of their families and friends?

    The point of all these questions is that the law to proscribe spraying sounds like killing a fly with a boulder or cutting off a head because it aches. One logical reason offered so far to justify the law is that Nigeria pays so much to manufacture coins and currency notes and that spraying or pinning of either of these items accelerates its degeneration and leads to the need for frequent replacement of such items. By setting out to send police and mobile court judges to millions of event centres across the country on each of the four days of naira gifting: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, is it not likely that such process would gulp more funds than replacing stressed naira notes would?

    A futile law had been created by Obasanjo, but the law could have been just left unnoticed as we had done for over ten years. There seem to be too many more serious problems facing the country and too many overtly criminal matters that can benefit from the enthusiasm of those who want to be seen to be doing something. There is virtually nothing to gain from a law that sets out to fetishize the naira.  It is clear to citizens that some individuals are making profit from selling new naira notes. Popular knowledge is that 10% is being charged by bank managers and another 10% by the naira vendor. Maybe the CBN should be the only vendor of new naira notes and make 20% profit on each naira sold. Whatever accrues from such profits may be enough to offset the cost of frequent replacement of Nigerian naira notes.

    • Roposek@msn.com

  • Let us leave God out of our search for unity

    Pushing the problems of Nigeria on God may be a cheap test of the faith of members of the public.

    When Nigeria obtained independence in 1960, the consensus among leaders was that Nigeria was the result of human construction, hence, the various constitutional conferences that culminated in the Republican Constitution of 1963. Nobody, not Frederick Lugard, Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo, and Nnamdi Azikiwe called Nigeria a creation of God. It was not common in the world at that time to pass the buck of poor or good architecture to God, as many highly placed leaders tend to do these days. To reinforce the status quo, political and cultural leaders have had for too long the tendency to make claims that are not realistic or rational, namely that it is God who created Nigeria, implying, in effect, that nobody should do or say anything that challenges God’s design.

    President Buhari’s recent exchange with Pastor Kumuyi is not the first of such message from the top echelon of political or cultural power in the country. The intention of today’s piece is not to challenge the right of President Buhari to proclaim that God put the various nationalities in Nigeria, but to discuss the implications of such statements to citizens’ understanding of the complexity of the problem facing the country in respect of the role of human beings in the country’s social, economic, and political affairs. Granted that there are millions of citizens without any form of literacy and that most of the ones with a measure of literacy may not have had adequate exposure to critical thinking, such an innocent statement that God created Nigeria may confuse or mislead citizens who are interested in solving problems affecting development in the country.

    None of my two parents was born a Nigerian in 1912. All history books including those written by British authors told us that Nigeria was created by Frederick Lugard. But young Nigerians reading Buhari’s speech are likely to be confused to hear that it was God that put the country together. As desirable as the country’s unity is, it is unnecessary to over mystify any aspect of its evolution. Narratives are important to political communication, but narratives that are too bizarre have a way of losing their force. It is an avoidable hyperbole to say that God created Nigeria, and those who prefer religious views of essentially political matters should not overdo this kind of mythmaking. It is also capable of further de-secularising the country, just as the myth that Nigeria is a multi-religious country was used several years ago to override the constitutional principle of secularity of the state.

    Before this season, Nigerians were already used to hearing that it is God that appoints leaders, especially when some nosy citizens accused ruling parties of election manipulation. This happened in 1979, 1983, 1993, 1999, 2003, 2007, and even in 2011, particularly when those who lost elections challenged the integrity of such elections. Resorting to metaphysical explanations of political activities has been for some time part of political rhetoric in the country, but the relapse to etiological exercise got to a crescendo in the last few years, particularly since demand for restructuring or re-federalisation became more pronounced and the rise of MASSOB and IPOB became a rallying narrative for the Southeast Region.

    Mystification and distortion started to become popular during the regime of President Obasanjo, who equated call for restructuring with demand for secession, as his way of calling the dog of restructuring a bad name to get it ready for hanging. Most Nigerians had no reason to expect that there would be an emergence of such dare-devils as the Kanu group with inordinate ambition: breaking Nigeria so that Biafra can be revived, to allow what the group considers a Master-race nationality in Nigeria to move ahead and reclaim its manifest destiny.

    When MASSOB and IPOB emerged on the landscape of the country’s geopolitical struggle for the soul of Nigeria, those calling for restructuring got eclipsed by the bellicose rhetoric of IPOB. And some of the new theorists of etiology seized the moment to remind citizens that it was God in his/her infinite mercies that created Nigeria and that nobody born of women has a right to question God’s design. Of course, mystification has its function. It either makes critical individuals to interrogate what they perceive to be overdone or get simple-minded ones intoxicated or indoctrinated by the sheer force of the oversize image that may have no connection to reality.

    For far too long, political and cultural leaders have relished making God responsible for the way Nigeria has become, but such leaders need to be careful what they wish for. Pushing the problems of Nigeria on God may be a cheap test of the faith of members of the public. Apart from the use of such mythmaking to confuse the Nigerian public, it can also make members of the public to see everything in terms of belief in God or not, to the extent that when the country’s problems continue to fester, the doubt that should have been about the manner of altering a bad situation might throw up Islamic and Christian prayer warriors perpetually on their knees for divine mercy or blessing. Citizens may start throwing up their arms while saying this is the way God wants Nigeria to be.  The choice of form or content of national conversation should not be between etiology and sociology or fatalism and humanism. It should simply be about the sort of polity a people—homogenous or heterogeneous—ought to have from time to time, regardless of the identity of the energy that founded such polity.

    Those who govern and those being governed need to understand that Nigeria, like any other country, has not been perfectly made, largely because those human forces behind its design are not perfect. Nobody knows how Lugard would have felt if he had been given another chance to re-sculpt Nigeria today. Ideas about keeping Nigeria united should be to reinvigorate national conversation on how to make living in the country better, not to create fear for the public about divine source of its existence.  Such rhetoric has the potential to limit the space of choice in political and social organisation. It does not strengthen any argument to push every problem on the lap of God, as doing so gives human beings the chance to expect miracles about what they could have been able to improve on their own, as the history of most countries in the world has shown.

    Certainly, Nigeria needs active debates to throw more light on what the issues that weaken the country might be. But the type of debate we do not need is leaving to God what should have been the responsibility of Caesar. Citizens should be put in no doubt about the function of their political leaders and of governance. The job to make Nigeria better than what it has been rests, first and foremost, on the shoulders of those who have asked citizens to vote them into power and on citizens to be quick to ask their leaders, not God, what the problems are and how to solve them.

    This piece had appeared in a slightly different form on this page before. The recent claim by President Buhari in Abuja about “God not making a mistake for putting 250 ethnic nationalities in a place called Nigeria” is the reason for republishing it today, to warn citizens against oversimplification of an essentially complex matter, especially given the fact that President Buhari says at the same event: “With my experience as a governor, minister of petroleum, head of state, chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund, I thought I had seen it all, but Nigeria has a way of going at its own speed.” 

    • Roposek@msn.com

  • When are Nigerians going to get angry?

    Education, as Mandela says, matters in a democracy

    You know I am not very happy with Nigeria.…but you let yourselves down, and Africa and the black race very badly. Your leaders have no respect for their people. They believe that their personal interests are the interests of the people. They take people’s resources and turn it into personal wealth. There is a level of poverty in Nigeria that should be unacceptable. I cannot understand why Nigerians are not more angry than they are.
    What do young Nigerians think about your leaders and their country and Africa? Do you teach them history? Do you have lessons on how your past leaders stood by us and gave us large amounts of money? You know I hear from Angolans and Mozambicans and Zimbabweans how your people opened their hearts and their homes to them. I was in prison then, but we know how your leaders punished western companies who supported apartheid.
    What about the corruption and the crimes? Your elections are like wars. Now, we hear that you cannot be president in Nigeria unless you are Muslim or Christian. Some people tell me your country may break up. Please don’t let it happen. Let me tell you what I think you need to do. You should encourage leaders to emerge who will not confuse public office with sources of making personal wealth. Corrupt people do not make good leaders. Then you have to spend a lot of your resources for education.
    “Educate children of the poor, so that they can get out of poverty. Poverty does not breed confidence. Only confident people can bring changes. Poor, uneducated people can also bring change, but it will be hijacked by the educated and the wealthy…give young Nigerians good education. Teach them the value of hard work and sacrifice, and discourage them from crimes which are destroying your image as a good people.—Nelson Mandela

    The 100th anniversary of the birth of Nelson Mandela that even got President Buhari excited in New York, despite his legendary and taciturnity, is not a wrong to time to encourage political leaders and followers in Nigeria to re-think about many things that are done to them and in their name. The copious quotation overleaf calls on Nigerians to remould or reshape their country, not only for their sake but also for the sake of Africa. It was as if Mandela had seen the weeks of the election to vote in someone to succeed Rauf Aregbesola in Osun State.

    The first observation by Mandela is in respect of quality of leadership in Nigeria. Mandela’s view that Nigerian leaders have no respect for the people shows clearly in the events that led to the just concluded election in Osun State. The PDP, the party that governed the country for straight sixteen years and now presents itself as the party to save Nigeria from APC, chose to act unilaterally after the death of the elder of Ademola Adeleke. The overriding criterion for picking Adeleke was his ‘electability.’ It was believed that Ede people would vote for him because of the sudden death of his brother, without looking at other factors that could produce a politician capable of serving as inspiration or good role model for the millions of youth he had been recruited to govern. Nobody seemed to care how educated (or literate?) he was or how educable he is. He was the soul or spectacle of any dancing party. Not much of a glib talker and thus not eligible to be referred to as a demagogue, nevertheless, his high skills in gyrations, to put it bluntly, was enough to endear him to the hedonistic layer of the society that has been dumbed down by clowning and infectious consumerism, especially in a Yoruba society that seems to have lost any confidence in the power of education on the mind of the leader and the follower.

    What is expected of senators even in Nigeria requires some measure of mental or intellectual presence. But gubernatorial responsibilities are more complex than those of senators. The governor must have enough literacy to read bills and understand their intentions. He or she needs to be able to make connections between laws that generate policies and grasp the interconnection between policy and implementation. I first wrote this piece two weeks ago but felt that it was not proper to publish it when candidates of various parties were seeking for votes from citizens, in the hope of avoiding being adjudged too partisan. I am bringing this out today because of the tempo of pro-mediocrity rhetoric of Yoruba people during the few days between the first and second ballots in Osun. By the time readers get to read this article, it would no longer affect citizens’ right to choose the leader they prefer.

    I remember how Yoruba people used to joke forty years ago about Barkin Zuwo for not grasping the fine distinction between solid minerals under the earth in his state and mineral drinks such as Coke, Sprite, and Pepsi, etc. It is worrisome that after sixty years of Awolowo’s Free Education Scheme in old Western Nigeria, there are people whose political partisanship makes it acceptable for them to accept that someone without any evidence of being able to comprehend any complex material should be given a chance to learn on the job! In the era of Awolowo, persons who asked for support of their peers in their communities were professionals; lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc. These were people who had intellectual preparation to do the job. Modern governance is different from Yoruba monarchy which is defined by the flowing of royal blood in the veins of a prince, rather than the flow of ideas in the heads of candidates for political office. It should not be at the time that villages are pleading that Kingmakers look for educated candidates to wear the crowns of their pre-literate ancestors that senators or potential governors should be accepted just for what or who they are.

    Education, as Mandela says, matters in a democracy. It matters for those who are called upon to rule and those who are to follow political leaders. A minimum measure of critical thinking is expected from citizens who release their power to rule to others they believe have better chances of doing so. Whatever has brought Yoruba land to this low level of ambition about the capacity of their representatives in the legislative and executive branches of government needs to be addressed immediately. Granted that a low level of education on the part of the citizen makes the job of a relatively better educated lawmaker or governor easier for him or her, but the consequence of installing someone with severely limited intellectual capacity for the polity and society is more serious than can be easily imagined. Anyone interested in understanding the psychology of stunted cognitive growth on people in power should read Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons.

    A democracy that puts little value on knowledge stands the risk of producing a dumb electorate; one that cannot understand the difference between the sublime and the ridiculous. This is not to say that there it is automatic that once a person has a string of university degrees, he or she will automatically become a good ruler. It is about what Rev. J. F. Akinrele, the second principal of my secondary school, Ondo Boys’ High School, left as one of the most quotable quotes about development of the school in respect of a right balance between ‘First-class Character and Second-class Upper Education’ as the right recipe for progress. Whoever wins tomorrow’s Run-off election in Osun State should heed the saying of Rev Akinrele referred to in the preceding sentence. Nothing more would make Mandela smile in his grave about Nigeria. And ensuring a good balance between academic or professional training and good character can reduce the risk of an African Spring spawned by citizens’ anger.

  • Planning without facts?

    This may be a good time for Nigerian ‘developers’ to borrow from a common American saying—”If it is not broken, don’t fix it.”

    How else is one to interpret the recent revelation that about 32 million under-five children in Nigeria do not have birth or birth registration certificates? If this is true, it means that plans made in respect of education, health, and food production and distribution leave out about 15 per cent of the population, if we put the country’s population at 200 million. What the omission of 32 million children from plans made by the central and subnational governments suggests is lack of faith in facts as one of the fundamentals of modern governance. Extremists would even say that this shows that people in power and governance have no respect for the citizens whose votes bring them power and prominence.

    Hearing from the UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, Mrs Sharon Oladiji: “The federal government must ensure the birth registration of 32 million under-five children in the country to properly plan for their education, healthcare and other services. We need birth records for them because this is critical for their education, health and other social initiatives,” only suggests that Nigeria’s leaders may be anti-knowledge or indifferent to the importance of knowledge and self-knowledge to development. Oladiji’s recommendation confirms that very little must have changed in the country since Stopler wrote Planning without Facts in the early 1960s.

    By way of digression, Nigeria used to have politicians and civil servants who knew the importance of data. There was a story in the 1950s about planning and implementation of the Western Nigeria Free Education Scheme. The topmost civil servant in the region and the country then was Chief Simeon Adebo. He had come to tell Awolowo that enrolment in the schools in border towns in Asaba towards Eastern Region, Otun-Ekiti, Otte on the way to Northern Region was noticeably higher than projected. Someone in the room said how could the government block those areas. Awolowo as premier was reported to have said that it was risky for the region to deliberately keep its neighbours illiterate in the middle of the 20th century. Awolowo then called for more data about border villages in the region so that its Ministry of Education could plan for such gate neighbours desirous of education.  This digression is not designed to preach Awoism; we already have too many people claiming to be Awoists. My goal with this anecdote is to remind contemporary politicians that data or facts may not be as dangerous or useless as they seem. They help to improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability in governance.

    With 32 million young Nigerians unaccounted for in the nation’s records, is it surprising that UNICEF has reported that about half of Nigerians engage in open defecation?  Will anybody be surprised if the promises made by the federal government to improve sanitation across the country in collaboration with the states miscarry after implementation of such plans? 22 of the 36 states are said to be without facilities for registering the birth of those rhetorically referred to as ‘leaders of tomorrow’ by politicians. Is it inconceivable that 50 per cent of the country’s ‘omitted children’ also have another 30 million of mothers and fathers whose identities are not recognised by their governments?

    The response of the Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Eze Duruiheoma, to the news about unregistered births is important. The Commission has confirmed that birth certifications and birth registrations are somewhat free, apart from what he calls ‘token charges’ by the company to which the commission had contracted collection of such facts in the country, after obtaining Federal Government’s approval for hiring Socket Works Ltd as a contractor for collection of biodata on behalf of the National Population Commission. He explained that NPC got approval to engage Socket Works Ltd under the PPP scheme, after due consultation with necessary authorities including the SGF.

    The Chairman’s matter-of-fact statement in respect of NPC: “The commission has been struggling over the years to switch from analogue to automated, (sic) but couldn’t do that due to lack of funds. Births and deaths are being registered by hand and the states struggle to put the data together and even when they do, it is difficult for us in the headquarters to analyse it,” deconstructs the government’s attitude to facts or data.  The failure to register births is due to “lack of funds” in a country that almost started a new airline a few weeks ago? Our priorities need to change. Most of the rest of the world, apart from Africa that is the poster child for colossal disregard for facts, is knowledge and data-driven. Avoiding such global best practices can only be at the expense of sustainable development in Nigeria and the rest of the continent Nigeria claims to lead. What is unpardonable is that Nigeria is even behind most African countries on inability to register the birth of its citizens even in the age of stunning advances in data technology.

    Now to something different from Stopler’s Planning without Facts. The recent announcement by the Minister of Aviation that Nigeria Air is off the radar for now, barely two months after its elaborate name ceremony, is an example of Implementing without Planning. Although we do not know or may not know what cut the life of this new source of national pride short even before the airline gets its birth registered, it is clear from the minister’s promise that all financial obligations in respect of the international naming ceremony for Nigeria Air would be duly settled, in compliance with international law. In other words, this is a case of waste of scarce resources.

    This may be a good time for Nigerian ‘developers’ to borrow from a common American saying—”If it is not broken, don’t fix it.” What in the first instance necessitated creation of another national carrier, after the sad experience the country had with Nigeria Airways? What has changed radically in the country to convince ‘developers’ that Nigeria had learnt adequate lessons from the fiasco of the first Nigeria Airways? It is logical to claim that President Buhari had promised during the 2015 campaigns to create a new national carrier. Is this the only promise that was made then and that had been found not to be feasible later? The presidential candidate then promised to bring federalism back to the constitution and devolve powers to subnational governments. Has this promise been fulfilled?

    What if Buhari himself had realised that neurotic attachment to national pride that was in vogue in many African countries in the 1960s is no longer good economics for a country crawling out recession? What if Buhari had realised that there are many more pressing projects that can bring a lot of returns to the country than embarking on another PPP airline project? What if Buhari has come to realise that no national airline brings more money and more pride to the United States than Bill Gates, Steve Job, or Mark Zuckerberg, all products of America’s education for innovation? What if Buhari now believes that borrowing to invest in quality education that stimulates innovativeness on the part of those educated can bring higher profit to the country than borrowing to fund a national carrier? At present, there are many airlines that can service Nigeria’s middle-class men and women that travel abroad daily, just as there are many that carry home-bound Nigerians to many of the state capitals with airports.

    With respect to data collection and storage for planning, it is imperative that all governments are empowered to make birth registration automatic in the hospital in which women deliver their babies and ensure that all birthing centres are licensed and fully linked to hospitals with computer facilities to collect data. On suspension of the project to start a new airline, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie.

  • Our slow journey to defecation-free society

    The Government of Nigeria is committed to promoting sanitation and hygiene, along with drinking water. Towards this end, it has formulated policies and strategies from time to time. Some of these policies are i) National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy, 2000, ii) National Environmental Sanitation Policy, 2005, iii) National Health Promotion Policy, 2006 and iv) Strategy for Scaling up Rural Sanitation and Hygiene to meet MDG, 2007.
    A time plan for implementing the proposed road map has been prepared. The various time lines suggested are, state of preparedness and period of transition (2016-2017), assessment (2018), years of consolidation and moving forward (2019-2021), year of self-assessment (2022) and the ûnal assault (2023-2025). Open Defecation Free Road Map—Federal Government

    Recent revelations about the way Nigerians ‘ease themselves’ seems to have hit the government in the face. Nobody, not even the World Bank or the UNICEF seems to have bothered about where Nigerians urinate. Yet, this is important for the health of the nation. But global organisations have, understandably, paid so much attention to what in local parlance is captured as ‘doing the big one.’ Put bluntly, about 50 million Nigerians defecate in the open. Should our federation be certified (as it has been) the second largest culprit in the social crime of open defecation, 58 years after independence?

    As problematic as British colonialism in Nigeria might have been, the colonialists made efforts to introduce the modern toilet system to Nigeria during their administration of the country. When the British first arrived in Nigeria, they themselves used the out-house model of freeing themselves from engaging in open defecation, a model that many communities in urban parts of Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, and Lagos copied. It must, therefore, be shameful to those who grew up in many of these areas in the 1940s to learn that all of them, except Lagos, have regressed, now having over 40% of their population in the category of open defecators.

    At the time the British were leaving in 1960, the model of modern sanitation had become known to their political successors. Some of the first-generation post-colonial rulers made efforts to popularise modern sanitation. For example, Awolowo established a toilet bowl and ceramic bathtub factory in Abeokuta, to make access to such products more affordable than imported products. What happened to that political will over time? At that time, the one-station radio distributed to most homes in the region engaged in aggressive promotion of sanitation and hygiene, including hiring of Sanitation Inspectors to private homes in the urban and semi-urban parts of Western Nigeria.  It is such political will that has been deficient for several decades, to the extent that the entire country slipped back into a sanitation culture that has embarrassed the civilised world. That truck drivers parking on bridges in Lagos today engage in open defecation brings the problem into sharp focus and calls, among other embarrassing conduct in most parts of the country for the kind of comprehensive solution in the ODF Roadmap published in 2017 under the Buhari administration but based on studies and policy discussions done under Goodluck Jonathan in 2014, a sign of productive use of Hand-Over Notes from one government to the another.

    It is instructive that all the country’s governors need to go to Abia State for tutelage on sanitation and hygiene, apart from reading the new textbook on sanitation by the federal government; Open Defecation Free Road Map. But the ‘Wonder Child’ of Nigeria in terms of response to sincere and effective intervention by government agencies and the UNICEF since 2013 has been Yakurr Local Government in Cross River State, which has been certified as the first open defecation-free community in the federation. The significance of the progress in Abia with just 1.7 percent of its population engaged in open defecation and of Yakurr LGA in Cross River becoming a national model of modern Sanitation & Hygiene is the validation of the old cliché, “Where there is a will, there is a way.”

    The Guardian’s story on the Yakurr experiment on improving sanitation is apt for all states and local governments: “A report of the re-validation of certified ODF communities in Yakurr LGA of Cross River State by NTGS released December 2017 concluded: “All the issues that were identified in the field were tackled using the small immediate doable actions (SIDA) approach, which addressed all the issues. A sustainability plan has been drawn at the LGA for sustaining the ODF Status by the LGA. The LGA staff pledged their support and commitment to sustaining their new status. The clan heads also promised to use their offices to sustain the status and to strife to achieve total sanitation in the shortest possible time. Everyone was commended for their various contributions leading to the 100 per cent success of the programme in Yakurr.”

    Open Defecation Free Roadmap is by all standards a well-prepared policy document. This is not surprising, given the experience and expertise of agencies involved in its formulation: UNICEF, DFiD, European Commission, NAFDAC, and representatives of several ministries, ranging from Health, Agriculture, Environment, to Water Resources. The diversity of perspectives of those involved in preparation of the policy to meet SDG 6: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” captures the interlocking nature of the problem at hand. The policy document also illustrates ambitiousness of the government, particularly its commitment to meeting SDG 6 five years ahead of 2030.

    But a policy paper can also remain a rhetorical document if the will to move it from the page to the stage of implementation is not pursued with sincerity and vigour. The history of efforts towards reducing or ending open defecation in the country since 2000, referred to in the first passage in the opening of this piece, shows that several policy documents must have been allowed to die a natural death. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to create a new roadmap to solve a problem that had been on the policy table for the past 18 or more years. But the comprehensive policy of 2017 is better late than never.

    Given that it has taken the federal government four years to turn a concept conceived in 2014 into a policy direction, it is conceivable that achieving the goals by 2025 will require unfailing implementation in the next seven years. And the bulk of the time needed to meet this specific Sustainable Development Goal will take place under the next federal government. It will be necessary for the current government to make the new document available on its website. All political parties seeking to rule the country from 2019 need to be exposed to this important document. Doing so will enable all presidential candidates to present their positions on a policy to end a cultural practice that is self-demeaning. It is already axiomatic that handlers of Buhari’s campaign for 2019 will not leave this matter out of their mission, having spent three years on producing such a remarkable policy monograph.

    For lack of a better phrasing, ODF Roadmap 2017 is a form of cultural restructuring. It must not be made optional to any president and political party that comes to power in 2019. It is whichever party that comes to power in 2019 that will have the opportunity to make or break implementation of the laudable goal that is currently only a promise to Nigerians and other countries committed to improving quality of life in the entire world.

  • Reconciling liberty and security

    Determination of a nation’s interests in a democracy is the choice of citizens and their representatives, not of the president alone.

    It is better for the law to rule than one of its citizens…so, even the guardians of the laws are obeying the laws—Aristotle
    No man is punishable or can lawfully be made to suffer in body or goods except for a distinct breach of law established in the ordinary legal manner before the ordinary courts of the land—A.V. Dicey
    Wherever law ends, tyranny begins—John Locke
    In America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other—Tom Paine
    If man is not compelled to have recourse, as a last result, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, human rights should be protected by the rule of law—Eleanor Roosevelt

    When fundamental rights are sacrificed for the sake of National security, both will be lost. On matters of urgency, a democracy must balance its duty to secure itself and its obligations to uphold its distinctive and indispensable principles of freedom—Shehu Sani

    The hallmarks of a regime which flouts the rule of law are, alas, all too familiar: the midnight knock on the door, the sudden disappearance, the show trial, the subjection of prisoners to genetic experiment, the confession extracted by torture, the gulag and the concentration camp, the gas chamber, the practice of genocide or ethnic cleansing, the waging of aggressive war. The list is endless—Tom Bingham in The Rule of Law

    This year’s National Bar Association (NBA) conference has brought new attention to the concept and practice of Rule of Law, hitherto believed to be a settled aspect of Nigeria’s democratic culture. President Buhari took advantage of his invitation to open the conference to do his occasional pontification on matters of importance to citizens. But this year, Buhari has chosen to problematise what all functioning democracies find to be a settled matter, the belief that rule of law is supreme in democracies. Instead of borrowing from best practices elsewhere to reconcile liberty and security, the president chooses to see both as antagonistic: “Rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest. …Our apex court has had cause to adopt a position on this issue in this regard and it is now a matter of judicial recognition that; where national security and public interest are threatened or there is a likelihood of their being threatened, the individual rights of those allegedly responsible must take second place in favour of the greater good of society.”  He draws inspiration for the principle that national security and interest take precedence over human rights from a judicial observation over application for bail in the case of Dokubo-Asari versus FRN in respect of bail when the former was accused of treasonable activities.

    President Buhari’s speech at the NBA conference has left two levels of concern. The first worry is failure of the Nigerian Bar Association as a group of 106,000 registered lawyers, whose livelihood derives from flourishing of rule of law, to comment formally on a speech that challenges the supremacy of rule of law in a democracy. Although many lawyers have expressed objections to the president’s statement about subjecting the rule of law to the executive’s disposition to threats to national interests, the silence of NBA as a body remains puzzling. NBA would have assured citizens of the association’s democratic credentials if the association had plucked the courage to defend the cause of human rights in response to Mr. President via a resolution to form part of the communique at the end of the conference. Geoffrey Chaucer’s line “If gold rust what shall iron do” sums up citizens’ feelings about NBA’s taciturnity towards Buhari’s privileging of national security over human rights. If the president had come to the conference to just fly a kite with his pontification, NBA has used its silence to congratulate him, when the association needed to critique him. It is troubling that not even survivors of National Association of Democratic Lawyers in the NBA could pull the association away from a right-wing endorsement of Mr. President via the mechanism of total silence.

    The second concern is about President Buhari’s assessment of his role in protecting the country’s security and interests. There is nothing in the constitution that gives him the power to single-handedly determine how to determine or evaluate national interests and how to respond to threats to such interests. That task is a joint responsibility that involves the legislature directly and the judiciary indirectly, lawmakers to provide enabling legislations for necessary actions to fight threats to security and the judiciary to review actions that jeopardises human rights and national peace and unity. Determination of a nation’s interests in a democracy is the choice of citizens and their representatives, not of the president alone. Liberty provides the conditions for citizens to belong to the nation itself and thus give the nation life, and any attempt to deny citizens their liberty without following due process smacks of authoritarianism.

    For example, the importance of reconciling liberty and security in the United States after 9/11 terrorist attacks became an issue for the country’s executive whose no-holds-barred approach quickly roiled citizens about arbitrary and abusive treatment of suspects.  Under pressure from citizens and the media, the Congress quickly introduced legislation to ensure that response to terrorism is in sync with the culture of rule of law. Thus, leaders in the parliaments of the United States and the United Kingdom foreclosed the probability of concentrating too much power in the executive, by opting to create legislations to regulate use of executive power in response to terrorists. Before such legislation, it was not uncommon for ordinary citizens to cry foul about deprivation of suspects’ freedom during interrogation and detention of suspects. The decision of the US and UK to use legislation to fight suspects is the right way to go, not suspending the liberties of suspects as preferred choice of fighting threats to national security.

    Finally, the case invoked by the president to support his claim about the rightness of suspending liberty in order to secure the nation is not a strong case to use for changing the culture of rule of law. The Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari versus Federal Republic of Nigeria case over granting bail to Dokubo-Asari in a charge of treason is a case that should not have been started, because it did not go beyond argument over bail. After taking the bail issue through the entire court system, the allegation of treason by Dokubo-Asari was never prosecuted. The case just died a natural death after the judgement on the rightness of refusing the appellant bail.  The observation of Justice Ibrahim T. Muhammad, the lead judge in the bail case, appears too narrow for it to be turned into a state ideology in respect of human rights versus and national interests.

    Let us invoke the legal wisdom of Justice Oputa in respect to the difference between principle and rule. In the case of Fawehinmi v. NBA (No 2) (1939) 2 N.W.L.R (PT 105) 558 at 650, Justice Oputa averred on Doctrine of Precedent: “It is good to call the Court’s attention to its pronouncements in a previous case. Under our system (which we inherited from England and from the Common Law) the formulation of general principles had not preceded decisions. Our case law is the law of the practitioner rather than the law of the philosopher.  Decisions have drawn their inspirations and their strength from the very facts, which framed the issues for decision. Once made, these decisions control future judgements of the courts in like or similar cases. The facts of two cases must be either the same or at least similar before the decisions in one case can be used and even there as a guide to the decision in another case. What the former decision establishes is only a principle not a rule. Rules operate in an all or nothing dimension. Principles do not. They merely form a Principium, a starting point. Where one ultimately lands will then depend on the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case in mind.”

    The country needs more than a case over bail over an allegation that suddenly fizzled out before jettisoning its constitution-backed belief in the rule of law by recognising what Oputa calls difference between principle and rule. Undiluted respect for supremacy of rule of law is the surest way to sustain a federation of cultural diversity and save citizens from arbitrariness and authoritarianism.

  • In Nigeria, nothing is ever ordinary, everything gets ritualised

    To avoid being charged with plagiarism, today’s title is borrowed partly from Tunji Dare’s observation in last Tuesday’s article, “Back to compassion and empathy.” What is appropriated for re-use here is Dare’s observation: “In Nigeria, nothing is ever ordinary. The system operates on the assumption that exceptions will be abused.” I have borrowed the first part of Dare’s observation and taken liberty to add that in Nigeria things that should have been ordinary are pushed into the realm of ritualisation.

    Rituals in most societies do not encourage understanding of what is ordinary; they mystify it. Ritualistic acts do dramatise aspects of life for purposes of memorialising in a hyperbolic way what could have been straight and ordinary. Rituals often turn exceptions into rules. A thing that should be simple is dressed in elaborate garments. For example, when democracy returned to Nigeria in 1999, there were just a few political parties, but as time progressed and in the name of taking advantage of the principle of freedom of association, the number of parties grew to 70, and seems to be growing.

    Of the 195 countries in the world today, there are 28 countries with a population over 50 million and Nigeria is 7th on the list with about 190 million. Yet, Nigeria has 70 political parties as at the time of writing this piece and already there are indications that INEC is in the process of registering more parties. Not even India with over one billion people and a longer tradition of electoral democracy has up to 20 political parties. In most countries, the average number of political parties that function is three. The reason that Nigeria has about 70 parties has been traced to a strict constructionist interpretation (or literal interpretation?) of the principle of freedom of association. Is it proper to treat political parties just as mere associations or as instrument for organising the struggle for legitimate political power? In other words, can political parties be allowed to look like clubs or religious societies that people can form and discard as they please? Does frivolous creation of political parties have impact on efficient conduct of free and fair elections? Should governments have the power to limit the number of political parties in order to make organisation of national elections cost-effective and efficient? These are controversial issues that need to be raised as Nigeria plans to grow its democracy.

    It has been argued by political pundits that for Nigeria to find over 70 political parties registrable despite the rigorous requirements, Nigerians must be jealous guardians of their freedom of association. This claim may be true on the surface. For a political association interested in becoming a political party to establish offices in at least 24 states out of 36 before becoming registrable, individuals in such associations certainly must have been committed to exercise their freedom of association. But the truth about the country’s political parties is that many of the parties are also known to have been registered by individuals who were already top men and women, operating through proxies. Some of the many parties are believed to have been established as mechanisms for consummate politicians to use when they need to fight members of their own parties, without being noticed as working against another member of the party in which they act as national politicians. In other words, many of our party leaders use sponsoring of inactive political parties as future opportunities for defecting. In other words, there are two types of defection in the country: the open one in which individual politicians migrate from APC to PDP or vice versa and an invisible defection in which party leaders also create sub-groups to work for or against the larger set. It is, therefore, euphemistic to paint the number of political parties in Nigeria as a reflection of citizens’ commitment to freedom of association. In many cases, this may be a 419 scheme for a few individuals or groups to own many parties at the same time.

    Are political parties supposed to be mere associations or formal state instruments for structuring political options to assist citizens to choose their leaders?  Deliberative governance in many places has shown that citizens can participate in the way they are governed, not only through owning political parties but also in cooperating with others of like minds to nurture civil society organisations that shape governance. For example, SERAP is not a political party but it affects governance more than 65 parties on the political register. What is the purpose of having 65 political parties that cannot contest elections or even contest just a few of many elections—federal, state, and local? One good that General Babangida did to the political culture of the country before annulling the 1993 election was (and still is) limiting the number of parties to two. A two-party or three-party structure (still technically multiparty) makes choosing a party at elections easy for citizens, in contrast to saddling hardly literate voters with a catalogue of party symbols. Rationalising the number of political parties can also make conduct of elections more efficient and cost-effective. Any surprise that Nigerians are telling Buhari to distribute N289 billion proposed election budget to 289 million citizens and in local parlance ‘carry-on or ‘carry-go’ the presidency?

    It is illogical to register parties that are kept inactive by those who register them. In what ways has the existence of 70 political parties in Nigeria manifested more commitment to democracy than having just 2 or 3? In all the countries with larger landmass and population than Nigeria: India, Pakistan, Brazil, the United States of America, functioning parties are on the average two or three. Having political parties that are registered for the sole purpose of keeping them in the cooler to provide another political space to politicians that want to have another party to own when needed may sound like smart politics, but it does not lead to more democracy. It is easier to socialise citizens about the importance of political choice when choices are not too large to make choosing almost meaningless. There are too many ghost political parties that add to the cost of governors. Rituals can be useful, but when reality is over ritualised, it increases the chance of trivialising serious issues.

    Another ritualized behaviour is the continued acceptance that there should be different election cycles for governors. Poor judicial management created a situation in the regime of Obasanjo threw some states into a separate season for elections than thirty-three other states. This practice has almost imperceptibly degraded democratic choice in many states. In Ekiti and Osun in 2014, citizens in the two states voted under a heavy cloud of fear, as military, police, and DSS occupied the state and in the process scared people directly or indirectly from coming out to vote. Similar occupation of political space by security personnel was repeated in Anambra in 2017 and Ekiti in 2018. It is believed that the same style is on the way for Osun State. Citizens across the country should vote under similar conditions. Such equal opportunity for voters had not existed in these states for decades. There is need to look for a creative way to ensure that all states vote under the same conditions; that some are not made to vote as police states while other states vote in an atmosphere devoid of intimidation by security personnel.

    Inequality in the allocation of freedom to choose can be removed by application of that rare deus ex machina: Doctrine of Necessity. We used this doctrine at the time we did not need it in 2010, when it was obvious (as it still is) that a deputy president has the right to become acting president when the president is unable to perform his constitutional duties. Governorship candidates in states that currently vote off-cycle need to be made to see why they should make some sacrifice for the sake of free and fair elections in their own states. Invoking doctrine of necessity (with or without) paying such governors salaries and benefits including security votes for the months they lose may not be as outlandish as this choice of action may sound, given the amount of degradation of free and fair elections that such states suffer in the name of adhering to the clause that a governor’s tenure must be four years from the day he or she is sworn into office.

     

  • Aren’t things moving too fast?

    Following persistent complaints and reports on the activities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) that border on allegations of human rights violations, His Excellency, Professor Yemi Osinbajo SAN, Acting-President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, has directed the Inspector General of Police to, with immediate effect, overhaul the management and activities of SARS.—Acting President Yemi Osinbajo’ Order

    The Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad previously under the Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Department (FCIID) is henceforth to operate under the Department of Operations, Force Headquarters Abuja. The Commissioner of Police (FSARS) is answerable to the Inspector General of Police through the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Department of Operations. Inspector-General of Police

    A country that is generally not known for quick response to issues and that relishes hiding under red tapes to prevent taking necessary actions has suddenly become fleet-footed, to the extent that orders are carried out with what used to be in the parlance of military governors, “immediate alacrity.” But such break-neck speed is bound to lead to duplication of efforts, such as preliminary investigations, preliminary reforms, preliminary announcements, all of which still leave important tasks poorly executed.

    Within 24 hours of Vice President Osinbajo’s order for overhaul of controversy-inducing Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS), the Nigeria Police announced its completion of the task of overhauling the special anti-robbery unit: “In observance of full compliance with the presidential directives, the FSARS will be intelligence-driven and restricted to the prevention and detection of robbery, kidnapping and the apprehension of offenders linked to the stated offences only.” This statement was accompanied by some detailing of evidence of overhauling the special police unit: Re-naming of SARS to FSARS; Unit will be Intelligence driven; Commissioner of police will be in charge of FSARS; Training for operatives in collaboration with civil society organisations; psychological evaluation of FSARS personnel; Official uniform will carry identification of staff; FSARS’ commanders to be of a rank not less than Chief Superintendent of Police; Human rights desk to be located in all FSARS formations; operatives to stay off civil matters; a new committee to review FSARS operations.

    On the surface, this looks like a lot of changes which overhaul demands. But a deeper look at the ‘changes,’ indicates that police response to the Acting President’s order smacks more of responding verbally to each of the items in the order. An overhaul of management and activities should normally go beyond giving promises of what to do and not to do, but without failing to include specific means of achieving a new outcome. Overhaul should include changes in philosophy, structure, methods of operation, etc. All that seems to have changed is adding Federal to SARS, changing the designation of officers in charge, and the chain of command between the commander and top echelon of the police system. Such overhaul is cosmetic rather than structural and methodological.  It is conceivable that the use of “with immediate effect” in the Acting President’s order can be taken literally by military and para-military agencies, but the police could have asked for more time than 24 hours, if doing so would have allowed it to do a far-reaching exercise that Overhaul calls for. After all, the Acting President as a lawyer would not have difficulty with request for more time by the IGP, particularly of a police unit that had been concerning to citizens and human rights organisations. More fundamentally, overhauling of SARS should not have been given only to the police, an organisation with vested interest, to handle alone. As enviable as the Acting President’s order is, it should have been broadened to include other stakeholders. Achieving the best and safest law enforcement that seeks to protect and promote human rights is best left in the hands of all stakeholders.

    Another good intention that can go awry if it is pursued in a rush is the new committee of National Economic Council (NEC) on decentralising the central police. Without doubt, NEC’s desire to decentralise the current central police system should be good news to citizens with interest in a police system that does not resemble a colonial police formation in terms of its preference for over centralisation of law enforcement in a federal multicultural polity and society. The establishment of a committee of selected governors and the IGP could not have come at a more challenging time for full national debate on what type of decentralisation is best for the country.

    For no fault of the Acting President and the governors, the National Assembly, which was the first branch of government to initiate legislative action on creation of sub-national police system is on some strange vacation. Unless there is something extremely urgent about law enforcement, it would be better for this sensitive matter to wait for participation by citizens and direct representatives of the various constituencies in the country, rather than pushing the matter to a special committee that includes the IGP, a man with over-flowing vested interest in centralised police system and about which he had commented publicly that a central police is the best for the country.

    Decentralisation of policing is not a technical or operational issue. It is basically philosophical, cultural, and political. Charging a legislative group, let alone an executive committee, with decentralising the police at a time that elections are just five months away may increase the risk of such committee failing to achieve the aims and goals of multiple police system in a multicultural society. Constitutionalising police decentralisation is the most effective way to put this matter to rest. Although treating this matter as a case for constitutional amendment may take more time than leaving it in the hands of a committee of seven governors and the Inspector-General of Police, the country is more likely than not to gain more from a legislative determination of levels of policing that are proper for the country. If nothing untoward is not likely to happen to the security architecture and operation of the current police system before February, it will be better for decentralisation to wait until after the forthcoming elections. Many other recommendations by the APC in relation to devolution are already waiting for future consideration.

    Another avoidable rush is the secret trial of Premium Times reporter, Samuel Ogundipe, by a magistrate court without the benefit of having his attorney in attendance. It is ironical that this trial was at the instance of a SARS formation and was conducted at a time that SARS was undergoing an overhaul. If Ogundipe was suspected of something other than refusing to disclose the identity of his source for a news story, he and his lawyers ought to be duly informed. All that the rest of the country knew about Ogundipe was that he had refused, in the tradition of global ethics of journalism, to disclose the identity of his source, and nothing else. When further police investigations revealed that Ogundipe had trespassed and stolen what did not belong to him, his lawyers should have been put in the new picture before rushing Ogundipe to a secret trial in a village, a development that is hardly believable, especially  after some ‘overhauling’ of SARS.

  • Is democracy a Sisyphean task here?

    From what we have seen so far, efforts by the military to build a nation has miscarried.

    The many optimists that have kept Nigeria going for almost sixty years are as eager as ever to assure the rest of us of Nigeria’s uncanny ability to move too close to the abyss and move back without getting hurt. The various conflicts of the past three weeks are on the surface too mundane to be considered analogous to the scheming of the gods in ancient Greece. But since the gods then acted so much like human beings, it is not out of place to make some connections between politics in the ancient world and modern Nigeria. It is the self-indulgence of the writer to see governance in Nigeria since 1962 through the prism of a curse-like performance of repeated activities that lead to no goal, like the task before Sisyphus.

    The Myth of Sisyphus has been popularised in the modern world by Albert Camus. He was a Nobel Laureate who, among other works, did a philosophical essay in which he saw Sisyphus and his futile and endless struggles with carrying a stone to the top of a hill as a symbol of the absurdity of life—purposelessness and meaninglessness of the human condition. But the focus today is on the original myth itself, i.e. the why and how of Sisyphus’s unusual actions. The interpretation of Sisyphus’ ordeals that I prefer for today’s page is not the one by Camus, undoubtedly the most profound of the interpretations of this myth. My choice is that of the Epicurean philosopher, Lucretius, who saw the myth as symbolising the futility of the actions of power-seeking politicians, especially the emptiness or futility of fighting over power. Even as far back as 300 BCE, Lucretius was able to see politicians struggling for power as largely self-serving by people limited in imagination to the extent of not appreciating the emptiness of their tricks.

    For readers not already familiar with this particular Greek myth, let us briefly summarise the story. Sisyphus was King in the town that later became Corinth. He was a man who relished power and used it to bring unhappiness to many people. He was also a man who enjoyed deceiving others including the gods, to demonstrate how much cleverer than others he believed he was.  Sisyphus was later cursed by Zeus for his life of trickery and deception. The curse by Zeus put Sisyphus on a futile and endless ordeal of rolling a boulder up the hill only for the rock to roll back downhill. Sisyphus acted in a metaphysical space while Nigeria acts in a political space. I expect readers to wonder about the connection between a fight between deities and kings in ancient Greece to the issues that have characterised the Nigeria Project since 1962. Nothing directly, but a lot indirectly, by way of analogy, drawing connections and correlations between two apparently dissimilar things.

    Let us migrate from the world of Sisyphus and metaphysics to the world of politics and democracy in Nigeria. Since 1962, the country has been acting like Sisyphus, carrying out the same onerous task seemingly without achieving its goal and without the task coming to an end. When the first 1966 coup came, it was justified on the basis that the military needed to come and rid the country of political and bureaucratic corruption. Each subsequent coup (about five) always put corruption at the top of its list of objectives. Each coup also included bringing democracy back to the country after defeating corruption. Just like the military, each civil rule promised to fight corruption and, in the process, consolidate democracy.

    Many of the politicians voted to power to fight corruption and grow democracy have been moving from one party to the other in the last few weeks in a way to illustrate another type of corruption that no government has promised to fight—preventing or frustrating citizens to think and choose right candidates and parties they prefer to rule them. Just as it happened between beneficiaries of military coups in the past, elected politicians also prefer to seize power from each other, ahead of the time which the constitution sets apart for campaign and voting. The migration of politicians from one party to the other in 2015 was in one direction—PDP to APC. In 2018, migration is in both directions, a development that seems to be making mass migration from one party to the other a normal part of the country’s political culture. Both parties even establish festivals to celebrate new migrants. The point of all this is that our politics has become the rolling of rocks uphill and the undoing of such rolling, not by the gods as in the case of Sisyphus but by men voted to represent them in allocation of resources and distribution of the country’s wealth.

    A problem that the average Nigerian seems to have recognised is the difficulty of politicians roll the boulder of effective democratic governance up the hill to build a modern multi-ethnic nation that can address the problems of citizens in the modern era that is increasingly characterised by respect for human rights and commitment to fostering human progress. From what we have seen so far, efforts by the military to build a nation has miscarried. The miscarriage has been caused by lack of readiness on the part of military rulers to take citizens into consideration in their design of the country’s governance architecture, especially construction of a unitary system with concentration of power at the centre and the subordination of federating units. The argument for this development from military political theorists was (and still is) that the country should seek unity first if it desires democracy and development. Military rulers had performed their self-imposed task of rolling the boulder of nation building toward the hill, without reaching the top of the hill until the military lost its relevance to the task of nation building. But the military succeeded in leaving a constitution that has served as obstacle to efforts at nation building since its exit.

    Similarly, the transition to representative government in the last eighteen years has been marred by a constitution that concentrates power at the centre and makes it the centre so seductive that politicians would die to get executive or legislative power at the centre. It does not matter to such people that they need to work for improvement of their constituencies. The only thing that matters is seizing the opportunity to participate ostensibly as builders of national unity while concentrating on making personal profits for themselves. Consequently, the search for personal gains makes participating in elected government a matter of life and death, as it was with military men who were quick to carry out coup d’etat against civilian and military rulers.  Lies, deceits, tricks became the weapons for obtaining or retaining power. Without any deity cursing politicians, the civilians that succeeded military dictators rolling the boulder of state up are also increasingly getting stuck, like their military counterparts.

    Eternal boulder rolling by Sisyphus did not have any consequence on the lives of citizens.  All it did was to show who was in control of the cosmos: powerful human beings or the gods. But in the case of what seems like eternal rolling up of the boulder by politicians, as Lucretius once observed, is an empty task. In the case of Nigeria, rolling the boulder just to bring benefits to those who choose to roll it up and leave it to roll down, as politics has been in the country since 1962 brings pain and suffering to millions of innocent human beings. The challenge before the nation is not just to address effects without looking at causes. It is becoming more imperative for thinkers and patriots to find out how to re-organise the country and its politics in a way that those seeking power—executive or legislative—have proper constitutional constraints to make it impossible for them to do as they like at the local, state, and federal levels of governance. There is no reason why citizens of Botswana, Ghana, and Rwanda should be doing better than Nigerians.