The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • How democratic is the 1999 constitution? (2)

    But it is the current 1999 Constitution that has become a poster child for constitutions created without people’s input in modern times.

    I predict that every multi-lingual or multi-national country with a unitary constitution must either eventually have a federal constitution based on the principles which I have enunciated, or disintegrate, or be perennially afflicted with disharmony and instability—Obafemi Awolowo, The Peoples’ Republic, 1968.

    I am pleased to see that we are now all agreed that the federal system is, under present conditions, the only sure basis on which Nigeria will remain united. We must recognise our diversity and the peculiar conditions under which the different tribal communities live in this country – Tafawa Balewa, 1957.

    Some of the world’s most intractable problems arise when primordial ties are politicized by attempts at national integration. Minority security is a common good—good for the majority as well as the minority. By designing a constitution to allay the fears of defenceless ethnic subgroups, the framers of a regime-founding compromise can secure the national cooperation necessary for economic prosperity and military independence. Any nation split into”primordially defined groups” must discover a “form competent to contain the country’s diversity.” This “form,” once again, is a political constitution in the broad sense….—Stephen Holmes, Constitutionalism and Democracy, 1988.

    Today’s column is dedicated to the memory of Dipo Famakinwa, a young democrat and federalist whose life was cut short at a time he was engrossed in creating structures that can reinforce sustainable democratic and federal governance in the country.

    The epigraphs above have been selected to remind readers of the awareness of the ramifications of cultural diversity in the country by some of its founding fathers. The focus of today’s piece is on how Politics of Omission or what Stephen Holmes has characterised as Gag Rule had led to creation in 1999 of a constitution that ignores the importance of consultation, consent, and consensus in respect of the  normal nexus between constitution and the citizens it is designed to govern.

    Politics of omission is often deployed by those in power. The process allows such groups to filter or shortlist items that can be discussed. It is not unique to constitution making as it can be applied to any political agenda. By keeping certain issues out of consideration by the ruled, members of the ruling group in charge of agenda setting sweep items they consider troubling or volatile out of national discussion.  One aspect of Nigerian polity that has been shaped by politics of omission is the 1999 Constitution although this choice of action had been an abiding aspect of constitution making in the country for a long time. Out of the six constitutions for the country before 1960, only that of 1951 under Governor Macpherson was relatively free from deliberate narrowing of the agenda by the ruling group. Extensive consultations were encouraged at the village, district, divisional, provincial, and regional subnational levels before the national conference that produced the draft of the 1951 Constitution, which became the template for the 1954, 1960, and 1963 constitutions.

    The two constitutions written under the supervision of military dictatorship have been shaped by varying degrees of politics of omission or self-censorship. But it is the current 1999 Constitution that has become a poster child for constitutions created without people’s input in modern times. The 1999 Constitution was not unveiled until after it had been used to conduct the first set of elections to end military dictatorship. In other words, citizens and candidates for elective posts had no idea of provisions of the constitution that the president and lawmakers were later to swear to protect. In the colonial era, especially between 1914 and 1951, colonial rulers had no apologies for creating such constitutions for Nigeria as a colony. In 1999, military rulers chose to deploy tactics of politics of silence on issues they would rather hide from the public.

    The government of General Abubakar Abdulsalaam that succeeded the General Sani Abacha military presidency initiated a Transition to Democratic Rule process that included presidential, national, and subnational elections but avoided open discussion of a new constitution with the citizenry. Ironically, members of the group most involved in the struggle for an end to military rule, NADECO, also abandoned its demand for restructuring and a new constitution as it joined others to accept Abdulsalaam’s call for transition to civil rule. Thus, efforts of citizens to have an input in the design of a constitution that protects individual rights and regulates or disciplines the tendency of the central government to crowd out values of subnational communities in a multiethnic state quickly collapsed, and the rest is history.

    Through the military government’s choice of politics of omission, the last military administration, which like others before it that had deformed the country’s federal constitution, was quick to neutralise demands for a new constitution that included citizens in negotiation for provisions of the constitution the Abdulsalaam regime had selected brokers to frame. It was clear to the military that agreed to withdraw from coercive governance that organising a proper constitutional conference was likely to wipe out its marks on the polity, as such decision would enable citizens to bring into the open questions about military re-design of the country and offer new ideas about how to govern the country in relation to strident calls for political restructuring. The military thus opted for politics of omission, a process of issue-avoidance and opted to edit the 1979 Constitution, away from the gaze of the public.

    High on the list of issues for avoidance by the military was (and still is) ‘constitutionalisation’ of   cultural diversity of the country. Without allowing the people to express their wishes about what type of union they would prefer, appointed framers of the constitution returned a version of the 1979 Constitution that re-enacted non-justiciability of Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution: Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy which provides for political, economic, social, educational, and environmental objectives of state policy. The most graphic paradox of the 1999 Constitution, like its 1979 version, is the non-justiciability of a chapter that states: it shall be the duty and responsibility of all organs of government, and of all authorities and persons, exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers, to conform to, observe and apply the provisions of this Chapter of the Constitution. What is the sense in creating duties that citizens have no power to enforce and that no court has the power to enforce?

    That a document with such contradictions has been undergoing amendments for the past few years may sound promising to over-sanguine citizens, but the truth of efforts of the 8th National Assembly, like the one before it, is that most of the proposed amendments also avoid discussion of citizens’ fear of some measure of veiled ethnocracy. Ethnocracy refers to what Holmes describes as “a single religious, linguistic, racial, or regional group” capable constitutionally of expelling, assimilating or subjugating all others. This situation appears to be encouraged by constitutional silence on the issue of a constitution that promotes mutual reinforcement between national and subnational governments.

    The much-touted amendments by the National Assembly are more about reinforcing the interests of members of the ruling group: local government autonomy, creation of new states, provision of life pension benefits for principal officers of the Senate and the House, indigeneship versus citizenship, provision of space for independent candidacy in a country with over 30 registered political parties, etc.

    Amending or appearing to amend the 1999 Constitution has been on for about five years. This is an indication that constitutional amendment may have become another illustration of politics of omission or distraction. Like the military framers of the constitution, the lawmakers elected under the constitution also appear eager to narrow the agenda of constitutional debate by engaging in interminable exercise of constitutional amendment. As many of the proposed amendments only skirt the real issue about a constitution that shuts out citizens in the process of determining what provisions they want in the Basic Law that governs their interactions, there is need to stimulate a national conversation on a constitution that can save the country from self-distraction from good governance.

     

    To be continued

     

  • How democratic is the 1999 constitution? (1)

    How democratic is the 1999 constitution? (1)

    Having a properly negotiated constitution remains, even in the 21st century, the core of democracy. 

    A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution…. A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution, is power without a right.—Tom Paine
    A documentary constitution normally reflects the beliefs and political aspirations of those who have framed it.—Nicholas Sunday
    We need to bring these nationalities around a conference table to discuss how we are going to live together as one country. As it is today, we are not a nation yet; we are a state.—Ben Nwabueze
    There are basic issues if we want a strong Federal Government. The earlier we restructure the stronger we will be, and if we don’t restructure, or wait for too long, we are attempting disintegration.—Chukwuemeka Ezeife

    The recent announcement that the 8th NASS is about to round up on its efforts to amend the country’s constitution has motivated a return to a topic that this column had discussed extensively in the past, especially during the era of Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan. But the essays under this title are slightly different in style, and perhaps, in substance from those that appeared six years ago on this page. The controlling thesis for the series is that, given the historical, philosophical, political, and sociological evolution of the peoples that constitute today’s Nigeria, the 1999 Constitution bequeathed to the country by the last of the country’s military dictator in 1999 is not democratic enough to make the multination republic realise its huge potential.

    If you are expecting to hear legal arguments in the following sentences, you should not bother to read them. Constitutional legalism is just one aspect of any country’s constitution. It has relevance after a documentary constitution has been duly established, not before it. In short, the series is not about constitutionalism but ‘constitutionalisation,’ the making of constitutions. Several sharper minds had written ad nauseam from the perspective of lawyers about the 1999 constitution. One argument that undergirds the series is that Nigeria has not had a settled or agreed constitution in the 1999 one that has guided operations of government since the advent of the 4th Republic. Consequently, there is still a lot of space for discussion of politics of constitution making, such as the one that will preoccupy this column for the next few weeks.

    I know that it will sound bizarre to many readers that this column has chosen to interrogate the 1999 Constitution, even after many citizens had accepted it as a given. Of course, members of the current National Assembly now getting ready to finalise discussion on amendments to the constitution are likely to find this piece and others to follow cheeky for several reasons. One, it attempts to derogate from their concept of legislative sovereignty. Second, it seeks to draw the hand of their own legislative clock back. Since sovereignty rests ultimately with the people of any nation-space, it is fit and proper for any citizen who feels that a constitution that circumscribes his or her life to complain about a constitution that purports to represent his or her views without adequate consultation between representatives and citizens.

    Other citizens in the last few weeks have been problematising the constitution in different ways. Some have been calling for disintegration of the country, to allow their regions develop much more than it could under a suffocating constitution or endless complaints about the structure of the polity that the 1999 constitution creates, promotes, and protects. This in a way summarises the perspective of Professor Ango Abdullahi of the Northern Elders Forum. Others, like the Emir of Kano, have warned their colleagues about the danger for the North in allowing Nigeria to break by continuing to increase the number of illiterate and disempowered citizens in the country. Even many legislators have boasted that they the only authority that is charged with improving the constitution and in an attempt to silence those calling for a people’s constitution.

    Even the Senator Ken Nnamani 24-man Constitutional/Electoral Reform Committee or panel established by President Buhari has been acting as if citizens should be kept at a distance from its efforts. This observation was confirmed by the poorly publicised manner the Nnamani Committee conducted hearings a few weeks ago when it advertised invitation to public hearings on the constitution on the very day the committee was meeting in Abeokuta to receive memoranda from Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Oyo States.

    The Buhari presidency will be the second administration during which members of the National Assembly have preoccupied themselves with constitutional amendment. Under Jonathan, they assembled some amendments that did not get Jonathan’s assent. And in the last two years, returning and new lawmakers have been working at amendments which they now claim are nearing completion. Many citizens have observed that, with little interaction between lawmakers and citizens across the country on what type of constitution citizens prefer, legislators preoccupied with amendment may not be doing this for any reason other than to ensure that they upstage citizens calling for a people’s constitution or restructuring.

    Furthermore, apart from those who would rather have Nigeria go into fragments than countenance any form of restructuring, top members of the executive shy away from countenancing any demand for replacement of the constitution by General Abdusalaam Abubakar with a properly negotiated constitution by all the constituents of the federation. It will be recalled that the 1999 Constitution was an outcome of debates largely by 24 hand-picked citizens under the leadership of Justice Niki Tobi. The establishment of Senator Nnamani Panel on constitutional/electoral reform seems to have added to the culture that this column once described as Arodan (making citizens dissipate energy while giving the impression of doing something purposive). Shouldn’t the activities of the House, Senate, and the Nnamani Panel in relation to the 1999 Constitution not be enough to make it superfluous for any other group to demand creation of a new constitution? This question will find answers when details of the amendments carried out by legislators are unearthed and made available to citizens to compare with the duly negotiated constitution agreed to in 1960 and 1963.

    The controversy about turning the local governments into autonomous units that are not answerable to the states suggests that limiting ratification of constitutional amendments to states and the president, without calling for people’s referendum on the amendments will amount to creating another elite document. The original document was created largely in camera and only became public after the general elections of 1999. Citizens, particularly professional politicians in their rush to get out of military rule wound up inheriting a constitution the military had developed during the many decades of their rule. But not many people ever believe that the claim in the preamble to the 1999 Constitution: “WE THE PEOPLE of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: Having firmly and solemnly resolved….” is a statement of fact. It was for this reason, among others, that late Abiodun Oki spent the last months of his life pursuing his litigation on the falseness of this claim.

    The most basic element in the making of constitutions was absent in the assemblage of the provisions of the 1999 Constitution. Any effort to amend a constitution based on a false premise may not be enough to silence calls for restructuring, constitutional conference, constituent assembly, people’s constitution, etc. Any effort to amend the current constitution without referring it to a referendum will be tantamount to giving further legitimacy to a document that was designed by military dictators bent on saddling citizens with a constitution marked by military identity—unitary, command-style system.

    The current constitution fails to meet the basic conditions identified by Tom Paine in the epigraph overleaf: “A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution.” In the case of the 1999 Constitution under amendment by lawmakers, a government happens to be a thing antecedent to a constitution and a constitution is the creature of a military government that should not have existed in the first place, because it was never endorsed by the people. For as long as the most important rules governing government-citizen relations remains questionable, as the 1999 Constitution has been since it first came out into the open, there is the likelihood that so much energy will continue to be dissipated on debates about what type of Union the nationalities that constitute Nigeria prefer. Having a properly negotiated constitution remains, even in the 21st century, the core of democracy.

    To be continued

     

  • Regionalism and growth: angles from the North

    The only place where there is availability of work is the north because it produces a greater percentage of the food we eat as well as those used by some of our industries. 

    As this column had observed several times in the past, regionalism is creeping back into the country’s political lexicon, and justifiably so. The latest region to enlist members of its elite corps in the choir of progressive regionalism is what used to be called The Northern Region before the fragmentation of the country’s four regions into 36 states, affectionately referred to by admirers of unitary governance as the country’s new federating units. The three top members of the region’s elite who have chosen to expand the conversation about regionalism are the Emir of Kano and a former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University and Spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum, Professor Ango Abdullahi, and former Vice President of the country, Abubakar Atiku. The views of these three vertical figures will form the core of today’s discussion.

    Regionalism, a word that defined Nigeria until 1966, gradually went into extinction during the decades of military dictatorship in the country. Regionalism and other synonyms: true federalism, regional autonomy, restoration of federalism, and re-federalisation crawled back into the country’s political vocabulary in the 1990s, particularly during the pro-democracy struggle against annulment of MKO Abiola’s electoral victory in 1993. But these words featured prominently in the circles of politicians and pro-democracy activists from the southern states. Regionalism until recently remained a word that was hardly used by politicians and political activists in the northern states. Most recently, Abubakar Atiku is referenced as the first major political figure from the north to popularise the concept of regionalism since the Sardauna of Sokoto.

    Atiku had acknowledged the importance of regionalism since the coming to power of President Mohammadu Buhari and the recession that has trailed his assumption of power: “Our current constitution does indeed concentrate too much power and resources at the centre, which has, in my view, impeded national development, security, peace and stability…. There is no doubt that many of our states are not viable, and were not viable from the start, once you take away the federal allocations from Abuja. We have to find creative ways to make them viable in a changed federal system. Collaboration among states in a region or zone will help.

    Atiku’s pro-regionalism rhetoric became more strident when he said: “It is clear to me that the resistance against restructuring is based on three interrelated factors, namely dependency, fear and mistrust. Dependency of all segments of the country on oil revenues, fear of loss of oil revenues by non-oil producing states or regions and mistrust of the motives of those angling for restructuring. And his conviction about the importance of re-federalisation and de-militarisation of the polity acquired more vigour when he advised: “We have a unique opportunity now, with all the agitation and clamour for restructuring, to have a conversation that would lead to changes in the structure of our federation in order to make it stronger, enhance our unity and promote peace, security, and better and more accountable governance.”

    Of course, Atiku has been criticised by many for attempting to take political advantage of calls for regionalism in the southern states as someone known to be interested in contesting for the presidency in the event of a vacancy in Aso Rock. And his analysis of the disadvantage of unitary governance in the country would have remained as playing to the gallery in the south if two other vertical figures in the north: Emir of Kano and Professor Ango Abdullahi had not raised issues about the source of underdevelopment in the north.

    With specific reference to human development indices in the north, the Emir affirmed at a recent conference in Kaduna: “We are in denial. The North-west and the North-east, demographically, constitute the bulk of Nigeria’s population. But, look at human development indices, look at the number of children out of school, look at adult literacy, look at maternal mortality, look at infant mortality, look at girl-child completion rate, look at income per capita, the North-east and the North-west are among the poorest parts of the world….As far back as 2000, I looked at the numbers, Borno and Yobe states, UNDP figures… Borno and Yobe states, if they were a country on their own, were poorer than Niger, Cameroon and Chad. Nobody saw this because we were looking at Nigeria as a country that averages the oil-rich Niger Delta, the industrial and commercial-rich Lagos, the commercially viable South-east, and you have an average. Break Nigeria into its component parts and these parts of the country are among the poorest, if it were a country. And, we do not realise we are in trouble.”  Of course, this statement does not canvass for return to regionalism the way that Atiku’s statement has done, yet it certainly has started to engender controversy in the north for giving the north a negative profile

    Unlike Atiku, Sanusi’s analysis of the situation of the north does not emphasise the issue of federalism. It, however, focuses on cultural or ideological problems that had inhibited development in the northern states (and other parts of the country) during the decades of unitary governance across the country. Unlike in the era of autonomous northern region of the 1960s, the region in the days of fragmented 19 states is seen by the former CBN governor as characterised by under-development that has arisen from northern leaders’ adoption of wrong values. However, the Emir has been forthcoming on the need for northern leaders to change governance philosophy and practice as well as their values. Relatedly, a special conference of political and cultural leaders of the 19 northern states convened a few months ago in Kaduna also addressed some of the issues raised by the Emir of Kano, without drawing a lot of flak.

    Perhaps, the issues raised by the Emir would have remained an intra-regional matter if Professor Ango Abdullahi had not brought up the imperative of breaking the country to allow the north to realise its huge potential arising from land, natural and human resources. Abdullahi’s claim: “The greatest advantage of the north over other regions is that 75 per cent of land in Nigeria comes from the North; agriculture contributes 45 per cent of the GDP against oil, which contributes 14 per cent. Apart from the foreign exchange which oil provides, which in fact has always been stolen by the leaders, there is nothing much to talk about. Presently, there is potential of oil in many parts of Northern Nigeria. Let me tell you that oil money is idle money, which Nigeria has not worked for. The only place where there is availability of work is the north because it produces a greater percentage of the food we eat as well as those used by some of our industries. In any case, there are countries that said they are not moving forward and decided that the best thing to do was to divide. So, what is wrong in dividing the country?” raises the issue of a new form of regionalism, one which allows the North to become an independent country free to exploit its abundant resources. This position contrasts with the view of southern leaders on the type of political structure that can advance the status of Nigeria as a country.

    Two issues that are referenced with varying emphasis by all the three positions are leadership and structure. These two concepts are often considered to be alternatives, especially by lovers of the political re-engineering of Nigeria during the decades of military dictatorship and the authors of the 1979 and 1999 constitutions. For example, references to the golden age under Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo, and Nnamdi Azikiwe often ignored that these founding fathers also worked under a different structure, one which allowed each to be creative in governing his region and accountable to those they governed, without undue interference from the central government. It is ahistorical to emphasise the quality of individual leaders in the first republic at the expense of the quality of the structure in which they operated.

    The import of the divergent views of the three commenters on development of the north is not the absolute rightness of one or the other but the open expression of such views in a region often considered inviolably monolithic. A region that has cast itself as the father and protector of the unitary model of governance and fragmentation of states that had sustained unitarism for decades of military and post-military governance seems to be moving away from the belief that there is nothing wrong with the north, and by extension, other parts of the country. The divergent views of the three northern leaders referenced in this column certainly suggest the beginning of change in vision and orientation required to galvanise a national conversation on the way to change Nigeria in a way that encourages open debate about how best to redesign Nigeria for sustainable political democracy and economic development.

  • Arodan from the polity to the media?

    Arodan is a Yoruba cultural practice that sets out to achieve nothing other than distraction of its target. It is a language game in which the sender of the message sets out to deceive the receiver. The sender in Arodan is similar to Vladimir Propp’s recognition of the protagonist as ‘deceptor’ who is in a position of authority over the ‘deceptee’ (the person deceived) and takes maximum advantage of that position of superiority. He tells the receiver one thing and tells his own collaborators another thing hidden from the message receiver. The receiver is thus made to move in circles while trusting the sender of the message who, of course, does not trust him but does not make this known to him or her. In other words, the sender deliberately creates a world of diminished truth or even falsehood which the receiver hardly apprehends in his or her own innocence. Arodan game is driven by the desire of the person in authority to hide something important from his or her messenger, such as when parents want to be left to have privacy from the children or when parents and guardians desire to limit probing questions from their children and wards.

    Since politics is about allocation of value or the struggle to be in control of allocating value in society, the politicos see themselves as message creators while they tolerate the media as  conveyors for such messages. Even though the media in truly democratic ethos views itself as the watchdog on behalf of citizens, the sources of political messages package them in such a way that some sections of the media knowingly or unknowingly often pass the message from politicians to citizens with little or no mediation. What has been happening in Nigeria in the last few years, even under the government of change, gives the impression that citizens receive half-truths at best from the government and their sympathetic media houses. Sometimes, it is hard to tell the difference between the trendiest and the trashiest media houses in terms of over massaging of information required by citizens in a democracy. The consequence is that the media loses the sharp edge of its mission as an agenda setter and becomes increasingly mere transmitters of the agenda of politicos.

    For example, contrary to the basics of journalistic reporting, Nigeria is now one country in which elements of reporting include what, where, when, why, and sometimes how, but hardly WHO. In the last few months, for instance, it has been normal to come across news reports that say “a state governor has been accused of depositing funds from the Paris Club in his bank account.” Such stories leave out the name of the bank account and, of course, the name of the state governor. Just as it happens in the Arodan game, the reader is left wondering who the state governor is. Citizens who gather to discuss current affairs spend their energy guessing and speculating who the state governor is. The implications of such mangled communication are legion. Citizen journalists that operate in the social media give out names and create a confusion between messages from traditional media managed by professionals and the social media dominated by self-appointed citizen journalists. Citizens who used to buy newspapers daily just scan newspaper headlines and move on without buying any.

    I had a recent experience at a newsstand in Alausa, where I buy my newspapers daily. I was on the line when the vendor came to me with my preferred papers. I told the vendor I did not want to jump the queue but he told me that the seven persons ahead of me were not there to buy but just to read the headlines. Two of those who came to see the headlines shot back, “What is there to buy in most of the newspapers which report without having the real news about state governors or former ministers or legislators who have stolen or mismanaged funds? We are here to find out if news editors have finally got the names of the persons that had done the what which they have reported with relish. What is the logic of having a What without a Who in a newspaper article? Why can’t reporters on crime or governance beats not wait for their stories to mature?”

    Pundits and media sociologists are not unaware of the motivation for publishing unripe stories in our newspapers. Stories about corruption sell more newspapers than other stories, particularly in the era of anti-corruption governance. Newspapers that need to survive financially can no longer wait for ripe news about political and bureaucratic corruption when less prestigious newspapers are eager to meet their bottom-line needs from events or activities without known or identifiable actors or doers. Accuracy, the first of the many commandments in journalism schools in the analogue age, seems to have been overtaken by speed of delivery today, especially in reporting that has any connection to EFCC. The days of waiting to crosscheck or verify contents of a press release seem to be on the wane, more so to editors or managing directors that need to open the balance sheets to newspaper proprietors in search of profit.

    Arodan political communication often takes more comical forms that entertain rather than inform citizens, by blurring the line between reality and fiction. One recent example of this kind of news makers’ attempt to distract citizens is the claim by the ‘Executive Governor’ of Zamfara that Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM) is caused by sins of citizens in those states (or across the country?) in which the microorganism that scientists claim to be the cause of meningitis occurs. Fortunately, the governor has been prevented from becoming a prophet because of this revelation by the announcement of the Minister of State for Health that the recent spread of meningitis is one of the unfortunate things that occur in nature. What is at risk now is that the verbal gymnastics between the federal minister of health and the executive governor of a state experiencing spread of meningitis may be the staple of news for a few more days until some other courageous political comedian emerges.

    The federal legislature does not want to be left out of the Arodan game with citizens. Just a few hours back, citizens were told that the National Assembly had killed a bill that set out to give federal lawmakers absolute power to remove state governors and their deputies. How more diversionary can our legislators be in a country hobbled by recession? It does not make a difference that the bill was sponsored by two PDP lawmakers from Plateau and Gombe; it might as well have been authored by their APC counterparts in the National Assembly.

    Political messages that are designed to deflect attention from the real issues that prevent citizens from experiencing dividends of democratic federalism like their counterparts in other countries occupy more communication space than is needed. For example, in Anambra State, lawmakers are busy trying to “curtail outrageous demands on the families of the deceased by traditions and customs enforced by elders, without any consideration for financial capability of families of the deceased.” How more controlling would a military government in the state be, especially the one committed to saving the country from recession? Which cultural practices should be more worrisome for citizens: money spent to bury their loved parents or the ostentatious consumption of governors and their spouses illustrated by convoys of expensive cars that often include bullet-proof SUVs?

    I can almost hear my readers complain about Karounwi on the part of the columnist in a country in which its leaders—military and civilian—have always argued that the enemy of development and even justice in the country is ethnicity or religion? Even in the government of change, top political leaders blame all problems on national unity. It is about time for professional journalists to do more analytical and interpretive reporting that will offer recommendations on what to do with the country’s ethnic and religious diversity. Should we kill all nationalities and religions or allow one of the nationalities or religions to cancel the others, before we can get a country with sustainable development out of Nigeria?

  • Politics of secondary education (2)

    Apart from extending Basic Education benefits to include current senior secondary education, decentralisation of the curriculum should be one of the major steps in education reform.

    Man is the sole dynamic in nature; and accordingly, every individual constitutes the supreme economic potential which a country possesses. It is axiomatic that man can create nothing. But, by an intelligent and purposive application of the exertions of his body and mind, he can exploit natural resources to produce goods and service….. Therefore, other things being equal, the healthier his body and the more educated his mind, the greater will be his morale and the more efficient he becomes as a producer and consumer. —Obafemi Awolowo

    The ability to read, write, and analyse; the confidence to stand up and demand justice and equality, the qualifications and connections to get your foot in that door and take your seat at that table—all of that starts with education.—Michelle Obama

    We concluded the first part of this essay last week with an excerpt from the section on education in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) recently released by the federal government: “The shifts in the global economy, the emergence of new sectors and the digital revolution have changed the skills required of the work force. Nigeria has to reposition its education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment. As things stand, limited access to basic education and science and technology courses coupled with insufficient capacity and sub-standard infrastructure at the tertiary level mean that the work force lacks the critical skills needed to develop the economy.” The focus today is on what needs to be done to achieve, through education, citizen empowerment and national economic, political, and social development.

    It is logical to assume that the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan has overtaken the pledge on education made during the 2015 campaign, given the fact that the pledge was made before the realities thrown up by recession and the imperative of economic diversification. The pre-election manifesto to “fully implement and enforce the provisions of the Universal Basic Education Act with emphasis on gender equity in primary and secondary school enrolment whilst improving the quality and substance of our schools” seems to have been eclipsed by the new emphasis of ERGP “to reposition the education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment” and the realisation that “limited access to basic education and science and technology courses coupled with insufficient capacity and substandard infrastructure at the tertiary level mean that the work force lacks the critical skills needed to develop the economy.”

    As our economic realities alter our political and cultural ideology, so must our political vision be allowed to shape our economy, polity, and society. The ERGP seems to have started to think out of the box that had hobbled national development and citizen welfare for far too long, particularly in respect of the place of education in the life of a nation and the wellbeing of its citizens. At the beginning of Nigeria, it was colonial ideology that drove form and method of education. Missionary schools and a few public schools were created to train workers for the colonial economy and government: production of interpreters for colonial masters; assistants in the administration of the colony; training of citizens to assist in improving production of raw materials needed in Europe.

    After independence, the political ideology for governing the country still focused in many parts of the country on raw materials, such as crude oil.  This economic vision made it easy for the federal military government to focus on education with limited access to primary and secondary education. Just a few states saw free primary and secondary education as the right of citizens. To the central government, Unity Schools became more important than free public secondary education for all citizens. Free access to nine years of basic education was established by Obasanjo’s civilian presidency after the 1999 post-military administration.

    Apart from states in the former Western Region, free public secondary education was not seen as a priority in most states of the federation. Even in those states with free secondary education, quality of public secondary education suffered so much in the last few decades that many parents opted to enrol their children in private secondary schools, with the result that public secondary schools started to become educational ghettoes for those whose parents could not afford private secondary education. It was only in the last few years that some of such states started revitalising a few public secondary schools as model or mega schools. Despite efforts to create model schools in the form of Federal Unity Schools or State Mega Schools, the country has been compelled to realise after the fall in prices of petroleum that there is a need “to reposition its education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment.”

    ERGP seems to have changed the education discourse in the country. Political and cultural leaders who thought for decades that education should be treated as elite good now seem to have come to terms with the inevitability of education to building and sustaining a modern multiethnic country. ERGP suggests that there is a need for a major reform, if not a revolution, in the education sector. The challenge is for the various levels of government in the federation to think anew about what type of education to give citizens in the effort to reposition the country for global competitiveness economically and to prepare the citizenry for a life worth living for all.

    Now that politicians, i.e. those who control or struggle to be in control of allocation of values in the country accept that education is crucial to development, each of the three levels of government needs to commit to reforms that emphasize equity, access, quality, and relevance in the conceptualizing, planning, and funding of education with a view to make public secondary education the center piece of educational policies in the country. Abandoning provision of public secondary education to market forces may not make the country competitive in a globe in which more advanced economies like the USA, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, etc are providing their citizens with free and compulsory public secondary education.  It is common knowledge that over 80% of people who contribute to the U.S. economy are products of public school system. To act as if Nigeria can become competitive without making the first 14 years of schooling free and compulsory is to engage in wishful thinking.

    Furthermore, any attempt to centralise education may also not bring the benefits that the country requires to become and remain competitive. Any attempt to impose a uniform or central curriculum may be counter-productive. Apart from extending Basic Education benefits to include current senior secondary education, decentralisation of the curriculum should be one of the major steps in education reform. States and local governments need to participate in the design of curriculum and reform of teaching and learning methods and customise any aspect of these that can add value to education at subnational levels. States and local governments need to decide what should be the goals of free and compulsory schooling from pre-school to high school. Each state ought to determine whether it needs a comprehensive public education system or an academic one that focuses on preparing students solely for entry to degree programmes. There are many research-based policy decisions to be made, and such decisions should be left to both politicos and experts from each subnational government.

    The creation of an education that can produce efficient producers and consumers, to borrow Awolowo’s phrase, produce self-confident and analytical citizens that Michelle Obama believes can demand for equality and justice and sustain democracy captured in the words of Michelle Obama’s requires more rigorous and honest thinking than we have given the matter of education in the last few decades in the country. It is about time all levels of governance in the country engaged sincerely in making policies that can bring more meaning to provision of education and prepare the country for benefits enjoyed by other countries with cultural diversity. It is now too late to view education as factories for credentials to qualify citizens for slots in federal or state jobs to implement Federal Character principle. What is needed is to produce citizens that can be creators of value in a world where value creation and addition require more knowledge and skills than when all that was needed was selling petroleum to generate revenue to allocate to various levels of government to spend, more with the hope of national unity than national development.

  • Ife Crisis: Unity or justice?

    Ife Crisis: Unity or justice?

    It is therefore misleading for anybody, especially police investigators of crime, to resort to pontificating about unity, instead of addressing the matter of fairness of investigation.

    I apologise to my readers for choosing to delay the second part of the series on Politics of Secondary Education, in order to allow me join other commenters on the citizen-police controversy over police investigation of the crisis in Ile-Ife.

    I had lived in Ife before and even had friends in Sabo while I was teaching at the then University of Ife. I remember that despite the self-isolation of Hausa-Fulani people in Sabo, the degree of integration and harmony between Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani residents of the eastern part of the ancient town was not hidden from even casual observers of inter-group relations. The two communities: indigenes and settlers had over forty years ago many cases of inter-ethnic marriage. It should therefore be disconcerting that what used to be a peaceful community has suddenly become, in the vocabulary of the central police force, a threat to Nigeria’s unity.

    This column had written almost ad nauseam about the use of words that hide real problems in order to make those who use such words to be seen as occupying a higher moral or political ground than others. Unity and Security are two of such words. When motorists fail to park on the highway to allow politicians or their spouses in a convoy overtake them, they are warned by the police or SSS operatives to desist from acts capable of endangering the security of the country. Similarly, when two or more citizens of the country fight over whatever riles one or all of them, security personnel quickly warn them against acts capable of derailing the unity of the country.

    The response of the police to queries by Yoruba organisations about police investigation into the killing of Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba people in Ife brings to focus the danger inherent in misusing the word Unity. Hear the response of the police spokesperson on charges of lack of fairness in the investigation that found only one side of a violent conflict culpable: “They should be mindful of national security and they should be mindful that every Nigerian has the right to live in any part of the country. National unity is very important. So, any association that goes to fan the ember of disunity should know that they are not doing this nation any good. The era of impunity is over.”

    Anyone reading these words would think that Hausa-Fulani people have just arrived in Ife and are being prevented from settling down by Ife indigenes. The reality of Ife is that it has been home to thousands of Hausa-Fulani people for a very long time. Historians claim that these two distinct Nigerian communities had lived together or side by side in peace since the advent of the trade in kolanut in pre-colonial Nigeria. Over the years, the relationship grew beyond commerce into romance across ethnic and even religious lines. It is therefore misleading for anybody, especially police investigators of crime, to resort to pontificating about unity, instead of addressing the matter of fairness of investigation.

    All the organisations that had raised concerns about the result of police investigation of the Ife crisis have raised points pertaining to justice while police spokespersons have focused on issues of unity. As this column had observed many times in the past, Unity seems to be one word that has been over ‘Nigerianised,’ to the extent that it means different things to different sections of the polity. Is unity an end or a means to an end? If unity— a condition or situation of harmony or accord is a means, what is it supposed to produce in a diverse society? If it is an end, what is it expected to create for or in citizens of a plural polity?

    Furthermore, what is supposed to be the role of justice— impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments, or conformity to truth, fact, or reason—in a homogenous or heterogenous society? Many people who believe in the power of reason would readily think that justice is the foundation for unity or harmony. When citizens, regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliation, raise issues about absence of thoroughness or fairness in investigation of crimes, they should be seen as being concerned with justice rather than “whipping sentiment into the police investigation” and thus threatening the country’s unity.

    The questions that are still not answered by those who conducted investigation into the Ife violence are legion. Did the police discover that only Hausa-Fulani people were killed in Ife? If the answer is no, did the police try to find out who killed non-Yoruba people who died in the fracas? Did the police first focus its investigation on the indigenes with the hope of looking at the other side of the conflict later?  Is this why the police said “outside those paraded, investigation is ongoing and we are still going to arrest anybody found to be involved”?

    If investigation is still ongoing, why did the police then rush to parade suspects as criminals in Abuja, hundreds of kilometres from the scene of crime? Would it not have been enough to just keep those already identified as suspects in detention until completion of the investigation? How fair is the ‘media trial’ of suspects in a judicial system that affirms that suspects are innocent until proven guilty? If there is any behaviour that can threaten unity in a multiethnic society, it is for law-enforcement agents to look at two parties in a conflict and rush to parade suspects before international media in Abuja while investigation is still ongoing. Such action is worrisome in view of the statement by the police spokesman: “This is no ethnic or religious clash; these are people who have been living together for years. Issues came up and that is why the police are there to ensure that anybody that takes law into his hands will face the full wrath of the law.”  What does the police hope to achieve by taking suspects who have lived together for years in Ife with their victims to Abuja—to please the central government or embarrass the attorney-general of the state in which the crimes were committed?

    One lesson arising from the new mission of the police: “The Nigeria Police Force under Inspector-General of Police Ibrahim Idris is stamping out impunity in totality. Gone are the days when people will take up arms and kill other Nigerians and go free,” is that anybody in the country that kills other citizens—be it in Kaduna, Benue, Enugu, Mile 12 in Lagos, etc—will be identified for immediate punishment. But the police should ensure as they apply the Ile-Ife template to other parts of the country that nobody is paraded as criminal until such person has been found guilty of crime in the court of law and that suspects for all killings since the assumption of the new IGP should be identified without delay.

    Another lesson is that the state government in Osun needs to set up a commission of inquiry to look for remote and immediate causes of the crisis in Ife, given the fact that the two communities along Sabo in Ife had lived in peace and harmony for too long for the kind of violence between Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba residents of the ancient city to be left just in the hands of regular or special police investigators. Such inquiry will generate more lessons that need to be learned towards diversity management.

    What was designed to be a meeting to enrich the country’s unity in Abeokuta last week ended as another act of exclusion. The Senator Ken Nnamani Committee on Constitution and Electoral Reform organised a Southwest public hearing that was poorly publicised. The region had a better organised public hearing in 2014, preparatory to the National Conference sponsored by former President Jonathan. The preparation for the Abeokuta public hearing sells the commitment of the All Progressives Conference to “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” short. Any serious effort to entrench the ‘Federal spirit’ in the constitution ought to be inclusive and be seen as inclusive. It was a similar decision to exclude critical sections of the polity in the era of Sani Abacha that led to the 1999 Constitution, which citizens and even the APC government want to change, for not being a people’s constitution.

  • Politics of secondary education (1)

    To this extent, nine years of basic education may not be enough to prepare citizens for the complexity of modern and postmodern society.

    When all the talents in society are not fully developed, it is not the individuals that are adversely affected alone who suffer; the society as a whole suffers as well. Now, granting that every Nigerian is given an opportunity to develop his talents, it is imperative that he should also be given an opportunity to employ these developed talents….— Obafemi Awolowo
    Man is the sole dynamic in nature; and accordingly, every individual constitutes the supreme economic potential which a country possesses. It is axiomatic that man can create nothing. But, by an intelligent and purposive application of the exertions of his body and mind, he can exploit natural resources to produce goods and service….. Therefore, other things being equal, the healthier his body and the more educated his mind, the greater will be his morale and the more efficient he becomes as a producer and consumer .—Obafemi Awolowo

    The short statement by President Buhari after returning from his treatment in the United Kingdom: “My single advice is that we must take education seriously, and we must do much more to educate our children,” captures the essence of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s description in the quotations above about the value of education, which is also the theme of today’s piece: Imperative of expansion and improvement of access to good public education for citizens of Nigeria.

    The John Tosho verdict which inspired the last two columns pertained to the nine years of what governments in Nigeria call Basic Education. According to Tosho’s judgement, it is only the years of Basic Education that are constitutionally free and compulsory for all citizens within the school age. But this writer believes that the confusion between Basic education and the remaining three years of pre-tertiary education called senior secondary should be a matter of debate or conversation. This conversation is vital in view of President Buhari’s growing love for education of the masses of our people, aptly captured in his advice that ‘we take education seriously. All things being equal, pioneers of Universal Basic Education (UBE) under former President Obasanjo should be in high school by now. Most of them, except those in the old Western Region are likely to be paying school fees, if they enroll in post-UBE schools and probably on the street selling all manners of imported odds and ends, if they are unable to pay required fees for the three years of senior secondary.

    It has been argued by sociologists of education that Obasanjo must have left out the senior secondary years for reasons of cost management and with the hope that subsequent governments would find it logical to extend basic education to cover three years of high school for UBE foundation students. But the importance of education today is too overwhelming for any public affairs commentator to engage in hair-splitting arguments about what Obasanjo thought, did not think, or could have done to remove the illogicality in providing free public education for nine years, charging fees for three years of high school, and then offering free tuition at the university level.

    In view of radical changes in respect of means of acquiring, transferring, and storing information and with respect to the mercurial nature of the character of work in response to mind-bending advances in science and technology, many countries are reforming or considering reforming their education in compliance with new realities. Even though the country’s leaders have talked citizens to stupor about reforming education, particularly at annual release of WAEC and NECO examination results, no noticeable effort has been made since the unearthing of Obasanjo’s UBE reform. Talk of education reform has been one of promise and failure for the past 10 years of post-military governance.

    But President Buhari’s inspiring message about the importance of education to the survival of Nigeria shows why Nigeria should not continue to promise and fail on reform of education in terms of expansion of access and improvement of quality of public education. For a country that is projected to become the 4th or 5th largest in the world in the next twenty years, it will be very foolish to play the ostrich game on matters of educating the millions of mouths to feed, bodies to protect from or cure of diseases, to transport, clothe, and protect from vagaries of nature and culture, etc.

    As the human world becomes more complex, so will the business of educating citizens for the future get more complicated than it has been. Such complexity will require more people with high-level literacy, numeracy, communication, and computer competence to respond to the new culture of work that is emerging. In this respect, it is not only those who want to earn university degrees that will need a good measure of these skills but also those that may choose to acquire skills from vocational colleges. To this extent, nine years of basic education may not be enough to prepare citizens for the complexity of modern and postmodern society. If Nigeria is not financially buoyant enough to provide free public education to citizens from pre-school to undergraduate level, like Germany or Scotland, to name a few, it should strive to provide free public education from Kindergarten to High School, thus needing to make the present three years of senior secondary free and compulsory, as it is in many countries including the United States of America, Finland, Brazil, to name a few. It is common knowledge that about 80% of graduates in the United States, the epicentre of private economy, are products of public education.

    Now that cultural and political leaders from various corners of the country, including sections that had been lukewarm about mass education for about half a century, recognise Awolowo’s point about the centrality of mass education to sustainable democratic polity and society, political and bureaucratic leaders should feel encouraged to think out of the box about the type of education that can push the country to sustainable development. Making education free and compulsory for all citizens in the school-age bracket is a good way to start thinking anew.

    Most countries that are doing well and have thus become models for our leaders in many respects do not abandon the education of citizens to the private sector. To do so is to create unequal societies of overlords and underclass, just as it is already in many states of the federation. Completion of high school, i.e. twelve years of schooling should be free and compulsory for every citizen wherever he/she may live within the country. I can almost hear those that obsess over five credits in WAEC or NECO scream for this page about loss of investment demonstrated by the gap each year between input and outcome in terms of percentage of students with mandatory five credits to enter universities. Education is not only about the number that can qualify for university admission; it is also about the number of persons that can benefit from exposure to the culture of learning. All the people who fail to obtain five credits are likely to be better in whatever career they choose than those with no opportunity for the three years of high school closed to millions of citizens because of tuition charges.

    There is no better way to end today’s piece than to quote from the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) recently released by the Federal Government in Section 5.2 on Education: “The shifts in the global economy, the emergence of new sectors and the digital revolution have changed the skills required of the work force. Nigeria has to reposition its education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment. As things stand, limited access to basic education and science and technology courses coupled with insufficient capacity and sub-standard infrastructure at the tertiary level mean that the work force lacks the critical skills needed to develop the economy.”

    Next week will focus on how to make public education achieve its objectives of citizen empowerment and national development.

    To be continued

     

  • Imperative of free public education, recession or no recession (2)

    The teaching profession is now much more complex than it was before the Nigeria/Biafra Civil War.

    In the first part of this article last week, we concluded that John Tosho’s verdict that provision of free and compulsory public education is one of the constitutional duties of governments could not have come at a better time. For far too long, many states had paid inadequate attention to provision of free education, just as many parents, particularly in the northern part of the country had hidden under the excuse that nobody could sanction them for not sending their children and wards to school. These attitudes had made it easy for children of school age to work as street traders in urban areas, instead of being in the classroom as should have been the case in a country that seeks to join the world of development. The outcomes have been existence in the 21st century of millions of totally illiterate children and, perhaps, of more millions without functional literacy in states where free education was provided half-heartedly by governments that could not politically afford not to provide free education but could get away with not enforcing compulsory education. The overall effect of decades of half-hearted free education has been under-preparation of young people for the challenges of living in the 21st century. Today’s column is about what needs to be done by governments and parents to ensure that investment in free and compulsory public primary education bring required benefits to the country.

    As important to citizens as ability to read and write is as one of the outcomes of public education, focus today will not be just on literacy per se but on functional literacy. When the Emir of Kano at a lecture at Oxford University recently raised the importance of literacy of millions of Nigerians in Arabic language, he was concerned with literacy per se, as ability to read and write in any language. But there is no doubt that literacy in Arabic in a country that conducts its life in Arabic is more functional than literacy in Arabic by someone who lives in a country where Arabic is not the lingua franca and only serves the purpose of religious education. While millions of Nigerians who can read and write Arabic  are theoretically literate, in functional terms, they may not be literate in Nigeria where the language of governance and business is English. Such people will, however, increase the number of literate men and women in northern Nigeria if the country adds Arabic to its official language or if any state in Nigeria declares Arabic as one of its official languages, the way English and Hausa are today in most states in the north and English and Yoruba are in the Southwest. But this is a digression that is handy to illustrate the difference between literacy qua literacy and functional literacy, i.e. form of basic education that, according to UNESCO, “stresses the acquisition of appropriate verbal, cognitive, and computational skills to accomplish practical ends in culturally specific settings.”

    Now that more parents will send their children to school to avoid being sanctioned for violating the constitution of the land, governments’ funding of education has to respond to UNESCO’s recommendation of percentage of budget required for developing countries. threshold for developing countries. School enrollment should be expected to rise by at least 25%, thus requiring more teachers, more classrooms, furniture, mouths to feed at lunchtime, and modern teaching/learning tools. Governments need to ensure that the learning environment is modern and pleasing to behold by teachers and learners. All public schools need to be conducive to learning. Using recession as excuse for not increasing allocations to primary education may no longer be good enough to explain why children of school age are vendors of local and imported or pirated commodities along highways.

    With respect to appropriate pedagogy, rote learning may no longer be useful for the new global civilisation of creative and critical use of information. Interactive, dialogical learning requires more capital-intensive teaching tools than blackboard and chalk. It requires, as has been demonstrated in more advanced countries, supply of technology-assisted teaching/learning tools, something that cannot be optimised without guaranteed access to electricity. It is risky to wait for the megawatts that had been on the list of government’s to-do programmes from Obasanjo to Buhari. There is thus a need for solar-powered schools and solar-powered laptops for students and teachers.

    Furthermore, curriculum planning requires new thinking. Apart from teaching of English and mathematics, other subjects offered should emphasise local issues: geography, history, natural science, and civics. The language of instruction in the first six years of schooling should be in children’s mother tongues while the language that holds the country together, English, is taught as a subject at every term in the six years of primary education. Mathematics must also be taught at every stage. Any state that desires to add Arabic to its curriculum may do this as optional language for students while states that share borders with Francophone countries and believe that French will be an enhancer of multicultural literacy may add French to their curriculum in the last year of primary school.

    Like everything else in life, excuses for not doing the right thing do not lead to positive transformation of any aspect of life. In general, our country and many northern states had given avalanche of excuses for not giving adequate attention to public education. This is despite governments’ preference to ignore evidence of outlandish consumption of public resources by political officers and top bureaucrats. We cannot ignore the fact that the rest of the world is leaving Nigeria behind, faster than it did at Independence and in spite of Nigeria’s great wealth from petroleum for decades. It is in recognition of the yawning gap between Nigeria and other countries that parents and politicians with deep pockets in our country send their children overseas for education.

    One level of education that has been ignored, even in states with over half-a-century of free education, is pre-school education. At present, this is being provided by entrepreneurs, who understandably make pre-school learning prohibitive for the average citizen. Given research findings that pre-school education is a major cognitive and social enhancer for children between 3 and 5 years of age, it is necessary for states to commit to providing access to pre-school learning to citizens. All advanced countries are already doing this, to remain competitive in a global market.

    Finally, regulation of private schools must be an important part of the functions of governments, especially local government. Most successful countries have moved away from the philosophy of education, curriculum, and pedagogy bequeathed by colonial governments. The teaching profession is now much more complex than it was before the Nigeria/Biafra Civil War. It is about time that National Certificate in Education was replaced by four-year degree programme in education. Our policymakers in the ministry of education may need to visit Scotland, Finland, South Korea, and Singapore, to find out why these places are global leaders in primary and secondary education.

  • Education, imperative of free public education, recession or no recession (1)

     If educating a future generation is the only investment that the governments can make at this critical time, it is worth the pain. 

    Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children—International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
    By the combined effect of section 18(3)(a) of the 1999 Constitution and section 2 (1) of the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act, 2004, the right to free and compulsory primary education and free junior secondary education for all qualified Nigerian citizens are enforceable rights in Nigeria.—Justice John Tsoho

    Despite the pains of recession, educational value seems at the instance of progressive thinkers to be on the rebound in the country.

    A recent conference of northern governors, emirs, and elders in Kaduna accepted the inevitability of education as catalyst for development in the 21st century. At the meeting, the importance of education for all – male and female – was emphasised. Before that, Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, had acted as agent of revolution in education when he made Basic Education free and compulsory in a state that was for decades synonymous with a laissez-faire approach to education for all. More recently, the Emir of Kano added his voice to calls for full commitment of northern governments to education, especially of the girl-child. He even pleaded that mosques should be made to perform its original function of mind building by adding the function of teaching secular subjects to the spiritual functions of the mosque.

    It is, therefore, salutary that John Tosho in the second epigraph above has, in a progressive jurisprudential stance, declared that it is the duty of governments in the country to provide public education up to the end of junior secondary, come rain or shine. Tosho’s judgment provides the most revolutionary view of public education in the country since the introduction of free primary education in Western Region of Nigeria in 1955. The three-day-old judgment not only confirms the justiciability of the education component of Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution; it also reaffirms the country’s obligation to fulfill expectations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In addition, it also asserts that there is no excuse for the country to fail to carry out this constitutional function, thus sending a clear message to the Buhari government, which had also pledged through the manifesto of his party to improve education, to resist any pundits that preach caution on funding education at a time of recession.

    Tosho’s judgment will have reverberations all over Nigeria. It is not just a judgment to warn the federal government to provide funds for free education for nine years of primary and junior secondary education. It is also a judgment to wake states and local governments up to their responsibilities to citizens. In addition, the judgment also implies that education for citizens for the first nine years of schooling should be free and that parents have to see first nine years of education as compulsory. This is taking the first revolutionary act in Western Region in 1955 under the Action Group and the second such act in 1979 under the Unity Party of Nigeria further into the social and economic demands of the 21st century.

    There are other implications for subnational governments. Even in regions that served as  pacesetters for free public education as citizen empowerment from the 1950s, primary education has not been made compulsory. The recent ruling should make it obvious to states with free but not compulsory basic education that time is ripe for states to proclaim and enforce compulsory and free education. In the last four decades, public education has taken a back seat as private primary and secondary schools grew in enrollment and ‘prestige’. Even citizens who became members of the nation’s middle class from benefiting from public education chose to look away when public education was neglected.  They  enrolled (and still do) their children in private schools that are hardly regulated by the state. The result has been poor public education and seemingly better private schools with trappings of good looks and underpaid and under-prepared teachers but with little regulation from governments.

    Parents’ seeming abandonment of the rights to public education by their children and wards as they gravitate towards private schools has diminished citizens’ consciousness of what the governments’ responsibilities are towards them. Years of profligacy made possible by revenue from petroleum have also encouraged subnational governments to be lukewarm about functions that government leaders at the regional and local levels in the past performed as an act of faith and with gusto.

    Taking advantage of the non-justiciability of provision of free education in the 1999 Constitution for years, many states that were on the list of educationally-disadvantaged states in the country in the 1980s remain so, even about two decades into the new century. For example, states characterised as educationally backward in the South-south, particularly what later became Rivers, Bayelsa, and the only one in the Southwest, Lagos, grew out of the list of educationally backward states, largely through efforts of progressive governments in those states. The Tosho Judgement leaves no hiding place for states that relish in denying their citizens of their social and cultural rights.

    This column heartily congratulates the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), for its court action against the Federal Ministry of Education and the Attorney General of the Federation, in which it asked the court to determine whether by the combined effect of Section 18(3)(a) of the 1999 Constitution and Section 2 (1) of the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act, (UBE) 2004, the right to free and compulsory primary education and free junior secondary education for all qualified Nigerian citizens are enforceable rights in Nigeria. Without doubt, LEDAP’s foresight and insight that spawned the suit and the pro-human rights disposition of the judge are bound to change the direction of basic and functional education in Africa’s most populous country.

    Current or future recession cannot be a credible excuse for tampering with social rights of citizens. Even if all the revenue that accrues to the country is just whatever comes from petroleum, there still will be no reason not to provide free basic education in all states of the country. If educating a future generation is the only investment that the governments can make at this critical time, it is worth the pain. There is no sense to having 36 bureaucracies that cannot provide free basic education programme, not after the experience of free education before discovery of petroleum.  Making free education compulsory will also encourage cultural leaders, hitherto indifferent about education for all citizens, to pluck the political and cultural will needed for laying the foundation for a better future for citizens.

    For now, the Tosho Verdict signals the need for a new thinking about public education, especially at a time that the country is blessed with a government that says in its contract with citizens that education is crucial to the survival of the country in a global ethos that is universally acclaimed as the Knowledge Society. This judgment promises to be seminal to extending the nation’s education discourse to the importance of providing citizens with an education that can make them competitive in the modern world.

    • To be continued

     

     

  • Resurgence of regionalism?

    Resurgence of regionalism?

    Ironically, just about every region or cluster of states in former regions is now meeting openly to celebrate the idea of regional development.

    Some aspects of a popular Yoruba proverb: Eni eegun n le ko maa roju, bo se n re ara aye nii re ara orun (Whoever is being pursued by a spirit should endure, since runners from the world of mortals and those from the spirit world equally get tired) are showing in what looks like beginning of post-petroleum economy in Nigeria. A political vocabulary that several military dictators believed they had obliterated from the country’s political dictionary seems to be creeping back to circulation, in particular in the Southwest and the North, and without being considered dangerous even by those who see themselves as the police of unitary governance.

    When Nigeria started as three regions: East, North, and West, ordinary Nigerians from the three regions felt sufficiently united by the economic bonds engendered by colonialism and were ready to make the country work and grow on the federal constitutional arrangement bequeathed by departing colonialists. After the regions became four with the splitting of Western Region into two, peace and stability in intra- and inter-regional relations did not suffer, until attempts were made by the ruling party at the centre to change the political orientation of the Western Region.

    In particular, it was when the number of states ballooned further that traces of regional governance and development began to be forced out of the country’s political dictionary: assets owned together by new states while they were in the same region were sold, shared in what was called assets sharing, or assets transfer to corporations or private companies. Just as politicians were ordered by military dictators not to meet under any guise, so were states warned to desist from doing anything together as a region, as doing so was full of risk for the national unity that the military was installing across the country. This order to states became pronounced once abundant flow of oil from the Niger Delta made it possible to keep each of the 36 mini-states afloat through allocation of funds to 36 states and later to 774 local governments from the Federation Account, a code for funds made from sale of petroleum.

    But since the emergence of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) a few years ago when fracking or shale-gas revolution increased substantially supply of fossil fuel in the world, other regions including those that had been mortally opposed to regionalism have been holding meetings on crafting strategies for Integrated Regional Development. Even individuals who would not listen to anyone utter the word Regionalism at the 2014 National Conference under President Jonathan are now advocates for regionalist approach to development. Even at a conference in which the North presented a position paper titled: The North, the Strength and Pillar of Nigeria and the Southwest offered one on Regionalism, many delegates still cried foul at any move to re-introduce regionalism to the country, which such delegates believed to be a harbinger of disintegration or erosion of ‘national unity. ‘

    Ironically, just about every region or cluster of states in former regions is now meeting openly to celebrate the idea of regional development. The enthusiasm displayed at the last meeting of Northern governors, emirs, and elders amounted to a declaration of another governance philosophy in the country, just as several meetings of Yoruba governors have dramatised the birth of a new economic and cultural renewal in the Southwest. Even the South-south that used to meet religiously as a region since announcement of the Jonathan National Conference has not discontinued doing so, almost two years after the exit of Jonathan, just as several organisations and pundits in the South-East are calling for Igbo regional development initiative.

    For the avoidance of doubt, advocates for regionalism are distinct from those calling for restoration of federalism. While the former may not believe in migrating from a constricting unitary system to a freedom-promoting governance structure, the latter may not necessarily believe that there is any gain from groups of states working together to improve the chances of each member of the group. For example, Professor Ango Abdullahi celebrates oneness of the states of the old North while casting those who ask for loosening of the current unitary structure as enemies of one Nigeria.  Similarly, there is no evidence that the governors of the Southwest from two diametrically opposed political parties would have been able to tolerate each other if DAWN had asked them to endorse a document on imperative of re-federalisation of the country, for fear of offending their political patrons. This is despite the fact that the PDP has no space for restructuring in its manifesto and APC that does in its manifesto has looked away from its promise, on the excuse of devoting political energy presumably to ‘more serious’ problems: corruption and recession.

    In effect, revival of regionalism is an innocuous attempt to respond to unitary governance without upsetting it. It may not bring smiles to advocates for federalism or autonomy, but it may be a useful move to avoid the implications of a pseudo-federal system for the lives of millions of citizens left behind in most of the mini-states made possible by petrodollars. In addition, the connotation of contemporary calls for regionalism does not include any attempt to reduce the power of the central government as determined by the 1999 Constitution. If anything, the return to regional planning and development is to reduce the damage done to individual states by fragmentation of the country into 36 states sustained by proceeds from oil revenue, now dwindling because of what happens in other countries. It is logical that politicians with insight are not ignoring implications of the imperative of a new economy in the country.

    One good thing about the resurgence of regionalism is that just about every region now believes there is benefit in it as a strategy to improve the life chances of its citizens, now that petroleum seems more endangered than before. Something that may be missed easily about new emphasis on regionalism is the growing popularity of the notion of unity of purpose among states and even between regions, as demonstrated at the recent meeting of 19 states in the North. It is remarkable that political and cultural leaders hitherto glued to politics of the size of allocation from the federation account to states and local governments are seeing the handwriting on the wall in respect of sustainable development. While states are recognising the advantage of economy of scale in physical and social infrastructure development with neighbouring states, those obsessed with keeping the states apart or isolated for purpose of easy domination by agencies in control of the central government are also aware that the pie is getting too small to sustain parasitic governance systems made possible during the era of military dictatorship and abundant revenue from petroleum. All over the country, political and cultural leaders are responding appropriately to external stimuli that they cannot afford to ignore.

    Governors of the Southwest deserve to be commended for their readiness to take risk on the side of consultative and cooperative governance of states joined by history and culture. By agreeing to share ideas, methods, and resources among the six states, irrespective of ideological or political party affiliations, they deserve to be congratulated for agreeing to think out of the box. It is reassuring that the governors have accepted to work with DAWN on joint projects that can save cost and enhance efficiency in each of the states in the region. This is a recognition of the fact that there is nothing mystical about unity among human beings, as most human beings with common or similar interests are generally likely to work together for self-improvement.  It is commendable that the region’s governors are also ready to re-invent Odu’a Investment to meet the demands of the time. Mobilisation of citizens to buy into the ideology of integrated regional development stands a good chance to benefit from the enthusiasm of their governors, demonstrated visibly at Ibadan, Ekiti, and most recently at the Abeokuta Governance Innovation Conference.

    There are so many projects for the six states to do together: transportation, education, vocational training, energy, agriculture, industrialisation, cultural tourism, physical and social infrastructure, health care, comprehensive health insurance for citizens, public service delivery, and environmental management, to name a few.  This column congratulates the governors for a good idea waiting to become a laudable action.