The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • Taxation and dis-alienation of citizens (1)

    Taxation and dis-alienation of citizens (1)

    A more optimistic view of the call on residents and companies to pay taxes is for citizens to see this as inevitable return of their sovereignty to them by those who had distracted citizens from their primary political responsibility in the past.

    There is no room for failure over FIRS’s attainment of its 2016 target of N4.97 trillion to the Federal Government. This is not a joke. We need everybody to do his/her beat to ensure that everybody contributes (sic) to the achievement of the target. The nation will depend on FIRS to fund the budget. We need the money to stabilise the economy.–Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, Finance Minister
    The subjects of every state ought to contribute to the support of the government, as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities: that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation. -Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations
    A democracy requires accountability and accountability requires transparency. -Barack Obama

    Nigeria has been for too long a state run on the model of landlordism by those charged with rent collection from petroleum, who generally relish treating Nigerians not as citizens but as tenants. This philosophy of governance and of citizen-state relations had not always been so. Towards the end of the colonial era, taxation at the instance of colonial administrators and later of pre-Independence political leaders applied the principle of social contract with citizens, by assuring them in their rhetoric and praxis that the taxes citizens paid would address their social needs. This was why resistance to tax by citizens, especially in Western and Eastern regions weakened until when citizens joyfully paid their taxes, particularly during Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s unmistakable use of tax funds for social programmes that citizens could identify with. Now that Nigeria has been forced by collapse of oil price to return to funding of governance through taxes from citizens and non-citizens, as it is done in most self-sustaining countries of the world, this column will return to addressing previous themes covered on this page in the past: complementary responsibility of the taker and giver of taxes in a democracy.

    In the years before the onset of military rule in 1966, especially after the civil war when the principal source of funding for the government was rent collection from sale of petroleum, it was money collected directly and indirectly from citizens, residents, and companies that drove governance. For example, most of the infrastructure and institutions created in the four regions before the 1970s derived from funds collected directly and indirectly from the people and the economic activities they engaged in.  However, continued surge in revenue from petroleum not only encouraged military rulers to create a bloated central government in terms of functions and revenue; it also drove the policy of proliferation of states and of intended or unintended alienation of citizens from governments. Military rulers (and later civilians) of the central government in particular had the courage to delete the support of citizens from consideration, once they felt there were sufficient funds from petroleum sale to create whatever appealed to the fancies of rulers-be they military or civilian between 1975 and 2015.

    Military rulers who came to power by force of arms or civilian governments rigged into power found encouragement in the assured and growing revenue from petroleum to distance citizens from the state. This policy over time kept citizens away from scrutinising how they were governed, thus saving political and bureaucratic leaders from accountability.  Military rulers were content with citizen apathy generated by alienation, as this situation made it easier for rulers to manage civil society organisations and the media that had the courage to hold rulers to account periodically.  Corruption of some members of the media and sponsoring by rulers of civil society organisations to counter those that were genuinely pro-citizens’ interests gained ground during decades of military rule. The result of such policy on the part of government, especially the central government, is estrangement or withdrawal or separation of a person’s or group’s affections from an object or group such as those in charge of governance.

    Such alienation erodes or represses citizens’ political efficacy that should have allowed them to exercise their sovereignty. Instead, a polity committed to alienating citizens created a culture in which citizens largely, in the words of Dan Hind in The Return of the Public, “accept government’s authority almost to the point of autocracy.” It has taken the election of 2015 and the ascendancy of Mohammed Buhari as president to know the dangerous implications of decades of separation between those who governed the country and those that were governed. Suddenly, citizens now get to see the difference between discussion of corruption in the media as abstract ideas and the details of corrupt acts by those charged as politicians or civil servants to serve as minders of the state.

    It is possible that if the price of petroleum had not slumped, partisan traditional and social media could still have been able to urge the public to move on and forget the past, in order to mask the details of corruption in the polity. But the coming at the same time of an austere anti-corruption president and the loss of value of petroleum in the international market has unearthed the venality of crass political and bureaucratic corruption in the country. This has also compelled those newly charged to govern the country decades after consolidation of the culture of corruption to come back to citizens for collaboration with government through putting the onus of funding the country on citizens, residents, and their businesses. The return to the public by the Finance Minister when she said, “We need everybody to do his/her beat to ensure that everybody contributes (sic) to the achievement of the target” of raising 4.97 trillion from tax to fund a the 6+ trillion budget and to stabilise the economy knowingly or unknowingly calls on citizens to take their country back from banditry of decades-long irresponsible and unresponsive governance.

    It is conceivable that many citizens who did not feel pressured for decades to pay taxes religiously because of the culture of parasitism made possible by assured flow of revenue from petroleum and stratagems on the part of military and civilian rulers to save themselves from public scrutiny are likely to feel inconvenienced by government’s demand for prompt payment of taxes to fund governance. This may be a pessimistic view of the new reality by such citizens. A more optimistic view of the call on residents and companies to pay taxes is for citizens to see this as inevitable return of their sovereignty to them by those who had distracted citizens from their primary political responsibility in the past.

    Putting as many corrupt citizens in jail after proper trial; strengthening regulatory regimes to discourage corruption, and teaching young people in all schools about the value of honesty may not end corruption, without the readiness of citizens to invoke their power to read the riot act to politicians and civil servants that abuse their office. Such readiness will be stimulated and sustained once citizens provide the bulk of funds put in the care of politicians and civil servants. If citizens want to eat the omelette of good governance, they have to be prepared to break the eggs of reading riot acts to those who rob them of their commonwealth, by enthusiastically re-claiming their ownership of the state. Citizens’ readiness to invoke their sovereignty during and after elections is now required, more than ever before, to end a culture in which representatives of citizens as members of the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of government act as if they are sole owners of the republic.

     

    To be continued

  • Mini-states in a mangled federation

    Mini-states in a mangled federation

    To expect that the inability of states to function (like their counterparts in other federal systems) as centres of growth and development will be over if more money is released to states from the federation account is to look at the small picture and to take a short-term view of the solution.

    Today’s essay had appeared in large parts on this page before. It is being re-published to add to the discourse of state creation, beyond Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s premising of support for creation of Ijebu State on siting the capital in Ikenne, on account of the town being the birthplace of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Re-presenting this piece has also been influenced by President Buhari’s observable concern in his recent media chat about the fact that there are 36 states in 2015, in contrast to just 19 states when he exited as military dictator. 

    Future studies, the discipline that is involved in rigorous analytics with a view to predict the future of things, was already in existence by the time succession of military dictators created Nigeria’s states from the four regions in existence in 1966. But this discipline was not available in Nigerian universities. Even if it were, there is no evidence that the military rulers who came to power to redesign Nigeria in the interest of their godfathers, sponsors, or civilian collaborators would have countenanced any group trying to predict the future of the policies and decrees created by soldiers in power. It now appears that the chicken has come home to roost. Using existing data to predict what may or can happen has found a home in the nation’s political conversation.

    Senator Adetunbi’s recent revelations on the floor of Senate that most of the nation’s states are prone to bankruptcy or insolvency would not have surprised futurists if they were available in the Nigeria of military dictatorship. The results of the meeting of Nigeria Governors’ Forum cited by Senator Adetunbi should not even amaze ordinary students of public affairs today. What should astound citizens is the solution being proffered for the problem of a basket of unviable states in a nation that depends largely on exportation of non-renewable fossil energy. The solution being offered by members of Nigeria Governors’ Forum is similar in imagination to the one that led to creation of 36 states: throwing available but unsustainable funds at problems or creating irrational solutions and finding problems for and from such solutions later.

    States are, justifiably, asking for more allocations from the federation account. It is subnational governments that are closer to the people and are in a better position than the central government to embark on pro-growth and development projects. It is also state governors that receive directly the effects of citizens’ frustration from lack of social services and employment. With allocation of over 70%   of federal government’s budget to recurrent items, the chances that states can do any better than they are doing at present are slim, unless the basis of revenue allocation is reviewed in favour of the states, regardless of the fortune of oil in the international market.

    But giving more money to the states, though very necessary, is not a long-term solution to the problem of a profusion of mini states. Even if the trustees of the federal government agree (an uphill task) to bring down its own share of national resources to 42% from 52%, the solution to financial weakness in most of the states of the federation would not have been solved.  It is important for all involved to note that the trustees of the federal government are as much about power as their counterparts in the states are. For them to release more than 10% of what accrues to the federal government is to commit political suicide. What is needed for long-term solution is to re-think the way the government is governed and restructure the country’s federal system.

    The legacy handed over to civilians in 1999 by the military is not sustainable, regardless of whether the price of petroleum bounces back to $106 per barrel. The states are too many and too fragmented to be able to generate substantial internal revenue of their own. It is instructive that in the days of just four regions (four states, if you will), none of the states was insolvent, even when only 50% of revenue from oil accrued to the federation account. To expect that the inability of states to function (like their counterparts in other federal systems) as centres of growth and development will be over if more money is released to states from the federation account is to look at the small picture and to take a short-term view of the solution.

    It is the philosophy of basing creation of states on the manna from non-renewable petroleum that needs to be looked at critically by both federal and state governments. Several communities are clamouring for states and they are likely to continue to do so, even if they are confronted with the hard facts of gradual decline of the age of petroleum. The imagination that easy money from oil should serve as rationale for creation of states is also at work in the demand by governors for more funds from the federation account: that more money from non-renewable fossil energy will automatically stop insolvency.

    At present, most of the states, apart from Lagos and a few of those that receive special allocations for being oil producers, are basically centres of administration rather than development. Most states cannot provide potable water for their citizens; they cannot provide safe roads; they cannot promote healthful living for their citizens; they cannot create jobs for their youths; they dare not for lack of resources challenge federal monopoly of ineffectual security of life and limb; they cannot provide functional education for their youths and functional literacy for their teeming illiterate adults; they cannot provide support for non-state agencies interested in providing food security; etc. If all of these activities were to be added (as they should) to the menu of programmes that states should provide, the risk of bankruptcy or insolvency would have quintupled, even if trustees of federal power release 10% or more of what they currently hold to 36 state bureaucracies.

    While it may serve the purpose of not further demoralising an already demoralised citizenry, the claims by any state that it is not bankrupt or insolvent must not be used beyond that purpose. The financial problem of most of the states is not primarily the fault of most governors (apart from those that have turned corruption into a vocation or engaged in using the funds transferred to them for ostentatious projects). Governors have inherited states that came into being, not because they were considered economically viable by their creators, but simply because state creators believed that creating states that live on handouts from the central government is the most assured way to keep the country united. In other words, today’s civilian governors have inherited states that were created to live on subsidy. It is not the demand of workers for a minimum wage of 18,000 naira per month that is the cause of insolvency; it is only an illustration of financial anaemia of the states that have been created as administrative zones.

    What is needed most at present is not for communities to be putting pressure on the government for creation of new states. As the Yoruba often say: “There are moments when there is time for discussing new ideas just as there are moments when there is no idea to discuss, just as there are  moments when there is time for both ideas and time to push them.” A season in which Nigeria is poised to borrow up to 33% of its annual budget is not an appropriate time to ask for or endorse calls for further proliferation of states in the country. If anything, this is a good time to call for right-sizing of states through redesigning of the country’s architecture of governance.

  • In the court of public opinion: Anti-corruption versus rule of law?

    Those calling for the supremacy of rule of law, regardless of the justness of the law or of the ethicality of the interpreter of the law, may be overlooking the danger that the call for strict constructionist view of the concept may hold.

    One of the most insidious of mythological civic narratives is that our leaders are selfless public servants serving a higher call and order. In a lesser quoted part of Lord Acton’s power/corruption axiom, he offers the chilling statement: “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” Generally, people employed in the public sector are not selfless public servants. They are simple people whose job it is to serve the public. They work for the public, but does that really ennoble them? By the evidence of corruption and venality arrayed about us, the answer must be emphatically, “No.” Yet we still fall prey to the mythology. High public office…. allows some to convince themselves and project to the world that they are all that!  No one is all that—and most everyone, including most everyone in public life, is a whole lot less than all that. And that is okay. But it is also why transparency is so very important— Joseph Ferguson in a foreword to Transparent Government: What it means and how you can make it happen by Donald Gordon.

    One word that is ubiquitous today in print, broadcast, and social media, more than ever before, is Rule of Law. Not since the death of Umaru Yar’Adua, a president who included running a government in compliance with the rule of law in his presidential mission, has the lofty phrase been so popular. When a word is repeated as frequently as rule of law has been since the new government’s efforts to fight corruption by investigating and prosecuting individuals who are suspected to have abused the country’s financial management principles and values, ordinary citizens who are not members of the bar or the bench should be wary. Like some of those who requested me to comment on ‘media-hyping’ of this phrase, I am tempted to look at George Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

    In Orwell’s essay, he raised many issues about the relationship between words and the meanings they are intended to convey. He said among other things: “Our civilisation is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse…. Political language — and with this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell’s assertion that political speech is more often used to conceal than to inform and often used to justify the unjustifiable may apply to today’s obsession by pundits in both traditional and social media with the rule of law as if it is an ideology-free concept.

    Are these two words: anti-corruption and the rule of law mutually exclusive or should they be bandied about as if each refers to something that is oppositional to the other? Partisan politicians are enthusiastic in emphasising the importance of rule of law at the expense of fighting corruption. In some cases, some media pundits are even asking President Buhari to refrain from fighting corruption, if doing so might jeopardise the non-negotiability of the rule of law. Understandably, ordinary citizens seem to be confused by calls for privileging of rule of law principle over rejection of corruption, even though the two camps are presumably shooting for the same thing, good governance.

    Two issues that have been raised by those who see themselves as whistleblowers against acts that show lack of respect for the rule of law since the beginning of the ongoing fight against corruption is the fact that some who have been given bail by the courts are denied the benefit of bail by the federal government. Undoubtedly, it is not encouraging for any government to do anything to suggest that it does not respect the independence of the judiciary. But one area that is often ignored is that the judiciary, like other sectors of the polity and society, also has its own bad eggs as it is in all professions and occupations in the land.

    Borrowing Joseph Ferguson’s concept of mythological civic narrative and Lord Acton’s assertion: “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it, “it is logical to say that many of the politicians and media pundits who make efforts to privilege the principle of rule of law over the imperative of identifying, investigating, and prosecuting individuals caught with corrupt acts assume that the judiciary is right all the time. If time is taken to do forthright judicial criticism, it will be demonstrated that many judges use the space of discretion at their disposal to favour those accused of criminal behaviour and the sabotage of the state. For example, if it was not for the Administration of Criminal Act 2015, cases that have been put in the cooler in the name of rule of law since 2006 would not have seen the light of day, as they are now doing at the instance of the EFCC. The rule of law must protect all citizens. This is why most commentators emphasise equality before the law as the core of the political ideology that the law is the king as opposed to the king being law.

    It is citizens at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in particular who have not enjoyed the principle of equality before the law that are now querying in letters to the editor section of newspapers and on blogs the new obsession with the rule of law on account of time between the approval of bail and the actual release of suspects by law enforcers. The masses seem to be wondering if the word rule of law is to conceal rather than to reveal, whether the repetition of the phrase is not an attempt to take attention away from efforts to fight corruption. Citizens who are enraged by the absurdity of appropriation of funds meant for improvement of the life of all or to fight Boko Haram’s war against the nation are worried that the elite are doing what they have always done best: create confusion or distraction in order to prevent any meaningful intervention by those committed to deter corruption through a crime and punishment initiative.

    President Buhari may not have provided a grand narrative of how he plans to govern the country, he has, undoubtedly, clearly stated that no change can come to the economy if and until looters of the economy and the polity in the past are made to return their loot. Many people would argue that If President Buhari had any personal interest in keeping certain persons in jail over the mismanagement of $2.1 billion approved for the purchase of arms to fight Boko Haram, he would or could have given those involved in the case a graver charge. They could have been charged for sabotaging the country at a time of war and thus endangering the population. And doing this would have kept everybody involved in jail until their innocence is proven, as such charge would fall under the category of capital offence.

    Historically, the ritualistic conceptualisation of rule of law had been challenged in the past in many societies. Thomas Paine once said in “Common Sense” that unjust laws threaten the religiosity of the rule of law, just as Henry David Thoreau said in “Civil Disobedience”: “Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness.” Those calling for the supremacy of rule of law, regardless of the justness of the law or of the ethicality of the interpreter of the law, may be overlooking the danger that the call for strict constructionist view of the concept may hold. At a time that corruption has almost brought the country to bankruptcy and international receivership, it is necessary for pundits to be guided by Lord Acton’s axiom that the office may not sanctify the holder. In all the branches of government in our country: executive, legislative, and judicial, the office does sanctify the holders. The two bills being sent by the presidency to NASS may just be a good beginning in the journey to kill corruption before corruption kills the country along with the rule of law.

  • Who is afraid of the cost of change? 2

    Who is afraid of the cost of change? 2

    Unless there is an immediate revolution in the country’s judicial culture, citizens may be in a better position to support the government in ending or arresting corruption in the country than a judiciary that is already infected by the virus of Nigeria Factor.

    We need more support; it is about Nigeria, not an individual, the fight against corruption is for everybody, from the media we have to go to the grassroots, we will take it to children in the schools; we have to tell the children that corruption is bad, tell them why there is no chair in the classroom…. We will sensitise everybody to the evil of corruption. We need to let people know that corruption is bad, because some people don’t seem to know.—Ibrahim Magu, EFCC Chairman

    Last week, this column called on those holding the levers of power to get ready to deal with the cost of change. The column argued that if the current administration is to arrest corruption, it must address the two types of corruption: the act of plundering nation’s resources and a governance culture that makes citizens feel that the wealth of the nation belongs only to the few with access to political and bureaucratic power. It concluded that fighting corruption effectively will require not just the willingness of judges to serve the cause of justice, but also mobilisation of citizens to stand up to defend their patrimony through use of citizens’ sovereignty to call promoters and defenders of corruption and undue privilege for political officers to order. It also asked President Buhari to insist that his ministers declare their assets. Today’s piece will focus on the role of citizens in a democracy and the responsibility of people in power to encourage citizens to have a stake in the way they are governed. It will argue that both citizens and democratic governments in the country need to cooperate more than they are doing, if corruption is to be removed from the country’s governance culture.

    Born and raised mostly in the era of military dictatorship with no clearly defined mission for sustainable democracy and national development, a huge number of active citizens in the voting age today have grown to see themselves not as part of the governance process. The alienation of citizens at the instance of military governments continued into the few years of democratic governance since independence. The alienation reached its peak during the last administration, which essentially appropriated the state and its resources with a show of impunity that finally angered the citizens to the point of voting out a party self-referenced as the largest political party in Africa destined to rule without interruption for at least 65 years.

    In a way, the vote for Buhari and his manifesto of change marked the beginning of citizen dis-alienation. But the effective use of citizens’ votes to change a government they did not feel comfortable with does not amount to full acceptance of citizens’ role in a democracy. Apart from electoral democracy which gives citizens the opportunity to choose or replace governments that rule them, citizens are expected in democratic cultures to see themselves in post-election times as stakeholders whose main responsibilities are to participate in policy debates, petition the government, and protest against public policies whenever they feel the need to do so. The old aphorisms: “A people get the government they deserve” and “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” all illustrate the role of citizens in shaping the way their nation is governed, especially the readiness on the part of their rulers to see governance as a life-enhancing endeavour that expects people in government to commit to accountability and transparency in governance.

    For long in our country’s frequently broken journey to democratic governance, most citizens have come to see politicians and government as overlords. In addition, when vocational civil society organisations mushroomed in the country during the era of military dictatorship, many citizens saw civil society as separate from the citizenry. This perception has been traced to the fact that most civil society organisations came into being and remain in existence through funding by former colonial powers and their collaborators. Many observers also believe that many civil society organisations, like other segments of the Nigerian polity and society, had been infected and degraded by the culture of corruption in ascendancy from decade to decade.

    As this column observed last week, President Buhari’s call on citizens and the judiciary to play the roles allotted to them in a democracy enthusiastically and effectively remains one of the most profound statements from the presidency in respect of consolidating and sustaining democracy in the country. Undoubtedly, there have been similar statements in respect of democracy in the past, but it is salutary that such statement came this time from a man whose personal integrity had contributed noticeably to the success of an opposition party to unseat a political party ‘destined’ in the words of its leaders to rule Nigeria continuously for close to three quarters of a century. But the president’s encouragement of citizens to be vigilant beyond electoral democracy must have raised citizens’ expectations about the future of democracy and development in the country. However, for the president’s statement to have a lasting impact, it must be backed by programmatic commitment at every level of government to stimulating citizens to get fully engaged in the war against corruption, a political and social vice that is inimical to the thriving of democracy and development in the country.

    Unless there is an immediate revolution in the country’s judicial culture, citizens may be in a better position to support the government in ending or arresting corruption in the country than a judiciary that is already infected by the virus of Nigeria Factor. Like all aspects of the polity, the judiciary may need the type of re-orientation that other corruption-prone institutions in the polity require, for it to play a proper role in the fight against corruption. Building trust between the government and the electorate is the most important thing needed to reinforce the fight against corruption. It is perhaps easy for corrupt people to fight back and dirty as they seem to be doing already. Corrupt people in government, banks, and other resource-rich institutions are likely to have enough resources to purchase corrupt professionals in all spheres of life but they may not be able to have enough stolen money to spare for buying the conscience of most citizens.

    The fight against corruption and for amelioration of governance in the country (now coded as Change) needs citizens’ support more than that of any other institution inherited from decades of venality in governance. The managers of Buhari’s manifesto of change need to interact more respectfully with citizens than the governments in the past. They need to be honest with citizens and provide them with information about forces that are working to prevent change in all forms. For example, it should not be easier for the government’s media aides to identify names of police officers who take N100 bribe on the street than it should be to provide meaningful information about those who stole over one trillion naira from the state. The news about 55 individuals-former ministers, governors, bank officers, etc— is not helpful so far. WHO as one of the mandatory five Ws and one H of news reporting is the first thing to be established before an event is turned into a news story. There is no excuse for government to forget to give citizens the names of the 55 individuals that had wrecked the economy.

    If the manifesto of change is not to be rubbished by desperate members of the country’s venal elite, President Buhari needs to initiate programmes that can enhance participatory democracy by encouraging public debate and hearings on important policy initiatives, including bringing some matters directly before citizens in a referendum. Citizens feel the presence of governments all over the world through interaction with the public service. As of now, public service still acts as an agency to deny service rather than one to provide public goods and services to citizens. Making government agencies responsive to citizens is one way for the regime of change to establish trust with citizens to the point that they would take the risk of engaging forces that are hostile to good governance. It is after citizens are sure that those in power are serious about improving the institutions created to serve them that they too will “do the needful” to protect the machine of change.

    Citizens on their part need not feel overwhelmed by the noise of anti-change media warriors or by the power at the disposal of those they had elected. For example, as bad as the current constitution is, it provides citizens the right to recall elected officials when they feel this is necessary. Citizens need to be vigilant if they want change. They must realise that the power of example evident in Presidential Buhari’s personal life may not be enough to sustain a regime of change. Other branches of government, especially the houses of elected lawmakers require close scrutiny at all times. Like the president, the lawmakers need to be made accountable to those that elected them. When any lawmaker acts in a way that undermines citizens’ interests, citizens should not forget that they too have the power to recall irresponsible lawmakers.

  • Who is afraid of the cost of change? 1

    Who is afraid of the cost of change? 1

    Failure on the part of ministers to declare their assets is already being construed by citizens as attempts on their part to hide something.

    President Buhari may be doing his utmost to fight corruption and re-engineer governance in a way to make corruption unattractive to the thieves of state among us. What is not clear is to what extent he, his co-rulers in the legislature and judiciary, and the citizenry at large are ready to cope with the inevitable cost of change. The focus of today’s piece is to draw the attention of the president and his ruling party to many lapses in the organisation and governance of the state that require immediate change, to prevent the war on corruption becoming ‘a drum that breaks in the middle of the dance it has started.’

    The president needs to re-read the history of corruption in the polity and the various manifestations of policies designed to give undue advantage to the few with access to power in the country. When the military came to power for the first time in 1966, it accused the Balewa government of corruption and pledged to citizens that the military government would rid political and bureaucratic corruption in the country. The promise was never fulfilled, especially since easy flow of petrodollars under the various military governments between 1966 and 1999 and the civilian governments of 1979 and 1983. The more revenue came from petroleum, the more corruption festered until it reached its apogee in between 1999 and 2015. It was a sign of relief to the citizens when Buhari came out under the auspices of the All Progressives Congress to promise that he would give all his energy to fight and kill corruption in order to prevent corruption from killing the country.

    Corruption as abuse of power for material gain at the expense of the citizenry takes various forms in our country, with some forms seeming legitimate on the surface while in reality they are   designed to give to political office holders and top public officers undue advantage, all on the excuse that there was enough revenue from petroleum to pamper and indulge the few Nigerians that are lucky enough to have access to political or bureaucratic power. For example, the salaries and allowances given to political officer holders—at both the executive and legislative levels—are outlandish, and those receiving these perquisites are aware of the fact that they are getting more than they deserve in an economy that is in every sense of the word undeveloped or underdeveloped, lacking every basic element of modern life; electricity, transportation infrastructure, proper health and education provision, housing provision for citizens, etc.

    It is no use for anyone to pretend that citizens are not getting worried about the miraculous power of the status quo to remain intact even after eight months after the inauguration of a change regime. Instructively, President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo have declared their assets as required by the country’s laws. But there is no evidence that President Buhari’s ministers have declared their assets months after their appointment. The president in his recent Media Chat confirmed that he expects his ministers to do the right thing and does not believe that he has to drag them to do this. Without doubt, the buck stops on the desk of the president in this regard. He has to read the riot act to his ministers, if this becomes necessary to make them do what he and his vice president had already done, to assure citizens that the ministers are not above the law of the land. Citizens are already grumbling about what they see as nonchalance on the part of the ministers. It is not good for consolidation of electoral democracy for people with political appointments to discountenance such an important law. Failure on the part of ministers to declare their assets is already being construed by citizens as attempts on their part to hide something.

    With respect to the salaries and allowances (including the so-called constituency allowance that turned lawmakers into executive officers), there is nothing in the character of presidential system all over the world that justifies what Nigerian lawmakers earn and the amount of public funds available to them to spend. This column raised this issue recently in the essays titled ‘Pork Barrel Politics.’ Those responsible for writing the constitution that gave enormous powers to the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) could only have done this on account of the huge revenue flowing into the country from petroleum. There is no better time than now to revisit the policy of indulgence of lawmakers and ministers with regards to salaries and allowances, as well as the policy on severance benefits to citizens who opted for political office. Severance packages should not apply to individuals who work in any capacity for less than eight years for members of the executive and the legislative branches of government. It will be a matter of serious controversy if tax payers have to pay such humongous salaries and allowances to political office holders in the lean years thrown up by a huge slump in the price of petroleum and the new danger that may come to Nigeria’s share of the gas market from the United States becoming a major gas exporter.

    It is one thing to recognize the negative impact of corruption on the polity and the economy as President Buhari has done very well. It is another thing to come to terms with a political culture that promotes social and economic injustice, and thus creates a conducive atmosphere for corruption on the part of those unduly favoured. There is so much haemorrhage in a system that expends so much of the commonwealth on just a few of its citizens at the expense of the majority. For example, why are former lawmakers given police protection long after they have ceased to be in office? Even many ministers who served in military governments and in the Obasanjo regime are still moving around with police orderlies while there are no police officers to protect citizens. Former lawmakers still ride vehicles without registration numbers or some with House or Senate registration plate numbers, just as there are former state commissioners and local government chairmen with police orderlies. Citizens are already wondering why those who had served the governments that had brought Nigeria to its present low level of development over the years are being given undue protection at the expense of the citizenry. Citizens are already expressing surprise in both traditional and social media about a policy that continues to pamper former office holders. Some citizens are even asking why such people would need special protection, if they have not done anything criminal.

    A system created at a time that military and civilian rulers thought that money was not a problem for Nigeria should be given serious review now that the era of manna from the bowels of the earth is fast disappearing. For example, what message are policies of indulging top political and bureaucratic officers sending to citizens when they provide severance packages that include free cars, generators, diesel, and houses for former governors and deputy governors after they leave office while millions of citizens still in service do not have any housing or transportation benefits? A system that promotes the kind of inequality that is evident between those privileged to be in high political positions and the millions at the bottom cannot but nurture corruption among men and women who have been made to see the wealth of the country as belonging primarily to them.

    The philosophy and praxis of our change regime cannot avoid taking a close look at the culture of governments in Nigeria in the age of plenty. The outcry against lawmakers’ decision to spend billions of naira on cars and the seeming slowness on the part of RMAFC to review the salary/allowance package adopted in the days of oil boom show lack of enthusiasm on the part of political officers to come to terms with the reality on the ground in an era that petroleum no longer brings huge inflows of dollars. President Buhari’s observation at his recent media chat that it is only citizens and the judiciary that can check any excesses on the part of all the branches of government is remarkable. As this column plans to discuss next week, citizens need to be encouraged to invoke their sovereignty on all matters by the executive’s unmistakable preparedness to be more forthcoming with information.

  • America’s petroleum and Nigeria’s future (2)

    America’s petroleum and Nigeria’s future (2)

    Today’s article was first published in 2012. It is being republished today because many of the fears expressed in 2012 have now become real while some of the article’s optimism about willingness of Nigeria’s states to push demands for robust re-federalisation have not become popular, even after the negative effect of slump in oil revenue on the economy and politics of the country has become unmistakable. A political season in which President Buhari and APC as the ruling party are about to commence a regime of change in the country is a good time to join others to rub minds with guardians of the ruling party’s ideology and policy wonks saddled with transforming promises in the party’s manifesto into policies for immediate implementation, especially in respect of APC’s promise to return true federalism to the constitution and enhance the federalist spirit.

    If after 50 years of underdevelopment of the country’s infrastructure despite decades of oil boom, America’s entry into the petroleum and gas market as exporter reduces Nigeria’s revenue from oil and gas, Nigeria may enter a critical phase that will call for new thinking on the part of leaders and citizens. 

    Last week’s conclusion asserts that America’s entry into the international petroleum market as a gas and petroleum exporter (as distinct from its many decades of being an importer) will force Nigerian political leaders and citizens to accept the end of miracles as the solution to national economic and social problems. In other words, the existence in the future of what does not exist now or of what exists now and may not exist in the future in the petroleum market will push trustees or guardians of Nigeria’s politics to accept that the best route to national development and sustainable democracy is an economic culture that encourages citizens to engage in production, the way it was all over Nigeria until 1966.

    It is important for the country’s economic planners to replace platitudes with policies that can meaningfully diversify the country’s economy, without allowing current inflow of petrodollars to distract them from going back to the fundamental law of culture: no distribution before production. Since General Gowon was reported as saying that money was not Nigeria’s problems in the 1970s, Nigeria has been preoccupied with distribution without production. This is why it has not been easy for the country to invest in infrastructure that can fuel development: energy, rail, road, water, etc. Nigeria has been dependent on the 57% of revenue from oil that accrued from oil sale for several decades. This culture of Sadaka, Awuufu, Ifa or Saraa (culture of free loading) is best captured by the name of one of the country’s foremost agencies, Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, most graphically in the emphasis on assembling and making ready for use that mobilisation suggests.

    If after 50 years of underdevelopment of the country’s infrastructure despite decades of oil boom, America’s entry into the petroleum and gas market as exporter reduces Nigeria’s revenue from oil and gas, Nigeria may enter a critical phase that will call for new thinking on the part of leaders and citizens. Many things that have been taken for granted since 1966 will call for review, especially the country’s political structure.

    Once the flow of funds to the central government declines (as surely it will once the percentage of oil and gas it can sell to other countries goes down), existing states will aspire to become development centres, rather than distribution centres that they have been since military dictators initiated the culture of creating states and sustaining them with funds from the federation account.  The existing 36 states and 774 local governments will certainly have difficulties meeting their monthly bills: salaries to civil servants and other sectors of public service in particular. Retrenchment or downsizing the public sector will become imperative at the beginning for most states. But leaders that are unlucky to be in office when revenue decline occurs will have to adopt the maxim: necessity is the mother of invention. Otherwise, they may be chased out of office by angry citizens, the way it happened in many Arab countries a few years back. They will have to move from the ingrained culture of profligacy and corruption made possible by cheap oil money to providing infrastructure and support for a productive private sector.

    The sudden shift of attention from the federal government as the dispenser of funds to states and local governments to states and local governments as laboratories and factories for production will renew calls for restoration of functional federalism. No state will be prepared to pass gains from the sweat of its citizens to the federal government to share among states and local governments in the name of even development. States and local governments will have to compete with each other, just as they will also cooperate with each other in their efforts to respond to the new development challenges to be thrown up by decline in oil revenue.

    States that are currently calling for people’s constitution, restructuring of the polity, and devolution of power will be more aggressive in their demands, more so when the easy monthly or quarterly allocation from the federation account ceases to be useful to sustain the appearance of governance and government that most states have enjoyed since 1975. As each state struggles to produce what its citizens consume, it will need to have full supervisory power over its economy and polity.

    The mantra that only the federal police can keep Nigeria united will be challenged more forcefully by states that require efficient and dedicated police to enforce laws and sustain public order. States will resist the usual practice of collecting VAT and fees for driving licence and vehicle registration for the federal government to share among states on the basis of land mass and population estimate. States with ports will aggressively ask for compensation for port facilities in their states, rather than beg for special financial support or special status from the federal government. For example, the demand on the federal government to give Lagos a special status that will require additional funds from the federal government will be replaced by demands for a percentage of revenue from use of Lagos ports. Other states with port facilities, such as Delta, Cross River, and Rivers, will make similar demands for revenue sharing with the federal government from port revenue.

    Regionalism or regional integration will become a common model of development across the country once the easy flow of revenue from petroleum and gas ceases or reduces considerably in the years beyond 2020. The current competition among states on exhibitionism in the use of public funds will give way to cooperation in design and execution of projects that can advance development in contiguous states. The reality of scarce resources that may result from revenue decline from the federation account funded largely from proceeds from oil and gas will stimulate the culture of prudence in states that do not want to go bankrupt. Citizens whose taxes become the largest source of revenue for the government will demand an end to low-class self-promotion of political leaders and their family in newspaper adverts at the expense of public funds.

    The sections of the country that have sworn not to allow the country’s post-military federal government to devolve power to states will become more realistic about the imperative of restructuring, once the oil and gas revenue that has been lubricating the country’s chain of unity goes south. Such leaders will have no choice but to accept that it is only parasites without a sense of self-preservation that will depend on an emaciated host. Such states will loosen their grip on the federation and cooperate with those calling for true federalism, not out of altruistic interest but out of the need to have control over their own hard-earned resources in the years beyond today’s bountiful harvest from oil and gas.

    However, the years of less revenue from fossil energy will strengthen the territorial unity of Nigeria. No state or region of the country (not even the Niger Delta) will feel strong enough to want to opt out of Nigeria. A country that has since 1966 seen itself as one united by oil will start to see itself as needing to stay together in order to grow out of poverty. But the country’s unity will cease to be nominal or symbolic; it will be one with a purpose. The country will morph into a site for what Ben Nwabueze once called ‘diversity in unity’.  Proper fiscal federalism stridently called for by Senator Bola Tinubu during the Obasanjo regime will become a major aspect of the country’s architecture of governance.

  • BJ@70: greying of a virile tradition of intellectual activism for social democracy?

    For decades, BJ was largely a self-funding NGO by himself and along with others for
    the purpose of improving his society and immediate community.

    All men are intellectuals. But not all men have in society the function of intellectuals. —Antonio Gramsci

    As readers of this column read this page today, a large number of West Africa’s literati in particular and lovers of social democracy in generalwill be moving in the direction of Kankafo Inn in Ibadan, to participate on Tuesday, January 5 in paying tributes to a man who has for over half a century stood out as one of Africa’s (and the world’s) stellar thinkers for and on behalf of social justicenot only in Nigeria but wherever he finds himself on the globe. This page will be devoted today to paying tribute to Biodun Jeyifo (BJ) for using his mind consistently for the past   50 years of his adult life to assist others to understandthe need for them to think and act in pursuance of creating unfettered environment for realising their humanity to the fullest.

    Writing almost fifty years before the birth of BJ, Antonio Gramsci drew a line between traditional public intelligentsia and organic public intelligentsia. He described organic intellectuals as conscious members of society who must be developed to think and act on behalf of the working class, in contradistinction to the traditional intelligentsia composed of “men of letters, philosophers, professionals, etc” who are intimately tied to the dominant culture and therefore compromised and limited in their own capacity.” In his own case, BJ refused to be limited by the skills and knowledge he had acquired in precolonial and postcolonial Nigeria and in other parts of the world of advanced capitalism.  He chose (and still does at 70) to spend the rest of his post-baccalaureate years as an organic intellectual in pursuance of freedom and social justice for the people.And he has performed this role over the years without risking the quality of contributions of a highly endowed mind to human progress through knowledge expansion.

    At 70, BJ is understandably and expectedly greying and doing so graciously. He, like many others with similar intellectual bent before and in his generation, is greying in a way that should make those who see him as an enviable role model and those looking for a role model to take advantage of the festival of encomiums that will occur in both traditional and social media on the occasion of BJ’s entry into the septuagenarian phase of life.

    Rather than do what most people who knew my relationship with BJ at the University of Ife: would readily expect: focus on his teaching, research, and professional publications, I will focus in this 1400-word space at my disposal on some of his qualities as intellectual-activist and activist-intellectual.With BJ’s over 50 professional publications that include such magisterial works as The Yoruba Traveling Theatre of Nigeria, The Truth Lie: Essays in a Sociology of African Drama, Marxism and the Criticism of African Drama, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Post colonialism, Wole Soyinka: A Voice of Africa, 1958-2008: Things Fall Apart; Things Fall Together, Africa in the World and the Worldin Africa: Essays in Honour of Abiola Irele, using this small space allotted to me today to summarise tomes of high scholarship may amount to an understatement. Doing so may also rob average mass readers of newspapers the opportunity to obtain an insight into the contributions of an expert who chose to connect his fertile mind to the life of average citizens in whatever clime BJ has found himself in his professional years.

    As a young scholar, BJ joined the ranks of several scholars in the country to interrogate the assumptions of postcolonial Nigeria. While scholars like Bala Usman of Ahmadu Bello University and Segun Osoba of the University of Ife were busy promoting a new historiography about social justice and nation building, and social scientists like Ola Oni and Bade Onimode were interrogating economic theories fueling and hobbling the new postcolonial states in Africa, BJ turned his intellectual tools on connecting the continent’s symbolic discourse, in particular literary production with economic production and reproduction. BJ found a good company in this venture with scholars like Omafume Onoge and Femi Osofisan at the University of Ibadan.Although BJ and I had crossed paths at conferences within and outside Nigeria in the mid-1970s, I was not privileged to observe from close quarters his dexterity at multitasking until I joined him at the University of Ife’s department of literature in English, where I also came to see how loving and loved he was (and still is) despite the stoic mien of a man continually in deep thought. And what I saw of him over three decades ago at Ife in terms of depth of commitment to social justice  in all climes and to wellbeing of associates, friends and family has been growing ever since.

    The activist-intellectual bloomed at Ife, where he was characterised by military dictators as one of “those teaching what they were not paid to teach.”His pedagogy of mobilisation and ‘conscientisation’ grew with him at Ife. In a decade of disequilibrium in almost all spheres of modern life in the country, BJ became the President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) with the remit to secure academic freedom and obtain respectable working conditions for the professoriate.He drove in his old Volkswagen Beetle across the length and breadth of the country to consult with various branches of the union and to attend negotiation meetings with representatives of the Shagari government. Not surprisingly, BJ still found time to meet his onerous teaching responsibilities and postgraduate supervision by teaching longer hours to make sure students were not disadvantaged by his union-related activities.

    The impact of BJ’s ASUU presidency on the university system in Nigeria is a legacy with a template that has been an abiding aspect of labour unionism ever since.  As a member of the executive committee of ASUU at that time, I was privileged to observe BJ’s sincere identification with and support for the demands of non-academic staff unions and the union of junior workers in the university system. He became a spokesman for these other unions at ASUU meetings, thus using the power of example to provide leadership in neutralising tension on many campuses of what many academics perceived then as issues of no concern to the demands of ASUU.

    BJ has at every point in his 50 years of professional life been very active in the three major areas of intellectual activism: demanding solutions to problems through taking oppositional stances to mainstream policies created by an existing hegemony; undertaking actions which manifest in the creation of alternatives to the dominant system through construction of new ways of social behavior; and revolutionary activism that is preoccupied with fundamental change of society and its major institutions.

    For example, BJ was a leading member of an agriculture and food cooperative in the Ife area, with the objective to pass new methods to local farmers and assist them to improve their productivity through sharing of responsibilities. On the surface, this affiliation of BJ with farmers looked like unnecessary demystification or trivialisation of high knowledge while to the farmers and other perceptive observers, it demonstrated BJ’s desire to assist under-tooled farmers to construct a new ethos of equality and social justice, an illustration of his proclivity to marry theory and praxis for the purpose of stimulating an egalitarian spirit among people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in a young postcolonial state.While his profession took him to North America, he initiated a weekly anti-poverty conversation with the mass reader through the publication of Talakawa Liberation Herald, which readers of this newspaper musthave been reading religiously on account of its unfailing brilliant analyses. More recently, he also started an Anti-Poverty Initiative headquartered in Bodija part of Ibadan to share some of his post-retirement energy and resources with people in need in a country that should have been overflowing with milk and honey.

    The purpose of this piece is not just to celebrate a colleague and friend. It is also to make a connection between BJ’s 70th birthday and the ageing of what used to be a vigorous struggle via words and action for social democracy in our country.  For decades, BJ was largely a self-funding NGO by himself and along with others for the purpose of improving his society and immediate community. As ever before, the need for BJ-like commitment to organised struggle for social and economic justice in our country continues to grow, more so now that struggle for social justice has been left to professional NGOs funded largely by external donors with their own vision of Nigeria.ABIJE, as Nike and Femi Osofisan, Shade and Yemi Ogunbiyi, and Kole Omotoso prefer to call you, Bi eegunba se rere, biieegunba se ibi, aa fi onaigbalejii. Eegun tire ti se rere o. Igbaodun, odunkanni

  • As we finally enter the regime of change

    As we finally enter the regime of change

     In the manifesto that Buhari and his party waved as contract with the electorate last March, the section on Reform states unequivocally the commitment of Buhari and his party to bring fundamental changes to the way governance is organised in the country.

    Our change slogan is not a campaign gimmick but a promise that must be kept. We are determined to bring about tangible changes in the lives of our people.—President Buhari

    With a new budget that is fully Buhari’s and his ministers already in the saddle, Nigeria appears finally poised for change that is expected to bring the country’s dark past to an end. And with clarity of evidence of serious efforts of the Buhari presidency to fight Boko Haram and to recover stolen funds from corrupt public officers, other areas of Buhari’s manifesto that are yet to be given attention deserve to be highlighted by citizens. Today’s piece is an effort in that direction.

    As this column had observed several times in the past, it is not Jonathan’s regime that created the culture of corruption, despite the reality that Jonathan’s administration worked to become the poster child for venality in governance across the globe. While it may be a waste of resources—financial and emotional—to go and probe every government that had ruled the country since 1960, it is proper for those holding the levers of power to address political and social behaviours that have brought Nigeria to its current state of anomie.

    But as the Buhari regime sets out to reconfigure our institutions in a way to make corruption unattractive, this column seeks permission of its readers to bring back a recurrent theme that has been discussed almost ad nauseam in the column: re-designing the architecture of governance in a way that will bring more input from citizens into the way they are governed. Using the end of 2015 to repeat or re-open the discourse of re-federalisation may not be out of place at a time that the country’s Change Regime is poised to be at full throttle.

    It is entertaining and also depressing to learn about Dasukigate and Rice-gate that capture nuances of how big men charged with the responsibility of securing the country as members of executive or legislative branch of government wantonly rape the country. Citizens seem to be enjoying the naming and shaming drama of Dasukigate in particular while some are salivating ahead of what is likely to come out of the new revelation about a new crisis: promoting rice farming through rice smuggling. It is one thing for citizens to take joy in the naming, shaming, and even jailing of those who have been caught for sabotaging the country in various ways in the last four years. But it is another thing for citizens to be encouraged to worry about how our country came about this mess and how to get out of it.

    Surely, citizens in large numbers are already expressing support for no holds-barred attack on corruption and corrupt individuals. There is no day that citizens and groups do not express support for the efforts of Buhari’s government to fight corruption. Such support may be in a way a reflection of citizens’ anger and desire to get back at those they have perceived to have functioned more as enemies than leaders of state and its citizens. Just as it is with circuses, citizens are also likely to get tired of watching the video of corruption or of trial for corruption before long. They are likely to get more ‘long-termist’ in their search for solution to a problem that has been an abiding aspect of the political culture of the country for about half a century. Indeed, citizens are already asking why they are ruled under a political system that is centralised to the point of robbing the average citizen of the space to participate in how they are governed, especially at the grassroots level. They are worrying about a political system that has taken the opportunity of easy revenue from petroleum to alienate them from governance at both local and state levels.

    It is instructive at this point in Buhari’s administration to recall sections of his manifesto that are designed to make the country better governed than before. In the manifesto that Buhari and his party waved as contract with the electorate last March, the section on Reform states unequivocally the commitment of Buhari and his party to bring fundamental changes to the way governance is organised in the country. The section on Reform includes several visionary statements: We will not only clean up our government, we will reshape it—reforming and strengthening the law enforcement agencies…. We cannot achieve these reforms without strengthening our public institutions away from the “Strong Man” model, which has devastated our economy and institutions. In another statement, the manifesto says: We will devolve more revenue and powers…We pledge to bring the government closer to the people through fiscal and political decentralization, including local policing. And with special reference to the constitution, the manifesto adds: APC government at the federal level will 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 (My emphases).

    Quoting copiously from Buhari’s contract with the electorate is to demonstrate that President Buhari in his manifesto gives as much attention to the structure of governance as he places on national security, corruption, and national development.  The recent decision of the 8th Senate to establish a special committee on constitutional amendment signals that the legislature is also ready to move to the governance component and constitutional aspect of the APC manifesto. It is instructive that the Senate’s decision to re-open the issue of constitutional amendment was made on the day that the federal government announced its success in ending the territorial thrust of Boko Haram’s terrorism. This move by the Senate appears indicative of the APC government’s readiness to focus on the Good Governance component of the Buhari/APC manifesto. As the Senate moves in the direction of amending the constitution, it is necessary to invoke the call by Buhari in his manifesto on the need for “all Nigerians to collectively chart our future as a people and our destiny as a nation,” by providing a space for participation by citizens in creating a constitution that citizens will feel happy with across the length and breadth of the country.

    The process of amending the constitution under the federal government of APC must be different from what obtained under the PDP regime. Citizens were not sufficiently included in having input in the process when the two houses were dominated by PDP members. There was a public hearing in six regional centres for half-day interaction between lawmakers and citizens who could afford to travel to and pay for accommodation at such centres. Even when President Jonathan convened a national dialogue, the PDP-dominated legislature was not able to provide any covering legislation for the national conference before and after. In fact, Jonathan’s party did not openly endorse the conference, delegates to which were handpicked by Jonathan and his supporters who were largely not openly affiliated with the PDP. In addition, the PDP refrained from making any formal reference to the 2014 national conference during and after the exit of Jonathan from power. If anything, it was groups and individuals that were not in the PDP that have been promoting recommendations of the Jonathan conference since the last election.

    Since amending the constitution “to entrench true Federalism and Federalist spirit” is a noticeable part of the Buhari/APC manifesto, it stands to reason for citizens to expect that the party of change will take the opportunity of being in power to encourage an inclusive process for constitutional amendment or review. Citizens at the level of federal constituencies should be mobilised by the ruling party to get involved in making suggestions to their legislators on what type of federalism they desire. It is up to citizens to choose the method they prefer for preparing suggestions for their representatives before constitutional amendments are forwarded to state assemblies by the federal legislature. Similarly, state assemblies should give their constituents opportunities to think along with them before ratifying such amendments.

    Unlike the former ruling party, APC came to power with a clear manifesto to devolve power to the states and local governments and in the process enhance the process of citizen participation in governance at the grassroots. Consequently, APC has no reason to be afraid of adding options of referendum on critical matters to the new constitution, as it is done in advanced democracies.

  • A season of forgiveness?

    A season of forgiveness?

    The worry about the avalanche of calls for forgiveness by departing political office holders is that none of them has been able to put a finger on what wrong decisions they must have made. 

    “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  — John 1:9

    “Allah pardon you! Why did you excuse them until it was clear to you which of them were telling the truth and until you knew the liars?” – Surat At-Tawba, 43

    “But if anyone repents after his wrongdoing and puts things right, Allah will turn towards him” – Surat Al-Maida, 39

    If a politically literate person were visiting Nigeria for the first time in the last three or more weeks, he or she would have thought that the country was under a Truth and Reconciliation decree. In truth, what has been happening since General Buhari (now President Buhari won the 2015 presidential election) is that many of the country’s political office holders from the president down to governors have been asking for forgiveness from fellow Nigerians for whatever they did or did not do while in office. And the calls for forgiveness were made without anyone plucking the courage to identify anything that each of them believed he had done wrong.

    From their pedigrees, each of those calling for forgiveness for themselves or groups they identify with emotionally appears to be Muslim or Christian. As the quotations overleaf indicate, each of the two major globe-wide religions insists that truth about mistakes made must precede plea for forgiveness. In Catholicism in particular, nobody asks for forgiveness until he or she has given full disclosure in a confession ritual of what he or she had done wrong. The worry about the avalanche of calls for forgiveness by departing political office holders is that none of them has been able to put a finger on what wrong decisions they must have made. Some of the political leaders in their valedictory ceremonies even felt emboldened to leave blueprints to be implemented for those succeeding them, regardless of the fact that their regime was replaced on account of its anti-citizen governance style.

    Despite periodic show of bravado by PDP leaders who called on President Buhari to focus on implementing his election manifesto, the trail of demand for forgiveness was blazed by the outgoing President himself. He and his wife pleaded with Nigerians to pardon them for whatever they must have done in the discharge of their official duties to offend anyone. As if it was not good enough that President Jonathan had graciously accepted electoral defeat and, in the process, according to General Buhari changed the course of Nigeria’s history, President Jonathan expressed fear of being ‘persecuted’ along with his aides and pleaded that should anyone desire to probe his administration, that person should not forget such other leaders as Yakubu Gowon, Shehu Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, AbdusalamAbubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo. This was an indirect way of saying that if all these former leaders had been forgiven so far for whatever they did or failed to do, his plea for forgiveness has no reason to fall on deaf ears. He pleaded that he not be scapegoated at the risk of opening a Pandora’s box that is better kept closed. (This was weeks before the allegation by EFCC that billions of dollars meant for fighting Boko Haram had disappeared into the pockets of individuals and companies not connected to arms production and sale).

    Even the outgoing Vice President,Namadi Sambo, did not want to be left out of the ceremony of asking for forgiveness from citizens. He and his wife spoke passionately about how they believed that they must have offended some people in the way they performed their duties. (This was long before the allegation that N20 million monthly stipend was paid to his office from the fund for military equipment to fight Boko Haram).Similarly at the state level, many governors did not want to be left out of the ritual of calling for forgiveness. For example, the outgoing governor of Benue State was the most vocal of such governors. In his own case, Gabriel Suswam was specific about those whose forgiveness he would need. The lapse he boldly acknowledged was his inability to pay the state’s civil servants their salaries for months. And his reason for this was the nation-wide economic challenges facing Nigeria as a whole after the plunge in oil price. Despite this challenge, he was able to donate some vehicles to his successor, to ease transportation during the period of transition. Some would wonder why Suswam would need to apologise for problems beyond his control.(Suswam’s profuse apology came before his invitation to appear before the nosy EFCC). But Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State was the most specific about who should forgive him. He called on the accountant-general of his state not to abandon him on the eve of his departure from office and not to fail to tell him whatever lapse he (Uduaghan) might have made, a subtle way to ask for forgiveness.

    In the context of Nigeria, calls by outgoing political office holders for forgiveness and understanding at the end of their tenure are not totally unexpected. It should be expected that those looking forward to come back to power and plum of office in 2019 would need to be in good terms with most of their supporters on their way to what they see only as leave of absence from political office. Correspondingly, those who do not share the optimism of their party leaders about 2019 may need to talk right while they wait for soft landing or mercy from the regime that had promised before election to set Nigeria right.

    In the last few days in particular, a new love for plea bargaining has entered the country’s public conversation. After the revelations about what is now named in the media as Dasukigate, traditional and social media have been clogged by calls for plea bargaining, corruption amnesty, and truth and reconciliation, where such intervention is expected to replace traditional investigation, prosecution, and punishment of individuals accused of wrongdoing. It has also been reported that there are moves by ethnic and regional leaders to plead with President Buhari to use the route of corruption amnesty, instead of insisting on the crime and punishment approach.

    When this article first appeared in this column two weeks after the inauguration of President Buhari, the writer urged President Buhari to have a multipronged approach to the fight against corruption. Corruption amnesty that allows for plea bargaining was one of the major approaches suggested, in addition to the traditional crime and punishment approach, and a restructuring that could make corruption less easy and attractive than it has been in our free-for-all governance system. Instructively, President Buhari himself announced recently that his government has been recovering stolen money from political office holders and public servants, adding that he would, at a more auspicious time, release detailed information about those who returned their loot and how much they had returned. Those calling now for plea bargaining or corruption amnesty with respect to allegation of diversion of money meant for procurement of military equipment to personal gifts need not worry about those who have already pleaded not guilty. Amnesty is in logical terms not for those who are not guilty; it is for those who accept responsibility for what they have done wrong and then plead for special mercy.

    Ethnic or regional leaders should thus allow President Buhari to follow the two options he has chosen for fighting corruption: investigation/prosecution and corruption amnesty. In the context of today’s Nigeria, nobody should be obsessed that his kinsman or woman has been accused of corruption. The average Nigerian knows that this is a social cancer that cuts across ethnic and religious lines. To turn allegation of corruption into a regional or political issue is to trivialise the role of corruption in the destruction of nation-enhancing values pivotal to underdevelopment of the polity, economy, and society.

  • Silence and sound about corruption

    Nobody needs to be extraordinarily bright to know that the Senate has become a source of noise designed to silence citizens who are enthusiastic about the war against corruption. 

    Vice President Osinbajo chose this year’s Anti-Corruption Day to appeal to citizens to opt for sound over silence regarding matters of corruption in particular and change in general. The appeal is to ensure that the war on corruption is won by the society at large, rather than just by President Buhari and his team and to prevent noise makers opposed to the emphasis on identifying and punishing thieves of state from seizing the nation’s political narrative from those committed to fighting corruption. Making the war on corruption a national task may require a roadmap by the government that citizens can intellectually and emotionally identify with, apart from pre-election identification of voters with the manifesto to dismantle the culture of corruption and impunity that has almost impoverished majority of the population.

    Nobody needs to be extraordinarily bright to know that the Senate has become a source of noise designed to silence citizens who are enthusiastic about the war against corruption. For senators who got elected largely on account of Buhari and APC for change to suddenly become obsessed with legislating against citizens willing to carry the message of enough is enough to venal political office holders and public servants must worry lovers of good governance. As if by design, senators on a war path with advocates of freedom of speech seem to have distracted many citizens from the real job at hand. Instead of being encouraged to speak against corruption by members of the party elected to fight corruption, the country’s opinion leaders have been sucked into a struggle against senators who have sworn to kill free speech by labelling complaints against corruption as frivolous criticism. The noise by authors of anti-frivolity bill has increased what appears like silence on the part of warriors against corruption.

    The Vice President’s call for citizen democracy is appropriate. Citizen journalism, facilitated globally by social media and other advances in communication technology, is a major factor in the enhancement of participatory democracy in the modern world. The impression given by the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Media and Publicity Committee, just as the myopia of senators on the side of a new law to gag citizens, seems to have no tolerance for citizen journalism. Freedom of speech does not exist just for professional journalists; it is constitutionally guaranteed for all citizens.

    But to the mind of the house chairman of media and publicity, the legislature owns freedom of expression which it can give to whomsoever it wants whenever it finds it convenient to do so: As chairman House Committee on Media, I must say that we cannot close space for free speech. We would like to ensure that there is free speech. And the only thing we try to enjoin is that journalists, who are trained, who know the ethics of journalism, should also join the social media activity so that we can differentiate between the grains and the chaff. I think that is most essential, but we should not leave it for just those who think they can just post anything. Ideally, I think it is very important that we allow free speech. With time, we will get to the level that we can regulate. For now, I think Nigerians will rely on them. We came on the platter of change and it was this social media that brought us to power and we are making effective changes on that; I think we should live with that. Ideally, I think it is very important that we allow free speech. With time, we will get to the level that we can regulate.

    Like Bala Ibn Na’Allah, the mind behind the bill to gag the media and citizens, Abdulrazak Namdas is a member of APC. The signals emanating from the ruling party in Abuja are enough to silence the average citizen. With two leading members of President Buhari’s party of change–Na’Allah feeling compelled to end citizen’s participation in modern democratic governance through citizen journalism via the social media and Namdas’ readiness to wait for a more appropriate time to regulate basic human rights, it should not be surprising that citizens are not as vocal as they were during the pre-election campaign for change. Conflicting signals from the ruling party are capable of confusing well-meaning citizens. If a party that rode to power on the promise of change and with the support of the social media operated largely by citizens from all professions now feels emboldened to gag those who use the media to blow whistles about bad governance, appeals from those in charge of the levers of power should be made to members of the ruling party to show consistent commitment to democracy and desist from threatening vocal citizens with primitive laws.

    It is futile to set out to regulate citizens’ use of modern communication technology to make comments about how they are governed. Social media has added value to democratic spirit and culture all over the world. Indeed, social media has expanded citizens’ rights to hold and express opinions without hindrance and interference. Beyond the traditional role of the journalist as watchdog in democracies, social media has made it possible for citizens (ultimate owners of sovereignty) to also function as watchdogs. Na’Allah’s quick move to enact a law to muzzle the media and Namdas’ willingness to postpone creating a law to exclude non-journalists from exchanging ideas on the social media point to the same unease of APC lawmakers with democratisation of the process of signification. Reduction of the power of mediation between sender and receiver of messages characteristic of traditional media and increasing empowerment of citizens to contribute to political communication is an inevitable aspect of modern democracy. The research wing of the ruling party needs to re-educate lawmakers about the futility of any government opting to control or regulate the use of social media and the internet. What needs to be regulated or controlled is the propensity of rulers to use power to control citizens rather than to enrich them. With the internet and social media, there is no more hiding place for political or business leaders who operate or plan to act unethically. All politicians and citizens are already well protected by existing laws against treason, defamation, and libel.

    The president himself can also help to encourage citizens who want to support the anti-corruption drive and other projects that can bring positive change to the country. Citizens need to know more about the soft war against corruption. Citizens deserve to know more than mere presidential declaration that thieves of state are already returning money to the nation’s coffers. It is salutary that President Buhari had discussed openly with Nigerians in Iran the efforts of his government to make corrupt individuals return some of their loot. But there are many concerns on the minds of citizens at home. For example, citizens are eager to know how much the government has collected from corrupt men and women; percentage of what is returned to what is stolen; who are the individuals being given the special advantage of corruption amnesty (as opposed to those bound to face open trial); and what agency is in charge of warehousing of returned loot?

    There is no doubt that it is, in the final analysis, only citizens that can assist any party in power to succeed in bringing change to a polity, more so one that had been hobbled for decades by venality of people in power. But such citizens need to be convinced by those in the legislature and the executive that the party in power is ready ‘to play ball.’ APC lawmakers’ eagerness to regulate free speech and the executive’s preference to be general (rather than specific) in talking about proceeds from an informal corruption amnesty to selected persons are likely to create doubts in the minds of vocal pro-change citizens. Citizens who voted for President Buhari and his party in preference to the PDP that has been in power for sixteen years had shown that they are ready for the sacrifice needed to bring change. It is the people citizens had voted into power that have to reassure voters that they too are ready for the inconvenience that a Change Manifesto can create for lawmakers and those in other arms of government.