The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • Power separation: rule of law or tricks of politics?

    There was evidence last week that many members of the 8th Senate acted in a way to suggest that they need to be reminded about the need for lawmakers in particular to adhere religiously to the rule of law at all times, if, ironically, they are not to contribute to the collapse of democracy in the country. 

    A principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires, as well, measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency. –UN Secretary-General on the Rule of Law

    Nigeria’s democracy may amount to nothing if the principle of rule of law is endangered in any form. It will not matter if threat to the rule of law emanates from any arm of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. More important, commitment to the rule of law cannot afford to be just rhetorical; it has to be religious. There was evidence last week that many members of the 8th Senate acted in a way to suggest that they need to be reminded about the need for lawmakers in particular to adhere religiously to the rule of law at all times, if, ironically, they are not to contribute to the collapse of democracy in the country.

    Shortly after the appearance of Mr. Bukola Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, 83 senators were reported to have expressed on the floor of Senate a vote of confidence in Saraki’s presidency of the upper house. This announcement was sequel to a report that about 50 senators accompanied Mr. Saraki to the Tribunal when he made his first appearance there. During the debate preceding the expression of vote of confidence in Saraki by 83 of his colleagues, individual senators were reported to have stated that the principle of separation of powers had been endangered by the invitation of Saraki to appear before the Code of Conduct Tribunal to defend himself over allegation of misconduct. Senators’ conflation of two distinct issues: Saraki’s presidency of the senate and Saraki’s need to respond to charges of false declaration of his assets confuses issues and misses the point.

    Saraki is being charged for alleged misconduct committed long before he became senate president. Whatever anyone thinks about the politics of the charges, Saraki is being tried in an open court and therefore has a transparent platform to defend himself according to the law. A superior position that should have been taken by Saraki’s admirers is to give him more free time to defend himself at the Tribunal without having to worry about day-to-day management of the senate. Taking such decision does not derogate from Saraki’s innocence. If anything, it is capable of enriching the principle of rule of law. Mr. Saraki should have been viewed by those who rushed a vote of confidence in him as innocent until he is proven guilty by his accusers. With that mindset, it should have been clear to Saraki’s colleagues that he does not need any special show of solidarity by his fellow senators to boost his confidence. Having pleaded not guilty to all the charges, Saraki should not need any pampering by his colleagues. All he needs are good lawyers and honest support of all categories of citizens who believe in Saraki’s innocence.

    Without doubt, the Senate President’s confidence-boosting comrades acted with very little consideration for ethical standards expected of lawmakers and other citizens in public life. Knowingly or otherwise, Saraki’s 83 senators acted as if they had no faith in the rule of law and independence of the judiciary. As the nation’s lawmakers, they ought to act more ethically by allowing the different branches of government of which they are a part to do their job without any harassment or intimidation. It is, therefore, not surprising that citizens have called the vote of confidence in Saraki an attempt to intimidate the judicial system of the country. It should have occurred to the 83 senators that their rush of vote of confidence in Saraki, while he is facing charges of misconduct for actions taken long before he became senate president, is also liable to be viewed as an attempt to rig the judicial process, thus smashing the principle of separation of powers that the senators believed they could strengthen with expression of vote of confidence.

    On his own part, Senator Saraki should not have had any difficulty in showing superior moral leadership to his colleagues’ by withdrawing himself from the position of senate president while facing trial. Contrary to common belief, doing so would not have shown any weakness on his part or of fear of losing his senate presidency. If anything, it would have raised his moral stature among lawmakers and citizens who subscribe to high ethical standards in public life. It is true that the constitution does not call for temporary withdrawal from senate on his part, but he could have benefited tremendously from applying the wisdom; “discretion is the better part of valour” to the situation of divided attention caused by having to go to court on charges of misconduct while functioning as senate president. This is what most of his counterparts in other democratic countries would have done.

    The rush of vote of confidence by 83 senators from the ruling and the opposition parties has more implications than may appear to the average observer of public affairs. Some social media pundits are already saying that the vote of confidence denotes fear about the impact of the case on Saraki’s current political power and influence. There is also the possibility that such fear may not only be about Saraki. It is likely that the 83 senators may also be afraid of what can happen to them, should the executive branch, preoccupied as it is with a manifesto to fight corruption more aggressively than before, choose to open many more files of lawmakers, ministers, and civil servants.

    Furthermore, the pressure from the NASS in the last three weeks on the executive to release 64 billion naira constituency allowance to lawmakers and the legislators’ resistance of citizens’ strident calls for review of salaries and allowances of lawmakers suggest readiness on the part of the legislative branch to deploy its political arsenal to neutralise the call for higher ethical standards in government. While citizens are worrying about the sense in providing constituency allowance for lawmakers, senators are giving the executive an oppressive deadline to pay lawmakers’ constituency allowances that could not be paid last year by the Jonathan presidency on account of dwindling revenue. The pressure for payment of 2014 constituency allowances for new and returning lawmakers smacks of efforts to divert the attention of the executive from focusing on realignment of the country’s finances in view of continuous fall in national revenue.

    If citizens want change, they have to pay close attention to direct and indirect attempts by the senate to politicise what is essentially a moral issue. Rushing a vote of confidence to divert citizens’ attention from what is a moral or ethical case is absurd and diversionary. Similarly, putting pressure on the executive to pay constituency allowance to the National Assembly at a time that calls for wholesale rationalisation should be high on the priority list of the country is capable of creating avoidable crisis between the executive and the legislature. From the consistency in his public declarations – national and international- there is no doubt that President Buhari is serious about his resolve to reduce corruption, mismanagement, and waste. Nevertheless, citizens have to show unmistakable interest in sustaining the ethic of change, in view of growing enthusiasm of some lawmakers to return to the business-as-usual model of governance.

     

     

  • Time to move away from excuses

    Time to move away from excuses

    Unlike the optimism of voters for change and enthusiasm of President Buhari to return a sense of order to the polity, civil servants and others in political office do not seem to be in a hurry to change from looking for excuses to mute irresponsible behaviour in government.

    One feature of the country’s culture of corruption is finding excuses not to do the right thing. This culture of impunity was not created by former President Jonathan; it just reached its pinnacle (or nadir?) under his presidency. Finding excuses not to do the right thing is also part of the culture of all categories of workers-from those in the formal sector to those in the artisanal and informal sector. Unlike the optimism of voters for change and enthusiasm of President Buhari to return a sense of order to the polity, civil servants and others in political office do not seem to be in a hurry to change from looking for excuses to mute irresponsible behaviour in government.

    The latest demonstration of excuses in our new government of change pertains to failure of over 300 MDAs to act in compliance with the presidential order that accounts of all government agencies be transferred to the Treasury Single Account in the Central Bank. Let us hear from the Accountant-General of the Federation who should know about the latest development on the presidential order: “As at today, I can tell you about 600 out of about 900 MDAs have keyed in. For the number of accounts I cannot categorically tell you because even the MDAs and indeed the federal government never knew the number of accounts. However the accounts are going on to the Central Bank of Nigeria and I believe very soon a position will be made available on the number of accounts that have been swept up.”

    Is there any better or worse way to illustrate resilience of poor governance than the statement from the Accountant-General? The AGF may have some excuse for not knowing how many MDAs there are in the country, because he is new on the job. But it is absurd that the MDAs and the federal government do not know the number of accounts. What the Accountant-General implies is that departments and agencies that keep public funds are not even sure how many accounts they have. The Accountant-General’s use of “about 900 MDAs and about 300 MDAs” in the quotation above indicates, if anything, the lack of seriousness in public service delivery. What does it take for our public servants to be able to talk in exact terms? A similar fear of exactness was displayed during the announcement of the last presidential election when one of the Returning Officers from the Eastern States had to be asked by the former INEC chair, Professor Attahiru Jega, if the man was reading from the text in front of him. Government officials, especially senior ones, should be able to talk in exact terms when and where figures are involved.

    But the uncertainty of the Accountant-General about the exact number of MDAs is not the focus of this piece on excuses. Today’s interest is about the Accountant-General’s need to convince MDAs that the presidential order on closure of multiple accounts is not directed against MDAs but for the purpose of increasing efficiency, days after the deadline to carry out presidential directives had passed. Of course, the order is directed at (and designed against) all government agencies that chose to open deposit accounts that nobody, not even the federal government has been able, according to the AGF, to count or verify.

    In normal polities, it should not have been necessary for the Accountant-General to plead with erring MDAs, days after the deadline for closure of multiple accounts: “The policy was never intended to impair the operations of MDAs; rather, it is intended to make them more efficient and to make cash available to government in a very centralised and consolidated manner. So, operations of MDAs are expected to move on as expected but MDAs must come forward in line with the directive and deadline given of Sept. 15 which has already expired. We are expecting them to come and enlist, enrol and identify users that will participate and key into their individual sub-accounts so that they can utilise their resources based on their budgets.” The president gave reasons for calling for a return to the Treasury Single Account when the directive was first made. It is important for heads of agencies to note that in a presidential system, the buck stops at the desk of the president. Heads of MDAs that are uncomfortable with the directive or unable to respond to presidential directives on time should be given the choice to resign. Nigerians are ashamed of a system that allows departments and agencies to open bank accounts the number of which may be too numerous for owners of the account to count or know.

    The claim that some MDAs are experiencing difficulties in following the presidential order is reminiscent of what many citizens believe is a staple of financial managers in the public sector: the tendency by those in charge of MDAs to keep public funds in many bank accounts, most of which are to yield personal interest for the privileged civil servants. In the era of Sani Abacha, some senior public servants including governors were believed to have put public funds in Finance Houses to produce interest for them. Some governors were even warned by Abacha against joining NADECO on account of having illegally deposited public funds in private bank accounts for personal interest. It is dangerous for the federal government to be shifting deadlines. To instil discipline in governance, the president needs to read the riot act to MDAs that had failed to meet the deadline to move all public funds in their care to the Treasury Single Account.

    Still on excuses, citizens are no longer in the loop on whether the police had finally submitted the investigation into the allegation of forgery (in the senate at the first meeting of the current senate) to the Ministry of Justice. A few weeks ago, the media was agog over the play of excuses between the police force and the ministry of justice. The former claimed to have sent to the justice department the full report of the investigation while the latter claimed that the first report sent to it was incomplete and was sent back to the police. The police shouted back that it had sent the final report back to the justice ministry. No reference was made to the mode of sending the report. But in the last three weeks, no information has been made available to the public about the location of the report of the said police investigation. As no reference has been made in the last three weeks to the existence of the report, the media may need to ask both arms of government about the whereabouts of the report of a very important investigation by the police.

    Police men on highways have again started to ask motorists to produce licence for tinted glass on vehicles imported into the country and for which owners had paid customs charges. I was stopped on Sagamu-Ore road last week. I told the policeman that the matter of tinted glass had died a natural death long ago. He told me he was not aware of any change in the position of the police on tinted glass, adding that the new Inspector-General had not made any new pronouncement on tinted glass. Should the IGP need to reassure his field officers on the highways that most countries imported to the country come with factory-built tinted glass, he should add a sentence on tinted glass to his post-confirmation speech on his policies to turn the police force around for the better. Voters for change are tired of having to live with the culture of excuses by government agencies.

    Even months after the exit of a government that did not care about laws and rules, persons accused of violating the law of the land are eager to accuse the current administration of witch-hunting or political persecution. What has happened in our country to the principle that every action has a consequence and every responsible citizen has to be ready to accept responsibility for his or her action? Individuals accused of unwholesome behaviour are encouraged by their supporters to cry foul, not about the substance of the allegations levelled against them, but solely about the involvement of their political enemies in drawing attention to their unlawful conduct. Mobilising men and women to engage in solidarity visits to courts says as much about the morality of those accused of wrongdoing as it does about supporters who choose to abandon their own jobs to accompany individuals accused of corruption or any other violation of the law to courts.

    Citizens who are used to corruption and impunity are likely to always find excuses for whatever they do. It is the levers of power in a paradigm-altering administration that will have to remain firm in their resolve to end impunity by not listening to excuses from citizens who are used to being above the law.

  • Infighting among veterans of Jonathan’s conference?

    Infighting among veterans of Jonathan’s conference?

    They are forgetting that many Nigerians are saying that the 2014 national dialogue failed to address such important matters as fiscal federalism, multinational federalism, and finding a people-friendly process of constitutional reform.

    Whatever may be the weaknesses of former President Jonathan (and they must be legion) he is a man with the kind of consistency that made him predictable while in office and after. He ruled with relish; fought for tenure renewal with gusto; and accepted the judgment of majority of Nigerians with resignation. Even when he complained bitterly after his exit brought about by voters, he did so with the faith of a child, especially when he said at different times that he accepted the verdict of the last election in order to grow the country’s democracy and that he could see no reason why he or his assistants should be singled out for punishment for any wrongdoing after his generosity to the country. But the harmony between Jonathan’s theory and method or between his vision and policy appears to have disappeared within the group of Jonathan’s national conference veterans, despite the boundless enthusiasm that marked the investiture of members of Nigeria’s most cited group of political structural engineers or architects.

    When Jonathan picked about 400 Nigerians in 2014 to think and talk about various aspects of the country’s condition, those awarded the status of polity designers felt encouraged to stay united on one issue: Delegates appointed and anointed by President Jonathan were the right Nigerians to change the destiny of the country before or by the time of the 2015 presidential election. This was despite warnings from millions of Nigerians that Jonathan’s sudden convening of a national dialogue was not the most democratic way to address the issue of sustainable federalism in a multinational democratic state. It is ironic that the source of unity among handpicked conference delegates before the presidential election in 2014 now appears to be the cause of disunity among them after the election in 2015: using the occasion of ‘national conference’ to stay relevant politically.

    How else does one explain the recent eruption of opposing stances among those who claimed just a year ago that they had created the best blueprint for the re-making of Nigeria? In a recent press release by Northern Reawakening Forum, one of the nominees of Jonathan to the 2014 conference announced the decision of the North (or just North East?) to call for another national conference. It is not clear yet if the proposed conference is, like the Jonathan conference, to be called by Buhari and driven by Buhari’s men and women in the corridors or reception halls of presidential power. What is clear so far is the sudden recognition by NRF that the North in general and the North East in particular are holding the short end of Nigeria’s stick of growth and development.

    Northern Reawakening Forum’s claim of the North’s underdevelopment in relation to the Southwest and Southeast is based on convincing statistics: “The North has the highest number of people below $2.00 a day. 71.5% of the population in the North East live in poverty and more than half are malnourished. A 2013 World Bank Report showed that poverty in 16 out of the 19 Northern States have doubled since 1980. The North has the lowest literacy rate in the country. Lagos is at 92%, Kano 49% and Borno less than 15%. 65% of Northern girls and 53% of boys are not in school compared to only 20% for the Southeast…”

    No better case can be made for immediate and sincere intervention in the situation of the North than the communique of NRF. What is wrong with the proper diagnosis is the suggested treatment that Nigeria as a whole needs to summon a national conference to discuss what can better be addressed as a regional problem. For example, when the Yoruba region, otherwise referred to as the Southwest, came to terms with its social and economic decline a few years back, it convened a regional summit, which produced a blueprint (largely still to be implemented by the six governors in the region) for regional integration and creative solution to the region’s underdevelopment. There is no section of Nigeria that is better positioned to identify the problems of the North and proffer solutions to such problems than the nationalities and communities in the North.

    While it may be uncharitable for anyone to read hidden meanings into the call of NRF for help in its new efforts at renaissance, it is advisable for opponents of Kumaila to acknowledge that calling another jamboree of friends or supporters of the new president in Abuja (as it was with the 2014 conference) may be another round of misuse of scarce resources. Should President Buhari be favourably disposed to identifying with regional initiatives, the most he should be encouraged to do by his advisers is to provide matching grants for the communities in the North to come together to find solutions to a problem that has been in existence for over half a century of post-colonial Nigeria.

    Questions or comments about why Mohammed Kumaila would, after full participation at the 2014 national dialogue, suddenly realise that the most serious problems of the North were not addressed at the last conference may not be as relevant as making efforts to understand paradoxes in NRF’s desire for genuine social progress. Why should a region that supplies most of the protein consumed in the country have the most malnourished people in the country or why should a region that collects more funds from the country’s oil-wealth for having over 400 local governments have the highest number of illiterate citizens, sixty years after the exit of British colonialists? The best way to assist NRF is to empathize with the regional think-tank by showing it how other former educationally-disadvantaged states in the South of the country were able to move to the group of states with over 70% literacy and numeracy.

    Ironically, the most mordant critics of Kumaila and the NRF are his fellow veterans of the Jonathan Conference. His fellow delegates from the Southwest and the Southeast are already calling him names. For example, his fellow delegates from Afenifere are drawing Kumaila’s attention to a greater problem than what he has identified in respect of the North: the clear signs (that may be invisible to NRF) that “what will restructure Nigeria is already here.” Others are reminding NRF of the consensus at the 2014 conference to remove “some of the undeserved privileges of the North” as the cause for NRF’s call for a new conference. In addition, Kumaila’s fellow delegates from the Southeast are drawing his attention to the fact (yet to be verified) that “the majority of the North want the report of the confab implemented.”

    Intentionally or unintentionally, Northern Reawakening Forum, Afenifere, and Ndigbo are joined in what looks like an effort to distract President Buhari from the immediate tasks he has set for his presidency:  fighting corruption, fighting terrorism, and diversifying the economy and preventing it from collapsing under the weight of low revenue from petroleum. Such distraction in itself is not anti-democratic. It is needed to make President Buhari realise that the problem of Nigeria may be about being blessed with good leadership once in a while as much as it is about having a good structure for governing a culturally diverse ‘republic.’

    Both proposers of a new conference at the instance of the North and supporters of Jonathan’s ‘mother of all national conferences’ at the instance of the South are ignoring something very crucial. They are forgetting that many Nigerians are saying that the 2014 national dialogue failed to address such important matters as fiscal federalism, multinational federalism, and finding a people-friendly process of constitutional reform. It is, however, reassuring that at the same time that Kumaila was promoting NRF’s call for a national conference to address the problems of the North, some of the most cerebral or intellectual veterans of Jonathan’s conference were attending a conference in Edinburgh on Constitutional Change in Canada and the United Kingdom: Challenges to Devolution and Federalism.

    Once the noise over the imperative of a Buhari conference and the inviolability of the recommendations of the Jonathan conference subsides, it may be easy for genuine federalists to benefit from the new knowledge acquired by some of the delegates at the 2014 conference at the Edinburgh Conference about effective ways to create and sustain federalism in a polity that has constitutionalised regional or ethnic domination under the guise of unity. Neither the old conference nor the new once (if it happens) will amount to anything, if efforts are not made to adopt modern ways to find out how citizens want to be governed in a plurinational state like Nigeria. No genuine national conference is likely to hold any water until citizens are allowed to choose their delegates and to vote Yes or No on recommendations from such conference.

  • Buhari’s return of equality to public discussion

    Buhari’s return of equality to public discussion

    The recent announcement that the Buhari presidency is poised to commence free meals for school children and modest social security for the destitute revives a tradition of public discourse that had gone out of fashion in most states of the federation until the 2015 presidential election. 

    For the past sixteen years, our country’s political and economic space has been dominated by two major themes: wealth creation and humanitarianism. All the PDP governments since the end of military dictatorship had focused on creation of material wealth at the expense of the welfare of majority of the citizens. Compared to many countries on the continent and despite the oil boom, Nigeria had paid lip service to provision of quality public education that can enable majority of the citizens compete in the expanding global economic space. General (now President) Buhari and the All Progressives Congress brought the theme of equality and what Aristotle called distributive justice back to the nation’s political space first during the 2015 political campaign. Just last week, the Buhari presidency moved from the plane of  campaign promise to policy development when the vice president announced that school children would be given one free meal a day in school.

    The last time Nigerians were bombarded with messages about the importance of bridging the gap between the haves and the have-nots was during the last campaign of Chief Obafemi Awolowo for the presidency in 1983 and, more recently, during the campaigns of Action for Democracy and Action Congress of Nigeria between 1999 and 2007. When public policy rhetoric was not solely about war against corruption during Buhari’s first coming or structural adjustment in the era of Babangida, it was about primitive accumulation in the Abacha presidency, and endless attempts at economic and fiscal restructuring of Obasanjo’s second coming or the mania for wealth creation for and by those with assured access to the country’s treasury in the last six years of Goodluck Jonathan.

    The recent announcement that the Buhari presidency is poised to commence free meals for school children and modest social security for the destitute revives a tradition of public discourse that had gone out of fashion in most states of the federation until the 2015 presidential election. But, as expected, the leaders of yesterday’s party of power have started to pooh-pooh Vice President Osinbajo’s announcement. They warned against simple-minded imitation of an Aregbesola model that the same party had campaigned against and identified as the source of failure of the Osun governor to pay workers’ salaries as and when due. This theory of Osun State’s failure to pay its workers ignored the fact that there were more PDP-controlled states that were also unable to pay their workers’ salaries on time. Also amusing is the PDP’s silence on the negative impact of decline in revenue from petroleum and of the federal government’s decision to take loans from domestic and international money markets to settle federal workers’ wage bills.

    Nothing is unusual about PDP leaders’ negative stance on Aregbesola’s initiative to improve access to and retention rate in public schools. The negative attitude of PDP spokespersons is in character with the struggle for power in a multiparty democracy. What is bizarre about PDP’s characterisation of modest measures of social assistance to school children and poor citizens is the facile generalisation that such government expenditures on citizens are part of campaign rhetoric after elections. Despite similar criticism of Aregbesola when he introduced this social programme a few years back, the programme has enjoyed commendation from its beneficiaries and the international community on account of Aregbesola’s responsiveness to the state’s most economically vulnerable communities. It is also on record that Fayemi’s failure to win re-election in Ekiti in his second term bid was not because of his modest social security benefits to the aged of his state. Indeed, it was in spite of his responsiveness to the most vulnerable group in the state.

    It is a good beginning for Buhari and the APC that the poor and the forgotten in the country are the first community to benefit from his administration. Provision of free or subsidised meal for school children in elementary and secondary schools in many advanced countries has many advantages. Research has shown that children who have breakfast concentrate better in school than those who do not, just as those who have nourishing food in or outside school also improve school retention rate than those who do not have the opportunity of nourishing meals. It may be difficult for those with easy access to the wealth of the country to believe that there are millions of school-age children in the country who are malnourished on a daily basis. But the truth is that the country’s classrooms are full of children whose parents cannot afford to provide one nourishing meal a day. Without the kind of the model provided by the Aregbesola government, many of such children would have found learning too stressful and enervating.

    There is also an economic aspect of free or subsidised meals for school children. It helps to stimulate agricultural productivity. Better opportunities for bulk purchase of farm produce for farmers exist in Osun than in any other state in the southwest. Bulk and regular purchase has the capacity to improve farmers’ credit worthiness and to increase agriculture-related jobs, not to talk of providing employment for cooks and chefs. A visit to Osun State will reveal that no state has better public hygiene culture than what obtains in Osun today.  As this column observed a few years before Aregbesola came to power, each school child should be given one glass of fresh milk and one glass of fresh orange or pineapple juice each school day as part of the meal for the day. Apart from the additional nourishment such beverages can bring, the provision of vitamin and protein-rich drinks is capable of stimulating modernisation of  dairy  farming in the savannah region while daily serving of vitamin-fruit juice can boost modern fruit farming in the rain forest region of the country.

    On the few occasions I had visited Osun State, school children whom I interviewed were full of praise for the free lunch programme in their state. They were so enthusiastic about the free-meal policy that they described in glowing terms the meals given to them every day at the state government’s expense. Some of them even repeated the clichéd expression of “being given the opportunity to enjoy dividends of democracy.” It was not surprising when parents came out in droves to defend their votes when the nation’s security forces (or their clones?) supervised in a blood-thirsty way the state’s gubernatorial campaign and voting last year.

    If the experience of Osun school children is anything to go by, President Buhari and his party should act with confidence and waste no time to kick-start implementation of the free meal policy and other citizens’ welfare-related policies. Majority of Nigeria’s school children and their parents must be very excited about this policy. So must the federal government provide leadership to states on the need to use political power to enhance equality of opportunity for less materially-endowed citizens so that they too can add value in their own way to development efforts. Doing so will eclipse decades of politics of primitive accumulation by personalistic and patrimonial political and public office holders. It will also provide a new and enviable model for good governance in the country.

    But the efforts to reduce inequality must not be limited to one free meal per day for school children or token social security assistance to the elderly or the poor. Majority of Nigerians need government assistance in many other ways to enable them meet their basic needs: transportation, health, jobs, and salaries that can pull them out of poverty. Citizens are aware of the economic mess inherited by the Buhari government and do not expect miracles. However, they expect sincere efforts on the part of government at all levels to address poverty-alleviation and enhance equality across the country.

  • Governors’ security details and police ‘mai guards’ for big men

    Governors’ security details and police ‘mai guards’ for big men

    The question that is likely to still remain on the minds of most citizens is why governors elected by citizens in a free and fair election would need 62 security details, sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship.

    The police has recently announced its decision to cut security details for governors from 150 to 62. The decision was sequel to calls by President Buhari for liberation of hundreds of police men and women meant to protect the community from serving as Mai Guards in the homes and cars of powerful men and women in the society. The question that is likely to still remain on the minds of most citizens is why governors elected by citizens in a free and fair election would need 62 security details, sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship. Citizens are also worried about thousands of police officers attached to retired ministers, commissioners, and even local government chairmen in a country where the only time citizens see police men or women is on highways and street corners where police ask motorists for their driving and vehicle permits, preparatory to extorting them.

    In a way, the recent reduction of governor’s security details from 150 to 62 smacks of some commitment on the part of the IGP to the ethic of change. In the past sixteen years, governors and their wives, and often, children have experienced the generosity (or prodigality?) of the state. There was a time in the recent past when governors’ wives travelled with 40 security details and aides on the same day their gubernatorial husbands were on another assignment that required at least 60 state protectors. Should children of such governors also need to be somewhere else at the same time, they too were entitled to police men to secure them on their way to clubs, bars, or friends. It is still a common sight to see governors alight from their cars in the midst of 50 or more security details, even now that change is in the air.

    A few years ago, the governor of Dubai was featured on CBS 60-minute Sunday documentary, riding a horse and stopping to talk to citizens and driving his own car and stopping to chat with citizens. It was a moving scene of love and admiration between the ruler and the ruled. When asked why the governor would risk a foolhardy mingling with citizens without heavy police protection, he said that there was no reason for him to fear those whose interest he was working to protect and promote. In the governance style that we have in Nigeria, it certainly will be suicidal for most of our governors to see their guests off from their sitting rooms without tens of security details suffocating them and their guests. Such behaviour is typical in most post-colonial African states from Cairo to Cape Town and from Dakar to Dodoma. Our rulers in post-colonial Africa still see themselves as successors to the colonial governor and district officer who needed to be protected from the wrath and jealousy of blood-thirsty primitive natives God had brought them to Africa to civilise.

    The mention of jealousy of colonialists by the colonised is not to imply that there is no jealousy or even envy between those who rule and those who are ruled in Africa in the post-colonial moment. In countries under military rule, the rulers need protection against the electorate whose elected governments they displace by violence, more so when such military dictators repeat the political and economic sabotage of the state for which they dismiss elected civilians. Given the bellicose nature of multiparty politics in Nigeria, especially the hostility between ruling and opposition parties in a system that is characterised by an electoral culture in which the ruling party sees remaining in power as a life-and-death matter, post-election politics often requires that winners be given adequate protection. The need for special protection for governors and other holders of political appointments may not necessarily have anything to do with the behaviour or policies of governors. Even in a properly constituted democratic government, it may be foolhardy for governors with people-friendly policies and programmes not to take precaution, as the thugs of political parties that lost elections are still around to cause mayhem.

    It is thus understandable that governors be given adequate protection, but 62 security details are still too many in a country with less than 400,000 police to protect 180 million citizens, not to talk of state and personal property that requires round-the-clock protection by security personnel. I have heard those who said that 62 security details should not be considered too outrageous, if we truly recognise that our governors, regardless of the quality of their governance require protection against evil doers. Reducing governor’s security staff by 88 per governor leaves the country with additional 3,168 to return to the general pool to protect citizens. This is also a good time to seek more rationalisation in the allocation of state security personnel to non-gubernatorial big men and women as personal security guards.

    The IGP ought to know (and if not, needs to be reminded) that there are thousands of citizens perceived by the government as value-added super men and women who have police protection in their homes, cars, as well as in the cars of their spouses. In many cases, such police men are seen carrying the bags of their oga’s wives to and from the market, standing behind them in party halls, and standing at the doors of beauty parlours each time such wives of extraordinarily value-added men choose to paint their nails. Under the category of men and women of political power, the culture is that those who had served as ministers, commissioners, speakers, and in other ‘high-wattage’ political offices have police attached to them for life. The list includes surviving ministers from governments overthrown by military dictators since the sudden end of Balewa’s government for unacceptable level of corruption. Even individuals who served under military governments in what is considered in the country’s political culture as larger-than-life capacity between 1966 and now are also being protected at the expense of the state. Even three months into the government of change, members of the previous executive and legislature are still being protected by police men in cars that have no tags and those that carry NASS plate numbers.

    There must be a better strategy for protecting citizens who had held political appointments before than just reducing the number of security staff attached to them. While governors and current ministers may have some reason to fear for their lives, there is no reason why the state should be spending taxpayers’ money on special protection for individuals who ordinarily should not be in harm’s (or ‘arms’?) way months and years after leaving office. In an ethos of equality before the law and equal opportunity for all citizens, there is a need for the new National Security Adviser to think anew about how to make former political office holders feel at ease after leaving office.

    There is also no logical reason to be renting government security staff to economic giants or billionaires who also feel unsafe, to the extent of requiring special police to watch over them in their living rooms and bedrooms. In the universities twenty-five years ago, vice chancellors did not have policemen running around them and their wives. But today, a vice chancellor without a police orderly is a rarity. Even some vice chancellors of state and private universities are now seen in public with police orderlies sitting beside their drivers on highways while it is impossible for any citizen to get police to respond to stress calls.

    There is so much advantage that advances in technology can provide to support governments’ efforts to protect the life and property of current and past political office holders, more so that electricity supply is improving by the day. Electronic surveillance, home alarm systems, security presence in communities rather than in the homes of individuals with political or economic power are some of such devices to release thousands of police men working as Mai guards for politicians to protect communities.

  • Derailing of Nigeria: the smaller picture (2)

    Derailing of Nigeria: the smaller picture (2)

    Within the country, a visit to passport offices across the country often reveals that the Immigration Service is also engaged in sharp practices but only in a way more subtle than that of the police on inner-city streets and highways.

    There has to be a general recognition that this crisis (corruption) is moral as well as economic. It is, indeed, a perfect illustration of the economics of morality—the absence of a sense of propriety, of restraint and of right and wrong, was not just obnoxious, it was economically disastrous.—Fintan O’Toole

    The first part of this column last week argued that as much attention as is being paid to the big picture of political and bureaucratic corruption by President Buhari needs to be paid to less elaborate corrupt practices that exist within the security forces and other agencies. Today’s piece will conclude the series on what appears to be minor corrupt practices but which call for as much effort on the part of the Buhari government to initiate an elaborate process of ethical re-engineering, without which no modern nation can thrive.

    On the topic of uniformed officers using their positions to defraud citizens and the state, the two agencies not covered last week: the Customs and Immigration Services do not generally fare any better than the Nigeria Police Force, Federal Road Safety Commission, and military units assigned to perform civil duties that we covered last week. Nigeria in the last few decades has been one of a few countries in which Customs officers act as highway police. It is common practice to see Nigerian customs officers on highways that are farther than 100 miles from the coast or any international border. Customs officers, such as are found on the highways between Lagos and Ibadan, Ibadan and Ife, Ijebu-Ode and Ore, Ore and Benin, for example, stop not only vehicles carrying containers but individual motorists going or coming from work to check if they carry contrabands or goods that had not been duly cleared at the seaports or at the borders.

    Most of the time, motorists who get stopped end up being made to give some money to the officers who stop them. It will be more cost-effective for customs officers operating in the middle of the forest in many parts of the country to be deployed to seaports and highways that link Nigeria with other countries. If there were efficient and honest performance of customs officers, citizens or foreigners who convey containers on highways would have cleared their goods at the ports or at border posts before getting on domestic highways, thus obviating the need to post hundreds of customs officers to highways in the middle of the country to apprehend persons trying to evade customs charges. Citizens who are often flagged down by customs officers on the highways need to be saved from such harassment and exploitation. If the Customs Service is overstaffed, then the agency needs immediate rightsizing through deployment of redundant customs officers to other sectors.

    Similarly, customs officers in collaboration with NDLEA staff at international airports also harass citizens, not for carrying illegal drugs but for carrying food items that they want to consume in their destinations. Tricks used to create difficulties for travellers include asking them to go and obtain licence to take food out of the country, even when the food being transported is not in commercial quantity. For fear of missing their flights, such customers are often pressured to part with some money. Such harassment makes citizens lose respect for and confidence in the authority of customs and NDLEA officers who are deployed just to check the luggage of travellers exiting the country. No public servant should be given a chance to create the type of difficulties that citizens experience on their way out of the country at each of the country’s international airports. The technology for effective detection of cocaine and other illegal drugs has gone past two or three uniformed men or women rummaging with their hands through travellers’ bags, just to complain about small quantity of food in the luggage of travellers, especially those with children.

    Immigration officers appear to be more restrained than other agencies. Yet there are many cases of harassment by Immigration officers of citizens, particularly those coming back home on expired passports. Many of such officers appear ignorant of the general problem in Nigerian embassies abroad with respect to renewal or re-issue of passports. Even in places such as New York, Washington and London (second home to millions of Nigerians), Nigerian embassies are often unable to process new passports for citizens in good time for their travel plans on the excuse of not having in store passport booklets. Most of the time, such persons still get to enter the country after ‘greasing the palms’ of officers at the Lagos or Abuja end. Moreover, those who come to the country to obtain their visas at the entry point are not immune from harassment. Within the country, a visit to passport offices across the country often reveals that the Immigration Service is also engaged in sharp practices but only in a way more subtle than that of the police on inner-city streets and highways. Each passport office allows touts or passport contractors to run after potential applicants for passports right from the gate, marketing benefits of accelerated service. Unlike in other countries, such quick service attracts double the cost of a regular passport and receipt that does not reflect payment for accelerated service.

    Even traffic wardens in uniform are wont to take full advantage of their uniform to fleece motorists. It does not matter what names they bear from state to state, traffic wardens who are not full-fledged police also extort money from motorists for claim of infractions of traffic code. They too are in the habit of jumping into vehicles to negotiate traffic fines. In some instances, there is collaboration between police and traffic wardens to extort money from motorists. In addition, during the era of Sure-P’s special federal task force staff, citizens were also pressured to part with 200 or more naira, particularly on Lagos roads.

    All this is to draw attention of the new government to the abysmal level of ethical standards on the part of those employed to enhance security and safety of citizens. The culture of corruption cuts across income levels and across occupational lines. Those endowed with political and bureaucratic power make efforts to steal billions of naira, most of which President Buhari is already planning to retrieve. On their own part, those with the little power bestowed by the uniforms they wear steal whatever they can get from poor citizens. But the effects of formal sector corruption of ministers and civil servants and of informal sector extortion of citizens by police and other uniformed workers are similar. In both cases, citizens are robbed directly or indirectly. State authority is also eroded.

    Just as big-time thieves of state property rarely get punished and shamed to restore citizens’ confidence in the state, so is it rare to find erring police, immigration, and customs being subjected to the principle of crime and punishment. In societies where corruption is nurtured by impunity, citizens either become cynical or resigned to corruption as a way of life. The 2105 presidential election was a rebellion against kleptocratic governments in the country. While there are several individuals, groups, and non-governmental organisations that are already pleading with President Buhari not to probe anybody unless he is ready to probe everybody from the government of Balewa to that of Jonathan, there is no doubt that majority of voters who brought Buhari to power with their votes, though generally voiceless, are enthusiastic about the fight against corruption.

    But the war against corruption will remain half-hearted or half-won if it is directed solely at big-time looters. It will be in order for the Buhari government to involve citizens in the fight against corruption. Citizens may not be adept petition writers, but they know their neighbours who live above their wages and salaries. Opening special Ombudsman offices in state headquarters to collect information from citizens suspected of graft or extortion may be a good addition to the two major anti-corruption agencies. Moreover, the principle of crime and punishment needs to be invoked at all times. The best way to restore and sustain citizens’ confidence in government is to assure them that those who dare the state by violating its laws are punished accordingly. This is also the best way to promote compliance habit on the part of citizens.

  • Derailing of Nigeria: the smaller picture (1)

    Derailing of Nigeria: the smaller picture (1)

    Four years may be too short for Buhari to take a holistic view of the phenomenon of corruption in a country whose structure and ideology for decades had grown out of the vision of rulers who believed in the philosophy that political power is for personal enrichment

    There has to be a general recognition that this crisis (corruption) is moral as well as economic. It is, indeed, a perfect illustration of the economics of morality—the absence of a sense of propriety, of restraint and of right and wrong, was not just obnoxious, it was economically disastrous. —Fintan O’Toole

    The quotation from Fintan O’Toole’s Ship of Fools, a discussion of the role of corruption in Ireland’s economic meltdown of 2008, is deliberately chosen to get readers thinking about Nigeria’s economic collapse, now slated for rehabilitation under the Buhari administration, after decades of massive kleptocracy in the land. Just judging by the headlines so far, there is no doubt that President Buhari, who campaigned on the promise to end insecurity and corruption, two conditions that Sarah Chayes in her 2015 book, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security has described as relations, has identified some of the visible forces of venality in the country. President Buhari’s focus so far has been on the bigger picture. Today’s column is meant to remind him of the smaller picture of corruption which is by no means less venal than corrupt practices at the hands of oil thieves or treasury looters.

    Four years may be too short for Buhari to take a holistic view of the phenomenon of corruption in a country whose structure and ideology for decades had grown out of the vision of rulers who believed in the philosophy that political power is for personal enrichment. President Buhari cannot be unfamiliar with the surge of centralism in the country. He had been a military ruler during the decades to de-federalising the country, which started with the 1979 Constitution and seems to have gotten to a head in the 1999 Constitution, which the president has sworn to uphold and defend.

    There will be plenty of time to talk about the role of over-centralisation of the polity and economy in the monstrous growth of corruption in the country. The emphasis today is on sections of the nation’s security and law enforcement systems that citizens have seen as synonymous with corruption. Most of the corrupt characters in this sector do not steal money from the nation’s treasury or central bank; they do not engage in illegal bunkering, over-invoicing, and contract abandonment. They simply prey on citizens, especially those that are most vulnerable. However, they occasionally prey on the big men and women in society who need their assistance to do the wrong thing.

    Knowledge of the folks about corruption in the law enforcement sector is within reach of any Nigerian who cares about morality in government. The central or national police has been a beehive of corruption for a long time, including the era of military dictatorship. Police assigned to secure the roads—urban streets or interstate highways—are notorious for turning their beats into sites for extorting citizens. The regular dialogue between Nigeria police officers and citizens are “whey your papers? Whey your licence? Wetin you carry? Wetin you bring or have for us today?” At the end of the short dialogue, the average citizen stopped by police loses a little of his/her hard-earned income to law enforcement officers on government payroll. If the citizen who is stopped on the highway has the look of a big-man, he gets a little more respect as law enforcement officers ask him obsequiously: “What do you have for your boys today sir?”The big man responds to them as boys by throwing some naira notes on the ground for them to pick.

    Police men are also known for locking citizens up in order to extort money from them. Just last week, a woman with some disagreement with her neighbour in a section of Egbeda found herself in police cell after her neighbour reported her to one of his own police friends for packing one of his bags along with hers at the close of market. The woman was in police cell for hours until she was able to get her own big man to read the riot act to the police or to bribe the police more generously than the first complainant.

    The culture of extorting citizens in the course of law enforcement and crime prevention is not limited to the national police. It is also evident in the circles of Federal Road Safety Commission and Vehicle Inspection Officers. An agency set up to protect lives on federal highways is now in the habit of sending its staff to nooks and corners of streets without names in urban areas, where they collect unofficial tolls from motorists. Those who act with generosity are allowed to go regardless of what violation they have committed while those who are stingy or too poor to give anything end up being asked to pay official fines. Even at places where driver’s licence is issued, the same agency insists that applicants for licence produce evidence of driver education from specific driver education centres. Most of the time, citizens are sold such certificates of attendance or completion of driving rules and regulations for 3,000 naira each. Driver’s licence issuing stations create other obstacle courses that pressure citizens to pay for accelerated service and save them from going back and forth.

    Similarly, Vehicle Inspection Officers are in the habit of stopping motorists arbitrarily and asking some of them to get in to VIO’s cars, ostensibly to drive them to VIO’s stations but in reality to make it easy for such citizens to give  uniformed officers “something for the road.’ Just as in the case of the police, no law is enforced most of the time. Such stops on roadways and highways and last-minute negotiations in front of court houses are designed as obstacle courses to extort money from vulnerable motorists. Even military checkpoints on interstate highways also become a market for exchange of money between motorists and military personnel deployed to highways to prevent transportation of materials that can be used to compromise the country’s security.

    The recent news published in The Punch about the ping-pong of denials about the whereabouts of the final report of police investigation into allegation that rules of the Senate on election of officers were forged is, if true, an example of law enforcement personnel taking advantage of a bad situation. How else does anyone explain that even after the vision of Buhari about fighting corruption is already common knowledge, staff in the police and the ministry of justice are still brave enough to argue about a simple matter in a manner reminiscent of impunity under past administrations. What more embarrassment can two agencies charged with the rule of law give a country over such a simple matter to resolve?

    How far is the police headquarters in Abuja from the Ministry of Justice for a report sent from the former to the latter to have miscarried? What mode of transportation did the police use to send the report in an age where offices in different countries are linked by the Internet? If the report was carried from the police headquarters to the justice ministry by hand, what is the identity of the police man or woman charged with this important function? Is there just one copy of such report with the police? If not, there is no reason for the media to lose its expensive space to such story. All that a credible law enforcement system should do to save the country from this shame is to take another copy of the report to the ministry and ensure it is signed for by the staff at the receiving end.

    Most of the things in today’s column should be repetition to most people who live in the country. It is clear that they are to President Buhari who recently warned the police not to collect bribe in the process of recruiting 10,000 officers. The Immigration Service had done taken illegal collections from applicants for jobs and endangered their lives in the past without any reprimand. But the purpose of repeating these clichéd anecdotes about our country is to remind President Buhari that the fight against the culture of corruption, which could become the factory of perdition for the country if not arrested, must not be stopped at the doors of ministries and agencies in charge of oil and gas. Corrupt practices that can shake the confidence of citizens in government and even lead them to the hopelessness that precedes resort to violence against the state or its agencies, such as we are now witnessing in Boko Haram’s rebellion against the state, are rife in the most unlikely places: the nation’s security systems.

    To be continued

  • As if there is no change in the air

    The recent expression of worries of members of the National Peace Committee (now re-named the National Peace Council) at the end of a meeting with President Buhari provides a subtle demonstration of the desire to tolerate the culture of impunity

    The more things change, the more they remain the same? This question cannot be more apt than it appears to be in today’s Nigeria. Many pundits are already describing the durability of old habits in the country as a manifestation of the Nigeria Factor, a psycho-social condition that  gives Nigerians across the social spectrum oversize energy to make the wrong thing look right without blinking; to do the wrong thing and expect the right result; etc. How else does one explain the behaviour of some members of the Peace Committee or of the Senate that is still not totally out of the woods from the crisis some of its members foisted on the body of the country’s upper legislative chamber a few weeks ago?

    Immunity or the flair to soar above the rule of law has been a part of the Nigerian condition for a very long time. It did not come with the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan nor with the first post-military civilian regime midwifed by General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Immunity in political, social, and economic matters was present during most of the decades of military rule. Military dictators fired tenured civil servants with enthusiasm and without any reference to the law of the land.  There were also military governors who flogged civil servants; shaved the heads of journalists; and ordered some public servants to do frog jumping. What got worse over time and especially during the post-military civilian regime since 1999 is the desire of elected political office holders or appointed ones to do whatever appealed to their fancy, without worrying about how such behaviour advances the cause of accountable, ethical, and elegant civic life.

    The recent expression of worries of members of the National Peace Committee (now re-named the National Peace Council) at the end of a meeting with President Buhari provides a subtle demonstration of the desire to tolerate the culture of impunity. Some of the statements of Bishop Kukah in particular should worry lovers of democratic governance. In his assurance to citizens about the objective of the meeting the National Peace Committee held with President Buhari, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto said: “I think what we are concerned about is the process. It is no longer a military regime and under our existing laws, everybody is innocent until proven guilty. . . .Again, our own commitment is not to intimidate or fight anybody. The former president’s commitment and what he did still remains spectacular and I think that President Buhari himself appreciates that. So, our effort really is to make sure that the right thing is done.”

    As much as the Bishop tried to assure citizens that the NPC is not worried about the federal government’s decision to put on trial those under investigation for looting the nation’s treasury, there are still questions that are not answered by his clarifications on the purpose of the special meeting with President Buhari. What has the president done since his assumption of office to suggest that he is likely to act in contravention of the principle of rule of law or to ignore ‘doing the right thing’? Have any citizens approached the National Peace Committee that their rights have been violated? Since when did the NPC, a group cobbled together before the 2015 presidential election, become a group for promotion of human rights in place of the constitution and the judiciary? Are there any suggestions that those being prepared for arraignment in a matter of weeks may be unable to protect their rights, should President Buhari’s government put them on trial without just cause? Perhaps, the NPC needs to give citizens more information about details of the negotiations that made the result of the presidential election acceptable to former President Jonathan, if only to assure citizens that the Committee/Council is not to become a non-elected and informal layer in the governing process.

    Now that President Buhari has given the National Peace Committee a new name, is this an indication that the body has been given a new lease of life? In what specific areas is the National Peace Council to look for peace? What exactly has broken that the NPC is now being charged or re-charged to fix? The nation and the entire world had amply congratulated former President Jonathan for accepting the results of the 2015 presidential election. What other matters are yet to be resolved after the graceful departure of Dr. Jonathan at the end of the inauguration of President Buhari? What is the cause of democratic governance going to gain from NPC becoming a permanent feature of the political culture? Is the extension of the tenure of the Peace Council an indication that the war in Nigeria is not just the one with Boko Haram but others within the polity that are yet to be named?

    Furthermore, is the re-naming of the Peace Committee an attempt to turn the ad hoc group into a standing body to settle issues outside the judicial framework? Shouldn’t members of the committee give the new president the benefit of the doubt that he ought to know what is right to do before accusing or arraigning any citizen on charges of corruption? Is it too much to expect that President Buhari can understand without being prodded that the government he now heads is not a military regime, months after he had contested and won a national election? Once a new government is in power, such pre-election groups set up to advise outgoing and incoming administrations should be allowed to move off the political and media radar, particularly once they had fulfilled the objective for which they were created. Shouldn’t members of the Peace Committee/Council have been thanked for a job well done and given the time to face their regular responsibilities in the various sectors of the society from which they were recruited?

    There is also a report that the Senate has decided abruptly to end public hearing on review of its members’ salaries and allowances. The Senate has chosen to refer matters of salary review to its own committees while some of its members are noting that the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission is the sole authority to determine how much lawmakers earn. It is reassuring that the Senate is now preoccupied with the matter of process. Other senators seem to have concluded that having pruned down the budget of the national assembly from 150 billion to 120 billion naira, there should be no need for any review of the salaries and perquisites of lawmakers. In the tradition of maximising the use of power entrusted to individuals and groups in an ethos characterised by immunity, the Senate is acting as if it wants to avoid being monitored by citizens who initially showed concerns about the oversize pay and benefit package of lawmakers.

    Is the Senate leader’s decision to move debate over salary/allowance review from public gaze an attempt to sweep the matter of legislative finance under the mat? The culture of the last national assembly was similar in many ways to that of the executive of the time. During the Jonathan era, it was not unusual for lawmakers to summon members of the executive for fact-finding and for such office holders to refuse to heed such calls with impunity. For four years, the lawmakers kept with impunity the details of their salaries and allowances away from the public. It is therefore not unlikely that the decision to halt public hearing on salary and allowance is being made with the belief that there is nothing citizens can do to make senators change their mind on how much they want to be paid.

    What senators should not be allowed to forget is that the game has changed. The voters that brought the lawmakers to office are starkly different from those that were claimed to have voted for many of them four years ago. In 2015, majority of voters got fed up with the ethic and style of governance and lawmaking in the last six or more years and thus voted for a new governance ethic. The mandate given to majority of the lawmakers last April, just like the one given to President Buhari, is one that requires transparency and accountability. If there are lawmakers who believe that they can muscle their way into any level of salary and allowance they feel can carry “increasing obligations to their constituencies,” they will need to remember that the constituents they now have will like to be consulted fully on all matters including how much their representatives take home as salaries and allowances. Should the nation’s revenue profile require any form of rationalisation that may affect any kind of allowance for lawmakers personally or for their constituencies, legislators and the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission need to be made aware of the principle that ultimate sovereignty lies with the citizens, not their representatives in the lower or upper House.

  • Kiddies’ literary retreat: bringing children’s literature to the knowledge table

    Kiddies’ literary retreat: bringing children’s literature to the knowledge table

    In the tradition of journalists’ facility to present the complex in an accessible language, Ajibade electrified the hall filled with children in their pre-teen years with hints on how children can use contemporary communication technology to enhance access to and quality of reading

    Lagos, like Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna, and Enugu, has been an active laboratory for creation and promotion of understanding and appreciation of literary products.  But a long time, literary fairs had been more of the diet of adult consumers of cultural products with very little attention to children’s literature. But the critical study of children’s literature is active generally in Nigeria, as many scholars write academic articles on various aspects of literature for young people while promotion of children’s literature has, for obvious reasons, taken a distant back seat in formal efforts to promote children’s interest in reading and appreciating literary works that are not necessarily written for adult audience.

    But Lagos witnessed a new surge in popularisation of writings for children on the first of August this year, when Winnay & Co organised a special retreat for children at the Vining Hall in Ikeja. The event was sponsored by Layide James Buks, a subsidiary of Winnay & Co that specialises in educational materials for young children. Mrs. Funke Aledeinu, the author of the three books presented at the multimedia event, chose to bring back the tradition of anonymity that underlay the propagation of stories in the days of oral tradition. The three books had a copyright page that did not include the author’s name, thus suggesting a deliberate separation of passion for creation of the object of beauty from the celebration of the author. But today’s piece is not about what may be a novelty in the profit-driven ritual of book launch in Nigeria. The focus of today’s column is the implications of the retreat organised by Layide James Buks principally for children’s literary retreat for the purpose of aesthetic and ethical education of  children in an ethos threatened by declining sensibility for the beautiful and the moral. Her three books: Tortoise, the Wise, David & Goliath, and Tortoise, the Tortoise, provoke new thinking about the teaching of children’s literature in an age in which the written word is being threatened by secondary orality.

    Ironically, today’s comment on this event is not addressed to children but to parents and guardians, who are responsible for socialising children into the world of knowledge through the arts. One reason for targeting adults who were just a minority at the literary retreat is that it is this demographic group that has material and social leverage to drive promotion of this important genre of literature.

    Kunle Ajibade of The News Magazine was the main speaker at the event. He spoke to the children on the importance of reading as the foundation for knowledge acquisition and expansion, thus raising one of the issues that must have driven the author to write three books that highlight deployment of intercultural literary techniques in the creation of stories for children in a global space that is being moulded by a combination of writing, oral tradition, and secondary orality made possible by communication technology. In the tradition of journalists’ facility to present the complex in an accessible language, Ajibade electrified the hall filled with children in their pre-teen years with hints on how children can use contemporary communication technology to enhance access to and quality of reading.

    The retreat was designed to imitate the character of contemporary cultural production. All contemporary modes of communication were given detailed attention by the author and organiser of the retreat. Each of the three books printed and published locally was beautifully done and in children-friendly colours: orange and yellow. Each monograph also includes a CD version with pictorial enrichment of important milestones in the story it tells. In addition, there was a digital presentation of selections from the stories; a short enactment or dramatisation of parts of David & Goliath, and readings and interpretations of the two trickster narratives; Tortoise the Wise and Tortoise the Tortoise. The mixing of modes electrified the hall for the children who also took part in a question-and-answer fashion in interpretation of the stories. And the organisation of the entire book presentation focused on expansion of children’s interests in fantasy and adventure at the expense of adults’ enthusiasm to please the author by ‘launching the books in grand style.’

    The author raised many contemporary universal issues. For example, David & Goliath retells a well-known biblical story in a way that satirises raw power by casting Goliath as an imperious might-is-right hegemon while David is presented as a young man of intelligence, faith, and dexterity. The story also includes illustrations of the universal psychological theme of sibling rivalry, without sacrificing in its conclusion the importance of family values and unity.

    The two Tortoise stories use the trickster-figure to illustrate self-absorption in one story and to project the trickster as iconoclast and agent of change in another. This narrative style emphasises the universality of the trickster as embodiment of the two sides of the human condition: good and bad. Just like in David &Goliath, the author retells the tortoise tales in a way to bring into focus the post-modern theme of environmentally sustainable development. In Tortoise the Wise in particular, the author promotes bio-diversity through a conference or summit of animals in which smaller animals complain about the predatory power of larger animals as well as of human beings. Elephant poaching in particular by human beings for profit and its threat to bio-diversity is challenged in the mode of conference debate among the animals.

    Other important issues raised by the retreat are the relative neglect of the important genre of children’s literature. In general remarks, attention was drawn to the little role being played by state and local governments in the promotion of children’s literature, outside the rhetorical worry by government leaders about the need to support “children as leaders of tomorrow.” Unlike in what obtains in other democracies, local governments in our country have very little support for cultural production for citizens in general. The neglect is worse in respect of children. Even at the level of teaching institutions, apart from individual publications by the professoriate, there is little attention being given by universities and colleges of education to the promotion of children’s literature as a major stage in the intellectual and creative development of children.

    Layide James Buks did not raise millions of naira from the presentation of the three books presented at the fair, because the author did not set out to do that, as disappointing as that was to adults in the audience who came to show their financial support to the author. Mrs. Funke Aledeinu through Layide James Buks achieved one obvious objective: organisation of a special retreat for children that gives adults and children in a formal setting opportunities for dialogue on the role of creative writing in the enrichment of taste and knowledge.  State and local governments certainly have a lot to learn from Layide James Buks about how to support children’s intellectual and artistic development.

  • Still in immunity mode months into a change regime

    Still in immunity mode months into a change regime

    A Senate with 83 senators that passed a vote of confidence in someone elected about one month ago and with the temerity to warn the police not to ‘harass’ their members seems to have sufficient numbers to frustrate policies and bills designed by the president and his party to fight corruption

    Democracy is more than a political system; it is also a moral system. It is a political system which is characterized not by particular procedures, such as regular elections of government, but primarily by being based on certain fundamental moral principles. In a genuinely democratic society, the government’s policy must accord with those principles. And, furthermore, all social institutions must also be established and conducted within the same moral framework, which invariably includes equality, freedom, and respect for the rights of the individual.—A. V. Kelly

    By immunity in this piece, I do not mean the formal protection against arrest and prosecution of president, vice president, governor and deputy governor which those who occupy these positions enjoy in our country and which makes leaders of the executive branch of government the most powerful and protected political office holders in the world. I mean the general lack of respect for laws, rules, and conventions among those accorded legal immunity by the constitution and those that are not covered by such protection. In other words, I am using immunity in the sense of an individual’s or group’s belief that he or she can do anything without being answerable to the principle of equality before the law.
    It is intriguing that despite the fact that majority of Nigerians voted for General Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the belief that the new president and his party would be in a better position to right the wrongs of the past under the regime of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the culture of business as usual is still thriving two months into the Buhari presidency. For example, the recent lucid analysis by JitiOgunye of the conduct of lawmakers in the National Assembly, particularly in the Senate illustrates how the culture of immunity and disregard for laws, rules, and conventions reigned on June 9 in the hallowed chambers reserved for regulating the lives of the nation and its citizens through establishmentof the ‘Dos and Don’ts’ that in normal situations sustain modern polity and civilisations. Ogunye demonstrated in a jargon-free interpretation that the election of Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu as president and deputy president of Senate was based on forged rules and thus need to be declared null and void, if deliberations under existing leadership of the Senate are to have integrity.
    Even after the police has revealed in its own investigation that the rules cited by the Senate for its conduct on June 9 are products of forgery, senators in support of the outcome of the election still find it comfortable to warn the police and other security agencies against allowing themselves to be used to harass the Senate, senators, or their spouses. Put in other words, the senators are warning the police not to do its work: investigation and detection of crime and presentation of suspected criminals to the court of law for trial. Instead of showing qualms, senators involved in the election of officers in June now show bravado as they threaten law enforcement officials for attempting to perform their lawful duties. This attitude from 48 PDP senators and 35 APC senators signal disaster for change, if the other branches of government— the executive and judiciary— fail to act in defence and protection of the rule of law.
    Stealing of the country’s patrimony, particularly crude oil in the millions still took place until July 3, according to President Buhari’s recent statement. This is an indication that the lawlessness that characterised the last government was still in vogue even after a new president had been sworn in. The courage of politically connected oil thieves during the last administration to engage in illegal bunkering even months after their principals had vacated power shows how ingrained the culture of impunity has become. What this signals is that there are collaborators in all sectors of the polity, including the nation’s security system who are still ready to work with economic saboteurs even under the nose of an anti-corruption federal government.
    Furthermore, using the media to deceive citizens through blatant lies that was a past-time of the administration in the last four or so years has not abated even two months into the new administration. For example, nobody in the country including those in power can say with certainty the exact location of the $15 million that was smuggled toward the end of Jonathan’s government to South Africa to ‘buy arms’ with which to fight the Boko Haram insurgency. As recent as last week, the South African High Commission was unable to confirm if the money had been returned to Nigeria. The South African envoy’s encouragement on July 23: “So, I advise you to check with the agency from where the money was released for the arms acquisition deal,” implies that the location of the money still remains unknown after several months of claim by the Jonathan administration that the funds had been returned to Nigeria.
    As we write this piece, many citizens are rejoicing that the crisis in the House has been settled with Dogara’s acceptance of the list of APC nominees for offices other than that of the Speaker. People are forgetting fast the issue that the election of House Speaker and Deputy Speaker was conducted outside the framework of the laws that guide such elections in the House. Many of such enthusiasts are saying that we need peace in the House to be able to embark on the crusade of change. How realistic is the optimism that the crusade for positive change can be facilitated by House officers who finally agreed to a compromise after being given a deadline to ‘do the needful’?
    It is not that actions and statements referred to in the paragraphs above had taken place in Nigeria that is a novelty in a country that had for decades become the poster child for political and bureaucratic corruption in the world. What is worrisome is that such unwholesome acts as conducting election in the federal legislature with forged rules; senators’ threatening of the police for planning to enforce the laws of the land; and solidarity messages from supporters of lawmakers purported to have used rules not known to the law smack of a growing tolerance for impunity under the nose of a regime of zero-tolerance for corruption.
    It is not the capacity of President Buhari to fight corruption with sincerity and vigour that is likely to be a problem, given his own strength of character. What is scary is the capacity of a Senate led by leaders elected on the basis of forged rules to constitute a stumbling block to Buhari’s efforts to clean the Augean stables the president has inherited from the preceding administration. A Senate with 83 senators that passed a vote of confidence in someone elected about one month ago and with the temerity to warn the police not to ‘harass’ their members seems to have sufficient numbers to frustrate policies and bills designed by the president and his party to fight corruption. It is not out of place to think that the current senate leadership is in a position, if adequate care is not taken, to disrupt good governance by instigating crisis that can disrupt the change agenda.
    The matter of election of senate leaders must not be left to compromise among party members, more so that police investigation has revealed that the election of such officers took place on the strength of forged Senate Rules. The executive and judiciary must not shirk in their own responsibilities on a matter that has been politically unsettling since June 9. This is the most appropriate time for the Buhari presidency to insist on equality before the law. If indeed there was forgery of Senate rules, those behind such forgery, regardless of their position in the polity and society, should be brought to book immediately.
    Citizens who want their mandate on change to be put to good use need to stand firm and give support to the executive and the judiciary when they act to protect the country’s constitution, especially its commitment to the rule of law, without which democracy cannot deliver good governance. Citizens must not leave protection of the moral system that subtends all viable democratic systems in only the hands of office seeking lawmakers.