The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (2)

    Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (2)

    Given the level of critical thinking in a country with less than 75% literacy rate, leaving citizens at the mercy of the central government to guarantee prompt payment of salaries and pension benefits is capable of encouraging citizens to lose confidence in subnational governments and thus see the central government as the only level that is efficient and compassionate

    By the time the first part of this piece appeared in this column last week, the Nigeria Governors Forum had not given citizens their interpretation of the funds they got from the federal government about three weeks ago. At the end of a recent meeting of the country’s 36 governors, their chairman, Governor AbdulazziYari of Zamfara State, had the following to say: “What had been shared last time was monies from NLNG and FAAC. And as we have been saying, we have not been looking for bailout, instead, we have been looking for all monies that are in the coffers of the federation, most especially we are talking about some monies that are hung around the coffers of government to be brought together for the purpose of sharing… We are not taking any bailout from the federal government and the federal government did not give us any bailout yet…But we are talking on how best the intervention will happen within these days so we will be able to settle the issue of salaries and other operations in government in the country….”

    This column believes that the governors have not been reported accurately in a story titled “Nigerian governors backtrack, say they never asked Buhari for bailout.”  All that Governor Yari had said on behalf of his colleagues is that they have not received any bailout yet and are already on the way to doing so by “talking on how best the intervention will happen within these days so we will be able to settle the issue of salaries and other operations in government in the country.” But today’s column is not about the Governors Forum’s differentiation between bailout and intervention with respect to how to end the problem of insolvency of states. Our interest is about the dangers inherent in a federal system in which states have to be “looking for monies hanging around the coffers of the federation” to pay salaries of workers. It is salutary that the NGF has pledged “to work with Mr. President to ensure coherent policy actions that will create a clear policy direction for the country and stimulate domestic production.” Cultivating new policy directions is an appropriate step to take at this critical moment in the country’s economy.

    Should the current precarious situation in state finances continue, states are likely to be compelled to ask for bailout or its more euphemistic synonym, intervention, from the federal government. Should states become vulnerable again to the point of having to beg the central government for special assistance, by doing so, it may unintentionally be creating more distortions in the country’s quasi-federal system. In other words, there is a great danger of encouraging President Buhari to push the country further away from proper sharing of power and sovereignty that federalism represents.

    Without doubt, President Buhari is now a democrat and a ruler with clear mandate from citizens, but he was a major player decades back in the policies of military dictators who in the days of oil boom believed that the best way to keep Nigeria united was to create mini-states that were designed to depend largely on transfers from the Federation Account to states, most of which had no viability to sustain themselves without funds from the centre. There is a possibility that inability of states to pay workers or meet their statutory functions can tempt any president in a hurry to create a national economy that works to push for fewer functions for states in the name of making governance more rational and more cost-effective. In other words, governors themselves stand the risk of subverting the little autonomy they currently enjoy, should they run into another problem of paying their workers. The real problem may not be about what many pundits consider as the reason for failure of states to pay workers’ salaries: mismanagement or inordinate ambition. It seems to be about creating an enabling environment for each level of government in a federal system to raise most of the revenues it needs.

    It is equally risky for governors to do anything to give their constituents the impression that states are more likely to generate agony for them than being a source of citizen empowerment. Given the level of critical thinking in a country with less than 75% literacy rate, leaving citizens at the mercy of the central government to guarantee prompt payment of salaries and pension benefits is capable of encouraging citizens to lose confidence in subnational governments and thus see the central government as the only level that is efficient and compassionate. Once citizens are pushed to feel this way, the temptation for them to prefer a full-blown unitary model of government may increase.

    Now that the Governors Forum has committed to working with President Buhari in creating policy directions that can respond to the country’s precarious financial situation, each state governor also needs to involve his constituents in the process of creating new policy directions. This initiative should not be restricted to governors alone; citizens should be engaged to contribute via town-hall meetings to determine what should be the right relationship between central and subnational governments. It will even be proper for state governments to subject their own thinking on how to prevent states from being vassals of the central government to a referendum in each state. Involving citizens in providing ideas about federal-state relations in an ethos of sole dependence on exploitation of non-renewable  natural resources may serve the interest of all better than leaving such matters solely in the hands of the political and economic elite.

    Citizens who are generally at the receiving end of policies made by political leaders may be in a better position to take a long-term view of the country’s economic problems than governors and other holders of political appointments who are preoccupied with frantic efforts to prevent their states from going into bankruptcy. With proper political education of citizens, they are likely to avoid a quick-fix approach to the issue of resource and power sharing. One of such quick-fix solutions to this issue is the 2014 Jonathan national dialogue which a group of Yoruba opinion leaders are pushing as the best option for states to obtain the kind of autonomy they need if they are to be able to provide sustainable development.

    Governors, especially those in the Southwest, where the noise about the last national dialogue is loudest, need not buy into the design to turn the recommendations of the conference into an albatross around their necks and the necks of their constituents. That conference worked on a wrong premise when the inflow of funds from non-renewable fossil was considered by delegates to be adequate to sustain 55 states. Nothing can be more eye-opening than the steady fall in the price of petroleum since the end of the 2014 conference.

    Now that the belief that Nigeria with 37 bureaucracies can be sustained by revenue from non-renewable resource is being shattered, governors planning to provide policy directions for the Buhari government need to engage their citizens directly, rather than allowing themselves to be hobbled by the push by non-elected delegates to adopt recommendations of the Jonathan national dialogue. Presenting recommendations of the Jonathan conference as synonymous with demands of Nigerians’ from the Southwest on the imperative of re-federalising the Nigerian polity may be tantamount to giving the country an Abiku federalism that may not move the country substantially away from the current model of states as parasites on revenues that accrue largely from petroleum and other non-renewable resource.

    Selected delegates to the 2014 national dialogue have the right to push the outcome of three-months of deliberations by delegates for adoption and implementation by President Buhari. But individual delegates and association of delegates do not have the right to present recommendations of the conference as the wishes of citizens in the six Yoruba states. Delegates did not consult with citizens before and during the conference. However, governors in the region with vocal advocates for implementation of recommendations from the dialogue should be open to consider some of the recommendations for inclusion in the questions to be presented to citizens in Southwestern states in a referendum. Limiting efforts at re-federalisation of the country to outcomes of the 2014 conference has the potential to prevent federating units from proper sharing of power and sovereignty with the central government in a sustainable manner. No federal system has thrived under a system in which subnational units are made to depend on allocations from the centre, regardless of the generosity of such allocations.

  • Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (1)

    Beyond ‘bailout’ for states (1)

    President Buhari and his advisers—economic and political—need to pay attention to the root-cause of the crisis that he has been able to solve patriotically within the first two months of his regime.

    Quibbling about the proper definition of recent special grants to states to enable them meet their primary obligations to citizens in their employment is not as significant as coming to terms with how to move away from the political philosophy and federal governance model that made it irresistible in the first instance for states to run to the central government for special assistance. It is therefore unnecessary to join hair-splitting arguments about whether the special grant passed from President Buhari’s central government to the 36 states last week falls, in the fashion of strict constructionism, into the category of bailout.

    This is the first time that so many states were unable to pay workers’ salaries for months. Not being a common occurrence suggests that most of the states must have been under unexpected revenue pressure. It should not matter if the immediate cause of the failure of states to meet their contractual obligations to workers is traceable to decline in the price of oil and resultant decline in allocations to states from the federation account. What matters most is that both the central and state governments had shortfalls in their revenue and thus had to take loans. The federal government would have been as guilty as the states if it was not for the central government’s bigger access to loans in relation to the access of states to loan facilities—domestic or foreign.

    There are many matters that should arise from the patriotic response of the federal government on this matter. While acknowledging the speed of response of President Buhari to this crisis, it is important for citizens to start looking at remote causes of failure of states to pay their workers, simply because those buying the country’s major foreign exchange earner, petroleum, are compelled to respond to the dynamic of supply and demand. Just as the coming to power of President Buhari and a progressive party encourages us to ask for changes, so should the decline in revenue from petroleum urge us to look beyond rushing funds to states to avoid the worst crisis in modern polities and societies: workers’ revolt. It is instructive to bring into focus a Yoruba proverb that says the problem of a physically handicapped person to carry his luggage dexterously stems from his physique.

    The problem of the states in the last months with respect to salary arrears and to diverting pension funds to pay salary of workers in service may not be all traceable to mismanagement by individual state governors. This is not to say that poor judgment may not be a part of the crisis. What appears to be the most important cause of the crisis is the character of the country’s political and economic management. President Buhari and his advisers—economic and political—need to pay attention to the root-cause of the crisis that he has been able to solve patriotically within the first two months of his regime. He needs to find out if he will always be in a position to give bailout to states if the culture of running a Manna Economy, such as has characterised governance in this country for decades continues. He also needs to ask himself if it is rational to grant whole scale bailout without ascertaining the impact of corruption on each state. More importantly, he needs to ask himself if all the assumptions that produced a system that was thrown into turbulence by a fall in oil price are right for managing a federal system that has over the years become a quasi-federal system that has been sustained by federal allocations.

    One school of thought about how to prevent states from experiencing similar embarrassment again is to adopt the suggestion at the 2015 Jonathan National Dialogue that the central government take just 42% of revenue (as opposed to the current 52% the federal government takes) while states and local governments receive about 56%. This mindset is still beholden to the mistakes of the past. The real problem is the structural imbalance in the re-design of the federal system inherited at independence in 1960. Just as retired Colonel Kangiwa Umar said recently, the military dictatorships of the past made egregious mistakes in the balkanisation of the country into unviable mini-states.

    Before 1966, each of the four regions had more powers of raising and spending revenues. A related question is why the federal government would need up to 42%. Should the federal government face fewer functions such as defence, foreign relations, currency, rather than saddling itself with all functions imaginable, it should not need more than 20% while the remaining 80% should go to states and local governments to carry out most of the functions on the concurrent list. But this is not the big problem; the big problem is that we need to move away from the model that encourages states to rely on allocations from the federation account.

    Under the military regimes of Manna Economy, during which the dominant mantra was “money was not the problem of Nigeria but how to spend it,” it was discouraging for political managers to look ahead and imagine negative scenarios such as we have today, and towards a time that oil might not bring as much easy flow of foreign exchange into the country. Even President Buhari has acknowledged the inevitability of the Manna Economy by saying that states should look for more IGR to supplement allocations from the centre. What happens in all other federal systems is that states, provinces, lander, use transfers from the central to supplement what they generate on their own. In other words, states in other federations across the globe are positioned by size, population, and natural endowments to leverage on their huge potentials to self-finance. Our federal system has been starkly different from what obtains in Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, United States of America, and United Arab Emirate, to name a few federal examples.

    The legacy left by military dictators to the civilians that took over from them is one in which even automobile (vehicle registration and drivers’ licence) taxes are taken away from states and put in the hands of some federal agency. All customs, excise, port charges, and consumption taxes are, under the current system fashioned by military rulers, collected into the central pool for sharing among federal, state, and local governments, a commitment to make subnational governments to accept the centre/periphery relations imposed by military re-design of the Nigerian state between 1966 and 1999 in particular. Even civilian rulers do not seem capable of thinking outside the box. If they were, no delegates at the last national dialogue would have mentioned creation of more states, let alone recommend moving the number of states from 36 to 55. Otherwise, it would have occurred to delegates that increasing the number of states to 55 and increasing allocations to states and local governments from 42 to 56 would not change the fortunes of subnational governments in any noticeable way.

    Giving bailout to states at times of financial emergencies is about the small picture. The big picture is thinking about and planning towards changing states and local governments from centres of consumption to sites of production. At both the corporate and personal levels, the country has gotten inured to a political and economic system that encourages laziness and fear of self-exertion to produce values. Just about every level of government has come to see as given a system of sharing funds from rents, rather than one of sharing responsibilities. In the short-term, preventing states from going into bankruptcy is a good gesture by President Buhari, who workers in Yoruba states now refer to as Aboki (friend) because of his immediate intervention in the financial crisis of states.

    The long-term solution to the problem at all levels of government having to borrow to even pay government workers may lie in new thinking that includes asking why a country of this size needs 36 states and 774 local governments. Such thinking should also ask if the obsession with unity is justifiable if states have to be guzzlers of funds from rent collection. Just as Colonel Umar also observed, President Buhari needs to start thinking about whether the present 36 state systems with 36 bureaucracies and legislatures are sustainable in the long-run, even after we start mining another set of non-renewable minerals.

    There is no better time for the country to come to terms with mistakes of the past. No federal system can survive, let alone thrive, on the strength of handouts from one level of government to other levels.

    • To be continued
  • Fear of progressives in our country

    Fear of progressives in our country

    Trying to pretend that there is no wing of the northern elite that is opposed to Buhari’s candidacy and may thus be interested in sponsoring opposition to his anti-corruption policies and programmes is being deliberately myopic

    Fear of progressives or of progressive ideas by individuals and groups obsessed with reactionary or conservative ideas has been a part of human organisations from time immemorial. The tension since the beginning of human history between conservative (originally known as feudal) forces and liberty-oriented individuals (generally known as progressives) is still evident in many societies of today. For as long as there are people who identify with ideas that seek to promote and protect the interests of the people at large while there are others who remain fixed to the position that it is only the personal or class interests of the few with various forms of advantage that should dominate majority with the power to determine what benefits should be given to the masses from the common wealth in any society, there is bound to be morbid fear between the two groups. It is usually the few individuals with the advantage of power in politics, economy, and society that generally appear more afraid of those cultivating new ideas than the other way around. But in cases of successful revolutions championed by those on the side of progress, such progressives quickly learn that the fear of reactionary forces is the beginning of wisdom.

    Those who were around to witness the political history of the country and those who have had opportunities to study the country’s political journey since independence ought not to be surprised when Chief Bisi Akande made the following observation: “Most northern elites, the Nigerian oil subsidy barons and other business cartels who never liked President Buhari’s anti-corruption political stance are quickly backing-up the rebellion against the APC with strong support….While other position seekers are waiting in the wings until Buhari’s ministers are announced, a large section of the South-West sees the rebellion as a conspiracy of the north against the Yoruba.” Many persons and organisations, including the north’s apex socio-cultural organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum, have castigated Chief Akande for making inflammatory statements and for attempting to return with this statement, despite his contributions to the building of a pan-Nigeria political party in APC, to the politics of ethnicity and religion. The ACF said authoritatively that “the era of tribal and religious politics or inciting one tribe over [sic] the other has no place in our present political focus.”

    As expected, people have lined up in the last two or so weeks behind or against Chief Akande for his statement or assessment of what went wrong with the election of National Assembly officers about a month ago. What is missing in the reactions of individuals and associations to Akande’s statement is the courage to ask pertinent questions before attacking the messenger. One of such questions should have been about whether there is a stratum of the elite in the north and other regions that is mortally opposed to Buhari’s anti-corruption stance and his ethic of change of the manner Nigeria is governed.

    Without mincing words, there are and have to be members of the elite in the north and south who are not comfortable with Buhari’s electoral victory and citizens’ mandate to him to work towards change of governance philosophy and style in the country. From the infancy of modern politics in multiethnic Nigeria during and after colonialism, there has always been a stratum of the elite class in all the regions with unmistakable aversion for modernity and change. In the 1940s for example, a strong group of traditional elite in the north unapologetically stood against calls for political independence from colonial subjugation, apparently for fear that sending British colonisers away would diminish the power and influence of the core of the north’s traditional leadership.

    Even in the west, now referred to as south-west and some sections of the south-south, there were persons who considered themselves cultural leaders who campaigned overtly and covertly against the introduction of free primary education when Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his Action Group party launched the policy of providing access to members of all social classes in the western region to acquisition of knowledge that could accelerate the process of modernisation. It was such opposition against reducing the barriers to change and equality that explained why the northern region looked away from copying the experiment in free universal education in the west after Awolowo’s progressive politicians overshadowed their conservative counterparts in the region with large support of the citizenry.

    Similarly in the second republic, conservative members of the elite in the north and the south in the NPN tried to justify the denial of access to universal education to citizens by insisting that there should be no universal education until the country was in a position to provide ‘qualitative education,’ as if access and quality were mutually exclusive. The entire country is suffering today for the denial of education to millions of children in the north when the Unity Party of Nigeria, a progressive political party, pleaded with citizens that no amount of learning was useless. Most of the young people in the army of Boko Haram terrorists today must be children or grandchildren of Nigerian citizens in the north that were denied access to modern education in the first and second republics in particular. The current push by the international community for a total approach to the problem of Boko Haram certainly includes a recognition of decades of marginalisation of the masses in a region dominated by elites with little confidence in universal education, one of the pillars of political and social reform.

    Just as there were conservatives or reform-averse individuals in the north and the south in the pre-independence era, so were there agents of reaction and reform in both sections of the country in subsequent republics. While the NPC was the dominant political group in the north at the time of the 1959 election, so was there NEPU of Malam Aminu Kano. In the second republic, the dominance of change-resisting NPN in the north was countered by a change-promoting political party also led by Aminu Kano, the PRP.  Alhaji Balarabe Musa and Abubakar Rimi won gubernatorial elections in Kaduna and Kano under the PRP.  Both agents of change then served as governors until the wheel of impeachment at the instance of the conservative wing of the northern elite removed Balarabe Musa from office. There were many intellectuals even in the southwest who believed that the UPN was not progressive enough for the problems confronting Nigeria and thus chose to register as members of the PRP. Just as the north had fire-eating enemies of change then, so did the region have change-promoting activists and intellectuals. For example, Bala Usman compared favourably with his radical counterparts in the south: Segun Osoba (the historian, not the journalist) and many others.

    Even in the third republic, the nation’s political space was divided into two: ‘a little to the right and a little to the left.’ The candidate for the right emerged from the north while the one for the left came from the south. It is only in 2015 that the candidate for the presidency on the platform of progressives is a northerner, an unmistakable member of the northern elite that Chief Akande referred to as producing most of those who sponsored the controversial election of officers in the National Assembly. Clearly Akande’s use of northern must have been in terms of geography, rather than ethnicity or religion.

    Reducing Akande’s argument about the role of conservative forces in the crusade against change (after the election of Buhari as the nation’s agent of and for change) to ethnic or religious distraction does not help matters in any way. It smacks more of intimidation of the first chairman of APC who Buhari himself has referred to as a major builder of the party. Even though northern elite in general asked for a northerner to succeed Jonathan, it is not unexpected that Buhari’s coming to power on the platform of change, reform, and improvement may not please all members of the northern and southern elite. Trying to pretend that there is no wing of the northern elite that is opposed to Buhari’s candidacy and may thus be interested in sponsoring opposition to his anti-corruption policies and programmes is being deliberately myopic.

    If our children are to have proper political education, no individual or group should deny the existence of some elites in the north and in the south and of their power or influence to scuttle the process of change, especially when power is in the hands of a progressive, whether he or she is from the north or the south. Ideological differences have always been a part of the country’s political culture and no amount of effort to occlude this fact can lead to reform. Conservatives and progressives must have the courage to identify public with their political stance, and no group should seek to benefit from the regime of change from shielded enclaves of reactionary forces in any part of the country while denying the existence of reactionary forces. Most modern countries of the world use ideology to structure their political conflict and competition for power. Majority of Nigerians opted for a progressive political party in the March/April elections and those who are behind neutralisation of the party of change need to be exposed so that citizens can take proper note.

  • Speed or efficiency of the political machine of change?

    Speed or efficiency of the political machine of change?

    If there is any urgency now, it is not announcement of ministers but providing appropriate response to the herculean task in front of the new president: finding solutions to the looming crisis of unpaid government workers at the federal, state, and local level

    It is clear by now that 1968 will go down as the year the new politics of the next decade or more began….And therefore this is the year when the old politics must be a thing of the past. But if this is true—and I profoundly believe that it is—then there is no more important question than what the new politics is. What are its components, and what does it mean to the future of the country? The most obvious element of the new politics is the politics of citizen participation, of personal involvement.—Senator Robert Kennedy, Speech at a San Francisco press gathering, May 21, 1968

    The result of the presidential election of March 28, 2015 promised the emergence of a new politics in the country. It marked the end of years of a governance system that was driven by impunity, a governance model that was older than Goodluck Jonathan but that came to its nadir under his presidency. The enragement of citizens fostered by the last four years of PDP governance in the country led to momentous civic engagement that encouraged hundreds of Nigerians to do more campaigning in the social media for Buhari’s presidential bid than was done in the traditional media. Many people are now insinuating in the social media that was one of the bulwarks of support for Presidential candidate Buhari that the new president is slow. Even some traditional media houses are insinuating that President Buhari’s failure to appoint ministers three weeks into his tenure had grounded governance, despite the President’s directives that permanent secretaries in the ministries should continue to provide leadership for the ministries.

    Given the enthusiasm with which voters went to the polls to elect Buhari in March, it is not out of place for citizens to get impatient with the president’s seeming slowness in appointing ministers. Such complaints are not out of order in an ethos in which citizens, not necessarily belonging to professional civil society organisations, have volunteered since the beginning of the year to promote more civic engagement than before. But appointing ministers is not as urgent as getting the machine to effect change properly oiled for the job. The National Assembly, to use the phrase of enthusiasts of speed in governance, ‘has hit the ground running’ without functioning in compliance with the manifesto of change. But the NASS is not the focus of today’s column. The focus is on why President Buhari needs to do his homework thoroughly before naming ministers, if the impact of such appointments is to serve the need of change.

    In his covenant with Nigerians, President Buhari had stated clearly what his objectives and activities would be in his first 100 days in office. President Buhari on behalf of his party promised an administration that will change the culture of public service in major sectors of the polity and society: Insecurity from Boko Haram in particular; providing a national strategy for fighting corruption; addressing through policy initiatives the collapse of health and education sectors; and restoring economic stability. Certainly, he would need ministers to do most of these  things but not before doing due diligence on potential candidates for jobs that call for a new mindset that is distinct from the business-as-usual mode, a code word for government as a facility for self-enrichment.

     When President Buhari made these promises, among others, the culture of secrecy and governance by bill boards in vogue until May 29 did not allow him to discover the geography or ecology of the Augean stables the new president finally inherited at the end of May. Even though the new opposition party has quickly characterised the revelation that the PDP government failed to provide handover notes until the eve of the inauguration, the facts that were unearthed after the swearing-in ceremony show that Buhari had inherited a federal government that was in the last few months borrowing money to pay federal workers while leaving many states in the lurch, all on account of sudden decline in petroleum prices. If inheriting a virtually empty treasury is not an excuse for caution in rushing to appoint ministers, citizens should wonder what other excuse for caution on the part of the new president is acceptable to those who left the seat of power broken and soiled.

    The jury may still be out on how empty the treasury inherited on May 29 is, what is clear from the recent visit of governors to President Buhari on the need for an immediate bail-out of states to enable them pay salary arrears is an indication that governance at every level was very poor by the time President Buhari took over. If there is any urgency now, it is not announcement of ministers but providing appropriate response to the herculean task in front of the new president: finding solutions to the looming crisis of unpaid government workers at the federal, state, and local level.

    While many countries have become attached to the ritual of the first 100 days of a new president or prime minister, Nigeria has a peculiar situation that calls for extreme caution before major appointments are made. The old mindset is that political office is an opportunity to enrich the individual and that politicaloffices are to be shared among political party stalwarts, with little regard to the principle of governing as a means of actually improving public service beyond the usual rhetorical assurance. Undoubtedly, Nigeria is endowed with talented people and richly credentialed individuals, but if the emphasis on change demands a search for men and women of character, the searcher may give the nation a better service by not rushing to name ministers until proper diligence has been done.

    The emphasis that may be needed after decades of poor governance should not be on speed of the new president to appoint ministers. The need to chart a new course in the way the country is governed may require the kind of caution that President Buhari has shown in the last three weeks. He has been busy enough with consultation with other West African countries that collaborate with Nigeria in fighting the menace of Boko Haram. He has also been spending time on consulting with foreign countries that can assist Nigeria in efforts to recover proceeds from looting of the country in the last few years for the purpose of bringing life back to the economy. He had ensured that a process of due diligence was adopted in selection of the Accountant-General, a post that is crucial to the work of ministers. This is the first time there is a real democratic change of regime in country and selecting ministers requires proper planning.

    Citizens who had witnessed failure in governance in the past may have reasons to expect earth-shaking policy statements from new ministers, but such statements may be meaningless without knowing exactly how strong the economy is. In a system where the buck stops at the president’s table, it is in order for a president who is as concerned about the culture of governance especially quality of public service as he is about the character of ministers to assist him to err on the side of slowness than to err on the side of rushed poor judgment.

    Given the theatrics regarding election of principal legislative officers in both houses, it is proper to expect the president to use appointment of ministers to seize some of the attention of the media, if only to show existence of order in the other branch of government. But the times are now different. There is a dire need for deep reflection on appointing ministers capable of staying the course of fundamental change in the polity and society. Just as President John Kennedy said about the relevance of the first 100 days: “All this will not be finished in the first hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.” In more recent times, President Barack Obama’s observation on the significance of the first 100 days is worth citizens’ attention: “The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference.”

    It will not be out of place if President Buhari needs the first hundred days to plan how to save Nigeria from its ugly past, in view of the state of the nation he inherited three weeks ago.

  • Lawmaking: social responsibility or self-enrichment?

    Lawmaking: social responsibility or self-enrichment?

    All the ideas emanating from the National Assembly regarding remuneration of lawmakers are far from the ethic of social responsibility, which requires people in leadership positions to accept an obligation to act for the benefit of society

    Even a few days into the new administration, it is becoming clear that some lawmakers are already acting as if they have lost the political will for change.

    Given the manner of choosing principal officers in the new National Assembly recently, it is not exaggeration for a public affairs observer or commentator to say that it is getting hard (or harder than in the days of Jonathan) to tell who and who in the legislature is working for APC’s manifesto of change or for PDP’s commitment to continuity or ‘business as usual.’ But today’s column is not about how and who got into the juicy positions in the Senate and the House of Representatives. After all, the ruling party has officially assured the public that it is ready to work with those elected into legislative offices, regardless of the initial controversy generated by the sidelining of 51 APC senators. Some people would say that the elite struggle for power in Nigeria is better left to the elites within the power circle to sort out. But citizens need to get intervene in the discourse of power politics before self-serving politicians drive and bury them in poverty.

    The interest today is to focus on level of remuneration for lawmakers in the new Nigeria of diminishing revenue from the easy source of foreign exchange that had driven individuals and organisations for decades to expect to be pampered with huge salaries and outlandish allowances. In the days of high revenue from petroleum, even the authors of the current constitution chose to give the power to determine what states and public office holders get as allocations and salaries/allowances to a group. The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation, and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) is constitutionally charged with recommending what every stratum of the polity gets from proceeds from the oil flowing from wombs of the Niger Delta. Although RMAFC prides itself on its website as independent, it remains to be seen how much of that independence or autonomy has been used to plead for moderation in matters pertaining to remuneration of political office holders and lawmakers. RMAFC is on record as complaining about several allowances lawmakers awarded themselves in the past, an indication that lawmakers have taken liberty to exploit their positions.

    Whatever was the culture in the past, the new economic realities in the country now call for more critical thinking than was the case in the regimes of Olusegun Obasanjo, UmaruYar’Adua, and Goodluck Jonathan. The abundance that led to creation of 36 states, 774 local governments, over 400 House of Representative members, over 100 senators, and even recently to recommendations for moving the number of states from 36 to 55 appears to be drying up faster than the authors of the Nigeria of today could imagine.

    All the ideas emanating from the National Assembly regarding remuneration of lawmakers are far from the ethic of social responsibility, which requires people in leadership positions to accept an obligation to act for the benefit of society. For example, the claim by the deputy speaker that the National Assembly is a separate arm of the federal government with its own peculiarities does not suggest any readiness on the part of this APC man from Osun State to respond appropriately to the call for prudence and sensitivity to society’s needs. To say that a budget of 150 billion naira is not much because it is less than three per cent of the total budget is tantamount to ignoring the new realities on the ground. Similarly, the defence of over half a million naira wardrobe allowance for lawmakers by the new Senate President and the spokesperson for the RMAFC during his recent visit to the Senate leader also misses the point.

    While it may not be right to blame the 8th National Assembly for the largesse given to lawmakers directly or indirectly in the last sixteen years, it is proper to expect new legislators, particularly those who got elected on the platform of the party that promised Change to get critical and creative about how to end what citizens generally have considered as oversize budget to pamper lawmakers in particular. A country that has borrowed money to pay salaries even at the federal level is not in any position to justify giving its legislators salaries and allowances higher than what their counterparts earn in wealthier and more advanced countries or what senior public servants like judges, professors, permanent secretaries, generals, etc earn for serving the country on a full-time basis.

    Given that the long list of demands that the anaemic treasury inherited by the new government must have forced President Buhari to take to the G7, no legislator should need special persuasion to realize the need to cut out the culture of waste inherited from the past. Nigeria is still one of the poorest countries in the world, despite its huge petroleum revenue in the past. Over 65% of Nigerians are believed to live on less than 300 naira a day. Child and maternal mortality in Nigeria is higher than that of many of its neighbours. Education and health care are two major social services that have been in decline for years. Most Nigerians have access to electricity not for more than two hours a day. Most Nigerians have no access to potable water while about 98% of Nigerians travel on substandard roads on a daily basis. Most Nigerians working in the public sector do not get their salaries as and when due while pensioners in many parts of the country get their pension benefits usually in arrears. Apart from the special insecurity of Boko Haram, most of the roads and streets in the country are unsafe for any form of night-time economic activities. All of these happen even after the government at all levels owe over $60 billion, most of which have apparently been used to finance recurrent expenditures. What other evidence should any serious-minded lawmaker need to get real?

    There has been so much opaqueness about how much money is given to lawmakers as salary or allowance. While the basic salary of the average legislator looks normal, the list of allowances is scandalous: furniture, wardrobe, utilities, vehicle maintenance, leave, newspaper, constituency, recess, domestic staff, entertainment, personal assistance, etc. When added up, all these allowances and salaries put the Nigerian legislator as the highest paid lawmaker in the world. And this is despite the fact that lawmaking in Nigeria is a part-time activity, 120 to 180 days on the job in a year. Citizens serving the country in non-elective positions have to work 260 days in a year to earn a net income that averages between .001 to 10% of what lawmakers and other political office holders get in the name of allowances.

    As laudable as the decision of the new governor of Kaduna State to take only half of his salary is and as ridiculous as the readiness of the Bayelsa Senator to pass his wardrobe allowance to widows in his state and workers in Osun State sounds, what is needed at this point is not good-hearted philanthropy from overpaid political office holders in the executive or the legislature. The country’s economic condition, most graphically illustrated by borrowing money to pay salaries and the long list of requests President Buhari had to carry to Bavaria for consideration by members of the G7 group, calls for bold intervention.

    The onus to show a higher sense of responsibility in determination of what to pay federal, state, and local political office holders is not just on the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission. Lawmakers should seize the initiative to assure citizens that they are not in the National Assembly for the over generous emoluments inherited from sixteen years of profligacy in government. When citizens shifted majority of their votes from the PDP after sixteen years to the party that promised to change the way the country has been governed, they wanted to end a model of governance that appeared to privilege enrichment of the tiny political elite over the general welfare of citizens. Undoubtedly, the Resource Curse that is part of the rentier state nurtured in the last fifty years must have produced the regimes of indulgence that the 2015 election results had promised to change. If, as it has become clear, our Manna economy cannot sustain prodigal allowances of the tiny political elite, it stands to reason that the change to an economy based on productivity and taxation will not be able to sustain the extravagant allowances for lawmakers and members of the executive branch of government. It is time for citizens to get more vigilant.

  • The new NASS: old struggle with new armour

    The new NASS: old struggle with new armour

    What happened last Tuesday is worse than mere carpet crossing; it is a coup d’etat against the ruling party, a relic of the old political culture that citizens voted against last April.

    Many of regular readers of this column have bombarded me with questions and requests for comments on the recent election of principal officers of the two houses of legislature. Despite my efforts to wriggle out of discussing this matter until all the facts are in, many of such readers have insisted that my emphasis on the Manifesto of Change in the last few weeks should make it obligatory for me to comment on what appears to them as an assault on change.

    By way of preliminary remarks, those who asked for votes on the promise of change did not include PDP members who eventually got elected on the platform of that party. It is thus pointless for citizens to lose sleep that current and former PDP governors and other representatives in the new National Assembly chose to assist in getting Saraki as President and a leading member of the PDP, Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President. PDP lawmakers have not done anything unusual. What is clear is that the PDP is still very strong in the Senate. Although this should not be an excuse for the leverage demonstrated a few days ago by PDP lawmakers in the new National Assembly, in view of the fact that the majority of the Republicans in the 113th Congress of the U.S. Senate was not any more significant at 53 Democrats to 45 Republicans than that of APC’s 64 to PDP’s 45 in Nigeria’s 8th National Assembly. Yet, it was easy for the Democrats to elect the principal officers of the Senate. The difference between the two contexts was party cohesiveness and discipline.

    If what happened in the National Assembly had been in the days of “PDP Power,” it would not have created tension for many as it has now, given the number of emails I had received since Tuesday. In a period when the safest psychological state was not to expect so that one was not disappointed, nobody would have worried or been worried by what appeared as political tricksterism in the election of principal officers in the national assembly last Tuesday. But in a government – executive and legislature – that came to power on the manifesto of change, it is conceivable that the average newspaper reader would feel disappointed by the behaviour of APC members of the new legislature.

    Citizens have no reason to feel despondent at this point. It is too soon to feel discouraged. Buhari and the APC promised change, and it is logical for citizens to expect clear departure from the political style of the past in the first major action of the APC-controlled legislature. President Buhari may be a reformed or born-again democrat as he was presented during the last campaign. It is not being realistic to expect that all the folks in the APC are democrats in the true sense of the word, given the mass migration of politicians seeking power and recognition to the party in the last one year.

    Without any exaggeration, the APC is a political party that is still unfolding or evolving. As it is today, it is a mix of political views and ideas. And this should be understandable, given its history. It is obvious that the APC is a party that houses ideological factions. If this was not clear before the elections, the events of last Tuesday illustrates graphically that there is diversity of ideological perspectives in the APC, unlike what obtains in the PDP. From its inception, the PDP had shown no apology for being a party of the extreme right ideologically, a conservative political party, despite periodic rhetoric of progressive politics by individual members of the party. PDP was created largely to sustain the governance philosophy and style of the military dictators that midwifed the party. In a study of the governments of Nigeria from colonialism to now, Atul Kohli described in a book STATE-DIRECRED DEVELOPMENT: Political Power and Industrialisation in the Global Periphery those who had governed the country in the post-independence era as ‘personalistic and patrimonial.’ In the last sixteen years, ‘PDP Power’ whether under Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, or Jonathan, was deployed to confirm Kohli’s classification of Nigerian rulers by ensuring that each PDP government in the last sixteen years built on the culture of corruption that is generally the result of a governance driven solely by personalistic and patrimonial interests.

    With respect to the APC, the party ideologically houses mainly centrists sandwiched by a thin layer of rightists and leftists. This amorphous situation was compounded by the migration of members of the New PDP to the APC shortly after the formation of the party. What played out as lack of cohesiveness or discipline with respect to the election of principal officers of the national assembly last Tuesday is the effect of the party’s ideological amorphousness. Those who came to the APC out of dissatisfaction with the culture of a political party besotted to power sharing should be expected to have as much interest in sharing of the plums of office, as those they met in the party. It is thus not bizarre that members of the party that lost out in the primaries to select the presidential ticket and others who believe they too had worked hard to bring victory to the party in their respective states became passionate about their desire for office in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Ambition in this instance is not a political crime or moral lapse.

    What is absurd is the failure of the APC to prevent any of its members from negotiating the interest and right of the majority party away through an ugly form of horse trading with the PDP, to the extent that in the name of geopolitical balance a current PDP member was given the position of Deputy Senate President as a compensation for the PDP’s decision to give the position of Senate President to a visible member of the APC, regardless of the choice of majority of his colleagues in the APC. In a political culture that focuses on power, there is bound to be politicians that act solely in the interest of obtaining power from the electoral victory of their party. But invoking the principle of geopolitical balance to justify what happened on Tuesday is diversionary. There are many other more straightforward and respectable ways to achieve geopolitical balance.

    On the question on the implications of this action for the manifesto of change, it is too late to tell. However, it signals the possibility of other conspiracies between a section of APC and the PDP to scuttle executive policies that may be in the interest of citizens but not to the advantage of ideologues of personalism and patrimonialism in both APC and PDP. It is unlikely that the new alliance between some APC members and the entire PDP lawmakers can threaten the president with frivolous impeachment. For that to happen, APC will have collapsed as a party. However, executive bills sent to the Assembly stand the risk of being delayed or deformed, should APC leadership fail to find strategies for containing its errant members.

    As for whether this action can destroy the manifesto of change, especially from the executive side of the federal government, President Buhari himself will have to have changed his mind on his electoral pledge to end the politics of corruption and personal interests that endeared voters to him two months ago. Having promised the nation and the international community two months ago to move the country away from policies that promote the interest of the elite to those that address the problems of people at the grassroots, he should have nothing to fear about conspiracy between some members of the party on which he got elected and those of the party he defeated in the last presidential election. Once majority of citizens are solidly behind good policies of Buhari, regardless of how uncomfortable such policies make politicians beholden to self-promoting political practices, there is nothing to fear.

    But there is a need for concerted efforts on the part of leadership of the APC to make the party more cohesive ideologically. What happened last Tuesday is worse than mere carpet crossing; it is a coup d’etat against the ruling party, a relic of the old political culture that citizens voted against last April. One lesson that nobody can miss is that the strategy employed to gain power from a non-performing political party may not be enough to sustain a new party in power. Party leaders need to remember a Yoruba proverb: Bi inako baa tan l’aso, ejekii tan l’eekan (for as long as lice hold on to or reside in its owner’s clothes, there will continue to be blood on the owner’s fingers resulting from the owner’s efforts to fight the lice). The political fabric of the country is still replete with lice and what happened last Tuesday in the National Assembly is a graphic illustration of this malaise.

  • Parastatals and the ethic of change

    Parastatals and the ethic of change

    Allowing the FRSC to legislate compulsory use of speed limiter by motorists, particularly private motorists is one way of over outsourcing governance and in the process shortchanging the democratic process

    Parastatals were in the news most of the time during Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency. At some point, there were complaints that many parastatals, especially those with the power to collect revenue failed to remit such revenues to the federation account as and when due. At another time, it was the sheer number of agencies designed to assist the government in the governing process that caused concerns. To address this, a special committee under the chairmanship of Steve Orosanye was created to suggest ways of rightsizing and downsizing the plethora of agencies. The committee made its recommendations and very little (if any) was adopted. So soon in the life of the Buhari government, parastatals are coming back to the radar.

    One of such agencies is the Federal Road Safety Commission, an agency with its origin in the vision of a stellar patriot who brought the attention of the nation to the needless and avoidable deaths on the country’s roads. As this vision was born during the era of military dictatorship, the FRSC became a child of military creation via the mechanism of decree during the military presidency of General Ibrahim Babangida. The decree that established this agency was transformed in the post-military era into the current Federal Road Safety Commission Act of 2007.

    Today’s piece is not to argue against the existence of the FRSC. On the whole, the FRSC has been a useful agency, even though it came into being on account of the failure of the country’s law enforcement system. The birth and nurturing of FRSC is, though, the product of a fertile imagination, it would not have been necessary if the police force had performed its duty with respect to traffic management creditably. But the focus today is on how to save FRSC from overgrowth, particularly in terms of the power to make legislations that affect citizens without proper consultation with citizens and those citizens had elected as their lawmakers.

    The latest announcement from the FRSC is to the effect that the Commission, in collaboration with the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) and the Nigerian Police, is in the process of making it mandatory for citizens to have speed limiters on their vehicles. According to the Commission, the rationale for this move is the conclusion that about 50% of road accidents in 2014 resulted from speed. Another cause of accident in the words of the agency is the continued use of “expired and used tyres” by motorists. Without doubt, the increasing number of accidents on the country’s highways should trouble all patriots and in particular an agency with the raison d’etre of eliminating or minimizing road accidents. But both the FRSC and the federal government should ensure that a policy with otherwise good intentions does not by way of the law of unintended consequence become a facilitator of corruption and abuse of citizens’ rights as well as of the democratic process.

    The political moment of promised change and renewal is an appropriate one to look again at the multitude of agencies governing on behalf of the elected governments at the federal and subnational levels. Short of radical transformation of the police system currently in place, it is more likely than not that there will be need for an agency like the FRSC for some time to come. But the new government must not over delegate its lawmaking functions to agencies that are not elected by citizens to perform such functions. Allowing the FRSC to legislate compulsory use of speed limiter by motorists, particularly private motorists is one way of over outsourcing governance and in the process shortchanging the democratic process.

    Looking through the published functions of the FRSC on its website, it is clear that it has “the responsibility to recommend works and devices designed to eliminate or minimize accidents on the highways and to make regulations in pursuance of any of the functions assigned to the Corps by or under the FRSC Establishment Act of 2007.” What is not clear in the recent announcement on the installation of speed limiters on every vehicle is whether this is a recommendation to the governments or a fiat from the Commission. Whatever this policy is designed to be, it is necessary to have a public debate on the issue of mandatory use of speed limiters by individual motorists and by taking the issue to the National Assembly before it is enforced on the highways.

    Similar regulations have gone unnoticed by citizens in the past. For example, making it mandatory for motorists to have in their vehicles so-called ‘C-Caution’ device to alert other motorists about a stalled vehicle on the road has more or less become a normal part of the culture of driving on our highways. However, citizens have not failed to complain that this regulation is passing the buck on the part of government. In cases of good road design that includes having a functioning shoulder for each highway, it would not have been necessary for motorists to spend meagre foreign exchange on imported road caution gadgets. Most motorists outside Nigeria do not know what ‘C-Caution’ device is. Another one is the moribund regulation on obtaining special permit to operate on the road vehicles with tainted glass. Except on rural roads, both the police and FRSC workers appear to have gotten tired of asking motorists to provide such permits, largely because citizens have resisted this arbitrary regulation.Another one is the requirement that drivers wishing to renew their license have to provide a certificate of attendance at a driving institute. In many FRSC driving license issuing centres, drivers are even told which driver education institutes to obtain their clearance from! Citizens have been going along with all these regulations but not without complaints.

    The unfolding effort to make it compulsory for motorists to install speed limiters on their vehicles is similar to the regulation on ‘C-Caution.’Except for speed limiters installed by manufacturers during the building of a vehicle, individual speed limiter purchased and put in vehicles by drivers is not known to be effective in any country. First, such device can be (and is often) ignored by motorists, as it chimes and stops after some time. Secondly, this is passing the responsibility of government to citizens. Most of our roads do not even have visible speed limit signs. There are no speed detecting radars on our highways to assist highway police to track motorists who exceed speed limit and to caution motorists while they drive, as it is often the case in other countries. The agency may achieve its objectives better by also advising government on providing proper infrastructure including filling potholes before they become gorges on highways.

    More fundamentally, how democratic is it for an agency to create regulations (legislations more or less) that impact on citizens’ property rights? Speed limiters are optional accessories that have nothing to do with driver’s capacity to comply with traffic codes, especially announced speed limits. Good roads, speed radars, and even installation of cameras to check and issue tickets for exceeding speed limits are better and less cumbersome ways to ensure that motorists drive safely and within speed limit.

    Over regulation has a tendency to be counter-productive. Making it compulsory for commercial and non-commercial drivers to install speed limiters on their vehicles smacks of avoidable over regulation and an un-necessary punishment of safe drivers.The new government—executive and legislative—needs to review the functions and powers delegated to agencies. Non-elected administrators should have the power to make laws. In other countries that have considered ways of enforcing speed limits, their legislators, not administrators in parastatals, have initiated discussions that have included public debate on such matters. The culture of outsourcing legislation to agencies needs to come to an end under a Change Regime.The media needs to get interested in interpretative reporting of activities of parastatals while citizens need to insist on proper debate of issues that may affect them. Change is a process that requires all hands on deck.

  • Our season of forgiveness?

    Our season of forgiveness?

    “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 the decree of a Truth and Reconciliation commission. In truth, what has been going 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 must have been 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 governance style.

    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, the outgoing president 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, ShehuShagari, 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, as opening the Pandora box would be too risky for the country’s stability.

    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 also spoke passionately about how they believed that they must have offended some people in the way they performed their duties. Similarly at the state level, many governors do not want to be left out of the ritual of calling for forgiveness. For example, the outgoing governor of Benue State is the most vocal of such governors. In his own case, Gabriel Suswan was specific about those whose forgiveness he needs. It is his civil servants and the lapse he has acknowledged is his inability to pay the state’s civil servants their salaries for months. And his reason for this is the nation-wide economic challenges facing Nigeria as a whole. Despite this challenge, he was able to donate some vehicles for his successor, to ease transportation during the period of transition. Some would wonder why Suswan would need to apologize for problems beyond his control. But Governor EmmanuelUduaghan of Delta State is the most specific about who needs to forgive him. He is calling 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 more subtle way to ask for forgiveness.

    While in the context of Nigeria, calls by outgoing political office holders for forgiveness and understanding at the end of their tenure is not totally unexpected. It should be expected that those looking forward to come back to power in 2019 would need to be in good terms with most of their supporters on their way to what they see as going on sabbatical 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 the next job or contract. It is the call for forgiveness for Boko Haram by senior political, cultural, judicial, and military leaders that sounds rather unusual.

    Many powerful leaders from the North and a few from the Southwest who attended a conference organized by Professor Ibrahim Gambari’s Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy, and Development (SCDDD) rose from a conference in Abuja with a communique that called on the new President to grant general amnesty to the men who had killed thousands of innocent Nigerians in churches, mosques, markets, and motor parks. It is hard to miss the voices at the conference: the country’s leading international diplomat, Gambari, former Chief Justice of the federation, Mohammed Uwais, one-time secretary to the federal government under President UmaruYar’Adua, BabaganaKingibe, the outgoing National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, retired MajorGeneral Ishola Williams, and many other individuals with name recognition in the country.

    All of these are known patriots. It is thus hard to ignore whatever they say in respect of an organization that had almost torn the country apart. No doubt, the call of these gentlemen for forgiveness is different from those of those vacating power in that the call from SCDDD sounds altruistic. However, it is amazing that such calls are coming at a time when nobody seems to be sure what the motive and agenda of the faces behind Boko Haram are. It is also not clear how much study or research those pleading for immediate amnesty for Boko Haram members have conducted on the terrorist group and its activities. Most Nigerians need to know if Boko Haram members have qualified in their killing and maiming of innocent Nigerians for the status of political criminals.

    There was a time President Jonathan used to harp on the fact that Boko Haram was designed to make him fail as president by making the country ungovernable for him. Not many people believed him. Many thought he was looking for excuses for not wanting to leave office. Others countered by saying that Boko Haram came about because of decades of underdevelopment in the North. Is Boko Haram now being considered by the SCDDD as being similar to Niger Delta militants who carried guns in order to press home their demands for economic justice or what they call their own share of petroleum money? Is the Savannah Centre convinced that underdevelopment in the North had created a sufficient condition for what Dr. Junaid Mohammed rightly called crime against humanity? Is it not a little hasty to ask the new president to grant wholesale pardon to an organization that had pushed Nigeria into hiring mercenaries from South Africa and begging other countries to fund neighboring countries to assist Nigeria to fight? Is a terrorist group that has publicly affiliated with ISIS one to be given unsolicited amnesty?

    Just like departing political office holders asking for personal forgiveness, so would organizations like the Savannah Centre need to engage in truth finding before pleading for acts of forgiveness. It is always better when full disclosure necessitates or justifies forgiveness than when pardon is offered before the causes and effects of wrongdoing are identified.

  • Implications of change manifesto (6)

    Implications of change manifesto (6)

    The Buhari administration, and by extension, those of all the governors and local governments of his party, must be subjected to monitoring of implementation of policies at all times

    The focus of last Sunday’s column was on the President-elect. Suggestions were made for his consideration as he prepares to assume the mantle of change in a country that had experienced more failure than success in the last few decades. The column reminded the new president that sustaining the integrity of the manifesto of change, upon which majority of Nigerians voted for him and his party, requires conciliatory attitude to those who did not vote for him. It also calls for an ever-present readiness on his part to restore national security, justice, rule of law, development-oriented economy, and an unflagging enthusiasm to fight corruption, the mother of the failure of the Nigerian State in the last four or more decades. Today’s piece, the last in the series on implications of Buhari/APC’s manifesto of change, is on the citizenry.

    It is instructive that political pundits and average citizens have started to acknowledge that Buhari/APC’s change manifesto was even before the election in tandem with citizens’ hunger for change, a complementarity that madeBuhari/APC’s victory over Jonathan/PDP seemingly predictable, once the APC primaries picked Buhari as the party’s presidential candidate. While INEC deserves to be commended for taking all risks to make the 2015 elections more free and fair than previous elections, it must be remembered that it is the decision of the people to exercise their sovereignty to choose the leader they prefer that, in the final analysis, gave Buhari and his party the electoral victory and the chance to change the culture of governance in the country in fundamental ways.

    The old saying that “citizens get the government they deserve” does not end with the power of citizens as voters to put a candidate or party of their choice in power as and when they feel they need to do so. In other words, citizens’ sovereignty does not terminate with electing a new government; it also includes an abiding obligation on the part of citizens to hold their leaders accountable for their policies and their conduct in office. Resolving to remain active in public life in the post-election era is the best way for citizens to assist the new government to fulfill its promise to bring political, social, and economic change to the polity and society. Any form of complacency on the part of the electorate or any attitude reminiscent of the feeling by voters that “we have done our part by voting them into power” can encourage bad behavior on the part of political leaders in power.

    In specific terms, there is much that citizens can do to support the process of change and also to protect the new government as it makes new policies capable of producing change in the polity, economy, and society.General Buhari’s integrity and love of probity in public life has become common knowledge to the extent that citizens believe he is capable of bringing out a rabbit from his hat with respect to most of the problems facing the country. As honest and resolute as he may be, he still needs the patience of citizens as he embarks on his mission of change as from next week.

    For change to be meaningful and effective, it is not only the way Nigeria has been governed that has to be changed; so must the sloppy attitude induced in citizens to public life over the years by public officers and civil servants who were deficit in terms of public spiritedness also requires change. Citizens in the workplace and in public space have also for decades been habituated to the culture of nonchalance,personalism, and patronage. Because of uncaring governments over the years, citizens have learnt how to feel unperturbed with conducting themselves as if they are local governments unto to themselves, such that many frown at paying their fair share of taxes on the basis that such revenue is more likely to be stolen by public officials and their bureaucrats. In the context of decline in revenue from petroleum, citizens need to perform enthusiastically their primary duty to government, prompt payment of tax.

    However, they need to invoke the principle of he who pays the piper monitors the relevance of the tune by becoming enthusiastic about their other role: engaging public officials and political leaders on issues of national, state, or community interest. The Buhari administration, and by extension, those of all the governors and local governments of his party, must be subjected to monitoring of implementation of policies at all times. It is too risky to stay aloof and wait for another four years to invoke citizen power in a democracy. Individuals and groups should play the role of civil society (putting pressure on their leaders to do right), without necessarily imbibing the careerism and entrepreneurship of what has become in the global periphery professionalization of civil society organizations or what critics in many African countries refer to as NGOISM, belief in the possibility of making a career in and with non-governmental organizations, particularly those that live off external funding.

    Despite the absence of triumphalism on the part of General Buhari and some of his party leaders, it is common knowledge that the traditional and social media are overflowing with triumphalist pronouncements. It is, for example, puerile for any group or party leaders to engage in self-celebration about how they won the last election while emphasis should be on how to use the victory to advantage. It is common knowledge that political parties in democracies win elections because citizens vote for them. Party enthusiasts who have to beat their chests for winning should keep such self-celebration in-house. Ordinarily, it should be the losing party that needs to console themselves with stories of how they lost. What supporters need to learn now is how to maintain constant vigilance and support of their party men and women in power as from May 29 while always respecting rights of those with different political views and affiliations who have to play the role of official and informal opposition. The focus should be on change, not on distractions.

    In the framework of separation of powers, it is not just the executive at every level of governance that citizens need to watch. They also need to monitor the legislature and the judiciary, to ensure they maintain the independence required of each branch of government. During the decades of military dictatorship, citizens had come to see government only in terms of those who perform executive functions. This mentality was carried into the post-military era to the extent that the legislature at all levels in the last sixteen years was virtually left on its own.

    Otherwise, how could lawmakers have been able to get away with giving themselves higher salaries than their counterparts in richer and more advanced countries of the world? How could lawmakers at the federal level get away with adding executive functions to their role in the name of constituency projects that generally got monetized for them? Despite receiving generous constituency allowances, most legislators at the center did not have functioning offices in their constituencies and had no consultative sessions with their constituents. And despite the provision in the constitution for citizens to call their elected representatives in the National Assembly to order, this did not happen in sixteen years. Citizens have to hold their lawmakers accountable by engaging them or protesting against them, if they try to avoid such engagement. No state governor should be allowed to avoid conducting local government elections as and when due, just as no governor should be allowed to tamper with funds earmarked for local governments.

    Finally, the absence of work ethics and general lack of discipline on the part of workers during regimes of self-interest need to worry every citizen as the country enters the moment of change. For too long, Nigeria had lived off easy money from petroleum to the point that the average citizen has come to believe in miracles, in the possibility that working hard and well is not a prerequisite for promotion and recognition in public service. Using having a job in government to ask for bribe before providing service to citizens will damage the reputation of the party of change. With the new regime, citizens must insist on restoration of the culture of honest delivery of public service, if they want the ideology of change to improve quality of life for all in our new country.

    Concluded

  • Implications of change manifesto (5)

    Implications of change manifesto (5)

    Apart from the obvious “wetin-you-carry and wetin-you-have-for-us” police culture on inter-state roads and urban streets, the prevalent culture in the current police force is the sale of police service at all levels

    While a ‘pure’ neopatrimonial state is probably rare in the real world, the case of Nigeria comes close, in terms of all the characteristics noted: use of state resources for private aggrandizement, widespread corruption (famously squandering and misusing Nigeria’s abundant oil resources), bureaucratic incompetence, and having the state disconnected from society, making it difficult for state elites to mobilize internal resource and in turn enhancing their dependency on the vicissitudes of oil revenues. State-led development lacking purpose or capacity thus repeatedly turned into development disasters.

    The political economy of sovereign Nigeria constitutes a sad and tragic story. In spite of immense natural resource-based wealth, common Nigerians are probably not much better off early in the twenty-first century than they were at the time of independence. Failure to sustain economic growth, especially in manufacturing and industry, has been an important ingredient ofthis overall failure.—AtulKohli

    The focus of today’s piece in the series on Implications of Change Manifesto is on the President-elect himself. I have deliberately opened today’s column with a quotation from AtulKohli, author of State-directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery.In my little research on General Buhari, I have been told that he is one of the country’s former heads of state who always visited bookstores anytime he was out of the country to fill one of his boxes with books to read.I would therefore not be surprised if he has read Kohli’s book. The country’s situation is likely to be worse when he assumes office than it was in 2004 when Kohli documented his assessment of the country. As many pundits in both traditional and social media have already acknowledged, General Buhari is coming back to govern Nigeria at a time that the condition of the country may be worse than it was in 1984 when he first came in as military dictator.

    As the President-elect has already acknowledged, he is now a democrat, as distinct from his status of military dictator three decades ago.  In addition, like his predecessors and successors in the game of authoritarian rule, he ruled the country as a believer in unitary model of governance and as a passionate centralist. He gave evidence that he believed that political unity of Nigeria and the belief of the average Nigerian in the territorial oneness of the country depended solely on running a country in which the center commanded every other part in the manner of a colonial master versus a colonized territory.

    But his pronouncements during the campaign and after the election confirm his theory that whatever he did in 1984 was in response to the character and challenge of the time. There is no doubt that he has come to accept the dynamic nature of human experience and constructions. For a man of his experience and age to have accepted or preferred to run on the manifesto of change, no further evidence is needed for the average citizen to start viewing General Buhari as a democrat.

    With his statements (reported in the media) that he has no constitutional obligation to accept nominations for ministerial appointments from governors, he is already departing from the business-as-usual model that made everybody in political office to see his or her position as an opportunity to manifest feudal privileges. If a person is elected a governor, consequentially, he/she is not elected to become the sole ruler of a fiefdom. What is the logic in the PDP arrangement that expects governors to nominate candidates for ministers while governors do not accept nominations for commissionerships from local government chairs?  Stating publicly that he has no desire to get involved in who becomes Senate President or House Speaker and expressing his readiness to work with whomever the National Assembly chooses for these positions, General Buhari gives additional evidence of his democratic credentials. The Aso Rock of General Obasanjo and Dr. Jonathan appointed aggressive lobbyists for these positions in the past, without worrying about what damage that line of action did to the principle of separation of powers.

    General Buhari is not only coming to power at a time that the country is on its knee economically, he is also assuming presidential power when the polity is in the abyss morally, at a time when it is common knowledge that trillions of dollars had been stolen from the nation’s purse in the past fifty years. Having already promised Nigerians and the international community of his commitment to the primacy of the rule of law, it seems to be a given that the President-elect will put an end to the culture of impunity that had prevailed for about sixteen years. He should also not become vindictive because of the smear campaigndirected at him in the days before the elections. That majority of Nigerians preferred to give him the mandate to govern them, despite the dirty campaign by his opponents, should have been enough compensation for him for weathering the storm of insults.

    But Mr. President-elect needs to be reminded that he has so much to change, if Nigeria is to be liberated from the wilderness of underdevelopment, poverty, and instability. Most of the institutions he is inheriting have been denatured or damaged. For example, he needs to know that the police system he is inheriting is as corrupt as any other sector of the polity. Apart from the obvious “wetin-you-carry and wetin-you-have-for-us” police culture on inter-state roads and urban streets, the prevalent culture in the current police force is the sale of police service at all levels. Those who witnessed the election in Ekiti, Osun last year, and in many parts of the country last month are not likely to hesitate to add that the secret police is as morally compromised as the rest of the polity. Even the so-called Road Marshalls created to reduce accidents on the roads by enforcing traffic codes are not any better than their counterparts in police uniform.

    It is also part of the folklore of corruption that all agencies including those charged with giving approvals to institutions and academic programmes are not immune from Nigeria’s brand of bribery and corruption. The prevalent folk belief is that if the new president sets out to jail all corrupt citizens, most of the houses in the country will have to be converted to jail houses. Similarly, customs men on inter-state roads that are distant from border towns often serve as illegal toll collectors. There is no doubt that leadership by example is going to change over 50% of corrupt citizens to good citizens, but the General has to have a  bold and workablestrategy to deal with the brave and incorrigible corrupt men and women in the public service. The security service system in its entirety needs to be re-structured and given a new orientation about public good and public service.

    More importantly, the President-elect needs to be firm about reducing the country’s recurrent expenditure. Too many perquisites for public servants and political officers have to be reviewed while unjustifiably high salaries for legislators need to be pruned down. The model of over pampering lawmakers and senior public servants grew out of a culture of gastronomic response to themanna from the bowels of the Niger Delta when leaders had no vision of governance other than personal enrichment. There is no reason why retired permanent secretaries at any level of government must be getting free generators and free diesel to run them after retiring from service, especially in a country that pays 18,000 naira as minimum wage, which, we are told, many governors can no longer pay on time.

    Finally, while the President-elect should (as expected) obey the spirit of the oath of  his office to protect the constitution, he needs to be friendly to those who call for overhauling of the 1999 Constitution, especially those who demand re-federalization of the country as a reliable way to promote sustainable federal democratic governance. The demand for de-militarization of the polity through a popular review of the constitution imposed on the country by military dictators, like commitment to fight corruption, improve national security, provide enabling infrastructure, diversify the economy, and create an education system that promotes access, quality, and relevance, ought to be seen as part of the direly needed change of which decades of military and civilian personalistic and patrimonial governance had robbed the country.

    To be continued