Category: Ropo Sekoni

Ropo Sekoni

I am an Afro-optimist. I am sure our generations are now exiting but your generation with your eyes open to what is happening in China, India with internet, you have to ask our leaders to be more accountable. That is what we don’t do right now. You should say, enough is enough—Olabiyi Yai

Many of the factors needed to turn a ‘pre-schooler’ into a transnational adult were around Labiyi Yai in his childhood that began in 1939. Such factors included—a father and mother raised in a proud cultural environment of  the Yoruba Kingdom of Shabe in Dahomey (now Republic of Benin) and a family of traders with the Yoruba nation then sandwiched by two Western colonial masters from France and Great Britain, a rare exposure to three languages, French, English, and Yoruba, a colonial space circumscribed by the philosophy of assimilation designed to erase the ancestral culture of the colonized; and a hypnotic popular culture of the Yoruba of western Nigeria abandoned by Indirect Rule to its own devices.

That Labiyi finally became an agent of change and continuity and a builder of cultural bridges later in life could not have surprised those who grew up with him in Dahomey. But I did not, because I did not meet him until I came to an African literature conference at the University of Ibadan in the 1970s and at the instance of a common friend, late Femi Ojo-Ade, a fellow professor of romance languages like Yai.

The bridge he built throughout his adult life was one to carry culture across space within Africa and between Africa and the Americas in particular. Speaking about his early academic interest in linguistics and the study of Yoruba language in addition to the other languages he commanded;  French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, Yai as a young boy recognized the cultural challenge of being born into a family divided by colonial geography: “I was conscious of the fact that part of our people were in Nigeria and that some of my cousins learned English. I wanted to learn the language of the whites who colonized my cousins on the other side.” Yai’s writings did not include how much cultural geography he knew at that time as a boy, but his choice of Spanish as a major subject he chose to study “opened the path” to a future career for which he became a major cultural reformer in Africa and beyond.

At first, Yai experienced many avoidable difficulties because of his preference for political independence for Benin and other West African countries. He was jailed for 45 days for his pro-independence activities as vice president of Faculty of Arts Students Union and for criticizing African political leaders who wanted to make a one-party system of multipartyism, even before independence. Even though the French colonial government would not give him a scholarship to do post-graduate research work in Cuba, for fear that he would bring revolutionary fervor back to West Africa, Yai remained steadfast in his passion to build cultural roads between West Africa and Cuba and other Latin-American countries with African presence.

He once during recent visits to him in Calavi reminded me of an old Yoruba proverb: Onakorokoro ni agbado n gba wonu ejo, ejo kii j’agbado sugbon o nje eku, eku si n je agbado (Snakes eat maize indirectly by swallowing rats which eat maize). The journey to reach Cuba was longer for Yai than it should have been, but it came at the end, now on Yai’s terms, to facilitate connections between old and new Cuba.

What Yai once characterized as the transitive and intransitive use of culture explains his special belief in the power of culture as a means of transformation, beyond the ease of passage for an average transnational person.  He could, like many African intellectuals in the diaspora been content with using his transnationality for infinite acquisition that proximity to consumerism encouraged for what Nigerian-Americans fondly referred to as the Second Tier, as a code for African migrants to the Americas during post-colonial era in Africa and the Americas.

As he aged, his academic and political goal to further join Africa to its diaspora—first since the 1600s and second since the 1960s continued to wax stronger and stronger, to the extent that he added Portuguese to his repertoire of languages, to enable him carry out his duties in Brazil, the country with the second largest concentration of people of African ancestry on the globe, after Nigeria.

Apart from Yai’s reputation as an excellent teacher of language and culture; his international reputation as a researcher of which many people have spoken across the globe since his passing, one other area that can create lessons for younger academics and public intellectuals, especially in Africa, is Yai’s cultural engagement through international cultural outreach. One Fon proverb that Yai mentioned in his discussion of Dahomean Narratives by the Herskovits:, one Fon proverb: “Only a hero can successfully cross borders,” could have referred to himself without intending to do so, if he had not been the incurably humble person that he was. The proverb assesses Yai’s many contributions to African culture within and outside the continent during his travel and sojourn in the Americas—from the Caribbean to Latin America.

Just as Yai used his years of studying and working in Nigeria to expand the resources of Yoruba language through his Yoruba-English dictionary, so did he use his stay at the University of Florida to make a strategic cultural use of his Spanish and Yoruba in Cuba and of the newest language in his repertoire, Portuguese in Latin America. He collaborated with scholars and producers of culture in these countries to enrich secular and spiritual use of Yoruba in Latin America, to the extent that writings on Ifa today even acquires as much as, if not more, energy in Latin America than in Africa.

Though, the political work that went into inter-continental study of Yoruba started with the decision by the founders of University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University) to establish the first department of Portuguese at the University of Ife, the recognition of the strategic value of increasing multilingual and multicultural literacy of educated Nigerians by such could not have found more profitable resonance than it did in Yai. And no other higher education institution could have reaped more benefits from the doggedness and his associate, Femi Ojo-Ade to collaborate to assist in the intransitive and transitive spread of Yoruba language in Latin America.

Yai’s life-long transnationality enriched it multicultural competence to the extent that he lived in many countries in which he had opportunity to practice his profession for the purpose of enriching the cultural and spiritual fulfillment of millions of people in different countries and regions of world. A principle he fondly described as “helping local cultural traditions survive around the world in the face of globalization.” It is, therefore, remarkable that one of his most memorable demands for a reformed UNESCO while he was chair of the organization, was an insistent call for elevation of UNESCO into a global think tank funded and equipped to provide leadership for an inclusive foundation for a ‘global governance ethic.’

Let me close this public eulogy for a deep thinker and active doer with snippets from the last discussions I had with him during his last visit to Akure for a conference on Fagunwa to mark the 85th birthday anniversary of Wole Soyinka. At Akure, I broached the topic of restructuring in Nigeria in a Nigerian newspaper article by someone who said he could not understand what Nigerians meant by restructuring. Yai responded in his characteristic low and yet sonorous tone, “RS, you can see how unthinking some of those who rule our continent are. Even the culture they use every day in their homes is protean and grows or changes daily. People who choose to close their minds about improvement of culture—religious, social, economic, political, and technological are blocked from self-improvement and a sense of self-preservation, regardless of whatever advantages they may get from the status quo at any given time. It is not only Nigeria that needs restructuring, the entire sub-Saharan Africa does (A paraphrase).

Over our last glass of wine, Yai quoted copiously from an interview he gave to a local newspaper while he was chairman of department of African and Asian Languages & Literatures at the University of Florida, in relation to his growth and integration of Africa: “It (integration) is meaningful because it is always on the agenda. Existing States today have not been divided up by Africans themselves. The borders are artificial and these States are not even markets. With 8 million people, some of these States are not even the size of an average Chinese city. If, selfishly, we create walls between these entities that we have not created, we harm our people who, moreover, do not hesitate to ignore the artificial borders and cross them without any restraint.” It is instructive that Yai gave this interview about 20 years before the ongoing closure of the Nigeria-Benin border!

Labiyi, thank you for making yourself a fitting site for the meeting of theory and praxis towards development of culture I many parts of the world. REST IN PEACE.

By Ropo Sekoni

Under one of the country’s military dictators surfaced a folk political theory that has endured even till today. The facile theory is that Nigerians have an uncanny ability to forget whatever bad policies made against them by their government. The theorist went further to add that all the political leader needs to do is to be patient to wait for angry and dissatisfied Nigerians to forget the bad policy that had irked citizens, after which the same political leader could add new bad policies.

And despite many years of digital culture that supports infinite memory for everything on any of the devices from a mobile phone to clouds for the internet, Nigerians are still believed by many politicians to still be at the risk of collective amnesia vis-à-vis matters about which they need to insist on actions from their political leaders to save them from talking,  living, and moving in circles.

Today’s column is to wonder and worry if Nigerians have not done sufficient analysis on federalist governance, without needing mere repetitions of the same motifs and themes that have been in circulation for about twenty years—be they broad ones like restructuring or small ones like recognizing the imperative of a multiple police system in a federation. Many of the issues on national political discourse had been in circulation long before the end of military rule when the call for Sovereign National Conference (SNC) was made by Alao Aka-Bashorun to enable the peoples of Nigeria establish a new Union Charter that can move the country away from the stasis that decades of military rule had established.

Even two decades after the exit of military rule, the 1999 Constitution designed to sustain military ruler’s replacement of federalism with centralism has remained intact. In the meantime, the same constitution has continued to fuel demands from sections of the country for a new and more federal constitution. On the other hand, the same document has attracted praise from others. It is thus clear that unlike the 1963 Constitution, not all parts of the country are happy with the 1999 Constitution, thus indicating a conflict which requires critical response from the president.

Today’s question is whether we have not talked long and loud enough to definitively address the two opposing positions on how to make Nigeria profitably governable for all. As things are, it is self-delusion to say that the country is currently enjoying the amount of peace it needs to make progress. What is now known nation-wide as security deficit is already being felt in every part of the country. At first, it was the southern section that used to complain about terrorism from herdsmen or kidnappers. But now, it is the ruling class in the south and the north that draw the attention of the federal government to the ubiquity of terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, cattle rustlers, etc.

Just a few days ago, the Sultan of Sokoto spoke up about insecurity in the land—north and south. Hear him: “People think North is safe but that assumption is not true. In fact, it’s the worst place to be in this country because bandits go around in the villages, households, and markets with their AK 47 and nobody is challenging them…They stop at the market, buy things, pay and collect change, with their weapons openly displayed. These are facts, I know because I am at the centre of it…We have to sincerely and seriously find solutions to the problem, otherwise, we will find ourselves soon, in a situation where we would lose sleep because of insecurity.”

One week later over the mourning of the killing of over 40 people by Boko Haram terrorists in Bornu, the Sultan also observed as follows: “Nigerians have become so much terrified, as nowhere is safe; the home, the farms and the roads. Bandits now rule in many communities, they set rules that must be obeyed…For how long would we continue to live a life in fear? For how long can we continue to wait in vain? For how long can we continue to condemn acts of terrorism without any concerted efforts in ending it?”

Even governors, who are otherwise addressed as chief security officers without authority over security officers in their states, also spoke up recently about the precariousness  of security across the country: “We cannot bring back the people we have lost in the last few days but if we do not take the necessary steps, the entire nation will be consumed by this insurgency.”

More recently, the two wings of the National Assembly, who until recently have jointly received from many citizens the nickname of ’uncritical supporters’ of the president on his federalist governance, are also itching to speak with the him about insecurity in the entire country.

Even colleagues of traditional rulers in Ondo State, who had been killed or kidnapped, have also complained about rising insecurity in the country. Ordinary citizens too have complained ad nauseam about the effeteness of the existing police system and the need to reform it and make law enforcement more user friendly for citizens by yielding the space of each state to the government in the state to police, in addition to a reformed version of a central police to address intelligence about crime.

With rise in citizens’ complaints about poor security and ineffective law enforcement system and torrents of demands for new national attention for reform in the security sector, now reinforced by traditional rulers and elected governors, what forces could be holding President Buhari back from setting to work on governance and security system reform? Whatever could have prevented the president from returning to his 2015 manifesto line of “ devolving power to the states and entrenching federalist spirit in the constitution,” there doesn’t seem to be anything serious enough to take precedence over security and harmony, which are required to sustain peaceful development here and elsewhere.

How additional evidence of strong divisions in the country over the structure of governance including security of life and property should we wait for, before organizing a national referendum and state referendum on what citizens desire in respect of how best to govern Nigeria as a multicultural society?

It is important for political leaders to note that values and visions of people across the globe have changed noticeably in the last three decades. Identity politics on the part of political leaders as well as on the part of ordinary citizens who are expected to live by rules created by politicians has been on the rise recently. The challenge before leaders of multiethnic federations is enthusiastic management of conflict whenever they arise. For example, states that have the most radical federal constitution in Africa are now embroiled in a war of words and deeds in Ethiopia over matters of self-determination. A favorite habitat for warlords is a state with noticeable security failure or countries where leaders and citizens fight over constitutions instead of dialoguing and reaching mature compromises on thorny constitutional matters.

One way to know how divided the Nigeria is over important matters of state—governance architecture, police systems, soft and hard security matters—is for the president in collaboration with each of the 36 governors to authorize through their legislatures nation-wide referendum or state-by-state referendum to find out what citizens in each region feels about restructuring the country’s governance and re-making its constitution.

Friends of our country who observe that Nigeria is too big to fail or break are real friends. There are too many Nigerians to be driven out of the country by terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, etc. On the contrary, a well-managed Nigeria as Africa’s largest multiethnic state and one of the largest multicultural democracies in the world will also have a lot to teach the world. Democracy is not only a game of numbers; it is also a culture that thrives on negotiation and compromise among diverse perspectives. As philosophers are wont to say, enough analysis has been done about the problems of unitary rule in Nigeria, the challenge now is how to change the problems thrown up by de-federalization of the polity by military rule over many decades.

By Ropo Sekoni

Since the acknowledgement by President Muhammadu Buhari of the assistance from traditional rulers at recent meetings with Emirs, Obas, Obis, Obongs, in their capacity as stakeholders, new ideas are surfacing almost imperceptibly from individuals and groups lobbying for return of doses of Indirect Rule into the country’s nascent elective governance mode. Like many policies that come upon the country without proper study and debate between citizens and those they have elected to govern them, special care needs to be taken before lawmakers are pressured to change the character of Nigeria’s republicanism.

There is enough confusion or contradiction that Nigeria answers to the name of a republic while it also contains thousands of unelected rulers. There is no good reason to turn traditional rulers into constitutionalized local government or statewide chairmen or a new line of modern administrators.

Given the rise in mutual admiration between leaders of republican governance and traditional rulers since the meetings across the country over the federal government’s report to selected stakeholders about #EndSARS protest, there has been a resurgence of new energy about the need find additional space for the country’s traditional rulers. Of course, desire by traditional rulers for more authority has been around since the history of Nigeria, but nothing new has happened to the country’s experiment with elective government to warrant finding a new relevance for traditional rulers.

For example, many traditional rulers wanted departing British colonial administrators to hand Nigeria back to them, to enable such indirect rulers continue governing of the people they had assisted colonial rulers to govern under the Lugard and other colonial governors. Further, one of the highlights of demands at the Political Reform Conference organized by former President Obasanjo was about the desire of traditional rulers for more recognition in the 1999 Constitution. In 2014 at the National Conference convened by former President Goodluck Jonathan, similar demands for constitutional recognition of traditional rulers formed a significant part of the meeting’s deliberations. Since Jonathan’s exit from the presidency, whenever there were mentions by lawmakers to amend the constitution bequeathed to the country by the last military government, traditional rulers had not failed to remind lawmakers about the infinitesimal role given to them in the constitution.

What requires special attention now is the burst of energy in support of demand for new powers for traditional rulers in the republic, especially since the president has found reasons to compliment traditional rulers over the role they played during the recent #EndSARS protest. For example, a group called Peoples Movement for a New Nigeria (PMNN), recently demanded inclusion of new well-specified roles for traditional rulers in the ‘ongoing constitution amendment’ by the National Assembly.

The founder of Peoples Movement for a New Nigeria, Yahaya Ndu, made his demand more specific: “I, therefore, with all sense of history and patriotism, urge the National Assembly of our beloved country Nigeria to lead us back to the right track, to restore the glory, honour, and dignity of our traditional rulers; and to create and ensure specific roles for them in the constitution of Nigeria…They are solidly grounded in the culture and tradition of their communities and people. They are patriotic…Let us restore their glory, honour, and dignity; and by so doing, we shall inevitably engender a new lease of life for our nation Nigeria.”

The call on behalf of PMNN sounds for a demand for return of Indirect Rule to Nigeria. Many readers may recall that Frederick Lugard, the father of Nigeria, introduced a rare mode of colonization in Nigeria. Instead of spending British resources on the civilizing mission that brought him to the pre-Nigeria’s political space, Lugard transferred the baton of power to the feudal lords they met in the various communities in the space re-named Nigeria. It did not matter how distant the pre-colonial feudal cultures were from each other, Lugard and his men transferred governance of emirates and kingdoms to the rulers on seat before arrival of the colonial master.

Each of the different feudal ruling systems, be it emirate or kingdom was given the power to rule on behalf of the colonial government. Even in pre-colonial cultures that were more democratic in Eastern Nigeria and most of the Middle-Belt, the colonial master created Paramount Rulers to replace governance by debate in those communities, thus making the first step to homogenize Nigeria’s political systems. The struggle for self-government and independence and the many constitutional conferences stimulated differences in the intensity of feudalism across the regions. And the rest is now history.

Although the Federal Republic of Nigeria may not have reached the Jerusalem of democratic governance in the last 60 years for obvious reasons, Nigeria does not need to be thrown into a diarchy that combines a measure of elective government and non-elective government through amendment of a constitution that citizens have complained about for being too undemocratic ab initio.

If enthusiasts for democracy, federalism, and modernity pay inadequate attention to the ongoing amendment exercise in the National Assembly, the chances that lawmakers who rate cultural homogeneity ahead of  unity in diversity or diversity in unity, whichever is preferable, the country may be committed to making avoidable errors of political re-engineering. It needs to be remembered that many of our grandparents and parents looked away when military rulers replaced, with the assistance of civilian collaborators, a federal system with a unitary model over many decades.

So far, the major area of cultural diversity in the country’s political culture the realm of traditional rule. No two systems are identical, as the use of power of Emirs is starkly different from that of Obas, while the power of Obis is distinguishable from that of Obongs, etc. Although members of each of these traditional categories of power is likely to long for any amount of additional power bestowed on it, the country’s journey toward modern democracy is likely to drastically get slowed down, should democracy watchers fail to engage lawmakers actively in debates in the National Assembly about awarding new powers to traditional rulers.

Although the Inspector-General of Police had appointed traditional rulers as stakeholders for the federal government’s community policing initiative, it is not clear if there will be no conflict for traditional rulers as stakeholder in respect of customary police such as Hisbah or Amotekun. The federation’s political culture is already too complicated and cumbersome to nominate traditional rulers as indirect rulers on behalf of the federal government. To even give traditional rulers functions that go beyond their specific jurisdictions may be too problematic, since the traditional power of a Yoruba monarch, for example, does not go beyond the community over which he is crowned a traditional ruler.

The world in which Nigerians are to compete henceforth is different from the society traditional rulers managed during colonialism or under the supervision of colonial administrators during colonialism. Integrating traditional rulers  into modern democratic governance is likely to create confusion for generations that need further grooming in democratic governance, as there is nothing democratic about a ruler or part-ruler who is selected by divine forces of various dimensions.

Should there be enthusiasm on the part of sections of the country to give constitutional powers to traditional rulers, it will be important to leave such decision to a referendum at which each community is given the right to choose what kind of traditional ruler it can tolerate in a pro-democratic space. It is more advisable to let a sleeping dog lie in  a new search for what to do to boost the power or recognition of traditional rulers, beyond the cultural communities  traditionally allocated by divine forces.

Northern leaders spoke directly and with conviction on #EndSARS; how it affects them and their followers and how they want the problems thrown up by #EndSARS to be solved.

Ropo Sekoni

Speaking Up became a value preached recently by the country’s ‘Millennials and Generation Zers.’ Nothing new about this, as one of the cardinal principles of democracy has always been the right to ‘speak up’ by citizens. Freedom of speech and of the press helps to grow the market of ideas that fuels the culture of debate, compromise, and consensus without which democratic governance gets stunted in societies, especially where people choose to keep mum when they need to speak to be heard.

Since the #EndSARS experience, many hitherto undiscussed ideas about governance in the country as a whole and in distinct regions or zones have been coming into the open. Young citizens with a sense of history called protesters and others in the same generation referred to as hoodlums spoke in different languages recently; one of grievances they want the governments to respond to while the other group called hoodlums spoke in the language of violence and banditry.

Like most things in life, it will take time to know exactly how people in the same generation suddenly emerged to hold contradictory values, one for justice and order and the other for injustice and chaos. But there will always be people to reveal the underbelly of history whenever the time is ripe for full disclosures from participants in a national exercise of self-interrogation. Today’s column, very unusual in structure and style, is about the benefits of open communication in a federal democracy made possible by a group of millennials and generation zers about two meetings—one in the North and the other in the Southwest—recently about #EndSARS .

After a matter from protesters that promised to stimulate reform of the police was drowned by forces of darkness turned the attention of citizens and friends of the country from protest for change into a near anomie in the hands of criminals or hoodlums, series of meetings were called by the government. The federal government summoned stakeholders including ministers, traditional rulers, and others.

Similarly, leaders of regional governments got invited to meetings one after the other. Although how to restore full order to the polity must have been the main reason behind governments’ invitation of stakeholders to each of the meetings, this columnist was able to glean from media reports of the meetings some cultural responses that had received too little attention from the country’s political sociologists, especially in the form of mass communication.   More specifically, two distinct ways of speaking between leaders from the North, better captured in this piece as ‘northern leaders’ and ‘leaders from the Southwest.’

Northern leaders spoke directly and with conviction on #EndSARS; how it affects them and their followers and how they want the problems thrown up by #EndSARS to be solved. On the two occasions that Northern Governors and traditional leaders met or spoke about the protest and the looting that replaced it in different parts of the country—from Lagos to Adamawa and from Port Harcourt to Kano, the stakeholders from the 19 northern states spoke with one voice. The message was unequivocal and devoid of ambiguity. And the message was that northern states had no problem with SARS as a part of the country’s police system because the governments or governors of the North( Northwest, Northeast, and Northcentral) have always found SARS to be beneficial to the North.

By way of proper attribution of the core of today’s piece, some young readers of this column (the type I used to refer to ten years ago in this column as members of backyard or front-house seminars) came to me to praise northern leaders for their frankness and courage to put their voice behind their desires. Before I could say Jack, the young men started pontificating about the readiness of northern leaders to act and talk with conviction on all matters of concern to the entire people of the country. One of the visitors with eyes or ears for history asked, me directly, “Were the people of the south given a different political system by the colonizers?” As if I was on trial, I quickly said that we were all raised on the diet of “Indirect Rule,” meaning that each region was left to its traditional rulers to manage its local governments but under overall supervision of colonial administrators posted to each local government.

Then came a volley of questions. “What did Southwest leaders mean in the report of their meeting with President Buhari’s Chief-of-Staff by “we want more police presence? Why did Yoruba leaders avoid talking straight about what their own people prefer or what they themselves as leaders of a region prefer, in the same language of directness that their northern counterparts spoke? Why did southwest leaders jump on 2004 National Conference recommendations when the meeting was about immediate problems of ending SARS and embarking on police reform? Shouldn’t Southwestern political and traditional leaders have asked the people of the Southwest about their assessment of SARS and the Nigerian Police Force per se.

To all these questions, I was becoming impatient and quickly asked my visitors to cut to the chase and speak up or talk straight like northern leaders. I was anxious to be educated by a close reading of many of the statements made by leaders from the Southwest in response to the rightness or wrongness of a SARS-type police formation in a democratic and rule-of-law ethos.

It was at this point that I got the meat of the evening’s unsolicited front-yard seminar. Each of the visitors spoke at length about what bothered him about the directness of northern leaders and the skirting of issues that defined the response to #EndSARS at the meeting of Southwest leaders. Northern leaders acted as the normative group while southwest leaders talked not as co-owners of Nigeria but as long-term tenants in a house bequeathed to all children by a generous grandfather.

I was able to realize that my visitors came to me as a representative of the Yoruba-Nigerian of old, always ready to talk with conviction and speak for the people they have the fortune or misfortune to lead. My younger visitors set out to feel my political and cultural pulse. I, again, asked them what the governors from the southwest should have said. “They ought to have the courage of their northern counterparts to talk straight,” they all chorused. There is wisdom in not blaming the leaders of the north for talking straight and honestly. What is wrong is with leaders of other regions’ hedging or beating about the bush, when leaders of other regions need to know what people of other regions feel about a national matter. Children of parents who talk as if they are tenants often cultivate the culture of tenants and develop inferiority complex that can often lead to avoidable behavioral problems, one of my younger teachers told me.

Without trying to make small exchanges about social reality look monumental, I choose to share today the private frustrations of young people, often wrapped in their subconscious, with readers who want to make sense of many things that happen in the society. Small complaints like the ones described above often add up to big discussions in many societies, especially those that subscribe to democratic governance to allow readers to peep into the subconscious of the Southwest’s leaders of tomorrow.

Since the return to democracy in 1999, I have not received news about political leaders—contemporary or traditional—offering matters of governance up for formal or informal dialogue with non-state actors or fellow members of the ruling party of whatever age. At 60, Nigeria is not an old democracy that can sleep with both eyes closed and expect well-built institutions by the country’s ancestors to take care of disruptions—planned or unplanned.  It is cross-fertilization of ideas between leaders and followers charged with building democratic states, especially federal ones, where many religious or ethnic often view nation building as geopolitical struggles for dominance and relevance.

If Southwest leaders need to be told, many citizens including children of influential Yoruba men and women respect northern leaders for talking as owners of Nigeria, just as many of such young men and women get mortally worried when leaders of the Southwest or other regions talk as if they are descendants of subalterns in the republic. This kind of relationship between federating units is not a profitable way to nurture a culture of equality and sustainable inter-ethnic harmony and unity.

By Ropo Sekoni

Since my years as a colonial and later postcolonial person in Nigeria, I have seen three events that I have found unbearably dispiriting: failure to avoid the civil war; failure to avoid the annulment of MKO Abiola’s election victory in 1993 and the repression it spawned in the Abacha years; and failure to escape the #EndSARS protest and its effects. Since the killing of protesters on what has become known as Black Tuesday, many newspaper articles from divergent ideological perspectives have appeared in our newspapers, to make other comments almost redundant, especially articles from an incurable social democrat.

The newspaper comments of the last two weeks have addressed what protesters should have done or not done; what governments, especially Federal and Lagos State governments should have done or said and how; what the military deployed to Lagos on Black Tuesday did or failed to do and what it should say or do to bring the matter to a closure; and what the government, especially federal and state executives and lawmakers should do, going forward. As is expected in a Nigeria Factor context, the more comments get made, the more the real issues are skirted or occluded almost at the expense of making crucial connections between the cause that must have led to a scenario that currently looks like a curse or jinx.

Since many brighter persons have already commented on a broad range of topics pertaining to the recent unfortunate crisis that made President Buhari to make special pleas with citizens about the imperative of  national unity and of avoidance of anything that can bring division in the federation, today’s column will draw the attention of members of the ruling and ruled communities to what historians call remote and immediate cause(s) of any important event or development in the life of a country or society.

Interestingly, President Buhari stimulated a sense of history when he recently hosted a meeting of former heads of states over the #EndSARS protest. At the meeting, all the leaders whose rule had benefited directly or indirectly  from existence of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad: Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, Abdusalaam Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, and the incumbent president had the opportunity to exchange views about what has functioned increasingly from its inception as a monstrous police project, which  28 years after its establishment, finally pushed the country to a crisis that I identified earlier as one of the three  crises that I have found most dispiriting in over 70 years of living on-and-off in Nigeria.

It is not certain that the club of former presidents will have another meeting soon over a problem common to all of them—advancing a police system that has removed justice, rule of law, equity, and the spirit of equality among citizens. One thing that is clear so far is that all the former heads of state, apart from President Buhari, must have had the benefit of distance from power to look back at the appropriateness of the vision behind SARS and other aspects of the country’s police system in relation to the role of police in fostering national unity and progress in a multicultural federation. It must have been instructive to leaders searching for solutions to the crisis thrown up by SARS that shortly before the meeting of former heads of state, sitting governors of 19 out of 36 states announced matter-of-factly that SARS has been good for all the 19 northern states, even without the opportunity of a referendum among the states. It is not an exaggeration that the preference of northern governors for SARS, if true, may lay land mines for fruitful post-protest negotiations about SARS and SWAT.

Since most of the heads of state at the meeting have had some experience with ruling or governing with SARS and have been blessed to live long enough to witness the #EndSARS crisis, it is not over optimistic to expect some of them to have become more critical of a police system that seems to be as repressive of citizens as regular colonial police system designed without any respect for the humanity of people considered as subjects rather than citizens.

Although it is encouraging that the federal government, owner of the police unit that had sparked, wittingly or unwittingly through past acts of omission and commission, the recent mass protest by young citizens in many parts of the country, no level of government should forget the main reason for the protest as the government embarks on police reform—bringing an end to all forms of police brutality to and abuse of citizens in the name of law enforcement. In addition to all manners of economic and social empowerment that both federal and state governments might find necessary to reassure the youths, one project that ought not to be overlooked is how to establish a socio-petal and life-affirming police system in the country to replace the current socio-fugal and life-denying police system that was bequeathed to Nigeria by British colonial rulers and was further energized by military rulers and their civilian collaborators over the years.

Incontrovertibly, Nigerians have not had the opportunity to discuss many important aspects of their political life including the structure of policing of their choice since the suspension of Nigeria’s Independence federal constitution in 1966. Clearly, the Nigeria Police Force inherited from the colonial era special police units that had grown out of the original structure of the NPF that has now proved to be unsuitable for free citizens. The new challenge is for the country to embark on sincere de-militarization of the police system preferred by former military dictators and that been energetically theorized over the years to have the potential to be more corrupt and and more abusive than one form of centralized police system. With SARS, the country now knows that the national centralized police structure is not any less oppressive and corrupt than the subnational police, proscribed by military rulers, if testimonies given by protesters is a guide.

Not having a constitution negotiated and approved by the people in 1999 has worsened the situation of policing in the country. It has enabled the federal government to make nonsense of the sharing of power between federal and subnational government, as it has sustainably put state governors beneath the Inspector-General of Police in terms of who has ultimate responsibility to exercise the power to protect life and limb in federating states. Such situation does not even exist in the United Kingdom.  Since the 1704 Act of Union that brought the United Kingdom into being, Scotland has remained autonomous in many domains: legal, education, police, and faith systems.

While preparing for a new normal, police reform should not be limited to killing SARS and giving birth to SWAT. It is time to move to a more humane level of policing; one that requires national and subnational policing, with federating units handling law enforcement and the federal police being in charge of intelligence but with guarantee for cooperation between the two levels. This is what exists in most democracies and even in countries, such as the United Kingdom, that is referenced as unitary.

This column had called several times for de-militarization of the polity through creation of a constitution duly negotiated by citizens after the end of military rule in 1999. If governors and federal legislators since 1999 have not complained about erosion of power of federating units, the recent protest has shown that citizens are unhappy with the disempowerment of states by the 1999 Constitution, which has backed establishment of SARS. It is not likely that in a democracy that gives room for participatory democracy, such as referendum fosters, citizens in many of the states would have tolerated SARS and other police formations bequeathed by military dictators.

As the recent expression of dissatisfaction over philosophy and design of law enforcement in the country has implied, as unfortunate as this might have been to many citizens across the country, Nigeria needs a constitution that derives its legitimacy from citizens’ input; otherwise, our governments at all levels may be putting the country at the risk of periodic outbursts of repressed frustration, such as the country experienced on Black Tuesday. It is too late in the history of modern democratic governance for Nigerians to be saddled with a constitution that many citizens see more as a jinx deployed by former military dictators.

Ropo Sekoni

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere—Thomas Jefferson

Last week, this column celebrated protest as part of the culture of democratic governance and that protest is an integral part of popular sovereignty that separates the space of democracy from that of authoritarianism. Although many unsavory things have happened between last Sunday and this one, nothing has happened to change the orientation of today’s column about #EndSARS from a positive one. not even the loud silences or ‘minus devices’ in President Buhari’s speech last Thursday.

Communication theorists, especially semioticians refer to minus devices as those things that are not said during the creation of a text—oral, written, gestural, etc., that are automatically endowed with a presence through the knowledge spawned by the context in which an utterance or text is made. It is not enough to say, as some people are already saying, that we have asked the president to make a speech and now we are speechless. The speech of a leader, though not often unexpected by the leader, gives birth to many more speeches with the effect of filling the gaps in the original speech. In other words, a leader’s or an influencer’s speech creates many more co-texts, just as unarticulated subtexts also create co-texts, all for the purpose of enriching information that can add to the understanding of an issue that requires attention from the target community—be it a family, village, town, or even a federation.

The motifs and themes that are present in the president’s speech on the protest include acknowledgement that the #EndStar protest is constitutional; that citizens have a right to protest against what they do not like about policies and actions made by any branch of government; that for protests to be democratically proper it must not damage the rights of other citizens; that the government is ready to dialogue with protesters on how to implement the five original demands by protesters. The President also indicates the willingness of his government to preserve the unity of the country, one reason that citizens that are not state actors called in the last two weeks to boost its legitimacy by addressing the nation, in order to prevent hoodlums from taking advantage of constitutional and peaceful demonstrations  and do avoidable havoc, such as the country has witnessed in the last few days in the killing of some demonstrators and destruction of .value-adding institutions and property.

In addition, absences in the president’s speech include no mention of the role of the state to give equal protection to both protesters and non-protesters from any harassment, such as can prevent hoodlums from destroying the integrity of a constitutional protest. For example, the president’s speech failed to assure citizens on what the government would do to identify and sanction violators of the protest? Citizens need such assurance as the country prepares to return to normal. What does the federal government that hitherto sponsored SARS plan to do about hoodlums that gave Nigeria a bad name in the international community by turning a peaceful democratic protest by the country’s youths into an event for which Nigeria has received bad mention in many of the country’s development partners? What does the central government plan to do to ensure that the country is not one of south for ending SARS and one of north for keeping SARS? Although the president recognizes in his speech the importance of protecting national unity, his speech is silent about what the federal government would do with hoodlums who by their actions have threatened a unity that we have all been looking for since 1966 and for which many value-added lives have been lost.

There is no doubt that the release by Northern Governors Forum a few days ago has grown the fear of two contradictory orientations about SARS in the country can deepen or increase the country’s cleavages. There is need to resolve the conflict inherent in the federal government’s acceptance that SARS is ripe for erasure and the insistence by the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum that SARS is good for the 19 northern states and that the region would prefer to keep the agency. This silence on this matter is capable of engendering avoidable conspiracy theories.

A Yoruba proverb, Bi omode ba subu, a wo iwaju, bi agbalagba ba subu a wo eyin (if a young person trips, he/she would look to the front while an older person who trips would look at the back) is relevant to the kind of discourse that is now needed, as the country seems to be getting ready to move beyond the SARS-related crisis. A young person who falls and looks to the front is searching for assistance and progress while the elder that looks back after falling is searching for cause of lack of progress.

Though young, representatives of the majority group in the country have looked to the front and have seen an agent of salvation from decades-old culture of repression from a police system created under military dictatorship, leaders of the ruling group in the northern section of the country have affirmed that they prefer the obnoxious system.   The statement by the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum may have increased the fertility of the conspiracy theory that the newly minted Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT)  is already causing confusion to many citizens. Before SWAT is seen as a re-naming of SARS, the new agency should be a part of the dialogue on a more comprehensive reform of the police system in general.

The mistake of 1992 when SARS was created by fiat ought not be repeated. In 1992, what we had was a dictatorship. The country now has an elected government at the national and subnational levels. The national legislature should be encouraged to participate in the dialogue planned as part of the reform called for by #EndSARS protesters. The need for mind-robbing between federal lawmakers and the president is too obvious for the country to miss. Instead of commencing a new interminable constitutional amendment being promoted currently in the media through a legislative call for state or subnational police system, it will be cost-effective for  lawmakers  work with the executive and citizens across the country to create a new and more citizen-friendly Police Act that has sustained SARS.

Further modernizing the country is part of further democratizing its governance processes including creation of an acceptable law enforcement system to the people. This column has in the last ten years been named by its critics as the column of a maniac of state police. Year-on-year in the last five or more years, nothing has happened to the country’s police system that has encouraged this column to believe that a police system that understands the language and culture of a federating unit in a federation and one that is an integral part of the political system endorsed by the citizens (those that the police is to protect) cannot get a good competitor in any central police system. There is no precedent for the current police model in any federation unless in a monolingual and monocultural society where all the federating units agree to one level of policing.

It may be myopic to miss the opportunity to see #EndSARS as a reminder to those who rule the country at all levels of what the critical mass of leaders of tomorrow have said with the protest—the need to move away from a police system that seems like a colonial one with no empathy for citizens that look like subjects to colonizers. With SARS or its look-alikes, the country’s politics of modern nation building can wittingly or unwittingly look like a dangerous geopolitical activity. It is not enough to sustain the territorial unity of the country; it is also crucial to sustain peaceful and progressive experience for all parts of the federation.