The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • Buhari versus Jonathan: time to end mindless campaign

    Buhari versus Jonathan: time to end mindless campaign

    Merely deploying words that frame candidates negatively shows lack of political skills required of the political elite class.

    Yesterday marked the end of the search for the two political protagonists that will drive the campaign and shape the voting in next year’s presidential election. The ruling party at the centre, PDP, presented yesterday its consensus candidate, the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan. On the other hand, the opposition party, the APC, elected before camera former Head of State, General MuhammedBuhari, as the party’s flag bearer. With the choice of the two candidates by the two leading political parties, it should now be the turn of citizens to hear more from the candidates about why each of them deserves to be voted in as president in 2015 than from distractive noises from chosen or self-appointed spokespersons. It should be assumed that public relations staff of each political party has done very well the preliminary work needed to put the two leading contenders before the electorate.

    On the eve of the conventions of both parties, President Jonathan played the role of a statesman when he cautioned politicians not to act like touts during the process leading to the presidential elections. In other words, President Jonathan must have chosen to caution party men and women not to turn the campaign process into the type of mindless antagonism that characterises relations between co-wives or touts fighting with all means for the same gain in the kitchen or motor parks respectively. The president must have been trying to warn party fanatics not to act in a way that can erode public confidence in the electoral process. Given the spate of name calling of opposition parties and personalities such parties in the past few months by party functionaries in the ruling party, the president must have seen the futility and danger in failing to warn party loyalists in all parties to take the matter of presidential elections with the seriousness it should deserve.

    One thing that may not be obvious but that is equally present in the president’s caution to politicians is the imperative in a serious democracy for political elite to demonstrate political skills expected of individuals in positions of leadership and evidence of a sense of the public interest by showing at all times during the electioneering campaign that political office seekers and their professional supporters have regard for the public, the citizens whose votes they seek and whose support they need to get elected in a truly democratic ethos. Unfortunately, the PDP spokesman failed to heed President Jonathan’s advice when he couched his first response to the announcement of Buhari’s candidacy in a language that detracts attention from policy matters, while focusing on personality of the person that is to run as alternative to the incumbent.

    The publicity chief’s statement: “Buhari has nothing new to offer, except ‘tired ideas’ and provocative utterances” is not an elegant way to start a free and fair issues-based campaign. Given anecdotal reports of citizens glued to television sets and radios in the last forty-eight hours during which the two leading parties formally chose their candidates, there is no doubt that citizens are interested in hearing what the candidates hope to do to address the problems that have confronted the country since 1999. Merely deploying words that frame candidates negatively shows lack of political skills required of the political elite class. Utterances and actions of party officials during electioneering do not only contribute to shaping citizens’ decisions and final choices at the polls; they also reflect the political maturity of the elite class while having the capacity to degrade or upgrade political attitudes of citizens.

    Another statement by the PDP spokesman: “We are convinced that the PDP remains the only truly national political party in Nigeria, a platform on which all Nigerians can pursue their legitimate aspirations” is hyperbolic and has no basis in reality. Such a statement undermines the INEC that found all the parties in the contest from PDP to APC, UPP to SDP national enough to deserve being registered for national elections. Such facile denigration of rival parties is capable of eroding citizens’ trust in the political process and even of alienating floating voters from the party of the incumbent.

    Certainly, there is a sense in which the job of public relations man or woman can be perceived as doing or saying everything that is capable of enhancing the chances of the client and to damage the chances of the rival or competitor. But statecraft and a sense of deliberative democracy require that party public relations officers act and talk in a manner to sustain trust in the system, rather than paint the system as pre-cast and frozen to serve just the interest of a competitor, regardless of fairness and respect for the rights of the other competitor[s] to present other cases   to the electorate. All the political parties need to move away from the traditional notion of election as just an opportunity to smash your rival in words of assault. Elections are regular rituals that sustain democracy and socialise citizens to imbibe the tenets of democratic practice, not a war of words that cast the rival as a demon.

    Truly, electoral competition presupposes that there will be conflict between or among candidates from different political parties asking for the same thing: the mandate to govern. But if we are not to be petty about this important matter, all persons functioning as party leaders need to imbibe and display commitment to the principle of choice by the electorate. Citizens’ ability to choose correctly can be frustrated or destroyed by demonisation of candidates in a campaign that focuses more on personalities than programmes or on images than issues. Our democracy is too young (only sixteen years after the exit of military dictatorship) for the political elite to organise electoral struggle only in the plot and imagery of conflict for conflict’s sake.

    Inter-party conflicts during elections in particular and at other times in a democratic ethos are for the purpose of clarifying nationally important issues for the electorate, with a view to leading them to make informed choices about the future preferred by voters for themselves and their children. Let us not degrade the process with provocative utterances such as are inherent in the latest description of the nation’s opposing party as Bola Tinubu’s APC. Such statement could have been designed to attack Tinubu as a politician who has reshaped the political party system in the country in the last sixteen years, but it also has the capacity to insult citizens and cast them as sheepish followers of an individual, rather than as believers in a multiparty system believed to be the surest way to sustain political democracy.

    Nigerians have heard a lot of slogans in the last fifteen years: “Do or die struggle for power,” “the political party that has been ordained to rule Nigeria for 65 years,” “Nigeria’s only national party that can keep the country united,” etc. Yet, our multiparty system has not disappeared, and the struggle by various political parties for the mandate to govern the country has not become redundant. In fact, the only thing that adds legitimacy to any political party’s bid for power is the existence of more than one political party. There is no better time for the political elite to act in the manner of elite, rather than as touts, to borrow President Jonathan’s phrase.

    Citizens are more likely to want to hear from all the candidates how each of them plans to address the real issues: corruption, security, an economy that appears to have been degraded by the diminishing value of petroleum, an education and health system in shambles, and a polity being broken into two by the diversionary tactics of Christian and Islamic fanatics besotted to political power at all cost. Let us all welcome the emergence of the two principal candidates for the office of the president with discipline and admiration for the democratic process by opening and sustaining the political space for unfettered presentation of policy statements to address the country’s problems. In addition, let us candidates urge for full and prompt funding of the electoral commission, to prevent watering down of the electoral process on account of under-funding while also calling on the media to restrain from reducing the political debate of the next two months to personalities, images, and packaging. Citizens need to hear (without over mediation) from each candidate about the way to peace, progress, and prosperity in the country.

  • Vending Yoruba unity at Ife

    Vending Yoruba unity at Ife

    The real issue is how to ensure the survival of age-old Yoruba civilisation, without sacrificing the core Yoruba value of tolerance of difference and plurality of perspectives.

    Oduduwa Hall at Obafemi Awolowo University was a few days ago the site for vending the latest political product in town: Yoruba Unity. The hallowed hall of ideas right from the days of Hezekiah Oluwasanmi almost became a source of contestation between merchants of Yoruba unity and students sent by their parents to acquire the knowledge with which they hope to transform Nigeria. Today’s piece is not about the juicy details of the confrontation between students and sellers/buyers of Yoruba unity, as the writer was too far from Ife physically to witness any detail at the unity market. The column today is interested in looking at distractions foisted on the Yoruba and by extension the Nigerian political landscape at the expense of the real issues that matter to the life of citizens-Yoruba or non-Yoruba.

    Nigeria’s existence has been driven from the beginning by unity as a concept, later as a project, and finally as a product, acquired or given to wholesalers to market at the ancestral home of one of Africa’s most sophisticated nationalities. At the beginning of Nigeria, Frederick Lugard brought diverse peoples from the East, North, and West together to co-exist in a country without a common history. It has been argued by political and economic historians that Lugard, on behalf of the British government of his time, did not create Nigeria for the benefit of Nigerians. He was believed to have brought the southern woman of means and the northern prince together for the purpose of easing the coloniser’s burden of financing the administration of Britain’s new market in sub-Sahara Africa. While the peoples of Nigeria were trying to make sense of their new political territory by negotiating their cultural differences, the colonisers were doing their own thing, expanding their trade in their new market.

    Independence brought a new reality. The three regions had a noticeably federal constitution that allowed each region to develop at its own pace. Soon after independence, the central government dominated by the northern region brought the issue of unity to the fore by strategising for a one-party system of government. Leaders of the central government from the two parties in alliance infiltrated the political party in power in Western region. The Action Group was broken into two: Awolowo’s AG and Akintola’s NNDP.

    The open text of the crisis fomented by the rupture focused on search for national unity (referred to in today’s political parlance as main-streaming) as the source of contention between the Awolowo group and the Akintola group. That was the first time that the concept, Yoruba Unity, became the driver of political ideology among the traditionally federal Yoruba states, hitherto integrated by Action Group with the ideology of welfare politics.

    The frantic search for Yoruba unity ended with the first republic. Military dictators shifted the struggle back to search for national unity. Ironsi on his part created a unitary Nigeria to be driven from and by the centre. Another coup came to change temporarily Ironasi’s policies back to the federalism in place in 1963. Soon after, the game changed again, especially with the advent of the civil war. Unity became a national project again. New states were created year in year out. Citizens in the balkanised states were pampered with funds from petroleum exploitation, and just about every group forgot about itself and looked forward to funds from the central government to oil the machines of government and the throats of government leaders.

    The second republic brought back the importance of ideology as a basis of political rivalry within the Yoruba region, with nobody worrying about Yoruba unity. Awolowo, the leader of UPN looked for people comfortable with the ideology of his party all over Nigeria while leaders of the NPN also did the same. The Yoruba region had some of its respectable sons and daughters in both parties, but most of the citizens identified with the UPN. There was no civil war in Yoruba land between the Awolowo group: Bola Ige, Lateef Jakande, Bisi Onabanjo, Adekunle Ajasin, and Yoruba NPN leaders: Akinloye, Abiola, and others in the NPN. No individual or group proclaimed itself as the custodian of Yoruba unity. In the third republic, Abiola and Ige found themselves in the same a little-to-the-left political party, an indication that if there was ever any division within the Yoruba, it was not cultural but ideological. The fourth republic again brought individuals from the Yoruba region, hitherto in opposing political parties in earlier republics, together into the same party. Old-time politicians like Abraham Adesanya, Bola Ige, Bisi Akande, and new-breed politicians like Segun Osoba, Bola Tinubu, and Niyi Adebayo found themselves in the same party with a programme to bring the politics of welfare back, and the rest is history.

    During the time that Save Nigeria Group was struggling to ensure that some cabal around Umaru Yar’Adua was not allowed to violate the constitutional provision that the Vice President, regardless of his or her geographic ethnic origin, should become president in the event of the person elected as president dying in office, unity in Yoruba land was not an issue. It was assumed by everybody that what was needed was for the Yoruba to have the opportunity to exercise their fundamental human rights of association. Even at the time of the 2011 presidential election, no serious politician raised the issue of unity. It was only in the last two years that the search for Yoruba unity became a religion and product at the same time, as it did in 1964-65. It was the search for Yoruba unity that was on sale in Ife a few days ago.

    Lovers of Yoruba culture and values should thank their deity that the marketing of Yoruba unity on the campus of ObafemiAwolowo University did not lead to serious destruction of life and property. I was told that a few Yoruba obas had to remove their crowns, beads, and robes in order to hide their identities movement to examination halls. Without really believing that our obas would be that cowardly, I do not feel any empathy for any oba who needed to suspend on his own volition his own divine kingship, on account of poor planning by a group preoccupied with Yoruba unity, with or without purpose.

    Before we end this historical piece, just a few questions for vendors of Yoruba unity. Why should Yoruba unity be a matter of concern to non-Yoruba people? President Jonathan is an Ijaw man hosted at Ife by miners of Yoruba Unity. How is an Ijaw man likely to be of use to the mining of Yoruba unity? The humble man was put under pressure to explain that he has been unhappy for the past four years because he had not been able to make a Yoruba woman the Speaker of the House of Representatives. How would getting a Yoruba woman to be speaker enhance Yoruba unity, having just experienced years in which two Yoruba people–male and female–served as speakers and even a Yoruba man, Olusegun Obasanjo, served as president for eight years?  Is this search for Yoruba unity for the purpose of fighting other nationalities in the country or to fight Yoruba who do not appear sufficiently united to cause of the self-appointed miners and marketers of Yoruba unity?

    The problem facing the Yoruba people of Nigeria today is much larger than a search for what is not missing. The real issue is how to ensure the survival of age-old Yoruba civilisation, without sacrificing the core Yoruba value of tolerance of difference and plurality of perspectives. If the Yoruba must find unity among themselves, it should not be at the expense of threat to life and limb of the country’s president, born and bred in another proud Nigerian nationality group that also has good reasons to be distinct from the Yoruba in many ways. It is rather late in the day for any individual or group to call a dog a monkey for Yoruba people. The political conflict in Nigeria at present is ideological: PDP versus APC. No Yoruba man or woman should need to use the search for Yoruba unity to occlude his affiliation with any of the two ideological poles. It will be vintage Yoruba to be active in both parties and be seen to be doing so by the generality of Yoruba people.

  • Our mutant form of democracy

    Our mutant form of democracy

    . Anyone who has just come to Nigeria in the last few months cannot but wonder what kind
    of ruling elite the country is saddled with

    “Democracies legitimize the existence of opposition parties as well as of organized interest groups….But it is really the power and autonomy of nongovernmental elites, and their recognized legitimacy that distinguishes the elite structures of democratic nations from those of totalitarian states. Pluralism, then, is the belief that democratic values can be preserved in a system where multiple, competing elites determine public policy through bargaining and compromise, voters exercise meaningful choices in elections, and new elites can gain access to power….In democratic society, unlike a totalitarian one, multiple elites exist. A defining characteristic of Western democratic nations is the relative autonomy of various elites-governmental, economic, media, civic, cultural, and so on. In contrast, a defining characteristic of totalitarian societies is the forced imposition of unity on elites….Elites must govern wisely if democracy is to survive. When masses turn to the politics of rage, the disorder is serious but generally short-lived. When elites fail to govern wisely, the devastation can be more formidable and more prolonged…”-Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler in The Irony of Democracy.

    Quoting extensively from The Irony of Democracy in the piece today is deliberate. It is to remind readers about the nuances of democracy that are being ignored daily in our country by the section of the political elite that needs to have a higher sense of enlightened self-interest and self- preservation within the context of democratic governance. Anyone who has just come to Nigeria in the last few months cannot but wonder what kind of ruling elite the country is saddled with and why would the ruling elite knowingly behave in a manner that undermines its own stability. Those who have been here for some time must also wonder how Nigeria has come to this pass and if the situation has always been this abysmal.

    Starting with the last point, the ruling political elite has not always been this insensitive to the role and place of opposition parties in democratic governance. For example, Chief Obafemi Awolowo fervently believed and repeatedly spoke and wrote in favour of the role of opposition in consolidation of democracy. He was the first politician in power in Nigeria to give special privilege to opposition parties. It was during his premiership of Western Region that he created an official accommodation for the leader of opposition even when he himself did not live in government house. Such was his respect for opposition parties.

    Of course, Awolowo came from a tradition of constitutional monarchy that also organised governance around pluralism and separation of power. In pre-colonial Yoruba land into which Awolowo was born and bred, the political system thrived on distribution of power among various elite groups: the monarch, executive cabinet, other chiefs, Ogboni (a very independent judicial arm of traditional government), and a traditional media system that included a few court poets and another independent group charged to perform counter-hegemonic functions as the need arose.  Even other leaders in the first and second republics from political traditions different from that of the Yoruba, such as Azikiwe, Bello, and Shagari found it difficult to act habitually with force in a way to suggest that they would rather kill all forms of political opposition. As desperate as some of them were about turning Nigeria into a one-party system, they had the capacity to know fear and consequently avoid overt and extreme destruction of the institution of political opposition in a democracy.When efforts to dismantle opposition parties in Western Nigeria occurred at the instance of some of these politicians in the federal ruling group, they did not last and left far-reaching consequences for the entire country.

    Since the end of the civil war, the military had degraded the country’s political culture directly and indirectly, to the extent that civilians elected to power at the end of military dictatorship in 1979 and 1999 were not (and still do not appear) to have been able to imbibe the culture of tolerance, negotiation, and compromise that statecraft in a democratic ethos requires. Under military rule, there was no separation of the concept of security of the state from the use of state power to pursue political and personal interests of military presidents and governors. Military dictators saw their rule as that of a one-party state that had no reason to brook any opposition. They thus created decrees to muzzle the press and devised stratagems to suborn, harass, and even liquidate individuals that served as voices of opposition: Soyinka, Awojobi, Solarin, Dele Giwa, Fawehinmi, Beeko, FelaAnikulapo, Falana, for example. Just as some of the political attitudes of the ruling group and its agencies appear in 2014, individuals or groups that had ideas different from those preferred by military dictators were labelled enemies of the country’s security and unity.

    What we have had as a multiparty political system since the exit of military rule in 1999 has not been noticeably different from that of military dictatorship, particularly in terms of the perception by rulers and members of the ruling party of opposition parties.  Under post-military rulers from Obasanjo to Jonathan (since Umaru Yar’Adua hardly had any time to show his style), the tendency on the part of  what other societies would have called ruling elite has been to smash the opposition and turn the political market of ideas into a field of uniformity of ideas for those in charge of the federal government.

    Too many embarrassing things have happened in the last two years in the polity. And each of them has been proclaimed by people in the corridor of power as efforts by the federal ruling group to secure the country and promote its unity. The country’s Governors Forum got broken at the instance of the ruling party into two and made ineffectual, thus denying the country of ideas that could have emanated from a group of governors capable of generating ideas for improved governance, on account of their proximity to the needs of citizens. Police that was to enforce law and maintain order became an instrument for the ruling class to harass opposition parties. The Speaker of the House automatically lost his security aides because he moved to another party. He and other federal lawmakers were prevented from entering the legislature by the police. The data office of APC was brazenly vandalised and workers arrested without a warrant by a combination of police and secret police all in the name of national security and unity. Judges were harassed in Ekiti at the instance of the ruling party without proper response by the national police to break down of law and order that this act represented. Even after a judge had ordered the release of workers arrested without warrant at the APC data office, the law enforcement agencies ignored such judicial order. There are many more examples of arbitrary use of power by handlers of the federal polity.

    These acts bring up queries about the attitude of the federal ruling party to maintenance of public order. In its elementary form, the personal use of police is evident in the number of policemen attached to politicians or their friends. The allocation of police men to people in or around power makes citizens wonder if security means protection of just individuals in power or protection of citizens of the country. As things seem, the ruling group does not draw a line between security of the country and citizens, and that of the partisan interests of the ruling party and its members.

    Leaders in a democracy are expected to have an enlightened self-interest that makes them recognise the need to avoid totalitarian or fascist use of power. The polity and society includes both the ruling party and opposition parties. Efforts at repressing, oppressing, and harassing parties and individuals with ideas different from those of the ruling party regarding how to improve governance are reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer” (one people, one state, one leader). Nigeria’s plurality is non-negotiable. That plurality is best illustrated by a multiparty system that includes a ruling party at a given time and alternative parties waiting in the wing to replace them, if citizens so choose. Any effort, overt or subtle, to silence opposition parties is capable of threatening democracy and unity of the country.

  • Permanent voter cards: INEC’s might versus citizens’ right?

    Permanent voter cards: INEC’s might versus citizens’ right?

    INEC’s response to queries from citizens who could not find their names and pictures but had with them their temporary cards is nothing more than another indulgence in the culture of excuses.

    The latest controversy on our political landscape is the issue of what the Independent National Electoral Commission calls the Permanent Voter Card. Since INEC’s shoddy work in releasing PVCs to citizens, the country’s political temperature has been raised noticeably. Opposition parties, APC in particular, have justifiably cried foul while image makers for the ruling party at the centre have made frantic efforts to dampen what appears to be a nation-wide opposition to impending disenfranchisement of citizens. INEC itself appears to be less forthcoming on how to resolve the crisis caused by its inefficiency.

    All over the world, the most important ritual of democracy is election. It may come every four years in some countries and every five years in others, but come it must in the character of rituals. The famous claim in democracies that sovereignty belongs to the people is most concretised in electoral democracy: the inalienable right of citizens to choose at constitutionally specified intervals, the persons they want to govern them in the political territory to which they belong as bona fide citizens. Citizens’ right to choose those who rule their country becomes compromised when they are deprived of their right to vote. The right to vote is, first and foremost, represented by unfettered to access to the voter card without which no citizen can cast his/her vote during elections.

    It is a common belief in democracies all over the world that any attempt-intentional or unintentional-that makes citizens feel that their right to choose their leaders has been abridged constitutes an attempt to deny citizens their claim to sovereignty. Such deprivation is perceived as deliberate effort to rob of their citizenship. Denying citizens access to voter cards is a clear case of annulment of citizens’ political and civil rights in a democratic country. Where such happens, concerned citizens have a right to scream, protest, and even go to court. Failure to protest and demonstrate against abridgement of such rights is tantamount on the part of citizens to knowingly committing political suicide.

    However, in the present circumstance of millions of citizens not being able to collect their voter cards from INEC officials, the onus of rectification rests solely on INEC, if the commission is not to be labelled as election rigger. Members of the ruling party and spokespersons for the president should have no role or voice in the matter of INEC’s failure to make voter cards available to citizens without fetters. For the ruling political party to criticise other parties for protesting against INEC’s failure to provide voter cards to citizens as required by law, such ruling party spokespersons give the impression that it aids and abets (or at least condones) the commission in its failure to perform its constitutional function properly.

    As a citizen who registered to vote as required by the country’s electoral law, my experience in M.K.O Abiola Gardens during last week’s release of voter cards convinced me that INEC was not prepared to release voter cards to citizens without fetters. The Commission was absent on the  first day it was billed to release cards, a day set aside as work-free to enable citizens perform their constitutional duty with ease. On the second day when INEC’s agents came, the performance of the agents was abysmally low. The agents were rude to citizens, shouting at them and ordering them around. Citizens who came there with their temporary voter cards (with their pictures on them) were ordered to first go and search for their names among hundreds of names and pictures pasted on the walls.

    Furthermore, when citizens came back to tell the agents that most of the papers had fallen off, they were told rudely to put the papers back on the wall  themselves, if they were truly interested in obtaining their PVCs. When citizens asked for assistance and glue to re-mount the papers on the walls, they were told to bend down and search for their pictures among sheaves of papers on the ground, if they were not ready to put the papers back on the wall. Those who did not see their pictures on the walls or on the ground were told caustically to wait for future announcements in the media about when they should come for re-registration. Those lucky enough to find their names, like me, were made to line up in the sun while the agents groped for cards in trays on and below the table. In the three hours I was there, more people were unable to find their names on the wall than those lucky enough to find theirs.

    The experience of those who were able to find their names is enough to accuse INEC of subtle or covert attempt to rob or deny citizens of their right to vote in the 2015 election. Rights in democracies are not supposed to be given grudgingly. Instead of providing a facile access to the cards for citizens on the day I went to collect my PVC, the agency frustrated citizens and gave the impression that the agents preferred to annoy citizens to quit without receiving their cards. One did not on that day need to be a critical citizen to suspect that INEC agents were more interested in holding on to the permanent voter cards than in giving them to their rightful owners. Otherwise, the culture of service (as low as it is in our country in relation to others) is generally higher than what I observed that day.

    INEC’s response to queries from citizens who could not find their names and pictures but had with them their temporary cards is nothing more than another indulgence in the culture of excuses. “Losing over one million names on the computer” is reminiscent of NEPA’s excuse of power outage coming from too much water during the rainy season and too little water during the dry season. In other countries where governments and their agencies have been made (or are in the habit of) respecting citizens, there would have been announcements of the loss of one million names to the computer well ahead, to prepare citizens for the frustration that might arise at the point of collecting voter cards. In addition, a complaint and rectification table would have been created to solve problems of those who did not find their names on the same day and at the same venue. Scheduling another time to do this appears designed to make the process cumbersome and frustrating to citizens, with the ultimate goal or hope discouraging them from fulfilling their civic duties.

    There are some issues that INEC needs to clarify for citizens. When did the agency realise that it had lost over one million names? What type of computer and software does the agency use that has no in-built device to prevent such huge loss? Were handlers of such computers properly trained or were they just irresponsible? Why has the agency not chosen to input the names that were lost from the master records in their headquarters long before the date to release cards to citizens? Why did INEC not announce and publicise all the names purportedly lost well ahead of the time for release of PVCs? Why did INEC wait till a time so close to the election to make permanent voter cards available to citizens? What is to be gained or lost if citizens with their temporary cards are allowed to use them to vote in 2015, instead of insisting that they must come back to do another registration, realising that the registration they did about four years ago had miscarried under the watch of INEC? In a country where all other important documents: passport and driver’s licence are not permanent, why is the voter card being made permanent and not renewable like other civic documents, as it is done in many other democracies? How can INEC guarantee that no citizen with a copy of his/her temporary card will be prevented from exercising the right to vote three months from now, should they still be unable to obtain INEC’s permanent voter cards?

    Political party leaders who went to complain and protest on behalf of citizens about the injustice and danger in the shoddiness of INEC with respect to providing all duly registered citizens with their voter cards have shown good leadership. There is nothing partisan about insisting that citizens, regardless of their party affiliation, must be given the opportunity at elections to indicate their choice. There is everything wrong with an agency charged with protecting such right to act– knowingly or unknowingly – as an agent to deprive citizens of their right to vote. Political party leaders also need to encourage and support citizens to protect their right to vote, as such protection is better handled by the aggrieved, through litigation-individual or class action.

  • The chicken of rentier states coming home to roost? (2)

    The chicken of rentier states coming home to roost? (2)

    The country now needs, more than ever before, governments that are sincerely committed at all levels to fighting corruption.

    The conclusion to the piece last week pointed at the two suggestions from the federal government about the fast-falling oil price: devaluation of the naira and the imperative for states to look for new sources of revenue. Some of the readers of this column called me last Sunday to advise me to desist from being pessimistic about the future of petroleum and Nigeria.  I was urged to accept that there was nothing in the facts I had listed regarding advances in energy research that can be taken as providing a sufficient condition for my conclusion that the value of fossil fuel may be waning from now on rather than waxing.

    The intention of last week’s piece and of the piece for today is not to propagate pessimism, as some of my commentators have alleged, but to heed pragmatism. Moreover, there is no effort to use the piece to criticise the Jonathan presidency. The problem of our political leaders’ irresponsible attitude to petroleum revenue is much older than Jonathan’s presidency. It goes back to the years following the civil war and under the watch of several leaders: military and civilian, but the Jonathan regime has not done much to right the wrongs of the past on this matter. It was not Jonathan that started the policy that transformed the existence of petroleum into a curse for the country. It is also hard to argue that his presidency has done anything to end the curse that petroleum would not bring progress but hardship to citizens. Readers should resist the temptation to read partisan politics into a matter that is likely to affect the life of every Nigerian, regardless of his or her political party affiliation.

    Getting back to the two suggestions by agents of the federal government, devaluation may not be a very bad option if the country eventually has something other than petroleum to export, to attract foreign exchange. No doubt, devaluation will be painful. It will drive inflation up and further impoverish those already at the bottom of the economic ladder. But with an economy that uses oil to acquire over 90% of its foreign exchange; to determine the size of its budget; and to pay for about 85% of import bills, a Nigeria with drastic reduction in revenue from oil cannot but devalue. Not having a huge reserve and not having saved a lot in the excess crude account, devaluation has to be high on the list of responses to the country’s latest challenge. Devaluation then becomes a bad consequence for poor judgment of the past.

    One way to delay devaluation is to look for ways of increasing the country’s reserve. This will require adoption of a more aggressive attitude to corruption. Probing as many of past political leaders and bureaucrats as possible, with the hope of liberating much of foreign exchange stolen and stashed in foreign banks by them and repatriating this to the country can boost the country’s reserve and increase the chances of the country to pay for its high import bills in the event that the flow of foreign exchange from petroleum refuses to get better. But even such additional revenue may not be able to stave off devaluation for long. It may delay it a little only if new outflow of funds from petroleum revenue is stemmed or stopped through draconian steps to discourage further stealing of public funds. In other words, the country now needs, more than ever before, governments that are sincerely committed at all levels to fighting corruption.

    The other piece of advice by the federal government last week that states should look for sources of new revenue may sound creative. But this advice is not any better than the rhetoric of diversification that citizens have been fed decades to no avail. The imperative of diversification of the economy has been around since the era of Structural Adjustment Programme. If it has not happened in close to thirty years, there is a need to look into why it has not happened.

    Guaranteed revenue from oil has fuelled corruption. This has been so, largely because over 50% of the revenue that flows into the country has gone and still goes to the federal government. This level of government has no direct population that it serves. But like other levels of government, it has a huge bureaucracy that consumes a lot of revenue while producing very little. Now that the chicken seems to be coming home to roost with respect to the country’s use or misuse of oil revenue over the years, it is more important for the federal government with a huge chunk of national revenue and very little direct interaction with citizens to review the revenue allocation formula than it is for minders of the federal government to call on states to look for sources of additional revenue.

    This should be no time for blame game or for scapegoating the states. Most of the states were created at the instance of mangers of the federal government between 1967 and now. When citizens and even governors cried out since the exit of military dictatorship that many of the existing states are not sustainable, owners of federal power who out of misconception of what national unity means in a multiethnic state have ignored such calls. For example, the recent amendments to the constitution by the national assembly and the recommendations from the recent national conference convened by Jonathan failed to come to terms with the danger inherent in structuring the polity on the expectation that revenue from petroleum is more or less infinite and will always be sufficient to foot the ever-increasing recurrent bills of the three levels of government that live off the manna from the bowels of the earth.

    It is ironical that the federal government which has dispossessed states of their traditional sources of revenue is now quick to call on the states to find new ways of attracting revenue. All the services that used to bring revenue to states and local governments have virtually been taken over by the central government or passed to federal agencies. A federal agency is in charge of issuing driver’s license, vehicle registration, collecting and distributing consumption taxes, etc. For decades, the central government has turned states into agencies to spend money allocated to them from the federation account, made possible largely by petroleum.

    As this column had observed in three articles in the past titled “Petroleum and the future of Nigeria,”dwindling revenue from petroleum provides an opportunity for the country to re-examine its methods and re-invent itself.  The new economic challenge that may ensue from reduced revenue from the country’s only crop may make obsolete the view that all that is needed for Nigeria to survive is that the country is pampered and made to be seen to be united. After throwing whatever is not stolen from the revenue that has accrued to the country since 1967 at sustaining 774 local governments and 36 states put perpetually on life support by huge flow of oil revenue, Nigeria does not appear to be any more united than it was when the country had just four regions and each region functioned as a centre for production and development by using the model of optimising comparative advantage.

    To continue to think that the present structure of the polity can be sustained if the era of oil boom comes to an end is for our leaders to knowingly bury their heads in the sand in order to avoid coming to terms with an unpleasant reality. There appears to be plenty of time to do a lot of re-thinking before the few amendments of the 1999 Constitution reach the state legislatures. Endowing 774 local governments with autonomy to spend funds allocated from a petroleum-driven federation account may no longer in the next three months be as realistic as it was to federal lawmakers a few months back. Correspondingly, President Jonathan needs to review his pledge to delegates at the recent national conference on implementing their recommendations, particularly creation of additional 18 states. The game may not have changed completely but it is changing fast. Let us start to get realistic and embark on removing traces of military inscriptions on our polity and economy.

  • The chicken of rentier states coming home to roost? 1

    The chicken of rentier states coming home to roost? 1

    It is salutary that after hedging for a few months, the minister of finance has finally come to terms with the new reality foisted on the country’s economy, especially its political economy by the laws of supply and demand in the international energy market.

    News about petroleum, Nigeria’s ‘king of crops’ is getting worse by the day. Reliable international sources of energy news are warning minute-by-minute that the price of petroleum has entered its downward journey south and may stay south for long. Even the federal government is taking note of the bad news. It just warned or urged states to look for other ways of raising revenue, rather than depending on the funds from fossil energy. What is required at this critical time is more than knee-jerk reaction from the federal or other levels of government.

    We have warned several times in this column in the last two years about the fast-approaching end to easy money from petroleum. Given the alarmist nature of Western media, in particular about matters that can readily unsettle African governments, it is possible for the forecast that the downward spiral in oil price will last long to be an exaggeration. What appears reliable for now is that Nigeria is losing a lot of revenue anticipated from sale of crude oil. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to tell the country’s 36 states to get creative about revenue mobilisation and less aggressive about revenue allocation.

    It is salutary that after hedging for a few months, the minister of finance has finally come to terms with the new reality foisted on the country’s economy, especially its political economy by the laws of supply and demand in the international energy market. It is right that the federal government has found the dwindling revenue from crude oil too serious a matter to justify denialist response on the part of its thinkers and handlers. Certainly, it is better to err on the side of pessimism than optimism in such matters.

    It is encouraging that the federal government has come to terms with the fact that its finance is under stress on account of the fall of oil price. If with over$70 per barrel, and about 80% of the budget coming from revenue from petroleum, the federal government appears to be having difficulty paying states their statutory allocations on time, then God save every level of government and even citizens when the basic law of economics catches up with all underdeveloped rentier states in 2015 and beyond.

    Some conservative economic pundits in the service of political partisanship have already started to argue that there is nothing to worry about, arguing that the prices of oil have been fluctuating for decades and that whatever goes up must come down and vice versa, as it has always done with the cost of energy. It is gratifying that the federal government is not depending on the perception of such intellectuals this time. The reality of the moment with respect to the future of fossil energy seems to be starkly different from what it was in 2009 when the price of oil dropped to about $40 per barrel.

    Too many new discoveries have been made since 2009. The United States had added Fracking to the lexicon of petroleum exploitation. It is the success of this venture, rather than any political change of heart on the part of that one-time regular buyer of Nigeria’s Brent crude that has stopped it from being one of our best customers. Fortunately, we still have the East to look up to for customers, especially India and China. The news coming from those countries also indicate that they are moving in the direction of borrowing or imitating the technology that brought shale gas into the energy vocabulary of the decade. Europe is certainly on the way to fracking and even Russia, a large supplier of oil and gas cannot be ruled out of the race for shale gas. The list of seekers of the technology of shale gas is getting longer. Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Estonia are already members of the Fracking Club.

    Moreover, more countries, hitherto without petroleum, are joining the club of oil exporting countries. Such countries include Nicaragua, and many of Nigeria’s neighbours on the continent: Ghana, Ehtiopia, Kenya, and Benin. Similarly, other technologies are emerging to increase production of renewable and clean energy. Even Shell, a long-time king of the energy market, is neck deep in renewable energy research and development. More than ever before, all brands of locomotive devices already have hybrid brands that combine a little of fossil oil with ethanol from sugar, cassava, or jatropha. Energy science news also indicates that some countries are already working on breeding bacteria that are capable of producing petroleum. It may be too soon to say that the era of glut on the petroleum market has arrived but it is also not unrealistic to say that sooner or later the world will supply more energy than buyers need. One consequence of this may be that prices of all forms of fossil energy will fall to the point of bringing embarrassment to states that have acted for so long to acquire the name of rentier states, i.e. states that depend not on revenue from the productive sector but largely rather from sale of natural resources without any significant value added.

    But, does or should the nose diving of the price of oil provide a sufficient condition for pessimism on the part of government leaders? It may in the case of a country that has taken the path of profligacy in its political policies over the years, especially one that has become a poster child for political and bureaucratic corruption to the point of having its enemies call it a global center for kleptocracy. However, where leaders are capable of listening to the wisdom of believers in humanism or the infinite capacity of human beings to alter or improve their conditions, there should be no cause for alarm, even if petroleum ceases to exist or advances in technology makes oil redundant.

    There have been leaders in the past who were indefatigable humanists. In the era of Awolowo, Azikiwe, and Sardauna, revenue from petroleum was so negligible that it was easy for the country’s constitution to reserve 50% of such proceeds to regions of derivation. Nigeria was competing neck-to-neck with Ghana then in export of cocoa for foreign exchange. Ivory Coast, today’s global leader in cocoa production was not any close to Nigeria in those years. The Northern region was also making huge revenues from growing cotton and groundnut while the Eastern region thrived on palm produce. It was not until the arrival of military dictators that easy money from petroleum became a source of radical policy changes that disabled the country’s three centers of production and balkanized the country into twelve, then 18, then 30, and 36 states, now slated to become 54, should President Jonathan have the means to implement recommendations of the recent national conference.

    It was well after the characterisation of Nigeria as a country that had problems of spending its petro dollars that military dictators also created a third tier of government and endowed local governments with direct allocation from the petroleum-based Federation account. As of the last count there are 774 of such local governments each with its own bureaucracy, and recently given additional encouragement by the national assembly that finally separated local governments from the 36 states that house them, in order for local government chairmen to have the freedom to use their allocations from the distributable pool. Consequently, for about forty years, Nigeria has not been baking the proverbial national cake; it has been sharing it almost without sense, all in the name of promoting national unity and even development. Once the goose that makes this possible loses its fertility, leaders would have to starting thinking hard like their counterparts in other parts of the world about how to stimulate development and thus make Nigeria attractive to all the nations within it to the extent that unity becomes a given.

    But calling for devaluation of the naira, as some have already started to do, may not remove most of the problems left by continued drop in the price of petroleum, the backbone of the country’s economy and the determiner of what its annual budget looks like. Correspondingly, asking states to look for other sources of revenue is not the way to go, given the size of many of the states and the disempowerment of such states by the federal government which itself receives the lion share of revenue from oil.

    To be continued

  • Our politics and geography of power

    Our politics and geography of power

    Certainly, there are political leaders in the country whose religious affiliations seem to have been eclipsed by their modern mindset and commitment to building a modern state.

    Our national politics took a new turn last week. Two of the country’s former heads of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo and General Mohammed Buhari, took turns to examine the religious topography of the country in relation to selection of presidential candidates for the forthcoming national elections. Buhari was reported to have said that there is nothing wrong with the top two candidates in the presidential ticket being Muslims or Christians, illustrating thatAbiola and Kingibe were both Muslims in the annulled presidential election of 1993.  In contrast, Obasanjo was quoted as saying everything is wrong with any presidential ticket that reserves the top two positions for Christians or Muslims, emphasising that the time is not ripe or right for any political party to make that kind of choice. The interest of today’s piece is to examine why both of the two former rulers may be, in Nigerian parlance, half-right and half-wrong.

    Ideally, religion should not be a matter of any importance in politics and distribution of power in a modern state, more so in a multicultural one. If religion were left at the level of spiritual interaction between individuals and whatever represents God for them, it should not matter to voters and candidates who are interested in solving social and mundane problems facing citizens. In particular, citizens in a mono-religious space would have no reason to think in terms of religion when choosing a candidate or when a candidate that subscribes to the territory’s only or dominant religion canvasses for votes.

    Focus on politics and power for the purpose of improving the quality of life of citizens would even be better assured were such a mono-religious society to proclaim the state a secular state rather than a theocracy. In such a context, citizens may not need to worry about the religion of those who govern them or represent them in legislative chambers. Emphasis in such a context is likely to be on candidates’ capacity to govern properly by solving citizens’ social and economic problems. For instance, the United Kingdom is a multicultural polity that is largely united by religion, a crown, and the book of common laws. Even though the country subscribes to the principle of freedom of association, it has not since 1707 had a non-Christian prime minister and no constituency seems to be bothered by this. It is just assumed that anyone wanting to serve as the country’s political leader would accept or tolerate the only or dominant religion in this multicultural society.

    Still on idealism, a plural society that houses multiple religious orientations: Animism, Christianity, and Islam has the potential to demand a supra-religious attitude to its politics and distribution of power, to avoid destabilising sectarian thoughts and activities. Regardless of claims by partisans of the dominance of one religion or the other in Nigeria, the country houses multiple religions, some of which appear to compete with each other. For a multi-religious society to avoid conflicts that can distract it from proper governance, it has two choices: declare itself a secular state or accept to reflect its religious diversity in the composition of its governing team in the fashion of the country’s principle of federal character.

    It is crucial to come to terms with the reality of Nigeria while hoping for ways to change such reality, more so if such is believed to strengthen the capacity to improve governance and enhance unity. Calling for a society in which the religious affiliation of political leaders should be of no consequence in seeking votes and post-election governance is not a bad thing. But anchoring supra-religious vision of the polity solely on readiness or capacity of individual candidates to act right to all regardless of their religious affiliation is not enough to guarantee peace and unity. The country needs a constitution that is unequivocal about secularity of the state as a means of welding together a country of multiple religions. Without a constitution that has adequate provisions to remove fear of domination of one religious group by another, or of one ethnic or linguistic group by another, asking citizens to discountenance the politics of identity and reflection of plurality (in terms of religion, ethnicity, or language) may be nothing more than wishful thinking.

    In a multicultural Nigeria where two of the three Abrahamic religions (or so-called universal religions) are themselves endangered by division into regular and radical Islam and Christianity, it is not advisable for any politician to push religion to the back burner in the choice of candidates, more so that the current constitution is not sufficiently secular in its vision and provisions. Even the amendments by the national assembly and recommendations from the national conference have chosen to ignore the confusion or inconsistency in the 1999 Constitution with respect to the difference between a secular state and a multi-religious state.

    Rising above the many factors that divide Nigerians into groups: language, ethnicity, and religion for the purpose of governance is not unachievable in the long run. But the rhetoric of transcending such divisions may not be capable of substituting for the wisdom of understanding such divisions and moderating them with a secular constitution that sets out to create and sustain a modern state. For example, with the current constitution that has a role for Sharia and Customary Court systems in the capital territory (the space of convergence of the country’s plurality) and a constitution that also has a role for the national assembly in regulating what should have been left solely to local governments and states that need such legal and judicial systems, citizens who do not share the religious beliefs of their Christian-Christian or Muslim-Muslim president and vice president may feel unrepresented or under-represented in the governing team.

    Certainly, there are political leaders in the country whose religious affiliations seem to have been eclipsed by their modern mindset and commitment to building a modern state. As a voter, there are many of such persons that I would vote for even if the presidential ticket is Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian. But this could be because I and others who think like that see religion as something that is best left to the private realm. Most of our present crop of voters have had no reason or exposure in the way the country has been governed in the last fifty years to think that the religious affiliations of principal officers of the Nigerian State do not matter. But it’s possible, even probable, for most voters to think that religion is irrelevant to the common good in a multi-religious society, but we may be too optimistic if we disregard the principle of inclusiveness without ensuring proper institutional or constitutional guarantees, to enable the polity move from where it is at the moment to where it wishes to be.

    After almost half a century of lack of direction, it is conceivable that most voters would want a presidential ticket that is committed and capable of providing regular electricity, an enabling environment for the growth of sustainable refineries to reduce the cost of energy for citizens and governments; creating jobs for young Nigerians and empowering our women; providing an educational culture that can compete in the modern world; etc. But it is also imaginable that there are many Nigerians who would want a guarantee of inclusivity, reflection of all forms of plurality (call it federal character) in the room in which the national cake of job and other opportunities is shared. Such guarantee can come more assuredly from a secular constitution and modern religion-neutral institutions, than from good-hearted leaders who can proclaim that they are tolerant Christians, Muslims, or Animists.

  • Our politics and geography of power

    Certainly, there are political leaders in the country whose religious affiliations seem to have been eclipsed by their modern mindset and commitment to building a modern state.

    Our national politics took a new turn last week. Two of the country’s former heads of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo and General Mohammed Buhari, took turns to examine the religious topography of the country in relation to selection of presidential candidates for the forthcoming national elections. Buhari was reported to have said that there is nothing wrong with the top two candidates in the presidential ticket being Muslims or Christians, illustrating thatAbiola and Kingibe were both Muslims in the annulled presidential election of 1993.  In contrast, Obasanjo was quoted as saying everything is wrong with any presidential ticket that reserves the top two positions for Christians or Muslims, emphasising that the time is not ripe or right for any political party to make that kind of choice. The interest of today’s piece is to examine why both of the two former rulers may be, in Nigerian parlance, half-right and half-wrong.

    Ideally, religion should not be a matter of any importance in politics and distribution of power in a modern state, more so in a multicultural one. If religion were left at the level of spiritual interaction between individuals and whatever represents God for them, it should not matter to voters and candidates who are interested in solving social and mundane problems facing citizens. In particular, citizens in a mono-religious space would have no reason to think in terms of religion when choosing a candidate or when a candidate that subscribes to the territory’s only or dominant religion canvasses for votes.

    Focus on politics and power for the purpose of improving the quality of life of citizens would even be better assured were such a mono-religious society to proclaim the state a secular state rather than a theocracy. In such a context, citizens may not need to worry about the religion of those who govern them or represent them in legislative chambers. Emphasis in such a context is likely to be on candidates’ capacity to govern properly by solving citizens’ social and economic problems. For instance, the United Kingdom is a multicultural polity that is largely united by religion, a crown, and the book of common laws. Even though the country subscribes to the principle of freedom of association, it has not since 1707 had a non-Christian prime minister and no constituency seems to be bothered by this. It is just assumed that anyone wanting to serve as the country’s political leader would accept or tolerate the only or dominant religion in this multicultural society.

    Still on idealism, a plural society that houses multiple religious orientations: Animism, Christianity, and Islam has the potential to demand a supra-religious attitude to its politics and distribution of power, to avoid destabilising sectarian thoughts and activities. Regardless of claims by partisans of the dominance of one religion or the other in Nigeria, the country houses multiple religions, some of which appear to compete with each other. For a multi-religious society to avoid conflicts that can distract it from proper governance, it has two choices: declare itself a secular state or accept to reflect its religious diversity in the composition of its governing team in the fashion of the country’s principle of federal character.

    It is crucial to come to terms with the reality of Nigeria while hoping for ways to change such reality, more so if such is believed to strengthen the capacity to improve governance and enhance unity. Calling for a society in which the religious affiliation of political leaders should be of no consequence in seeking votes and post-election governance is not a bad thing. But anchoring supra-religious vision of the polity solely on readiness or capacity of individual candidates to act right to all regardless of their religious affiliation is not enough to guarantee peace and unity. The country needs a constitution that is unequivocal about secularity of the state as a means of welding together a country of multiple religions. Without a constitution that has adequate provisions to remove fear of domination of one religious group by another, or of one ethnic or linguistic group by another, asking citizens to discountenance the politics of identity and reflection of plurality (in terms of religion, ethnicity, or language) may be nothing more than wishful thinking.

    In a multicultural Nigeria where two of the three Abrahamic religions (or so-called universal religions) are themselves endangered by division into regular and radical Islam and Christianity, it is not advisable for any politician to push religion to the back burner in the choice of candidates, more so that the current constitution is not sufficiently secular in its vision and provisions. Even the amendments by the national assembly and recommendations from the national conference have chosen to ignore the confusion or inconsistency in the 1999 Constitution with respect to the difference between a secular state and a multi-religious state.

    Rising above the many factors that divide Nigerians into groups: language, ethnicity, and religion for the purpose of governance is not unachievable in the long run. But the rhetoric of transcending such divisions may not be capable of substituting for the wisdom of understanding such divisions and moderating them with a secular constitution that sets out to create and sustain a modern state. For example, with the current constitution that has a role for Sharia and Customary Court systems in the capital territory (the space of convergence of the country’s plurality) and a constitution that also has a role for the national assembly in regulating what should have been left solely to local governments and states that need such legal and judicial systems, citizens who do not share the religious beliefs of their Christian-Christian or Muslim-Muslim president and vice president may feel unrepresented or under-represented in the governing team.

    Certainly, there are political leaders in the country whose religious affiliations seem to have been eclipsed by their modern mindset and commitment to building a modern state. As a voter, there are many of such persons that I would vote for even if the presidential ticket is Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian. But this could be because I and others who think like that see religion as something that is best left to the private realm. Most of our present crop of voters have had no reason or exposure in the way the country has been governed in the last fifty years to think that the religious affiliations of principal officers of the Nigerian State do not matter. But it’s possible, even probable, for most voters to think that religion is irrelevant to the common good in a multi-religious society, but we may be too optimistic if we disregard the principle of inclusiveness without ensuring proper institutional or constitutional guarantees, to enable the polity move from where it is at the moment to where it wishes to be.

    After almost half a century of lack of direction, it is conceivable that most voters would want a presidential ticket that is committed and capable of providing regular electricity, an enabling environment for the growth of sustainable refineries to reduce the cost of energy for citizens and governments; creating jobs for young Nigerians and empowering our women; providing an educational culture that can compete in the modern world; etc. But it is also imaginable that there are many Nigerians who would want a guarantee of inclusivity, reflection of all forms of plurality (call it federal character) in the room in which the national cake of job and other opportunities is shared. Such guarantee can come more assuredly from a secular constitution and modern religion-neutral institutions, than from good-hearted leaders who can proclaim that they are tolerant Christians, Muslims, or Animists.

  • With 774 autonomous LGs, states may become superfluous

    With 774 autonomous LGs, states may become superfluous

    If governors fail to release funds meant to be used by local governments, the response should not be turning this integral part of state governance into an autonomous level.

    If the many problems besetting our nation-state, one that is often forgotten is proclivity on the part of those in charge of governance to deflect attention from real issues when the need for rational debate is urgent. When the National Assembly initiated about three years ago one-day consultation with constituents from the six geopolitical zones on aspects of the 1999 Constitution they would recommend for amendment, citizens and civil society shouted foul, arguing that a constitution crafted by military dictators ought to require full consultation with citizens. But the lawmakers who saw (and still see) themselves as embodiment of the country’s sovereignty thought and acted otherwise, by floating perfunctory consultations in six cities with individuals who could afford to travel to such cities. The response of labour unions and other civic society organisations to the latest list of amendments from both legislative houses in Abuja, shows if anything, that the lawmakers are thinking alone and perhaps solely for the sake of the political class.

    On his own side, President Jonathan organised a national conference to discuss how to re-launch the Nigerian union. The conference also came up with several recommendations. Optimists about the outcome of the conference called on the president to implement their recommendations. In response to such optimists, President Jonathan established a special task force to move the recommendations to the next level. It is not clear if the recommendations had been sent formally to the national assembly, but the recent amendments approved by the national assembly indicate that the lawmakers have not paid any attention to the outcome of the national conference. If it has taken the national assembly about three years to agree on amendments to be sent to state assemblies for ratification or rejection, it is right to speculate that recommendations from the national conference are more likely, than not, to be kept in view for a long time, thus proving critics of the conference right on their view that no gain was likely to come out of a national conference convened a few months to national elections.

    It is conceivable that conference delegates and citizens in support of the conference are already getting ready to call national assembly members to order for not giving a thought to conference recommendations which are already in the public domain. However, it is instructive that labour groups have lost no time in protesting against two of the amendments from the lawmakers: closing the door to national minimum wage legislation and giving autonomy to local governments. In case Abuja is too distant for federal legislators to hear the complaints of labour leaders, state house assemblies need to heed the complaints of labour organisations on these two issues. Labour’s observation that these two amendments do not appear to have grown from holistic thinking deserves more attention in today’s column, before the issues get swept off the radar by campaign jingles.

    Part of the debate in the legislature on national wages is that federalism should allow states to determine how much they want to pay workers, putting into consideration such factors as differences in cost of living in the various states; each state’s capacity to pay, etc. Having a national minimum wage does not preclude states from adopting different wage levels. What is missing in the national assembly’s argument is the desirability of a national minimum wage in a country with an economy that is integrated to the point that some citizens work in one state and live in another. Wages and pension benefits may be on the concurrent list, but there ought to be some space for the national assembly to legislate on minimum wage level, below which no state may go in terms of emoluments to workers in the country but which any state may exceed should its economic fortunes allow.

    With respect to local governments, it is amazing how a civilian government can become an instrument of further militarisation of the polity. Apart from the fact that most countries of the world recognise that local governments are political units of states, no federal system on the globe gives the local government, country, borough, and other names for this sub-national level of government a status that makes it autonomous of the state of which it is a unit. It was military manipulators of the polity that created the concept of local government as third tier of government. It is also instructive that this was done principally with a view to pass funds from petroleum revenue to local governments. It was the concept of local government as a source of funds for local leaders that also dictated the naming of local governments in the 1999 Constitution, to the extent that local governments created after 1999 are not eligible for funding from the federation account. Lagos State is a good example of the limit put on local government creation on account of funds from the federation account.

    One argument prevalent at the national assembly about local government is the view that governors under the present dispensation are interfering with the funds allocated to the local government. Recommending autonomy for local governments is reminiscent of the syndrome at work when WAEC was believed by government leaders to be failing in its charge. NECO was created to do the same job as WAEC. If governors fail to release funds meant to be used by local governments, the response should not be turning this integral part of state governance into an autonomous level. Governors who withhold funds meant for local governments from them should be brought to book for violating the rights of local governments. Removing the Immunity provision from the constitution would have been enough to make erring governors act in compliance with the laws.

    Without realising it, there are more dangers for integrated development at the state level if local governments are made autonomous of states. What the national assembly has recommended is formalisation of the 774 local governments created under military rule as mini states. This recommendation has the capacity to undermine states’ control over their development while increasing dependence of local governments on the federal government. The thinking at the national conference on this matter was superior to that of the national assembly: local governments should not be separated from the states that house them in economic and political terms, if integrated development is to thrive at the state level. However, the bug of manna from the federation account was at work at the conference when it still left the issue of direct funding of local government from the federation account intact. Local governments are units of the state and need not be funded separately.

    It is an irony that at a time that revenue is dwindling to the extent that the federal government is finding it hard to release states’ shares of the federation account to them as and when due (on account of decrease in revenue flowing to the federation account from petroleum, the nation’s largest crop), the national assembly is showing more enthusiasm about turning 774 local governments into self-contained mini states.  Now that federal lawmakers have shown their preference on how to achieve integrated development at the subnational level,state legislators should not pay more attention to the wishes of existing and would-be local government chairpersons at the expense of ensuring coordinated development at the state level. The standard practice in other parts of the world (federal and unitary systems) is about two tiers of government. The three-tier system in Nigeria is an aberration foisted on the polity by military dictators. State legislators need to consult fully with citizens at the grassroots as to their preference on this matter.

  • Toward the future of Nigeria

    Toward the future of Nigeria

     The current system (bequeathed to the country by military dictators and sustained by civilian rulers for the past 16 years) of dependence on oil at local, state, and central levels is not sustainable in the long run.

    Northern states cannot continue to survive on Niger Delta’s oil money. Our states are bereft of ideas that will generate revenue to run our affairs. There is no state in the North that can pay one month salary without federal allocation, and federal allocation is derived from the sale of the Niger Delta’s oil. This is dangerous and spells disaster in the future….If Nigeria splits today, the North is in danger…We must resist money politics and elect credible people. We must protect our votes. – Shehu Sani

     

    The extract from the campaign  material of one of the country’s leading human rights activists, Shehu Sani, reminds me of the Yoruba saying: Ibitiiyati n baomo re wi, niomoalainiyati n koogbon (where and when a mother counsels her child, a motherless child within earshot pays rapt attention and thereby learns wisdom). Campaigning for votes for the senate in Kaduna Central Senatorial District recently, Sani used the occasion to canvass for votes and at the same time persuade the electorate in his constituency about the need for a rethink or new vision of and for Nigeria, if citizens at large are to benefit from the union.

    Nigeria has for too long depended on the oil money from the Niger Delta. When successions of military dictators changed the revenue allocation formula of 50% for derivation to zero to the model of bottle-feeding each state from the breast milk of the Niger Delta, they based the sudden change of policy on the imperative of national unity and cohesion. The school of thought then was that a policy of even development through donation of oil money to states would make Nigerians feel a sense of belonging to one country and see themselves as brothers and sisters eating from the same pot or bowl. Similarly, the policy to balkanise the regions into mini states and create about 800 local governments to receive milk from the national feeding bottle was also supported by the theory that to keep Nigeria united after the civil war, the more oil money that is taken to the grassroots, the higher the chances of national integration.

    Nigerians from all parts of the country have grown to see oil money as the source of life for the nation-state. In the north, bogus theories about oil as national resource were propagated to counter calls for return to federalism and the pre-1966 revenue allocation system. The most prominent of such theories from public intellectuals from the north were two. The first one is that there would have been no petroleum in the Niger Delta if solid and liquid wastes had not over centuries come through Benue and Niger rivers in the north to the delta and the basin that produces oil in the Niger Delta. The second claim is that it was federal resources that were used in the 1950s to intensify exploration and later develop technology for exploitation. In the western part of the country, many politicians argued (and still do) in the day for resource sovereignty for the Niger Delta while using the night to canvass for continuation of the revenue allocation system that dished out money to states and local governments, saying in whispers that post-military governors would not be able to sustain free education without such soft funds from the Niger Delta. Such thinkers could not be bothered by the interjection that there was no trace of petroleum in the country when Obafemi Awolowo’s government introduced free education in the Western Region in 1955.

    It is on record that the issue of dependence on oil money was a major factor in the failure of the recent national conference to go beyond recommendations for cosmetic or symbolic changes to the current unitary constitution, designed to support easy flow of funds to states and local governments. Even those who argued at the conference for additional 19 states (to move from 36 to 55 states) did so on the strength that the oil money would flow to the new 19 mini states. Even when the conference agreed that local government creation and development should be the sole responsibility of each state, the conference still kept intact the policy of direct allocation of funds from the federation account (made possible by petroleum) to the 774 or more local governments.

    Sani’s assessment that there is no state in the north that can pay one month salary without federal allocation applies to over 30 of the current 36 states. Only Lagos State in the west can pay one month salary without federal allocation and without floating bonds. There is no state in the Southeast and outside the oil-producing states (which now receive 13% percent for derivation) that can sustain its secretariat without direct allocation from the federation account. Most of the governors in the south have confessed publicly that they have no money for development and even to pay salaries if the Accountant-General in Abuja fails to send quarterly or monthly allocations down to the states.

    One does not have to have a stake in Sani’s chances to become a senator for Kaduna before acknowledging that the human rights activist in his recent campaign speech was addressing all of Nigeria on the right way to go, if the entire country is not to become endangered. The current system (bequeathed to the country by military dictators and sustained by civilian rulers for the past 16 years) of dependence on oil at local, state, and central levels is not sustainable in the long run. The price of petroleum is more likely to go down than to rise from now on. Technological innovations to produce new forms of renewable energy are yielding good results in many other parts of the globe; new sources of petroleum are coming from fracking; new technologies to save energy and thus reduce consumption are also coming to the global market.

    All of these indicate that any country that defines reality largely in terms of the oil it produces is virtually living in the past. The north is not likely to be more endangered than the west or the east, should Nigeria break. Having depended on manna for decades at the instance of military theory of political unity, no section of the country is likely to be immune from danger when oil prices head south. There used to be a time when each of the regions made good and respectable living from productive as distinct from the extractive activities that currently drive the economy: cotton, groundnut, cocoa rubber, palm oil production. There was a time when Ivory Coast, currently the world’s largest producer of cocoa, used to be behind Nigeria and Ghana in cocoa production. There used to be a time when Indonesia and Malaysia needed the assistance of Nigeria with respect to palm oil production. Today, Nigeria even imports palm oil in bleached form from Malaysia and Indonesia, with money made from petroleum.

    What needs to change radically is the mindset that Nigeria turned Nigerian political leaders into prayer warriors for manna from the Niger Delta. It is citizens that can drive such change. As voters, they need, as Sani has recommended to the people of Kaduna senatorial district, to identify candidates who want to serve and produce, in contrast to the hordes that ask for votes to enable them sleep and consume from the soft funding made possible by petroleum. The reason citizens have lost the courage or energy to resist corruption and impunity that hold the entire by the jugular at present is that the money being used to keep the country as it is and to intimidate citizens does not come from citizens’ efforts and taxes. Voters all over the country need to consider the future of their children and grandchildren by voting for candidates who are capable of going beyond the Sisyphean effort to do the same thing over and over, without noticeable benefits to citizens.