The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

20 years after June 12: Noise without deliberation

Twenty years after annulment of the presidential election of June 12, 1993 and the struggle for democratization that raged for four years against the dictatorship of Sani Abacha, the country has not made substantial progress in terms of responding to demands for democracy of and for nationalities in the country. But in terms of electoral democracy, the country has made some strides in the direction of de-militarization of the polity. Beyond conducting elections at intervals and electing officers to conduct the business of government at the federal and state levels, one crucial element of the struggle against military rule has been left unattended: the demand for restructuring of the polity.

Since the coming of civil rule in 1999, there have been media and political debates on the topic of re-structuring without sincere efforts to really address the problem with the hope of solving it. In the fashion of the proverbial Nigeria factor, debates on the issue of re-federalizing the country have been so cacophonous and suggestive of efforts to debate in order to prevent proper debate and deliberation. The process started with General Olusegun Obasanjo. During his first term, he referred to those asking for sovereign national conference as individuals that wanted the country to break. In his second term, he organized what he called Political Reform Conference. At the end of the conference, nothing substantial was achieved. This again induced fresh calls for people’s constitution.

President Umaru Yar’Adua did not have time to worry about addressing calls for restructuring, if he at all paid attention to them. But he succeeded in setting up a police reforms committee. The committee recommended that the central police system should be funded from the federation account, without giving any space of authority to the states which along with the central government own the federation account. As one area considered by federalists to be crucial to restructuring, those calling for a people’s constitution came back to the podium to drum up their demands.

Then President Goodluck Jonathan emerged. He too was quick to pontificate that Nigeria’s current constitution has no serious problem and that the structure of the polity is in order. Shortly after saying that, he formed a special committee to look at the 1999 Constitution and make recommendations on how to improve the country’s union charter. Knowing that the recommendations of the Belgore Committee did not address the issues raised by committed federalists about the current constitution, citizens continued to make the same demands that include calls for a people’s constitution to be determined at a sovereign national conference or a constitutional conference.

On its own part, the National Assembly expressed readiness to amend the constitution. Over sanguine federalists took this to mean that federal lawmakers would make recommendations to make the current constitution more federal. The process has been on for almost two years without any promise about when it will end. But from information released by lawmakers, the constitution, after amendment, is more likely to look more unitary, as we observed in this column last week. The purpose of the short historical journey since 1999 is to inform our readers about the failure of the country’s post-military political class to embark on de-militarizing and re-federalizing the polity. All efforts to make civilian rulers realize that continuing to govern the country with a constitution and a governance architecture that have no input from citizens is dangerous have not led to proper deliberation, even though they have generated a lot of noise.

Efforts by federal legislators to amend the constitution notwithstanding, two types of discourse have emerged and have been raging for the past one year: Unity discourse and Diversity discourse. Those who control the unity discourse insist that the current constitution is perfect. To them, what is wrong with the constitution is the quality of those who use or supervise the use of the charter. The core of the unity discourse is that if Nigeria is able to get good leaders, all its problems regarding managing its diversity optimally would be over. This school of thought also affirms that devolving more powers to the states is capable of causing disintegration of the country and that recognizing the county’s nationalities in the constitution as Ethiopia has done successfully is capable of breaking Nigeria. Centralists are quick to affirm that should Nigerians insist on electing a man or woman of higher quality than we have had since independence, constitutional problems that militate against peace and progress will disappear. In other words, the problem is lack of benevolent leadership.

But Diversity discourse focuses on the role of cultural plurality in the politics and economy of a multiethnic state. They ask for constitutional intervention in the management of the country’s diversity. Leaders calling for recognition of diversity insist that culture has a significant role in political and economic development and that cultural differences in the country are not likely to disappear and are also not injurious to the country’s unity, if well managed. Federalists insist that Nigeria may have bad luck that prevents it from having good and benevolent leaders, especially at the federal level. But they affirm that lack of benevolent leadership is not as impactful as lack of benevolent governance structure and institutions. They argue that many countries that have similar multiethnic character have created peace for the purpose of progress by adopting federal arrangements: Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Ethiopia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America, to name a few. Some federalists are even saying that the problems of Boko Haram partially result from failure to address the national question in the design of the country’s governance structure. In short, federalists believe that the problem of the country is not one of benevolent leadership versus benevolent structure; rather it is a combination of both. They also think that a humanist approach to governance suggests that it is easier to work at benevolent structure than to create benevolent leadership. Political systems are not about creating personalities that can create political miracles; they are about creating institutions that are conducive to enriching the performance of average political leaders in office.

The challenge as we begin the third decade after June 12 must continue to include wishing the heroes who died while struggling for democracy in the country: MKO Abiola, Alfred Rewane, Kudirat Abiola, and many others to rest in perfect peace. It must also include finding ways to elevate the discourse of federalism that is almost being drowned by the thinking that says an imposed constitution is not as much of a problem as finding supermen to rule Nigeria.

June 16, 2013
How strong must our federal government be?

The point at issue is that there is a need to share ruling and sovereignty between federal and state governments in a multiethnic polity

The title of today’s piece has arisen from the view by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Review of the Constitution (SCRC) that devolution of powers from exclusive to concurrent list together must respect the need to have a strong federal government that can hold the country together. The other possible title would have been since when has the country been falling apart? What the argument about having a federal bureaucratic leviathan to keep the country together appears to be set to achieve is to justify keeping most of the provisions of a constitution that had no input from citizens in the first place and about which citizens in large numbers have complained in their call for a new or people’s constitution. Most of what has been publicised as recommended amendments to the 1999 Constitution are basically Karounwi (just having something to talk about), rather than addressing the real issues.

We said in this column several times in the past that the amendment exercise is likely to go the way of the Obasanjo Political Reform Conference: nowhere. The reason for the lawmakers to attempt amending the constitution has been sidelined in order to privilege the irrelevant and the redundant. All the talk about not creating new states, introducing a six-year term to replace the current renewable four-year tenure, begging for a special status for Lagos, and passing the buck on revenue by derivation to Revenue Mobilisation and Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) amount largely to beating about the bush. The concerns of those who called for sovereign national conference and for constitutional conference, both of which the National Assembly tried to pre-empt by insisting that its charge or mandate includes constitutional amendment may at the end of the amendment exercise be ignored.

Citizens who have been clear on the issue that the present structure cannot be used to create a new and more benevolent structure for democratic and efficient federal governance now have reasons, after going through the recommendations from the SCRC, to beat their chests and say “Didn’t we tell you?”

That the lawmakers have shown a myopic understanding of devolution in a federation comes out of SCRC’s chairman’s statement that the exclusive list is congested, cumbersome, and unwieldy, and that “there is therefore the need to decongest the exclusive list by maintaining only items of utmost importance to the federation as a whole, while transferring items of concurrent interests to the concurrent list.” In the first place, the states are not begging lawmakers to shed load from the federal list to them, in order to have something to do. The point at issue is that there is a need to share ruling and sovereignty between federal and state governments in a multiethnic polity, which the authors of the 1999 Constitution had made up their minds to ignore.

From the list of items SCRC has recommended for transfer to the concurrent list, there are three that are clearly stated: Prisons, Stamp duties, and Railways. Is this to be interpreted that all the other 65 items on the list are about the federation as a whole? If this assessment is correct, then the concurrent list will now have 32 instead of the 29 in the current constitution while the federal government will have 65 items instead of its original 68 items, until we are told in plain language how many new items are added to the exclusive list.What is ironical about the cosmetic amendments announced so far is that states can now include establishment and maintenance of prisons and prisoners on their list of functions while they have no hand in law enforcement, including enforcing laws created by state legislators and violation of which can create population for the prisons. Fingerprinting is still on the exclusive list while Prisons will go to the concurrent list, should the Senate have its way. How can such disjunction lead to efficiency?

The complaint that the current constitution had created too many problems for smooth federal governance in terms of the sharing of powers between the national and state governments may be negligible in relation to the confusion that is likely to arise if and when the call by the Senate for autonomy to local governments is approved by all the relevant bodies. In effect, this would mean that state governments would have no supervisory function over local governments that are part and parcel of them. The highlight of giving autonomy to local governments is that civilian governments have succeeded in raising local governments to the level of federating units, a thing that successions of military dictators could not achieve.

With respect to the Senate’s view on Fiscal Federalism/Derivation: “It is the Committee’s view that fixing the present rate to reflect prevailing reality should be an administrative responsibility vested in the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission,” there is the impression that the Senate conflates or reduces fiscal federalism to derivation. Derivation may be a part of fiscal federalism, but fiscal federalism is much larger than derivation, and there should have been some reflection of this understanding in the recommendations proposed by the SCRC.

Wallace Oates, in his book, Fiscal Federalism, has said that the concept involves major devolution and fiscal decentralisation. This should include leaving to regions and states or provinces functions and taxation that can lead to efficient provision of goods and services to citizens, rather than keeping such powers and functions with a central government that has no direct constituents. The result of fiscal decentralisation is to increase citizens’ impact on political outcomes and political participation, and to accelerate development. Does SCRC believe that transferring three items to the concurrent list while retaining the principle of federal legislative supremacy on such items as well as avoiding entrenching the principle of derivation in the constitution would take care of the many issues that led to demands for re-structuring? Our senators need to know that we had a constitution until 1966 that clearly stated that derivation would be 50% of revenue garnered from exploitation of petroleum and other natural resources. It would have been safer to put such important information in the constitution than to leave it for a body made up of political appointees.

It is curious that SCRC has not shown any interest in looking at the percentage of revenue that is given to the federal government and the many functions that the federal government is billed to perform, even when such functions are more efficiently performed at lower levels of government in other federations. In case our lawmakers still have time to look more closely, there are, apart from Prisons, Stamp duties, and Railways, many more items that are better left to the jurisdiction of states:a). Establishment and maintenance of machinery for continuous and universal registration of births and deaths; b). Construction, alteration, and maintenance of roads declared by the National Assembly to be federal trunk roads should be a joint responsibility of the federal government and the state such roads pass through;c). Fingerprints, identification and criminal records; d). Fishing and fisheries in general; e). Insurance;f). ports;g). Mines and minerals, including oilfields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas;h). Patents, trademarks, trade or business names, industrial designs, and merchandise marks;i). Police and security services;j). Professional occupations; k). Public holidays; l). Formation, annulment and dissolution of all marriages;m). Establishment of a purchasing authority with power to acquire for export or sale in world markets agricultural produce; n). Inspection of produce to be exported from Nigeria and enforcement of grades and standards of quality in respect of produce so inspected; o). Establishment of a body to prescribe and enforce standards of goods and commodities offered for sale; p). Control of the prices of goods and commodities designed by the National Assembly as essential goods or commodities; q). Registration of business names.

June 9, 2013
Whenever the truth hurts

Nigerians at home and abroad need to accept that the truth can liberate while it can also hurt.

One popular lesson learned from Christian scriptures is that the truth shall set people free. In other words, the truth shall liberate people troubled or otherwise from their inhibitions and put them on the road to salvation or redemption. This has not happened in the case of truth that Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale shot and chopped Drummer Lee Rigby a British soldier in Woolwich, north-east London last week. The fact that the young men are British citizens of Nigerian descent had caused ripples in the country in which the crime was committed and where the parents of the two young men were born. This tragic and barbaric act has left so many lessons to be learnt in different parts of the world.

The truth about the parentage of the two latest members of the world’s newest international terrorists has raised the adrenalin of Nigerians in diaspora in the United Kingdom and in the birthplace of the parents of the two Michaels. Those in the United Kingdom who perceive themselves as possible or potential targets of vengeful looks and deliberate profiling from people in their host community have cried foul about the characterisation of the two Michaels as Nigerian, stressing that by any stretch of imagination, Adebolajo and Adebowale are British one-hundred per cent.

The truth has been hurting Nigerians in Britain noticeably. Living in a country where, apart from regular racism-institutional and inter-personal, subtle and overt–Nigeria had acquired too many stigmas: Advanced fee fraud (alias 419), drug pushing, credit card crime, identity theft, undocumented stay, etc. it is understandable if no one chooses to blame Nigerians for denying the two Michaels the opportunity to be defined in relation to their ancestry? It is perfectly within human character to invoke a popular Yoruba proverb: B’ina baa jo ni jo omo eni, taraeni laa ko gbon danu (if a person and his or her child becomes victim of fire attack, the person is obliged to first ensure his or her own safety before attending to the child). This principle is even emphasised planes where passengers are advised to first put on their oxygen mask before attending to their children.

Here in the ancestral home of the two Michaels, feelings are clearly mixed. Many opinion leaders, especially Yoruba pundits who have written extensively on the issue of the Yoruba being the most religiously plural and tolerant in the world are covering their faces with their hands, as if their own children had killed Lee Rigsby. Others are quick to conclude that of any attempt to attach the origin of the parents of the two alleged terrorists to their identities is overt racism. In other words, people in Nigeria are unhappy that the two young men are being connected to Nigeria, a land with too many dark spots that are visible to the international community. Many of such people prefer to be in denial about this barbaric act in a country that is 3,000 miles away from Nigeria.

Major politicians in the two countries linked by the shame of the moment have spoken effusively. President Jonathan has spoken in the tone of a sociologists: “Each environment presents its own unique challenges and peculiarities and actions taken by affected nations may differ, yet the resolve to confront and defeat this threat should never be in doubt.” Nigeria’s President has spoken bluntly like a person who is suffering a fate similar to Cameron’s at the hands of Boko Haram, but clearly as a politician dealing with the problem of insecurity, a major threat to stability of political power. On the other hand, Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has stressed: “This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life; it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country….” Cameron has spoken frankly like a politician who is preoccupied with search for economic security that requires regular import of petroleum and capital from oil-rich Islamic countries.

But close to the scene of the crime that had turned the two British citizens of Nigerian parentage into new protagonists of terrorism a few years after the case of Muttalab, the failed under-pant bomber, there are many British citizens who are eager to think beyond domestic and international politics and economics by stressing factors that predispose young men to Islamic radicalisation. One of such persons is a Labour parliamentarian, David Lammy. Lammy hasexplained susceptibility to extreme Islamism thus: “If you have not got a major father-figure in your life, if your parents are first-generation immigrants and there is a sense of detachment for you as a second generation immigrant, if you are unemployed, if you are looking for some sense of belonging and then you are potentially seduced by all forms of extremism and possibilities that are criminal or dangerous in intent.” In other words, there is a need to recognize the possibility of a victim morphing into a viper.

Some lessons are being overlooked by those who are preoccupied with face saving on both sides of the Atlantic. If Adebolajo and Adebowale had won the Nobel Prize for physics or medicine, it is certain that Nigerians abroad and at home would have claimed them as their own. No one would have accused the British media of stereotyping with the intention of adding to the stigma attached to Nigerians. It is also conceivable that the British media could have been silent on the parentage of the two men if they had won a prestigious international award. Similarly, Nigerian media pundits would have accused the British of subtle racism for not mentioning the Nigerian ancestry of Adebolajo and Adebowale were the two slated to receive Nobel Prize. No denialism can fly on this matter: the two young terrorists are partly Nigerians; they in fact qualify under our constitution to obtain Nigerian passports. It is re-assuring that the two men had chosen to stick with just British passport, a choice that makes it easy for Nigeria to share the shame of the week with the United Kingdom. The two ‘mujahids’ have also made it easy for the Yoruba of Nigeria to share with the English of Great Britain the shame the two friends have engendered with their murder of an innocent British soldier.

The ignoble act of the two young Nigerian-British murderers of Lee Rigsby has thrown up several questions. One of such questions is what would make persons of Yoruba descent, wherever they may be resident, to kill fellow human beings in the name of God? It is necessary to unpack the socialisation that the parents of the two friends must have given them. Isn’t it curious that the parents of the two partners in crime migrated from a Yoruba world that adores religious plurality and says unequivocally that God (believed in all religions to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient) does not (and should not) require any human being to fight for him or her. Is the reality of postmodern multiculturalism, particularly the practice of absorptive and additive assimilation of immigrants now taking its toll on Yoruba culture? The signs are already there that intolerance of religious plurality, best prevented from damaging social relations through the principle of political secularity, is gaining ground even in the Yoruba homeland in Nigeria. Politicians, school administrators, and parents of diverse religious persuasions are engaged in media war on the subject of wearing religious costumes to public schools, an institution that results from sociality that joins individuals together, rather than from religiosity or spirituality that connects individuals to their gods. Nigerians at home and abroad need to accept that the truth can liberate while it can also hurt.

June 2, 2013
From Nigeria factor to emergency? (2)

Boko Haram’s activities provide a sufficient condition for a National Conference

We ended last week’s piece thus: Would emergency declaration be the end of the interrogation of Nigeria’s multicultural federation that has been at the center of Boko Haram’s agenda to turn Nigeria into Sharia country and outlaw western civilization, the source of Nigeria as a country? The objective today is to look ahead, beyond the ultimate defeat of Boko Haram by the empowered JTF and out of the box of the country’s tradition of denialism.
The news since the commencement of emergency rule in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe is to the effect that the military is gaining ground at the expense of Nigeria’s Islamic terrorists. We have been told by the commander in charge of the special operation that many Boko Haram fighters have been sneaking into neighbouring countries, such as Niger, Chad, and the Cameroons. It is thus conceivable that after a few months,Boko Haram as a group capable of fighting the Nigerian military might become a footnote to contemporary Nigerian history. This possibility does not automatically include the end of guerilla warfare in the cities by warriors of the extremist sect. It also does not pre-empt deliberate harassment of security personnel or innocent citizens, such as had happened several times in the past.
The question of the moment is what will be the response of the federal government, the ultimate determiner of security in the country, should Boko Haram terrorists, driven away or underground during the special military operations permitted by emergency, come back to kill and maim innocent citizens periodically, as was the case when the group first unleashed terror on the country? We know what has happened in Mali. The country’s Islamic extremists had been driven largely across the border, but they have not been routed to the point that the security forces in Mali could sleep with their eyes closed. What if Nigeria’s Islamic extremists choose to harass us from their underground cells within or outside our borders?
There is a Yoruba saying: Eni pa inaoritikotii pa eyin re, niisepuponiwajulati se (If you kill a louse on the head without killing its eggs, you still have a lot of work to do, if you plan to avoid diseases from lice). The point of this proverb is to underline the fact that there is still a lot of critical and proactive thinking to do on the part of the federal government. From some of the grievances and objectives of the group announced by Boko Haram leaders, the sect’s agenda is similar to undestroyed eggs of a louse that has been killed. It is thus crucial for the President and his team to start preparing for a post-battle scenario in which the eggs of killed Boko Haram warriors return to haunt and hurt the nation.
Boko Haram has consistently raised two basic issues: the view that the group believes that western education, and by extension western civilisation is an abomination and the imperative of turning Nigeria or, at least, northern Nigeria into a Sharia region. The professional negotiators that are being prepared for post-war détente with BokoHaramists must not only think in terms of amnesty as paying money to survivors within the sect of the current battle. They will need to get ready to engage Boko Haram men at the peace talks about the root cause of the conflict. It is not enough to assume, as western pundits have done, that the terrorists are victims of poverty, or in the assessment of the country’s professional politicians, individuals hired to make the country ungovernable for Dr. Jonathan.
In other words, negotiators on federal government’s side must be ready to ask many hard questions. One of such questions is why would Boko Haram want to end a federation that is over half a century old and that had fought a civil war that claimed over one million of lives by calling for an end to its secular rule? Are Boko Haram thinkers aware of the fact that in a multicultural federation, any group that attempts to impose its worldview on other components of the country risks disintegration of the country or secession by other groups that want to keep their own worldviews intact? Do leaders of the Islamic terror group believe that Nigeria can survive as a country without western civilization, knowing fully well that there would have been no Nigeria without western civilization? Would members of the Islamic extremist group agree to the terms of a secular Nigerian State as part of the settlement of the two or three year-old conflict? How far are the Islamic extremists willing to go in accepting that there are millions of Christians in northern states that are not likely to become Muslims? There will be several other questions to be asked before writing the Amnesty treaty.
In addition, the federal government needs to prepare for a national dialogue as part of the discussion with Boko Haram terrorists. There is a need to stop being in denial about the magnitude of the problem facing our federation. That it was possible for a group to emerge and hold the country to ransom for about years over its preference for an Islamic State or his opposition to western education should be worrisome to the leaders of the nation-state. That modern and traditional leaders from the north spent more attention on the symptoms of Boko Haram’s grouse than on the cause–desire to Islamise the country– should send signals to the presidency about the need to think out of the box. Moreover, the fact that it took the federal government almost two years to read the riot act to this group needs to set the government thinking more critically about how to sustain the nation’s secularity beyond or despite Boko Haram.
The action that is needed after the end of the physical combat with Boko Haram includes re-thinking the architecture of the country’s security. Ironically, the leaders of the birthplace of Boko Haram are the most mordant critics of calls for decentralisation and democratisation of law enforcement in the country. The long-drawn battle with Boko Haram in the last two years had drawn special attention to the inefficiency inherent in using a central police force to establish and maintain public order. Otherwise, it would not have been necessary to deploy the military to fight Boko Haram, as if it is a foreign enemy. As we look toward the final settlement of an avoidable conflict started byBoko Haram, let us not forget that no sane human being that has seen the benefit of western education would be so opposed to it. The forces that had prevented most of the young men in the terrorist group from having an opportunity to benefit from western education must be reined in once and for all.
It may not be possible to come to a sustainable solution to the problem of managing a multiethnic and multicultural society and polity, without being ready to face the fact that citizens are fully involved in creating the constitution that guides the management of their lives. Boko Haram’s activities in the last two years provide a sufficient condition for a national conference.

May 26, 2013
From Nigeria factor to emergency? (1)

‘Nigeria Factor’ has delayed taking decisive against Boko Haram

At the beginning of the Boko Haram menace, it was not too difficult to foresee what we now have: emergency declaration in three of the states that had given birth to the country’s most lethal terrorist group. If it had not been for the prevalence of the Nigeria Factor, we might not have gone this far before reading the riot act to a group that must have set out to destroy the federation.

As a hydra-headed concept, the Nigeria factor has always included a belief in the capacity of the average Nigerian or Nigerian institution to escape the laws of physics, the type of belief that makes it normal to hope that problems may go away on their own or that problems can get solved by talking them to death or praying them out of existence. Sometimes, the factor encourages us to feel that money can be used to solve all problems. In all cases, the tendency grows among the ruling elite and many of the people they rule that the symptom of a problem is synonymous with the root cause of such problem. In the end, applying the Nigeria factor always succeed in changing the form of (rather than solving) the problem to which it is applied.

When the seed of what became Boko Haram mentality was sown in the first term of Obasanjo’s post-military presidency, we looked away from the issue. When some northern governors declared their states as Sharia states, President Obasanjo ignored them, saying that the decision was a political fad that was destined to fizzle out with time. Some pundits observed then that the decision was to make governance difficult for Obasanjo while others pointed out that the decision of northern governors to declare their states Sharia units was dangerous for the federation and its commitment to secular government. Obasanjo could not be bothered; he continued with his international travels that he thought would clean up the image of Nigeria that was sullied during Abacha’s brutal dictatorship, and the rest is history.

Then came the militancy of youths in the Niger Delta. The root cause of the militancy was the injustice in allocation of revenue from petroleum and gas. Niger Delta youths, who believed that the region was the victim of the country’s only extractive business, called for restoration of the principle of revenue by derivation that was part of the constitution upon which Nigeria agreed to be one country at independence in 1960. Obasanjo looked away from the cause of the problem. He was quick to attack Odi which he saw as the community that hosted the killing by Niger Delta militants of law enforcement officers. Consequently, media attention shifted to the sack of Odi and not the cause of the violence by Niger Delta militants.Obasanjo called a political reforms conference that also avoided paying adequate attention to the grouse of the Niger Delta militants, particularly their demand for adequate compensation for the destruction of the region’s ecosystem by oil exploration and exploitation, and the rest is history.

Furthermore, killings of Beroms and other groups in Plateau State came to national attention during Obasanjo’s rule. But the government looked away from addressing the cause of the killings that had since become a part of the culture of Plateau State. Suddenly, the federal government declared a state of emergency in Plateau State for six months, but the situation remained the same, even up till today. This was despite calls on the federal government by citizens committed to a federal republic to focus on the root of inter-ethnic violence in a multiethnic federation. Nothing changed and history rolled on inexorably.

In the era of UmaruYar’Adua, there was a resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta. Yar’Adua responded to this with amnesty. Militants were given money in exchange for their weapons and their passion for justice in the allocation of revenue to a region that has been de-natured by decades of petroleum exploitation and gas flaring. Again, the focus was on the symptom, not the cause, as the Yar’Adua government created, in addition to amnesty, federal agencies to bring development to the Niger Delta, and it appears that the rest is also history.

After Goodluck Jonathan became president, despite the controversy over PDP’s rotation agreement that the presidency was still to go to the North after Jonathan completed the term of UmaruYar’Adua, a new group, Boko Haram surfaced. The popular or forced belief was that the group was conceived to make the country ungovernable for the president who had prevented the North from moving power back from the south to the north. Pundit’s insistence that the worldview advertised by Boko Haram was too dangerous for a federation of plural cultures was largely ignored. But whenBoko Haram became very violent and lingered longer than most people had expected, new theories about how to deal with the country’s most violent terrorist sect emerged, one after the other.

First was the theory that Boko Haram was restricted to the Northeast where it was born and would evaporate with time. Next was the view that President Jonathan was treating the Islamic terrorists with soft hands. General Obasanjo called for more stick than carrot as the best way to end the menace, reminding the nation of his own style of intervention in Odi. Shortly after, the former chairman of the board of trustees of President Jonathan’s party called again for more carrot or dialogue.

Then came the call by modern and traditional rulers for amnesty. The whole country was encouraged to swallow any pride and beg the terrorists to abandon their worldview, in exchange for money and promise to bring more development to the North. Northern leaders in particular brushed aside calls for a country-wide dialogue or conference to discuss the issues of Boko Haram’s worldview and demands along with those of other nationality and religious groups in the country. Boko Haram waxed stronger by the day. Warnings from international friends of Nigeria about Boko Haram not being just a local group to solve a local problem were also eclipsed by strident calls for amnesty. The result is that we are now at the stage in which President Jonathan believes that the country’s sovereignty has been divided, some left to him and his legislature, and some being seized by Boko Haram terrorist group.

Finally, an emergency has been declared in three of many more Boko Haram states. What if the military with additional powers given to it by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces succeeds in keeping Boko Haram quiet? Would that be the end of the interrogation of Nigeria’s multicultural federation that has been at the center of Boko Haram’s agenda to turn Nigeria into a Sharia country and outlaw western civilization, the source of Nigeria as a country?

May 19, 2013
Mixed signals from constitution amenders

Legislators are not giving clear signals on amending the 1999 Constitution

It is becoming more difficult by the day to know what the lawmakers amending the 1999 Constitution are up to. Just a few weeks ago, they released results of votes on areas suggested by the assembly for amendment. It is clear from the list that the amendments to be expected from lawmakers are likely to push the country further into the pit of unitary rule. But the lecture by the Speaker a few days ago in Lagos suggests that the assembly is also contemplating pushing most items on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent list.

When Nigerians called for a national conference to create a people’s constitution to replace the one foisted on the nation by the country’s last military dictator, lawmakers quickly came out to say that the legislature embodies the people’s sovereignty. They argued that it is not proper to jump over their heads to create another group to amend the constitution, claiming that they were duly voted into legislative office by citizens. On the contrary, federalists argued that lawmakers were not given a mandate to write a constitution, arguing further that the 1999 Constitution is too far from the constitution upon which Nigerian communities agreed to become an independent nation in 1960. Critics of lawmakers’ position also stressed that the constitution the legislators wanted to amend had no input from citizens and that it was at best a document to support transition to democracy superintended by General Abdusalaam Abubakar. The proper thing to do, citizens affirmed, is to extend the rights inherent in democratic governance to citizens to elect their representatives to negotiate a post-military constitution.

Apparently, the National Assembly has been calculating in handling the amendment exercise. It has used the media to give the impression that the amendment is driven by a truly democratic process. First, the Assembly invited self-appointed spokespersons to come to their zonal headquarters to indicate what citizens slated for change in the constitution. It did not matter if such spokespersons consulted with anyone in their constituencies. It did not matter to lawmakers if citizens could afford to travel to zonal headquarters in large numbers or if they could afford accommodation away from home. What mattered was the fact that some persons showed up at each venue to discuss the 1999 Constitution with elected legislators from their zone. Another thing that mattered was the informal voting on issues by unelected participants at the public hearing. One other thing that mattered was that lawmakers were able to publish the results of the voting they conducted over constitutional provisions. At least such open communication with the electorate enabled legislators to show the weight of evidence in favor of further de-federalisation of the polity.

Moreover, it mattered to lawmakers that they were able to publicise their own voting on items determined principally by them. It did not matter if such items are related to worries of citizens about overconcentration of powers at the center in the 1999 Constitution. But legislators felt obliged to demonstrate to citizens that there is correlation between voting patterns at the public hearing and in the hallowed legislative chamber, especially to show evidence that lawmakers agreed on most issues with positions of unelected spokespersons at the zonal public hearings. At best skeptics would call this process good packaging and at worst working to the answer.

What the legislators are now invoking is the principle of majority rule. But what they are missing is that the distribution of legislative seats in the 1999 Constitution is one of the issues that citizens believe should be subject of negotiation at a sovereign national conference or an ordinary constitutional conference. They also appear unaware of the fact that a constitutional conference could have led to a different way of distributing legislative seats among the federating units known for having starkly different attitudes to census figures for the country. Optimists on the issue of lawmakers’ amendment of a constitution believed to be bereft of citizens’ input must have expected legislators to come up with a more federal constitution, to assuage the feelings of federalists who had been calling since 1993 for a sovereign national conference to negotiate a people-authored Union Charter. It is looks like the pessimists might win: the amended constitution is now likely to be more unitary than the 1999 Constitution itself.

Amendments are likely to allow local governments to be divorced from the states to which they belong. The issue of a third tier of government created by military dictators without any reference to the federating units is now likely to be strengthened by amendments by legislators, as funds to local governments may go directly to local governments. The federal monopoly over securing of life and property of citizens is now more likely (than not) to be reinforced in the amended constitution. The provision for State Electoral Commission is also likely to be removed from the current constitution, thereby creating a centralized electoral commission to conduct election to federal, state, and local offices.

If the claim by the Speaker that there are plans to push most items on the Exclusive list to the Concurrent is true, how will that fit into the items already approved by legislators? Federalists need to be more attentive at this point. If lawmakers are shooting for emptying most exclusive items into the concurrent list with the ultimate goal of creating a residual list, this may be a ploy to change states into glorified sites for Lugardian-type of indirect rule. With the principle of federal supremacy intact in the constitution, transferring more items from the exclusive to the concurrent list may be another working to the answer. The provision of federal legislative supremacy over items on the concurrent list in the current constitution can be used to render states irrelevant. State governors and legislators may be reduced to the status of traditional rulers under indirect rule: allowed to do whatever the overlords approve of and prevented from carrying out responsibilities that federal government wishes to seize from them. This is already happening. The federal government has succeeded in preventing Lagos State from installing surveillance devices to protect life and property of citizens in the state, on the flimsy excuse that the federal government has the intention to install similar cameras in the country’s major cities.

As federal lawmakers continue with the amendment exercise, they need to be made aware of two principles inherent in federal democratic system: the principle of Federal Loyalty and the principle of Federal Comity. The former refers to commitment on all sides to achieve the objectives and fulfill the needs of the federal polity. Citizens including opponents of the 1999 Constitution showed this commitment when they bought the argument that legislators be allowed to amend the constitution. The latter principle is about willingness by all sides to compromise, exercise forbearance, and understand the point of views of others. The handling of the amendment process by the National Assembly does not show there is respect for such principle. Nobody should be surprised if after the amendments are finally out, they succeed only in refueling the call for a sovereign national conference.

May 12, 2013
Must the country’s unity kill its citizens?

Unity discourse in our country is becoming absurd. Recently, the media carried a news story about the federal government’s instruction to Lagos State to shelve its desire to install 10,000 solar-powered CCTV devices in Lagos State, to deter criminal acts that grow by the day in a state that has in the last six years been more crime-resistant than other states in the federation. The reason for the federal government to prevent the government of Lagos State from making efforts to secure life and property in the state is that the federal government has the intention or plan to install CCTV cameras in major cities of the country. The result almost four years after announcement of Lagos State’s plan to install CCTV cameras in the state is that neither the federal government nor the government of Lagos has done so.

The promise by the National Assembly may not be enough to assure Nigerians that the union does not need the sovereign national conference that citizens have been calling for since the annulment of the 1993 presidential election. The attitude of the federal government to the security of the parts as the basis for the security of the whole remains hostile to what Daniel Defoe once characterised as Union of Affection, in contradistinction to the principle of Union of Policy. The attitude of those in charge of the federal government in the post-military era is as worrisome as it was during the era of military dictatorships.

Under the guise of integration of the country, successions of military dictators created policies which robbed the states of powers to carry out basic responsibilities required of states in a federal union. Such erosion of federalism got to a head in the 1999 Constitution which General Olusegun Obasanjo recently described as representing the apogee of efforts by the military to integrate the country. It is the 1999 Constitution, like all other military-authored constitutions since 1979 and decrees since the suspension of the 1963 Republican Constitution, which killed the tradition of multi-level policing in the country.

It appears that it is the preference of military dictators and their civilian apologists in the post-military era that must have given the federal government the audacity to stop Lagos State from deploying modern technologies to protect citizens and their property. Even at that, it is clear that the federal government is not as much after good governance of the country as it is in search of total control of the states. Knowing that federal political appointees and civil servants are well travelled and very conversant with latest security architecture and techniques in other countries, there is no other way to interpret the federal government’s attempt to stop Lagos State from spending its own resources to enhance security of the 18 million residents of the state.

This is not the first time that the federal government would prevent states from enhancing the survival of their citizens. When Yoruba states indicated their wish to fix the Lagos-Ibadan highway, the federal government rejected the offer, on the ground that it is only the federal government that has the responsibility to repair and rebuild federal roads. Thousands of citizens from all parts of the country must have died from accidents on the bad road since the federal government’s rejection of offers from Yoruba states through which the Lagos-Ibadan highway passes.

When military dictators in the past prevented Lagos State from establishing intra-city rail system as a means of mass transportation within Lagos, citizens blamed this on poor judgment from dictators that had no mandate from citizens. When Obasanjo rejected offers from Oodua Investment to build a fast rail system between Ibadan and Lagos, citizens shrugged it off as evidence of Obasanjo’s loyalty to his military culture of preventing any part of the country from providing services that are not available in other parts of the country, all in the name of even development and national unity.

It is an irony that the federal government under the leadership of a civilian elected by citizens is behaving in a way that is reminiscent of military heads of states. How does the provision of 10,000 CCTV cameras in Lagos State derogate from the country’s unity or the powers of the federal government? Why would the federal government prefer to provide a service that a state has the power to provide? Is the federal government’s purse overflowing with funds to the extent that it must look for projects to underwrite? And if so, must such funds be spent on providing the same service that a state is ready to use its own funds to provide?

Furthermore, it is an irony that, at a time the federal government is apparently over stretchedin its effort to fight different sources of insecurity, the same federal government would stop a state from assisting it to fight the various sources of insecurity in the country: Boko Haram terrorists, professional and ritual kidnappers, and Niger Delta militants, in addition to daily rise in incidence of other crimes in all parts of the country. It is also ironical that a government that lives on the promise of transformation appears hobbled by the country’s tradition of subordinating states under the federal government.

If it is true, as some media pundits have posited, that the federal government’s order to Lagos State with respect to deployment of CCTV cameras in the state is political, this is in bad taste and an illustration of primitive political attitude to multiparty politics in a federation. In the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the government of Western Nigeria provided several services that were not available in other regions of the country. Yet doing this neither broke the country’s unity nor derogated from the power of the federal government: free primary education, television service, building of Olympic-size stadium in Ibadan, etc. If anything, such services encouraged other regions to imitate Western Nigeria. The result was that progress in parts of the country translated into progress for the whole of the country.

Without doubt, the 1999 Constitution, nicknamed by Obasanjo as the instrument of the country’s integration, has given too much power to the federal government. Any president who fails to wield the big stick given to him or her by the current constitution to subordinate states or make them appear as junior partners in a federation stands the risk of being called weak. But any attempt by the federal government or its representative to frustrate states that are spending their hard-earned resources to show interest in the welfare and wellbeing of citizens is likely to be seen by most citizens as wicked and insensitive.

The federal government should not have to be told that many citizens are being kidnapped in Lagos every day. It also cannot be oblivious of the rising crime statistics in Lagos in recent times, despite strenuous efforts by the Lagos State government to invest a lot of its resources on beefing up security in the state. There is no other state in the federation that is more attractive to policemen and women than Lagos. This is because of the incentives in terms of equipment and other support given by the state government to law enforcement officers in the state.

Over half of the security efforts in most countries today is achieved with the help of modern technology, particularly collection of intelligence that can prevent crime and detect criminals. The decision of the government in Lagos to deploy 10,000 surveillance cameras is applying best global practices in the use of technology to secure life and property to the security situation in the state. It will be bad politics if the federal government prevents the state government from doing everything possible to secure life and property in the state, on the excuse that whatever the federal government has a hand in cannot benefit from input from state governments.

Apostles of strong federal government and weak or weakened state governments must realise that their vision is more likely to make the call for sovereign national conference to re-structure the union unquenchable.

May 5, 2013
Terrorism and tinted glass phobia

Who says that Boko Haram has not changed the lifestyle of Nigerians? That person should ask car owners, not only those that look tense when they are on a bridge or Nigerian Christians that are afraid to go to church on Sundays and their liberal Islamic counterparts who are no longer enthusiastic about going to pray in public mosques on Fridays. Ask young graduates who are no eager to avoid the unemployment line by rushing into NYSC camps in the North where there is more need for such graduates? The latest group to ask this question is Nigerians who own new and used cars that manufacturers in other parts of the world created from innovative thinking and research. Such doubting Thomases should ask managers of the country’s security who do not want to be called losers by Boko Haram warriors and have thus unearthed a law created under military dictators to assist police in fighting Western Education is Sin terrorists.

Terrorism is a major challenge for governments all over the world. It has led to creation of special agencies in some parts of the technologically advanced world. There was nothing like Homeland Security in the United States in the years before September 11, 2001. Air travelers and their non-travelling family members could go as far as the boarding gateuntil terrorists made it mandatory for security officers to create new policies to restrict non-passengers to the ticketing area of the airport. Hundreds of air travelers have learnt how to leave their belts at home when they need to go through security checks in all airports of the world. Even women obsessed with their femininity have had to live with small volume of face powder, small amount of perfume, and sometimes without toothpaste if they want to travel without hassles. It is therefore not strange that Nigeria’s security managers have gone into the archive of laws created during the era of military dictatorship in the country, in their search for what to do to assist them in frustrating Islamic terrorists, and unintentionally, the citizens whose cooperation they need direly.

What is strange is that the archaeologists of military laws have not given citizens good reasons to believe that they are not just being capricious or arbitrary. No data have been provided to show any link between terrorist acts in the North and vehicles with tinted glass. Smokers did not have to complain about being prevented from carrying their matches or firelighters with them on the plane, after the experience of shoe bombers or the botched attempt of young Nigerian international terrorist to light the bomb under his underwear a few years ago. Air passengers all over the world who are lovers of peace and order have not complained about ordinances that forbid them to carry machetes, knives, and bows and arrows into aircrafts. The connection between these dangerous items and in-flight terrorism had been made clear to passengers and non-passengers.

What has not been made clear to Nigerians is the connection between tinted glass on the two rear sides of cars and the killing of innocent people by Boko Haram bombing of the UN office in Abuja, churches, motor parks, and police stations. How many terrorists have been nabbed operating from vehicles with tinted glass? How many explosive devices have been recovered by police from cars with tinted glass? How many guns have been shot and how many bombs have been thrown from moving cars with tinted glass since the advent of Boko Haram? It is necessary for the police to use data obtained from such heinous crimes to enlist the support of innocent Nigerians that had taken loans to buy cars with tinted glass made by their manufacturers abroad.

Reports have indicated that Islamic terrorists had thrown bombs from motor cycles while some had shot innocent citizens from moving bicycles. Is the change in our security protocols going to ban motorcycles and bicycles? Nigerians have been told that Boko Haram bombers have used empty houses and occupied houses to store explosive devices and powerful assault guns. What is the attitude of the Inspector-General of Police to thousands of such houses in the north and south of the country, board them up? Invoking an obsolete law in the books against owners of cars with tinted glass is reminiscent of erecting road blocks as a means of fighting crimes. It is obsolete and may be counterproductive.

In a war that requires cooperation of civilian population, policymakers in the security sector need to know how to cultivate citizens. They should not create policies that anger or antagonize citizens unnecessarily. Asking car owners to obtain special permit for using cars that they had duly registered and for which they had paid duties to Customs is similar to punishing or blaming the victim. Anyone that drives an unregistered car in the country has committed a punishable crime. It should not be criminal for citizens who have paid customs on their vehicles and paid for registration with their local government or the Federal Road Safety Commission to use those vehicles. It should be safely assumed that Customs department, FRSC, and the NPF are interlinked and are agencies that share common interest in the country’s security. For the law retrieved from the archive to be fair to citizens, it must include reimbursement of customs duties and registration fees already paid by owners of cars with tinted glass.

In the fight against Boko Haram, our rulers need to learn from best practices from other countries that have security challenges from Islamic terrorists or any other category of terrorists: Ensure that cars do not carry tinted glass that is in excess of what is allowed in other parts of the world and ensure that security officers are given gadgets that can see through tinted glass from a distance. It will be less expensive for the federal government to acquire such devices than to have to face litigations seeking refund of huge sums of money to citizens who own duly registered vehicles. It is instructive to know that when the law being excavated by the police was made, it was to give special protection to military governments without mandate to rule. Even in those days when civilians were prevented from buying cars with green and jet black colors, and owning cars with tinted glass, military rulers were exempted from the rule, an indication that the law was not to fight crime but to accentuate privileges of new class of rulers.

Thomas Paine and David Thoreau at different times had warned makers of bad and oppressive laws about the danger in making such laws. They had argued that human beings have the capacity to resist or disobey unjust laws. The National Assembly should not engage in panel beating an unjust and unreasonable law inherited from decades of military dictatorship. What senators need to do is to jettison the law against the use of cars with tinted glass. It is absurd that, at a timethe president, governors, emirs, obas, obis, and obongs across the country are making a case for unsolicited amnesty for Boko Haram terrorists, the police is excavating laws to rattle citizens in all parts of the country or using vehicles duly registered with law enforcement agencies.

April 28, 2013
Democracy without choice?

The words that are needed from political parties are words that assure voters of a level playing field for all parties

Apart from the traditional definition of democracy as a government of the people, by the people and for the people, one abiding dimension of democracy is that it is a system of government that is driven by choice on the part of the electorate, the traditional owners of any democratic nation-state’s sovereignty. Looking at Nigeria’s democracy two years before the 2015 election, it appears there are serious challenges to the choice aspect of democracy in the country.

What is on the electoral horizon barely two years before the 2015 election is a politics of fear or fear mongering. Before President Jonathan came to power in 2011 on his own steam as presidential candidate of the PDP, Nigeria’s political space was free and agog with political campaigns by several presidential candidates that got narrowed down to three candidates from three distinct parties: PDP, ACN, and CPC. However, there was no clear manifesto from the party that brought President Jonathan to power. The closest to a plan of action on his part was the promise of transformation. Transformation was a word that was attractive and even intoxicating to voters, who had lived for decades under various military and civilian rulers that did not bring noticeable progress to most citizens.

For anybody to promise transformation in a country with about 20,000 kilometres of tarred highways, with a railway without coaches; with houses and factories powered by generators; with an educational system on its knees; and with a security architecture unfit for a federation of nationalities; it was as good as promising a government of miracles. Millions of voters crossed party lines to vote for President Jonathan, the presidential candidate of the PDP. It will be uncharitable to say two years on the throne that the rest is history on politics or ethic of transformation.

Now five years away from the 2015 election, President Jonathan’s party men are effusive in the use of vocabularies that are reminiscent of President Obasanjo’s characterisation of the 2007 election as do-or-die. Vocabularies attributed to the President and leaders of his party smack of fear mongering. Instead of giving Nigerians any indication about what PDP is committed to do for Nigerians between now and 2015, PDP leaders are deliberately heating the polity with military diction: capturing 32 states; accepting the challenge of the 2015 election as war, etc. It is not democratic to give voters any reason to be afraid of elections.

Furthermore, at the national level, efforts by opposition parties to merge and give the electorate two major political parties to choose from in the next election are perceived to be frustrated by the ruling party, at whose door step opposition party leaders put the blame about the sudden emergence of political parties and organisations with the acronym APC. The effect of the perception that there are invisible government hands behind the birth of several organisations to snatch the acronym APC from the party to emerge from the merger of ACN, CPC, and ANPP is that there are politicians that are afraid of new parties that are big enough to give the ruling PDP stiff competition in 2015. If a new party with the right size and spread to challenge the ruling party is frustrated in any way, it is the voters that are disrespected. Democratic political competition for votes is generally one that is driven by ideas and performance of parties in competition for citizens’ votes. President Jonathan has promised many times that he wants to be remembered as one president that has encouraged free and fair election. Free and fair election is not just about what happens in polling booths or at vote counting stations; it is also about readiness of party leaders to present their ideas and records of performance to the electorate while leaving the voters to make their choice without intimidation, coercion, or cajolement of opposition parties.

The country needs to hear what each political party has to offer as vision, strategies and policies to achieve direly needed change. It will need a political party that is not afraid of coming to terms with Nigeria’s diversity, not a party that sees development and unity as synonyms. Voters need to hear from political parties that are willing and able to address the problem of infrastructure head-on, without having to blame power outage on too much or too little water in the dam or no natural gas to power the turbines, etc. Voters are waiting to hear from all parties that have plans and methods for addressing the problem of limited spaces for thousands of post-secondary students that desire to obtain tertiary training, instead of the millions of students that now roam the streets in search of visa to North America, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and even Ghana in search of university education. The Nigerian electorate will need to see from all parties willing to rule Nigeria in 2015 blueprints for reducing the number of able-bodied young men and women that roam in the millions the streets or offices of unemployment. Voters need to hear from all political parties what plans they have for preventing the death of 1,000 Nigerian children from malaria every day.

Millions of Nigerians who asked for political re-structuring of the federation are still craving to hear from political parties that want to work towards purposive unity among Nigerian nationalities through a programme of equal opportunity for all citizens and all cultures; of equity and justice in revenue allocation; fiscal federalism; sustainable appropriate security architecture for the country; infrastructure renewal that covers the whole country; free and compulsory education for the first twelve years of schooling in public schools; strategies for achieving nation-wide religious tolerance and harmony; unapologetic attitude towards any form of terrorism, etc.

These are some of the issues that voters are craving to hear political parties and their leaders address with honesty and sincerity, not bellicose words that evoke two years before 2015 the picture of war and blood. The words that are needed from political parties are words that assure voters of a level playing field for all parties, respect for the rights of all parties to contest for power; and respect for citizens’ right to choose the leaders they desire.

April 21, 2013
Aborted Lagos bomb: Another good luck for Nigeria?

The country cannot afford any bombing in Lagos

The Guardian’s front-page story on April 9 about the escape of Lagos from massive bombing of its Third Mainland Bridge must be good news to many of the 18 million people living in the state, otherwise referred to as a megacity of many towns joined by highways and bridges. Apart from the spirit of ‘thank God it did not happen’ that is expected from the lips of millions of indigenes and residents of Lagos State, there must be millions that must have been losing sleep since The Guardian broke the news that the weapons of mass destruction unearthed in Ojora-Badia a few weeks ago were made to bomb and destroy Lagos. There are others who are already saying: ‘How lucky is Nigeria again!’

Of course, there must be questions on the lips of many patriots about the shroud that has been used to cover the story, especially the magnitude of the intention of Boko Haram terrorists that planned to hit the Third Mainland Bridge. Was the silence intended to keep troubling information from citizens and thus avoid panic? The fact that traffic has been unusually light on the bridge and in Lagos in general since Tuesday is an indication that people are already panicking. Would it have been better for the country’s security minders to have grades of alert about the danger posed by Boko Haram for citizens, the way it is done in other countries bedeviled by terrorism and suicide bombers?

Even if we succeed in appeasing the current initiates of Boko Haram with amnesty, it may be necessary for the presidency to find ways of warning citizens about the degree of danger facing them, as there is likely to be another group of BokoHaramists after the ongoing amnesty process, should the sect that has confessed to turning the North of Nigeria into an Islamic state agree to monetized amnesty. Has the country not known threats from Niger Delta militants after the first amnesty which has now become a model or precedent to borrow in fighting the greatest threat to the country’s unity since the pogrom in the North in 1966 and the civil war that the killing of Igbos in the North generated.

As scary as the news of plans to bomb Lagos is, security chiefs and the average citizen should not be surprised that Boko Haram finally came to Lagos to deploy bombs. It would have been surprising if it never got to this. The Yoruba have a saying: Aladugbotio n koasoara re siabatako le ma yaasoenielenisiwewe (A neighbour that puts his own clothes in the mud should have no qualms shredding other persons’ clothes). Apart from killing Christians in the North, Boko Haram terrorists also killed fellow northerners in bars. Many of them even killed themselves in the process of suicide bombing. Why would they not attempt to do the same in the nation’s commercial and cultural capital?

Still on why no one should expect the terrorist sect to stay away from Lagos, Lagos is the most graphic illustration of the impact of Western civilization or education in the country. Why should anyone be surprised that proponents of Education is Sin have planned to destroy the most convincing evidence that western education can also bring as driver of progress to parts of the country that appear to be addicted to western education? It is good for everyone that members of the Islamist terrorist group that came to Lagos to operate have been foiled and their plans aborted. But it is not yet Uhuru. Security and non-security workers in Lagos and other cities should not rest on their oars yet. Boko Haram is not dead yet. The Boko Haram imagination is not likely to die so readily, not even after Boko Haram in all its manifestations: religious, criminal, and political, to borrow the categorization of General Buhari, would have been appeased or assuaged with offers of amnesty.

Boko Haram illustrates some of the ironies in the Nigerian polity and society. It is an organization that hates western education but relies in its operations on products of western education. Boko Haram was birthed in the section of the country that believes that the unity of Nigeria is the only issue worth paying attention to, even if doing this is at the expense of the happiness of many sections of the country. In addition, the Islamist terrorist group is native to the section of the country that is mortally opposed to multilevel policing and law enforcement in the country. It is the same group that has hobbled the presidency and the country’s mono-level security architecture that is being appeased with offer of amnesty before any negotiation. It is the same sect that is driven by religious bigotry that is being cajoled by leaders of an admittedly secular or multi-religious country.

It would have been the mother of ironies if Boko Haram had succeeded in bombing the Third Mainland Bridge while the rest of the country was busy bending over backward to appease the terrorist sect with amnesty. There is no doubt that the people of Lagos must be expressing in their private spaces gratitude to the nation’s security group after the news that they were saved from mass murder by Intelligence workers that napped the suicide bombers waiting in Ijora-Badia to hatch their nefarious plans.

But gratitude to security staff may not be enough to save Lagos or any other city for that matter. What is needed is for every Lagosian to see himself and herself from this moment on as security intelligence staff. The country cannot afford any bombing in Lagos. This may be too dangerous for the unity of the country, as Lagosians and their relations elsewhere are likely to go berserk if any of the three bridges is destroyed with motorists on them.

This may be the best time to stop sectionalising the call for state and community police as the Constitution Technical Committee did when it reported that it is only the Southwest that is asking for state police. The same trivialisation occurred when leaders of major Nigerian nationalities dubbed NADECO’s struggle for restoration of democracy a Yoruba affair, but the rest about that is now history. Nigeria cannot afford to wait until everybody in the Southwest, Southeast, South-south, and even in the regions of birth of Boko Haram become his or her own police.The process of dialogue and offer of amnesty to Boko Haram must include calling other Nigerian nationalities to a conference to agree on the way to make the nation’s unity sustainable and pleasurable to citizens from all sections and religions in the country.

April 14, 2013