The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (2)

    Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (2)

    Okada illustrates devaluation of life in Nigeria

    He said in this column last week that the failure of a fragile middle class in Nigeria to determine cultural standards as it is done in modern societies is manifested in the opposition to regulate the use of okada as a means of mass transportation and suggested that okada illustrates the devaluation of life in Nigeria. We added that the cancellation of okada in other states and its recent restriction in Lagos State is the right thing to do to protect citizens and a necessary condition to make citizens demand with consistency and vigour that governments at all levels provide proper infrastructure for safe mass transportation.

    The shrinkage of the middle class during the decade of Structural Adjustment Programme substantially reduced the efficacy of the middle class as the guardian of cultural and social standards. The pauperization of the masses and the middle class during the era of SAP created a situation where the line between middle-class and lower-class cultural values became too thin to be visible. Consequently, cultural standards that were raised by the middle class created by the nation’s founding fathers and sustained largely until the 1970s evaporated under military regimes. Even under post-military civilian governments, higher taste and standards in respect of all aspects of life continues to disappear under rulers who themselves do not share middle class values. Should we be surprised that citizens are up in arms that okada is a means of livelihood when some of their governments and wealthy citizens purchase okada for the jobless in the name of poverty alleviation?

    Just as failure of the state to carry out its own responsibility brought okada on the nation, so has it degrade the quality of life in many other areas: public hygiene, civic aesthetics, safe marketing, etc. When Lagos State started to invest in city beautification projects by establishing green parks across the state, citizens already used to the degraded culture thrown up by SAP and care-free attitude of post-SAP governments cried foul. They called Raji Fashola Guru Maharaji and Flower Planter. They took a philistine view of the government’s creation of parks, arguing that the money spent on planting flowers could have been used to feed the poor. Many of the poor today sit in the parks to eat their lunch, forgetting that the parks in which they relax today used to be public toilets.

    Many years ago, Oshodi and other areas of the state used to be market sites in which street traders and their merchandise prevented motorists from moving. When the Lagos State government issued ordinances to stop street trading in such areas, several spokesmen for the poor advised the government to stop harassing hardworking traders that are trying to make a living in a tough economy. If the government had not remained committed to its vision of transforming Lagos into a cleaner and safer city, traffic problems spawned by on-the-road traders could have prevented movement of goods and services across the state and by implication from the state to other parts of the country.

    The devaluation of life that okada mass transit represents affects other aspects of life. Even civil servants whose counterparts in all successful countries are standard bearers are known all over Nigeria to encourage politicians to invest millions in bore holes in preference to public water works. Ministries of water now spend more money and energy on bore holes than in any other part of the world, despite warnings that bore holes can induce seismic disorder.

    It is not fair to blame advocates of poor taste who appear to be in the majority in the country, particularly those opposed to ordinances designed to enhance public order. Most of our citizens have for too long been degraded by many years of irresponsible governments and unresponsive governance. Governments that have for decades provided excuses for not carrying out their obligations to citizens have caused citizens to lose their sense of safety and good taste, especially in their bid to survive the harsh economic conditions created by bad governance.

    Of what significance is public order and safety to hungry people? This is the reasoning of citizens who see okada as a job or a poverty alleviation scheme that should take precedence over citizens’ safety and security. Of what importance are beautiful parks to hungry men? Of what value are streets devoid of trash to citizens who rummage through trash cans from time to time? Hard times have the capacity to rob human beings of higher-order sensibility and even of sensitivity to ordinances that are designed to ensure safety and order.

    What should be of immediate concern to life and self-respecting citizens is how to move the country from a pidgin culture into a modern one. Because Nigeria is a multiethnic country with diverse value systems that are being managed in a unitary manner, citizens all over the country are in a state of flux. Their languages and cultures are increasingly pidginized. Attempts of confused citizens to create a semblance of order out of chaos in politics, the economy, and in other areas of life have led to the cultural chaos that now prevails all over the country.

    The ongoing tension between advocates for okada workers and owners and the Lagos State government arises from misplaced hostility. Lagos State traffic laws that regulate okada movement or ordinances of other states that ban use of okada do not indicate government’s lack of concern for citizens. On the contrary, such laws derive from genuine concern for safety of citizens.

    The tension that is required is for citizens to impress on their representatives in government that over concentration of power and resources in the centre is not likely to lead to a motivated and functional middle class that can bring development to Nigeria. Okada is a glaring example of failure of the state. The call for restoration of functional federalism is not just about politics or revenue sharing. It is also about returning to a system that creates values for individual and community development. A society that is left to operate as a pidgin society should not blame citizens for subscribing to the ethos of anything-goes.

  • Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (1)

    Of our ‘dumbing-down’ culture (1)

    Citizens need to get angry to insist that governments do the right thing

    Any of us in this country, particularly in the Lagos area are surprised at the reaction of employers and employees of Okada Mass Transit System to the Lagos State traffic law. Why should anyone be surprised that okada businessmen and some of the respectable citizens that have to rely on this mode of transport are up in arms against a law that is designed to bring sanity to vehicular movement in a city that can pass as the most clogged urban space in the universe?

    Why should anyone be amazed at the amount of noise by politics-for-the sake-of-power-and-privilege-only advocates calling for fire and brimstones on the governor of Lagos State duly elected by citizens to facilitate development in the state? The ubiquity of low taste and absence of long-term planning on the part of most of the middleclass men that have managed the country should be enough to disabuse the minds of okadaphiles of the belief that okada transport system is necessary or inevitable.

    The story of okada and of many other aspects of our country’s banalisation of important aspects of modern life is similar to that of a physically-challenged person being criticised by a casual critic. The casual critic said to the physically-challenged that the load on his head was not properly placed. The man in return admonished the critic to look down (instead of up at the load on his head) for the root of the problem. The root of the noise against the good people of the Lagos State House of Assembly and Governor Fashola who made and signed the recent traffic law is an outcome of decades of Nigeria’s trivialization of values that drive and sustain modernity elsewhere.

    Okada did not just spring up at a time when there was no government. It is one of the regrettable legacies of military dictatorship. Like the current constitution that emptied the country of its federal values, okada came into being under the nose of military dictators. In most countries with forward-looking rulers – military or civilian—okada as a mode of mass transit would have been prevented through right policies and legislations from surfacing in the first instance. The care-free attitude of military rulers when okada transportation emerged and of succeeding governments until Abuja and Port Harcourt blazed the trail of legislating against okada is still at work in other areas of our national life. The recent effort by the government of Lagos State to push the lever of transformation from primitivism to modernity is expected to be resisted not only by okada transporters but also by opportunistic politicians and even honest professionals who are not conversant with the historic duty of the middle class in modern times.

    The role of the middle class since the Renaissance and more especially since the Industrial Revolution is to work to improve the quality of life of the individual and of the society through establishment of standards and practices that are capable of refining the life of the citizenry. Since governance moved from feudal lords to members of the middle class, standards have improved generally at the hands of middle-class men and women in government and society. Such time-honoured middle-class values as commitment to personal security and safety; promoting intersection between individual’s success and the success of society as a whole; and acceptance by government of responsibility to provide transportation and communication infrastructures have been overlooked or ignored by government and cultural leaders in our country for too long, until a few governments recently started to take the risk of restoring some of these values. The scapegoating of Lagos State government for taking bold and brave steps to restore order to the transportation sector in the state is understandable. It is the result of decades of dumbing down of values that are central to sustaining modern life.

    Why would people who grow up not having safe roads to travel within and between towns in most states of the union not feel bad that Lagos State is trying to move the country’s most populous city from chaos to order? Why would citizens with no regular access to train or bus feel uncomfortable about okada mode of transportation? Why would citizens that migrate from villages without any trace of modern means of livelihood and living not feel angry that okada is being demonized in Lagos, the city that they have come to see as an anything-goes city that belongs to nobody?

    Why would citizens who migrate from villages where governments have no interest in how they get to their farms and places of work not feel scandalized that Lagos State feels obliged to regulate a chaotic transport system in the city? Why would citizens who travel on unsafe roads in 14-seater buses named Federal Government Assisted Mass Transit System not feel out of sort in a Lagos that says okada transporters must do their business in a way that is safe for majority of the citizens and residents of Lagos? People who have been degraded over the years cannot but feel cheated that any government in the country, particularly in what they think is a free-for-all state, certainly need help and re-education to grow out of the cultural inferiority they have been thrown into over the years.

    But the way out of the problem created by okada business is not to look for reasons to justify keeping okada as an acceptable mode of transporting citizens across the state. Okada should not have happened in the first place, but it is never too late or too risky to put an end to an unsafe business for citizens at large. Lagos State Government should be congratulated for embarking on a national project that is long overdue for remediation. If legislating against indiscriminate use of okada makes citizens angry, it may not be a bad thing at the end of the day. Citizens need to get sufficiently incensed to pluck the courage to insist that federal and state governments across the country should do the right thing: provide proper infrastructure for proper mass transportation. It is senseless to expect any responsible state government to feel good about an inherited policy to move over 17 million people by okada. Citizens need to be angered to the point that they are ready to tell their governments to do the right thing: provide transportation and communication infrastructure to encourage entrepreneurs to put more buses and taxis on the roads, to convey citizens in a dignified and safe manner.

    That Keke Marwa or Keke NAPEP is used in India or okada is used in Benin Republic is not a sufficient reason to rely on this mode of transportation in Nigeria. Trains, buses, and taxis are used in most countries of the world to transport citizens. Civilisation or modernisation is about copying good practices, not bad ones. Encouraging okada as a mode of transporting the masses in one of the most populous cities in the world is an illustration of a culture and government that have lost the will to protect citizens.

    To be continued next week.

  • How crucial is state creation?

    Our legislators should amend the constitution in the direction of returning functional federalism to the polity

    Creation of new states is back on the front burner of the roster of the country’s lawmakers. Senior members of the National Assembly have been falling over each other to encourage petitions for new states, even after the latest count puts applications for new states at over 30. It appears that a business-as-usual approach to the 1999 Constitution may miss the point about the country’s economic realities vis-à-vis state creation.

    The National Assembly’s focus on creation of states is not in terms of changing constitutional provisions for state creation. From the Senate President’s recent of promise of state to some communities, it is clear that the Assembly is preoccupied with creating additional states. The country has had 36 states for over twelve years. The song by most states about lack of funds for development must make citizens curious about the enthusiasm of lawmakers to create state as part of the process of amending the constitution. To use the argument of bringing governments close or closer to the governed as a reason for adding to the current 36 states is to deliberately ignore the facts on the ground.

    When the first twelve states were created during the civil war, Nigerians were assured that doing so would bring governments to the door step of the people. Each time new states were added to the twelve until General Abacha pushed the number to its present 36 states, Nigerians were told by petitioners for new states that the primary motive was to bring the government closer to the grassroots. This promise is yet to be fulfilled in most of the states. Apart from creation of bloated bureaucracy in each state, nothing significant has happened to most of the states created since 1975.

    Residents of 36 states created from the original 4 regions still migrate in droves to Lagos in search of livelihood. Nothing illustrates the absence of economic viability in most of the existing states than ceaseless flow of migrants to become okada riders in Lagos. Of course, all the states had succeeded in creating a class of provincial politicians and rulers that have become wealthy in the last forty years of state multiplication. But creating a few wealthy rulers, civil servants, traditional rulers, and political jobbers is not enough reason for new states that are not economically viable, like most of the others created in the past.

    What is driving the petition for new states may not be, as some legislators have suggested, the assumption that some communities in multiethnic states feel dominated and marginalized to the extent that they need to ask for new states in which they can realize their ethnic aspirations and identities. It may also not be for the reason of bringing government closer to the people, as this should have been achieved through 774 local governments.

    There is no urgent reason for creation of new states. If our legislators need something to do, they should take a critical look at the constitution with a view to amending it in the direction of returning functional federalism to the polity, economy, and society. Adding to the existing 36 or 37 states shows that those clamouring for states and legislators that are goading them are just interested in free money from oil revenue. Creating additional states will still not remove the desire for politics of identity in a country with over 250 ethnic groups. There is a need for a more imaginative way to manage the country’s cultural diversity than creating states to gulp the meager resources that come to the federation account from petroleum and gas, at the expense of citizens living in the endangered environment of oil exploitation.

    If bringing government close to the grassroots is a value to be defended, then communities now calling for new states should be calling for new local governments. But Nigeria at present has more local governments than most countries on earth. With 774 local governments, there is still no evidence that the governments do enough for people at the grassroots to feel their presence. Some states are known to donate, in the name of poverty alleviation, okada to their citizens to take to Lagos for livelihood. What should inspire our lawmakers is not the principle of bringing governments closer to the people, because the goal post is likely to be shifted by petitioners for new states. What is direly needed is some measure of legislative creativity that will make existing 36 states and 774 local governments work in and for the interest of citizens. Constitutional reinforcement of a regional approach to development and diversity management promises more than further fragmentation of existing states into sultanates.

    How does one justify creating new states that will increase recurrent expenditure across the country at the expense of capital expenditure in a country where executive and legislative leaders claim that the country does not have adequate resources to provide regular electricity, create and maintain essential infrastructure, and provide functional education to citizens? What lawmakers need to do is to work towards amendment of the section on creation of new states. Communities that want to become states within existing states should first be made to conduct referendum within such communities before submitting petitions to the national assembly for consideration. Encouraging applications for new states, as provided in the current constitution, from a handful of self-appointed leaders or traditional rulers has the capacity to nurture frivolity. What can be more frivolous than the request for tens of new states in a country that already has 36 states and 774 local governments, most of which cannot carry out their statutory functions?

    The list of issues that the National Assembly wants selected citizens to consider in one-day of public hearing across the 36 states portends lack of seriousness on the part of those working on constitutional amendment. The most cited complaint about the 1999 Constitution is over concentration of powers and functions at the centre and the need for power devolution to the states. Creation of state appears to be a distraction from the real problem: returning a federal constitution to the country.

  • Before another peril from the Northeast

    There are more reasons for citizens from other parts of Nigeria to be more frustrated than Kirfi and other members of NEFUD

    About two weeks ago, something untoward happened in the Northeast region. Alhaji Bello Kirfi, a retired permanent secretary and now a leading member of the newly formed North East Forum for Unity and Development (NEFUD), called for secession of the North from the rest of Nigeria. He was immediately called to order by General Theo Danjuma who also called for adjournment of the NEFUD meeting. All has been relatively quiet from the North East ever since. But it is a big risk for the rest of Nigeria to sleep with both eyes closed over the call by Kirfi for secession at a meeting of several citizens who had occupied high positions in various spheres of the life of the nation.

    Apart from Balarabe Musa’s quick warning against any call from the North for secession: “I appeal to the masses in the North to ignore the call because it is against their fundamental rights,” members of NEFUD, like the media, have been silent on the demand by Kirfi for secession since the abrupt end of NEFUD’s meeting. And the entire nation appears to have forgotten or overlooked Kirfi’s frustration with the way things are in his region of the country.

    Undoubtedly, the quick erasure of Kirfi’s call from media radar is not without some benefit. It is capable of lessening tension in the country and fright on the part of ordinary citizens who prefer a multiethnic Nigerian federation. But it is important to note that the refusal of Kirfi to apologise for such an outlandish demand may be symptomatic of problems in the polity that only Kirfi is able to apprehend or which he has apprehended on behalf of citizens from the North who are not ready yet to show their faces. It is one thing to view Kirfi as a desperate person who only chooses to use alarmism to draw attention to his frustration with the current state of the country. It is another thing for interpretative reporters or political observers to dismiss this call as an outcome of frustration, without examining the security implications of Kirfi’s call.

    There are more reasons for citizens from other parts of Nigeria to be more frustrated than Kirfi and other members of NEFUD. There is no section of the country that is developed. There is no part of the country that is properly secured. Millions of Nigerians believe that the North East is a source of national instability, underdevelopment, and citizens’ fright. For example, new graduates from different parts of the nation are not safe to complete their NYSC obligations in the North East, the birthplace of Boko Haram and the laboratory for its violence. Religious centres, particularly churches are afraid to open their doors in the North East and in other parts of the country. Citizens in the southern states conduct their life in fear, because of the wanton violence of Boko Haram in various parts of the country.

    Furthermore, the average Nigerian, wherever he or she may be, feels unprotected by the nation’s security forces. Many of them believe that the architecture of the nation’s security is defective and partly responsible for the festering of the Boko Haram menace. Several Nigerians who feel frustrated with overwhelming corruption, and lack of security and development in the country, despite it immense wealth from oil and gas, have chosen not to call for secession as the best response to the raging malaise. They have on the contrary called for a constitutional conference that is to produce a truly federal constitution that will enable regions (including the North East) to manage their affairs in accordance with the dominant values in each region. In the process, such people have asked for fiscal federalism and regional or state autonomy that allow for creation of state or local police to protect citizens from avoidable loss of life and limb to predatory groups like Boko Haram.

    Alhaji Kirfi may have over stated his case or over indulged his feelings about the situation of the country at present. But he is also likely to be unearthing the political unconscious of several Nigerians that believe that the country needs to embark on a journey of change or what President Jonathan once described as Transformation. It is unfortunate that Kirfi has said something that is capable of scaring Nigerians, particularly those that were around during the civil war. But it is dangerous to ignore Kirfi’s call as irrational in the context of the way the country is or has been for decades. When a country appears not to be working, it is not irrational to call for change that can improve the state of affairs. When such calls are ignored or dismissed by those benefiting from the dysfunctional situation, calls such Kirfi’s cannot be ruled out. They just need to be addressed with honesty, even by those who gain from the failure of the state, if only to prevent a worse form of dysfunction that can erode their gains.

    What is irrational is for a country to dismiss calls for positive and negative change with the same amount of enthusiasm. The nation’s leaders including those from Kirfi’s North East region have always been eager to dismiss calls for people’s constitution, true federalism, state police, etc. Their reasoning has always been that anything that attempts to change any aspect of the present dysfunctional architecture of governance in the country is a code name for secession. Such people have always argued that what is most important is the unity of the country, regardless of the effectiveness of the constitution and structure by which the country is governed.

    To ignore Kirfi’s call and dismiss it as a figment of a frustrated man in a similar way that calls for restoration of functional federalism is to ignore aspects of the country’s contemporary history. Boko Haram started as an expression of frustration. It started as a resistance or rejection of western education. It has now grown into a monster that keeps the government jittery and citizens frightened. It is risky to sweep the frustration of Kirfi under the mat. Most Nigerians do not want to wake up one day and find that people who share the feeling of Kirfi about today’s Nigeria are up in arms to bring their desire for secession to fruition, just as Boko Haramists have been doing in the last few years to advance their cause to put all of Nigeria in the envelope of Sharia.

    The media should not ignore Kirfi. He needs to be interviewed, with the aim of identifying his frustration and how best his fears about Nigeria can be removed. The nation needs to find out if Kirfi is re-echoing the popular adage that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable?

  • Free and fair election in Ondo State?

    Free and fair election in Ondo State?

    Time will tell if the people of Ondo State actually spoke in a free and fair election a few hours ago. But if at the end of vote counting today or tomorrow Ondo State 2012 gubernatorial election is adjudged by citizens and political parties to be free and fair, the federal government would have endeared itself to citizens of the state, more than any other government since 2000. If there was any party that engaged in rigging in last night’s election, that party would have endangered the life and peace of innocent citizens in the state. Such political party(ies) would have robbed the state of direly needed peace and progress.

    The history of election rigging in Ondo State (as part of a larger unit in the past or in its present form) has been characterized by damaging disruption to the state’s economy, polity, and culture. Any party that rigged in yesterday’s election – caught or not caught for rigging—must have repeated some act that had brought disaster to Ondo State in the past. It must have created a problem that is difficult to get over emotionally, even after court adjudication. It must have caused a division that is capable of further alienating citizens from their government and pitting families and communities against each other.

    Historically, election manipulation in the area that is known as Ondo State today has been a source of disaffection not only between the winner of an election perceived to have been rigged and the governed but also between families and communities that believe they have been cheated and those perceived to have benefited from cheating. When parties cried out loud about the possibility of rigging in the last few weeks, it was to ensure that a politically evil act is not done in a state that has a Monastic view of electoral integrity, a people that do not separate their ego from their vote, a people that traditionally view agents of election rigging as abusers of their humanity.

    A verifiably free and fair election in Ondo State would be a rare gift to the people from Jega’s INEC and the federal government that is responsible for providing security, to prevent rigging. In my trip to the state in the last two weeks, I was amazed by how many narratives of agony from election rigging I heard from citizens I consider too young to know so much about the destruction that rigged elections had wrought in the state in the past. Any accomplishment by INEC and security forces to prevent election rigging, though a statutory responsibility on their part, would have saved the state and its citizens the harrowing experiences captured in didactic tales told by youths about the danger of election fraud in the state.

    Election fraud in the Sunshine state had always been a source of economic, political, and cultural convulsion. For example, in 1965, an attempt was made to rig the election of a professor candidate of NNDP against a trader candidate of AG to the Western House of Assembly. The NNDP candidate was a man of stellar reputation and man of high integrity who happened to have ideological differences with the AG. After duly losing the election, he congratulated his AG counterpart. But the ruling party in Ibadan chose to give the NNDP candidate electoral victory which he openly rejected. This attempt to steal votes through media announcement fractured the town emotionally for a long time. Citizens got violent with individuals and families that supported the ruling party to change election results. Scars from the days of violence over election in the state, otherwise known as Wetie are still on the faces of several families today.

    Similarly in 1979, a day before the election to the House of Representatives, some successful business men were caught conducting voting in their houses twenty-four hours before the official election time. Some accomplished professionals who were in the race for the Federal House were also caught trying to steal ballot boxes on the day of the election. These acts infuriated the citizens, leading to slaughtering and singeing of those believed to be robbing citizens of their citizenship rights. Such acts left indelible scars on the psyche of life-affirming adults and children at the time.

    In addition, the stealing of Ajasin’s votes for Omoboriowo in 1983 led to large-scale violence. People of Ondo and now Ekiti states were incensed by what they considered to be acts of dehumanization. Citizens that were generally known to be pacific in their communities got on the streets, destroyed government property, killed prominent citizens, and caused general mayhem in all the towns of the state. The gory nature of the events of the time is better left unrepresented in print. The only election rigging that did not lead to open violence was the one of 2007. But the financial and emotional cost of two years of contestation between PDP and Labour Party and the crisis of legitimacy that the contestation threw up left negative impact on governance and economy of the state and on the psyche of citizens.

    If at the end of the exercise today or tomorrow citizens and their political parties feel satisfied that the election of yesterday was free and fair, INEC and President Jonathan would have created a respectable space for themselves in Ondo State’s election museum. They would have enhanced the country’s electoral democracy in a verifiable way. For citizens of the Sunshine state whose grandparents and parents have known violence on account of electoral fraud, it must be dangerous to imagine another election with any trace of fraud.

  • Revisiting our unification policies (4)

    Revisiting our unification policies (4)

    Negotiated constitution is imperative for unity

    In the last 14 years of post-military rule, very little has been done (apart from restoration of election as a means of selecting members of the power elite in executive and legislative branches of government) to de-militarise the polity that has been shaped or distorted by decades of military dictatorship. Beyond civilianising governance, very little effort has been made from the administration of Obasanjo to that of Jonathan to democratise governance fully by subjecting decrees, policies, and constitution inherited from military rulers to scrutiny and transformation. Nowhere is the fear of interrogating military legacy in the governance of the country more evident than in efforts by post-military rulers to argue that there is nothing wrong with the constitution, laws, and policies inherited since 1999 from military dictators.

    We argued in the last three weeks that many of the policies created by military regimes have become anachronistic and of little value to the promotion of unity of purpose in the country, stating that no matter how well-meaning the military regimes were in making policies such as centralised police force, unity schools, national youth service corps, the reality today is that there is no evidence that these policies have worked. Nothing in the situation of general security in the country or in the culture of cooperation across ethnic groups has indicated that efforts to unite the country through policies created without thorough debate by citizens have worked. The bellicosity that attended rotation of the presidency or zoning is an illustration of how little the country has been united since 1966. Ethnicisation and regionalisation of power in 2011 is cruder than what it was before the first the coup.

    Had the country gotten a truly democratic government in 1999, perhaps, it would have produced government leaders that would have the courage to re-examine pre-1999 policies and jettison any of them that has ceased to be useful. Those who created many of the policies under discussion in the last three weeks and those that believe such policies were made to promote their interests thought more proactively than those who spent their life and resources to struggle for an end to military rule. They quickly organised to bring one of the authors of de-federalization of the country to power after the death of Abacha and at the end of Abubakar’s transition programme. General Obasanjo came into power and spent eight years scheming about how to defuse the struggle for a people’s constitution. He quickly labeled those calling for national conference secessionists. At the end of his two terms, he also picked his successor, Umaru Yar’Adua, in a way similar to how he was picked to succeed Abdusalaam Abubakar, and the rest is history.

    Fourteen years after the exit of the military from direct governance, the country is still saddled with a president who does not think that there is anything seriously wrong with a constitution without any input from citizens, a constitution that was invisible until after the election that brought the first post-military government to power in 1999. Just like Obasanjo before him, President Jonathan also attempts to preach to citizens that there is nothing substantially wrong with the 1999 Constitution. To President Jonathan, nothing is too wrong for ad hoc committee members not to have the wisdom to rectify without any input from the citizenry.

    If anything, the fear of civilian presidents to support those calling for a constitutional conference to produce a democratic constitution has encouraged those who see themselves as the policemen of Nigeria’s unity to seize media space to warn that any attempt to change most of the policies and laws created by military dictators (including the 1999 Constitution) is capable of destroying the country’s unity. Several northern leaders including elected governors have said pontifically that any attempt to move away from the system of federal monopoly of law enforcement is synonymous with plans to break the country. Only recently, the Arewa Consultative Forum said that any call for people’s constitution is tantamount to casting a vote of no confidence in the country’s democracy.

    President Jonathan himself appears confused about what the country needs to do with a constitution that has been taken to court as a fraudulent document in its claim to have been written by the people of Nigeria. He even says without any empirical evidence that the country is not ready for state police, despite the fact that under his watch, police work is contracted out to private citizens like Tompolo. He is even now in the process of sending a bill to the national assembly to detach local governments from the states that house them, seeing local governments solely as a receiver of federal grants, rather than as cultural and political units within states which constitutionally have governors and legislators to govern them.

    It must, however, be remembered that it was first under military dictatorship that the idea of three tiers of government came into the nation’s political space and lexicon. Most federations in the world have two tiers of government—federal and state or provincial. Ironically, the axe to destroy the federalist origin of independent Nigeria has since 1999 been getting sharper in the hands of post-military civilian rulers. Consequently, citizens calling for restoration of federalism in the country are seen as forces of distraction and secession by spokesmen for federal power and sectional cultural leaders who see themselves as enforcers of national unity.

    The current constitution and many policies inherited from military dictatorship in 1999 have not enhanced national unity, despite repeated claims by those who believe the current unitary current system is the best way to guarantee the country’s unity. The unity that exists in Nigeria today is not an outcome of any constitution or policy. It is a sign that citizens from different sections of the country believe that the country has tremendous economic potential as one country, particularly the huge manna from oil and gas. It is more of unity of economic purpose than anything else. To turn the country into a union of affection, leaders will do well to listen to citizens calling for a negotiated constitution through the mechanism of constitutional conference, rather than relying on policies crafted by few soldiers and sustained by few civilian rulers to confuse homogenisation with unity.

  • Revisiting our unification policies (3)

    Revisiting our unification policies (3)

    It is illogical for an Igbo man or Fulani woman that does not speak Ijaw to lay claim to indigeneship of Ijawland

    Last Sunday’s column concluded that our post-military governments have failed to revisit policies crafted by military dictators in their search for unity at all cost and without consideration for citizens’ rights and security. In addition, trustees of power since the transition to civil rule tend to be imitating military rulers in crafting low-wattage and high-verbiage policies that are likely, if not quickly nipped in the bud, to further endanger insecurity, increase inter-ethnic tension, and shrink citizens’ freedom.

    Some of such policies under consideration pertain to provisions in the constitution on when and how citizens can become indigenes (not residents) of communities other than those into which they and their parents are born. Another policy issue worth worrying about is creation of grazing corridors across the country for nomadic cattle breeders. Today’s piece will address principally these two issues.

    One thing that makes these two issues troubling is that the current civilian government is not genuinely interested in involving citizens directly in the making of the constitution that is to define and circumscribe their political and social life. Just like the military before it, the administration of President Jonathan is talking from both sides of its mouth regarding the place of citizens in the construction of the constitution of their country. On one hand, the President said that he wants the process of constitution making to involve citizens. On the other, he affirms that it is the recommendations of a committee constituted by him that will produce a people’s constitution for the country. In other words, the president talks right on sovereignty of citizens but acts to avoid call for a national conference to create a democratic constitution.

    Our country may be taking a major but avoidable political risk if it chooses to legislate on the process of indigeneship in a multiethnic federation without involving citizens and ethnic nationalities in the process of making such determination. Similarly, any legislation regarding creating zones for cattle, goat, and pig farmers in different parts of the country is likely to lead to political disadvantage that may outweigh its economic advantage for any group. But let us, for the sake of argument, agree that the present National Assembly can legally perform the function of a constitutional conference and create whatever constitutional provisions it wishes, the dangers inherent in creating policies or constitutional provisions that legislate on indigeneship and trans-state grazing grounds for private farmers must not be discountenanced.

    It is important for policy makers not to confuse indigeneship with residency. The former is culturally endowed while the latter is politically endowed. It is safer for policy makers to focus on requirements for residency than to attempt to legislate on the process of acquiring the status of indigene of ethnic communities. Our constitution needs to guarantee citizens’ freedom of movement. Regardless of where they live, citizens must enjoy at all times and in all places the right to vote and be voted for. In addition, Nigerian citizens that choose to live in communities or states other than the one into which they were born should have the right to do so guaranteed by our constitution. Such citizens must be protected against discrimination when they seek employment, rent or buy a house, enroll their dependents in schools. They must have the right to enjoy all social amenities provided in their community or state of residence.

    It must be added that such citizens are also obligated to pay taxes levied in their adopted communities and obey the laws created by such communities. The right of the community to determine how long a citizen must live before he or she can enjoy the privileges of residents should be respected by the constitution, but the federal government can recommend an upper ceiling to the number of years a citizen must live in another community before he or she becomes a full-fledged resident. This is how far a federal constitution can go on guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of movement within the federation.

    Any attempt to legislate on the process of indigenization is a wild goose chase. Indigeneship is generally the end point of assimilation into another culture. While a citizen in a federation does not have to necessarily blend into the culture of any community he or she migrates to in order to enjoy the privileges of residency, he or she needs to be culturally assimilated before he or she can claim the status of an indigene. For example, the language that binds the various ethnic groups together in our country is English or a smattering or bastardization of it. On the other hand, individual ethnic communities exist and thrive on languages other than English.

    It is, therefore, illogical for an Igbo man or Fulani woman that does not speak Ijaw to lay claim to indigeneship of Ijawland, simply because he or she has chosen to migrate to an Ijaw community. It is also irrational for citizens who live in cultural enclaves such as Sabo in northern and southern Nigerian towns and villages to aspire to be recognized as indigenes of such towns and villages. Nigeria has enough problems with Bauchi and Plateau states regarding tension between those who claim to be indigenes and those in the process of transition to indigeneship. We need not multiply such tension by nudging the country’s constitution in the direction of confusing the requirements for indigeneship with those for residency.

    Similarly, the call for creation of Grazing Zones across the federation for nomadic cattle farmers is fraught with more danger than can be readily observed. It is true that the country is already experiencing serious tension because of conflict between nomadic cattle farmers and plant growers in various parts of the country. But the solution to this problem is not to appropriate land from communities for the use of nomadic cattle farmers across the states. What is needed is for the government at all levels to provide facilities for transforming nomadic cattle farmers to sedentary farmers. Most of the countries that produce enough cattle for both domestic consumption and export do not rely on nomads. They adopt new scientific techniques in animal husbandry that make it possible for cattle and goat farmers to have a normal life that does not include following cattle or goats from one community to another.

    Just like nomadic education of the military era, creating grazing corridors for nomadic cattle farmers across the country is likely to fail to achieve the higher goal that should inform policy formulation: improvement of the quality of life of the citizen. What is needed is a policy that will modernize all forms of farming in the country and thus make the country competitive in all forms of agriculture. The United States, Argentina, Spain, Brazil, and many other countries are exporters of beef today, without having to rely on nomadic cattle farmers. Nigeria can also move to this level.

    To be continued

  • Revisiting our unification policies (2)

    Revisiting our unification policies (2)

    About forty years of the NYSC had not produced any concrete evidence that the scheme has achieved its goals

    The title of last Sunday’s column should have been ‘Revisiting our unification policies1,’ and not ‘Piercing the Fog of Revolution’ that the column carried. Today’s piece is to provide more illustrations to support the thesis of last Sunday’s column; the tendency that our country is moving increasingly in the direction of a Union of policy rather than one of affection, largely because of the failure of civilian governments since 1999 to be more creative and freedom-affirming than the military governments before them.

    In an effort to unify a country that had been pushed close to the brinks by rigged elections in 1964 and 1965, the country’s military governments before, during, and after the civil war created policies they considered to be the best ways to create a united nation out of the diverse nationalities amalgamated in 1914. Before the war, the military government, as we posited last week, abolished local and native authority police systems across the country and put the country under one central police, on the excuse that state and local government leaders abused the local police system in the past and in the hope that one central police is better positioned to unify the country and bring justice, fairness, and efficiency to its law enforcement.

    The country has been at the mercy of a police force controlled by the central government ever since. This is despite the fact that the force is visibly incapable of securing citizens and their property or maintaining public order, more so since the emergence of Boko Haram. Even after forty-six years of federal monopoly of law enforcement, several retired military and police officers, as well as anti-federalist political leaders continue to state pontifically that establishing any other layer of police system in the country is tantamount to balkanizing the country.

    Three unification policies stand out to be revisited out of the legion initiated between 1973 and 1979: creation of Unity Schools; establishment of compulsory National Youth Service for graduates of tertiary institutions; and federalization of pre-existing regional universities. The rationale given for all of these policies is the same: “to encourage and develop common ties among the youths of the country and to promote national unity.” Military rulers believed that these policies would create a Nigerian Persona that they thought was lacking in all other spheres of the nation’s life apart from the armed forces.

    Just as there is no evidence that the centralisation of the police has worked for the citizens of the country, there is also no evidence that the three policies designed to promote unity have achieved the goals for which they were created. For example, after several decades of the existence of Unity Schools and with about half a million graduates from such schools, there is no statistical evidence that the country is more united than it was before the advent of Unity Schools. In addition, universities taken over from regional governments have over the years lost the international reputation and the high standards they had before they were transformed into Unity Schools at the tertiary level. Regions from which such universities were appropriated by the federal government have had, in the undying spirit of federalism, created new universities, adding in the final analysis to the pool of underfunded universities and impoverished tertiary institutions in the country.

    Similarly, about forty years of the NYSC (controlled even in a post-military era by a military officer) had not produced any concrete evidence that the scheme has achieved its goals, apart from anecdotal evidence that many graduates from the scheme married across state or ethnic lines. I grew up in colonial Nigeria and grew up to know that trans-ethnic marriage was part of the culture as far back as the 1940s. Whether it was in Lagos, Ibadan, and Ondo, where I lived as a young boy, one did not have to go to another street to identify men or women with spouses from other regions. There are several colleagues of my generation now in their 70s with Fulani mothers and Yoruba fathers, Igbo mothers and Hausa fathers, or Ebira fathers and Yoruba mothers, etc.

    Despite several calls for abolishment or re-conceptualisation of the NYSC, elected government leaders are ignoring citizens’ calls for policy reversal or change, on the anecdotal claims that the schemes enhance national unity. What is needed is for the government to set the Federal Bureau of Statistics to work to investigate the following points: percentage of increase in trans-ethnic marriages since the commencement of Unity Schools, Federal Universities, and National Youth Service Corps; percentage of former corpers offered employment in the states in which they served and had thus chosen to relocate to such states; number of NYSC hosts and corpers that see the scheme as a means of cheap but unappreciated labour to less developed states. Unless these questions are answered with statistical evidence, no one has a right to say that the NYSC, for example, has impacted on the political and social life of the country.

    It is also necessary to juxtapose answers to the questions above with statistical evidence on the number of serving corpers that had been killed as a result of sectarian or religious violence; the number of corpers that had died on the road on their way to or from their posts; the number of corpers that would have participated in the scheme if it had not been tied to getting post-service jobs from federal and state government agencies; and percentage of leaders of Boko Haram that attended Unity Schools, federal universities, and fulfilled NYSC obligations. It is only after doing the cost and benefit analysis of NYSC and Unity Schools that any government can justifiably say that asking for a review of some of the policies bequeathed by unelected governments is tantamount to putting the hands of the clock of unity and development back.

    Largely because the country’s post-military government is afraid to revisit policies imposed on the nation by unelected governments before it, political and cultural leaders with the mindset of military rulers are already networking to start a new round of low-wattage but high-verbiage unification policies patterned after those whose impact is yet to be verified. They have started to prepare or programme citizens for a policy that empowers the federal government to award indigeneship of communities to members of other communities and another one that creates grazing corridors all over the country for the use of nomadic cattle breeders, something that is reminiscent of the nomadic education of the military era that is now replaced by elected governments with Almajiri education.

     

    To be continued

  • Piercing the fog of revolution

    Piercing the fog of revolution

    It is uncritical to think that all the policies of unification established by military governments are good for all seasons and contexts

    This column once described Nigeria as leaning more toward a Union of Policy than a Union of Affection, a conceptual distinction borrowed from Daniel Defoe’s comment on the Act of Union that brought England, Scotland, and Wales under one flag in 1706. The recent Yoruba Assembly in Ibadan raised new issues that need to be addressed, if the Nigerian Union is to become a union of affection and thus a functional and sustainable union. Many of the issues to be raised in the next few weeks of this column are by no means original. Most of them were ventilated at the recent Yoruba Assembly by conferees that passionately want Nigeria to survive as Africa’s largest country.

    There is no doubt that Nigeria started as a union of policy. Frederick Lugard’s amalgamation of 1914, once characterised by Sir Ahmadu Bello as the Mistake of 1914, did not consider the feelings of the diverse peoples the Act fused into one country. But with time, those now being referred to as founding fathers of the country forged some understanding among themselves to the point that they agreed to seek independence from the United Kingdom as one country, even though after several threats from the colonial government that no section would be given independence outside the framework of Amalgamation.

    Building on the understanding that cultural diversity was not enough to throw away the Nigerian baby of Lugard with the bathwater, the founding fathers agreed to seek independence as one federation. In the process, two of the three regions fused in 1914: Eastern and Western Regions sought self-government two years before the third one, Northern Region. All of them received independence in 1960 on a duly negotiated constitution that gave each of the three regions substantial political autonomy to develop its economy, enforce its laws, and cooperate with other regions to sustain the country’s territorial unity.

    Unification policies emerged on the country’s political landscape after the emergence of military governments in 1966. Pre-1966 local and native authority police systems were abolished by federal military governments under the excuse that the police systems in existence during the colonial period and for six years after independence were abused by state governments, thus giving the impression that the Nigerian Police Force was not abused by trustees of federal power. It is often forgotten that the military rulers at that time needed to have an unchallenged military and police force(s) to sustain their unelected government. The federal monopoly over law enforcement decreed by military government is what is being cited today by apologists for a central police as the only way to police a multicultural federation.

    Most of the defenders of federal monopoly over law enforcement today are from the northern part of the country which also supplied most of the military rulers at the federal level between 1966 and 1998. A few retired police officers from the western part of the country are re-echoing passionately the view championed by northern leaders that Nigeria is not ready for state police. That former police officers from the North and the West have the courage to say that the force they served is an indispensable model should not worry citizens. Such statement is a way of defending the job they did or did not do. What is irrational is the view by northern cultural and political leaders that a state police is synonymous with disintegration of the country. Is the vehement opposition to decentralisation of law enforcement by several northern leaders an indication that the current federal police system provides hidden advantages to the North?

    The question of the moment, which also came up at the Yoruba Assembly, is whether one central police force can protect life and property in the country or sustain public order all over the federation. The facts on the ground with respect to the intimidation of Nigerians from all parts by the Boko Haram terrorist sect do not support an affirmative response. One central police system may be effective to sustain military dictatorship in a multiethnic society; it is not likely to be effecient in sustaining public order in a democratic context, as the rampant insecurity generated by Boko Haram has demonstrated.

    The imposition of one central police in the country, which started as a Unification Policy after 1966, has now become one of the sources of division in the country. Southern governors want decentralization while northern governors want continued centralisation of law enforcement. The feeling of insecurity all over the country and the ongoing division between the North and the South over methods of maintaining public order demonstrate that forty-six years of one central police force has neither produced an effective police system nor created lack of suspicion among different regions. One policy that military dictators believed was capable of unifying the country has turned out to be a source of controversy that requires a national conference to resolve much better than northern leaders’ bogey regarding state police as a sure bet to break the union.

    It is uncritical to think that all the policies of unification established by military governments are good for all seasons and contexts. There is an urgent need to de-militarise the polity. While it is appropriate for leaders in a post-military era to repeat the mantra of indivisibility of the country, it is unimaginative to insist on non-negotiability of the distorted federation and ineffectual unification policies left behind by military governments.

    To be continued next week.

  • Our Union: of affection or of policy?

    Citizens should have the freedom to identity with the culture of their new homes

    I have borrowed the title of today’s piece from Daniel Defoe, one of Britain’s most successful and most cited writers. Reacting to the Union Act of 1706 that created the United Kingdom, Defoe said that the union was more of policy than of affection. This short statement raised profound questions about the legitimacy and appropriateness of the unification of England, Scotland, and Wales into a union, without giving due consideration to the feelings of the nationalities so unified about the act.

    The cacophony of voices about how to make the Nigeria Union or what many commentators refer to as the non-negotiable unity of the country only suggests the need to unearth the unconsciousness of the nationalities or ethnic groups that are making effort to debate the best way to make their territorial togetherness profitable to all that are involved in Africa’s largest postcolonial state. Whether the topic is diversifying the police system or respect for cultural rights of indigenous communities that constitute the federation, the notion that the federal government— executive and legislative—and those that consider themselves official and unofficial trustees of the current polity, the effect is the same: troubling.

    The club of former Inspectors-General of Police, Northern Governors Forum, Arewa Consultative Forum, and self-appointed spokesmen for the North are cocksure that allowing states and local governments that make laws to have state or local police system to enforce such laws will not only lead to abuse of such system by state governors but will certainly destroy the country’s unity. Retired IGPs indicate that to have a constitution that allows for any police system other than the existing federal police monopoly is a sure bet for fragmentation of the country. More worrisome is the news that the club of retired federal police bosses is lobbying the National Assembly to jettison any intention to amend the constitution in respect of law enforcement.

    Similarly, the stridency in the voice of the North, particularly the Arewa Consultative Forum in relation to amendment to abrogate indigeneship in a multiethnic federation is fraught with troubling interpretations. If it is true that the National Assembly is contemplating such an amendment that will have no space for the cultural rights of indigenous Nigerian communities, it becomes crucial that whatever amendments are arrived at by the legislature must be submitted to a referendum. All of the communities in the country are indigenous cultures, which the UN has resolved to protect. There is no mainstream culture in the country that turns other cultures into marginal cultures. The closest to a mainstream culture in the country is a pidginized form of British culture made possible by the English language used to conduct government and business affairs.

    Calling for an end to indigeneship outside of a regular constitutional conference is to put the cart before the horse. Our lawmakers need to do more research about the place of indigenous culture(s) in the country. It is the various cultures that negotiated through the three regions for political independence from Great Britain in 1960. The ACF’s claim that ending the situation of dual indegeneship “would promote national integration, since it would put to rest for good the controversy about who is an indigene and who is not an indigene” needs to be critically examined by those attempting to amend the constitution. What is at stake is not indigenous culture(s). It is the need to work out residency requirements for citizens that want to migrate from their own indigenous cultural community to another.

    It is not possible for citizens from other parts of the country that migrate to the North and are put in Sabo to be integrated with their hosts that live outside of Sabo. Correspondingly, it is difficult for northerners that move to the South and ask for a space to create Sabo in the South to be integrated into the indigenous cultures of such southern communities. What is needed more urgently is to abrogate Sabo across the country. Sabo represents physical segregation that militates against integration that is needed to make a new comer to a culture feel at home.

    The freedom of movement of every Nigerian must be respected at all times. Each Nigerian citizen should have the option to live in any part of the country that he or she desires. His or her political rights must not be abrogated because of the decision to move out of the state or community of birth. What is required is for the national assembly to make constitutional provisions to safeguard each citizen’s right to vote and be voted for and to buy and own property in any state of the federation.

    Each state should be allowed to determine how long a citizen wanting to be a resident of another community must stay in that community to enjoy political and social rights available to residents. Integration or assimilation (indigenisation) to a new culture comes after residency. It grows from the degree of identification of the resident with the host culture, and should not through constitutional mandate. In addition, residency in another state requires compliance with the laws of such states as well as respect for the cultural rights of indigenes of such states. Citizens should have the freedom to identify with the culture of their new homes, if they want to be accepted as part of the community. Such identification marks the difference between a union of affection and one of policy.