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Category: Ropo Sekoni

  • Is fuel subsidy ideologically inevitable?

    Is fuel subsidy ideologically inevitable?

    Ropo Sekoni

     

    In a country where there are no social assistance programmes for citizens, there’s nothing wrong with calls for special assistance to the unemployed

     

    Ade Alabi was sick in a village near Ibadan during the recent fuel scarcity. His neighbor had a car and was willing to take Ade to the nearest primary health centre. But the raging fuel scarcity at the time prevented his neighbor from having petrol to buy, even though he was ready to pay the prohibitive price of N200 per litre charged by Black Market sellers of petrol in the village. All efforts to take Ade to the hospital on his own Okada proved futile. There was no rubber hose to transfer petrol from Ade’s Okada into the car of his neighbor. Even though Ade had a brother who could ride Okada, his brother was just as big as Ade. It was not possible to have both brothers on the Okada with a third person to prop Ade up on the way to the clinic. While the entire village was thinking about how to get Ade to the hospital, the poor man slumped and died, leaving behind a wife and three children.

     

     

    THE story above illustrates the danger (to the poor in particular) inherent in the insistence by self-defined socialist ideologues (in and outside the trade unions) on the religiosity of retaining fuel subsidy as the best way to protect the poor and workers from exploitation by money grubbing oil and gas merchants and from neglect from a government in charge of a country whose most effective source of revenue in petroleum.

    Many cases are being made in traditional and social media in support of cancelation of fuel subsidy in the country. Some pundits base their position on evidence of corruption in the handling of the subsidy scheme, citing examples of irregularities in various committees established to probe the country’s subsidy scheme. Examples of financial irregularity are drawn from Farouk Lawan Committee’s Probe in 2012. This report claims that N232 billion on subsidy was paid to marketers for PMS in 2011 for fuel that was not supplied. The same committee also established that, contrary to the claims of marketers that 60 million litres was imported for each day in 2011, only 31 million litres per day was accounted for.

    Some commentators focus on the Nuhu Ribadu Probe in 2012 to argue for cessation of subsidy on the ground of lack of transparency. They draw attention to the report that NNPC deducted subsidy-related expenses before payment to the Federation Account in 2011. This group argues that NEITI’s audits from 1999 to 2011 also confirmed that NNPC deducted a total of N1.40 trillion for subsidy. Similarly, the Presidential Committee on Verification and Reconciliation of Fuel Subsidy (2012) is cited by anti-subsidy commentators to illustrate that 197 subsidy transactions worth N229 billion were illegitimate and that actual expenditure on subsidy was higher in the same year than appropriated sums for fuel subsidy.

    Economic thinkers of the free market persuasion also argue that natural resources are finite and attract largely time-limited revenues, more so if such resources are sold in the international market where the exporting country has no control over pricing. This group posits that it is not rational for any government to prefer fuel subsidy for citizens across the social spectrum to promoting sustained inclusive economic development through investments that can have multiplier effects on sustainable empowerment schemes for the underprivileged. This group calls for an end to fuel subsidy which its spokespersons believe to be a non-sustainable way of allocating natural resource revenues.

    On the other hand, trade union leaders and self-defined advocates of the poor argue passionately in favour of continuing with fuel subsidy. The trade union’s claim includes the need to view fuel subsidy as a non-negotiable poverty-alleviating policy. This school of thought calls on government to accept the need to make every Nigerian enjoy the fruits of a natural resource that under a unitary system of government is viewed to belong to the entire country, regardless of the damage the exploitation of such natural resource does to the economy and ecology of the communities in which such resources are located.

    Another line of thinking within this group is that underpaid workers, poor, and unemployed citizens need fuel subsidy to mitigate the knock-on effect of their poverty. The same group also argues that it is unfair for the federal government to stop fuel subsidy until the government is able to create the type of transportation infrastructure that exists in more developed countries, where fuel subsidy is discouraged as a policy. They add that the government must repair existing refineries and construct more to bring the price of refined petrol for domestic consumption down to the point of making fuel subsidy unnecessary. The Jonathan government accepted the thinking of labour leaders by creating another bureaucracy, Sure-P, to pacify workers and labour leaders, after agreeing to peg the price of petrol at N97 per litre. Just like the subsidy scheme itself, it did not take a long time for Sure-P to become another trick to occlude financial mismanagement by the country’s venal political elite.

    The position of trade union leaders and believers in social democracy appears unassailable. In a country where there are not many social assistance programmes for citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder, there should be nothing wrong with calls for special assistance to the unemployed and underpaid workers. In terms of fine ideological thinking, trade union leaders and their social democratic supporters are making respectable arguments. But the hard question that needs to be asked and answered by radical social and economic thinkers is whether fuel subsidy is the best way to assist the poor in our country.

    Despite the social democratic credentials of this author for over half a century, I do not believe that there are no better ways to assist the poor than the current fuel subsidy that is as enmeshed in the culture of political and bureaucratic corruption as it can ever be in any human space. In a country in which political parties do not openly embrace any noticeable form of social democracy, as in countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Norway, where social democracy is a fact of life, there are hundreds of ways to assist the poor without having to attempt to pay some of the cost of fuel for them. In these social democratic systems, the line between the middle-class or middle-income and low-income groups is made clear when policies of social assistance are being crafted. It is not so in the case of Nigeria’s fuel subsidy scheme, which allows upper-middle class professionals to enjoy fuel subsidy that should have been reserved for the underprivileged.

    The argument that fuel subsidy in Nigeria is to protect the poor is spurious. Out of the 145 vehicles per 1,000 citizens in Nigeria, 85 of them are cars belonging to middle-class members of the society. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the car-owning middle-class citizens that benefit largely from fuel subsidy. If indeed fuel subsidy assists the low-income and the unemployed, it is not to the extent that it benefits the middle-class. There ought to be better ways to assist the poor.

    For example, the federal government can use the money spent on fuel subsidy to pay for such services as free education, free meals for school children, free health for the poor, social welfare checks for the poor, and free adult education for the poor. In addition, poor citizens can be given social welfare support that they can use to pay for market price of petrol. Furthermore, trade unions can insist that the existing refineries be sold to workers for one naira each so that workers’ cooperatives can manage the refineries. The federal government can put the matter of removal of subsidy to a referendum to determine what majority of citizens want, as opposed to what paid representatives of labour prefer. Without doubt, if Ade Alabi, referred to at the beginning of this piece and his relations had been given a chance to vote Yes or No in a referendum on removal of fuel subsidy, all of them would have voted Yes, in hopes that the Ade Alabis of Nigeria can be taken to the hospital before it is too late.

    President Buhari and his team should pluck the courage to address this albatross around the neck of the nation. In addition to initiating many direct social assistance programmes for the poor, the federal government should use funds currently being used to pay subsidy charges to assist the poor in ways that those assisted can use the social assistance funds to solve the problems most important to them.

    • This article was first published in 2016

     

     

     

     

     

  • Matters befuddling

    Matters befuddling

    Ropo Sekoni

    In a presidential system, the president may be perceived by some as an emperor or monarch that must not be seen too frequently to avoid being demystified.

    Covid-19 seems to have already started to rattle or disorient many leaders or their aides across the globe. Some national leaders have given orders for shooting of citizens seen on the streets during lockdown, for refusing to be saved. Other leaders are sending to other countries what they do not have for solving their own problems at home. Many leaders are acting as if their political power automatically endows them with scientific or epistemic power. Religious fanatics are already confirming that the 2019 virus, unlike the Black Plague or the Spanish influenza or even SAR-S or Ebola, is a sign of Armageddon or the much-touted Apocalypse.

    Worse still, where many aides in the corridor of power have been given power to do or say anything in respect of the most worrisome disease in the post-industrial era, such aides have gotten intoxicated by such power, to the extent that many of such power wielders have taken actions capable of making their principals misunderstood by the people that have voted leaders into office. Such appropriation of power by ministers or aides has been used to put many political leaders in situations that can under sell them to those who voted for them shortly before coronavirus.

    One of such undue flaunting of power  by presidential assistants is the recent shielding of President Buhari from his voters over when it is right for him to talk to citizens on a matter of enormous importance to them: future of citizens in the wake of coronavirus. After the many days that aides and ministers of President Buhari had given reasons after reasons why he would or should not address citizens, the Commander-in-Chief at a time that coronavirus has been named as a global war, finally emerged to submit a 61-point advisory that did not depart radically from what his counterparts in other countries had dished out to their own citizens.

    And none of the points made by the Nigerian president was off tangent. One wonders about the political wisdom in minister after minister struggling to give reasons why citizens should not ask to be given the opportunity to hear from the political leader that should have been their first public confidante at a time of national and global stress. Ministers and presidential aides that like to be heard in lieu of the president are not helping matters. In a presidential system, the president may be perceived by some as an emperor or monarch that must not be seen too frequently to avoid being demystified. But citizens (voters) in a democracy have a right to view their president as a father-figure, especially at a time of national crisis.

    Even one of the most self-assured or absorbed leaders in the world came off his horse to speak directly to citizens almost every day. Even in the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister of the country that created Nigeria arranged a public interview with a nurse to provide an opportunity for citizens to feel the empathy of their national father-figure. The Italian Prime Minister cried openly on television while the Canadian Prime Minister shared knowledge about his family member’s infection with citizens, etc. The need for open identification with citizens at a time of national stress is not something that any aide or minister should have the power to deny troubled citizens. Nigeria’s democratic governance must not be emptied of opportunities for their president to talk directly to citizens as many times as citizens lovingly require from their president on stressful matters. This is in the character of leading a free people, of leading citizens, not subjects. History books told us how many times Winston Churchill spoke to the people of the United Kingdom during World War II. Creating avenues for political leaders to talk to citizens on burning issues is not only about what a leader is able to say, as much as it is about the psychology of people at a time of national disaster in a democracy.

    Another example of an intentional or unintentional use of the power of aides has come into the open in news reports attributed to the Ooni of Ife about his discovery of cure for coronavirus. This problem is not one of commission by aides that prefer to shield President Buhari from his citizens; the Ife case is one of omission. The aides of the Kabiyesi failed to counsel him not to join in a discourse that was outside his ken and traditionally outside his duties. It is one thing for a monarch to call for cleansing or fumigating of territories and another thing for the monarch to act like the kingdom’s Araba (chief priest) or Aroni (master drug maker).

    It is confusing why the chiefs and aides of the Ooni would fail so palpably to restrain him from coming out publicly or globally to do the job of a Babalawo and Onisegun when there are specific people designed for such roles in Ife and other Yoruba kingdoms. President Trump was not even allowed to do this at will in the United States. When he first announced that chloroquine can cure coronavirus, the Food and Drug Administration leaders charged with approving news drugs quickly announced that the agency had not confirmed the efficacy of chloroquine in respect of covid-19. Furthermore, close aides of President Trump made him appreciate the need to allow Dr. Anthony Fauci and other medical experts in charge of infectious diseases and epidemiology to talk to the people on the disease, instead of assuming that as president he has absolute power.

    For example, Ooni’s aides should have ensured that the monarch use his experts to announce discovery of cure for covid-19. He ought to call experts to assist him to talk about such a technical matter. Why did the Kabiyesi fail to call experts to tell their own stories? Why did he not address the matter of global virus since June when Ifa first revealed the truth about what now humbles humankind and the omnipotent United States? The Araba (master diviner) of Ife would have handled the prediction differently from what the Kabiyesi had done.

    The Yoruba homeland in West Africa and its diaspora in Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Carolinas have experts on Ifa in all its manifestations, ranging from epistemology to metaphysics, sociology, and psychology. The Yoruba monarchy expects such expertise to be made available for the use of Kabiyesi. As a narrative of Chance and Sacrifice, Ifa could have revealed many things to traditional rulers in the Yoruba world, as the claim of the Ooni illustrates and as recent divinations by some monarchs in the Republic of Benin about coronavirus also show. But by allowing the Ooni to play the role of Aroni (the master medicine man or pharmaceutical chemist on the pages of newspapers, members of his council of advisers and aides have failed in their duties.

    The tradition of division of labour that is reflected in distribution of tasks among Yoruba divinities and is reflected in the council of advisers for monarchs across Yorubaland must not be thrown away as it appears to have been done recently in Ife. It is clear to students of Yoruba culture that the Eureka or Orunmila stage in the investigation of any problem is the first of many steps needed to reach the stage creating herbal medicine or scientific product. The elaborate collaboration of various specialists needed to turn divination into medical product is absent in the simple narrative of Kabiyesi’s discovery of cure for covid-19.

    Today’s themes about aides of men of power not acting well enough in the interest of their principals and of citizens that political leaders are meant to serve may not sound significant, given the magnitude of problems that face Nigeria in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. But the goal of presenting today’s themes is to stimulate attention of cultural scholars to the danger of  ignoring manifestations of cultural decline, such as might have cumulatively brought Nigeria to this low level in many areas of life, sixty years after independence.

    It is important to stress that the current presidential system is not designed to place determination of desire of voters to see their president or hear from their leaders at the whims of unelected ministers and aides. Such assistants are to help the president, not to shield him from citizens. Protecting the president from harm is part of the duty of state security service. Conversely in traditional Yoruba political system, chiefs and aides are created to prevent over exposure of the monarch, by representing him as and when necessary, not to allow him to make statements that are controversial and may require elaborate fact-checking or verification. Let no minister or chief mix the democratic and feudal modes at will.

  • Covid-19 in Nigeria: keeping it real

    Covid-19 in Nigeria: keeping it real

    Ropo Sekoni

     

    Now that the truth has overwhelmed the myth, it is advisable that citizens and government agents refrain from creating new myths

     

     

    UNFORTUNATELY, the myth that Nigeria is too close to the equator to experience Covid-19 has been debunked. Now that the truth has overwhelmed the myth, it is advisable that citizens and government agents refrain from creating new myths capable of creating confusion in the minds of people and misleading innocent citizens.

    There is no doubt that many government spokespersons have been providing right messages since rise in the number of infected cases in Nigeria. Yet, many political leaders have been saying things that can militate against building a much-needed trust between government and the citizenry.

    For example, only a few days ago, the speaker of a state assembly directed lawmakers to mobilize people in their constituencies to fast and pray against Covid-19. While such advice may have its significance, it does not sound as the most appropriate thing for a lawmaker to say in the context of a governance matter. The federal and many state governments, especially Lagos, the most affected so far, have identified many steps that State Assembly speakers should have enjoined lawmakers on holiday because of the virus to take home to their constituencies. It does not make sense to promote the religious message over the scientific one on a matter that most of the world’s scientists are virtually sleeping in the laboratories searching for anti Covid-19 therapies and vaccines? It makes Nigerian leaders look more uninformed than they should.

    Any wonder then that many of our religious leaders, have started creating new myths about the origin and lifespan of the virus? In a country that relishes referring to itself as a multi-religious society, it is expected that each faith would seize the opportunity of the challenge of Coronavirus to keep their members in line about belief celestial solution to a terrestrial problem, but doing so should not be in competition with allowing the state to give non-religious directives to citizens. A situation in which a religious leader disregard government orders and justify doing so with the excuse that he needed to gather a crowd to carry the message already carried in all communications channels about necessity for crowd avoidance leaves much to be desired. What has happened to the tolerance of “giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s? A time that Saudi Arabia has advised the faithful to pray in privacy of their homes is not the one for Christians in Nigeria to find excuse to disobey government’s directives. Religious merchants and fanatics run the risk of undermining the importance of faith and science if religious leaders continue to act as if they need to always look for metaphysical causes and solutions to problems.

    Such utterances: “We want to pray, coronavirus is not here — it is the whites who brought it to us;” “God told me three days ago to spread the word that the spirit of coronavirus is dead. We will soon attend its funeral;” and  “Coronavirus cannot stop God’s children, but I assure you that the solution will be found this week” made by religious fanatics at the bottom and apex of the Christendom in Nigeria may lessen the fear of millions of people about the current plague, but they are capable of undermining efforts by governments to address a real problem on the ground with the knowledge and skills known to people who do not have any special anointment to see or hear what ordinary mortals cannot see or hear about the source or progress of a pandemic.

    For as long as Nigeria has not been declared a theocracy, the authority that should enjoy dominance at a time of epidemic or pandemic should not be the narratives or parables of clerics and fanatics, but that of the government in its secular authority. Although the government of Nigeria may not be doing wonders, it is, however, making efforts to emulate some of the best practices on preventing spread of Covid-19. Therefore, any attempt by religious leaders to distract citizens from steps being taken to mitigate spread of Coronavirus deserves to be stepped down before majority of citizens in Nigeria are made to lose confidence in global efforts being applied to fight Covid-19. No responsible leader—political or religious—has a right to use global tragedy to look for converts to their brands of faith.

    More importantly, government officials cannot afford to lose their cool by engaging in blame game. Yes, citizens especially on social media platforms are cursing out political leaders, but such citizens have more reason to blame government than vice versa. All the curses and imprecations oozing out of the social media are not blaming Nigerian political leaders for the coming of Covid-19. They are signs of decades of frustration that governance has created in the country for about half a century, which the emergence of Coronavirus has further exposed in the lack of any health and social infrastructure to assure people that those who govern them may not be able to respond to the challenge  on the ground.of global pandemic.

    It is poor statecraft for government spokespersons to blame the victim. Ordinary citizens are victims of the current scourge much more than their political leaders.  And it should be a no brainer to political leaders with a history of 60 years of governance failure behind them that citizens are disoriented. This is, therefore, a time for government leaders to act and talk as servant-leaders, show empathy to citizens and be firm in ensuring that public orders are followed for the sake of the common good.

    It does not make sense to give open-ended orders such as asking pastors not to exceed 20 or 50 prayer warriors in praying centres at a time. This should not be the time for government to pander to religious organizations. A clear-cut order against any public gathering such as has been issued in Saudi Arabia and Italy, two global centres of faith promotion and management, is the right order to give—No church or Islamic service period. Nigeria does not have the number, time, and discipline to go from ward to ward to count numbers of people inside churches and mosques. Owners of praying and dancing halls ought to have been told in clear terms to close shop, instead of having to send policemen that should have been fighting banditry to drive out hard-of-hearing citizens from party halls. These are trying times. Government spokespersons ought to direct their energy to building trusts with citizens who have for decades felt alienated. A time like this is one to get the worst out of citizens who have been abused and underdeveloped by successions of governments.

    Paradoxically, it is in times like this that countries can get more united to face the challenges facing them. The federal government should not miss the opportunity of self-recognition. Citizens are unhappy that the nakedness of Nigeria has been exposed to the world by Covid-19 more than before. Governors of some states are already asking development partners to assist them to establish structures to prevent spread of Coronavirus. Government officials are spending so much energy on telling citizens why their president need not speak to citizens when they are starving for reassurance. Citizens are being told by Nigerian political leaders that results of Covid-19 tests on their leaders are not for public consumption, when leaders in other countries disclose results of their own tests.

    Any kind of information war between frustrated citizens and their government can only be counterproductive. This is the time for government leaders to act like parents to citizens that have been neglected for decades, not the time to tell them why they cannot insist that they want to hear from their father-figure, the republic’s president. Nigeria’s political leaders need to watch their counterparts in other countries about the role of empathy for the governed at a time like this. This is the time to keep it real.

     

  • Of oil glut and Covid-19

    Of oil glut and Covid-19

    Ropo Sekoni

    When President Buhari said after his electoral victory in 2019 that his ‘last lap of four years would be tough,’ he could not have seen the kind of toughness that has come to Nigeria in the wake of Covid-19 and its verdict on the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy—petroleum. The toughness that has come to Nigeria and most of the world is certainly worse than what President Buhari must have meant one year before the onset of Coronavirus. Now is the time for Nigerians to remember the saying: “Tough times don’t last; tough people do.”

    The big threat to Nigeria may not be the spread of Covid-19, despite strict warnings to sub-Saharan African countries already famous for their fragile healthcare systems. Nigerians live in a country starkly divided by class. The majority group of lower-class and under-class and the narrow strip of upper-class men usually have no reasons to mix. Lassa fever is likely to kill more people than Coronavirus, Nigeria’s borders are closed immediately and the three spots where the two classes come in contact—churches, mosques, and parties are closed in addition to educational institutions.

    But with oil going down to $30 per barrel, the 2020 budget experiencing cuts at a time that the country just got out of the 2014 recession, many of our political leaders are already pontificating about how the current challenge can become an opportunity for Nigeria to boost its ongoing diversification project. Transforming challenges into opportunities should not end with economic diversification, it should extend to political decentralization. Diversification answers just one side of the problem. Freeing subnational governments from the strictures of centralism can bring economic diversification to success much faster than our leaders think. Countries with the right infrastructure for manufacturing, strong healthcare, and an economy not largely dependent on the price of crude oil do not have to panic as much as countries, like Nigeria that depend largely on selling of crude oil. When Nigeria gets its governance system right, it may, like countries on the same par with it in the 1960s, such as North Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, no longer need to be sent into jitters  any more than other developed countries with modern capacity to respond to global threats.

    To make diversification work, Nigerian leaders need to pay more serious attention to going back and forth between oil boom and bust, such as we have done between 2014 and 2020. It is a no brainer that it is recognition of the interconnection of a country’s economy and politics that forms the core of political economy. Diversification in an over centralized country where over 80% of resources of the country are spent on administration of 37 states and 774 local governments with each state not having any fiscal autonomy to innovate is something that should worry political leaders, including those who have sworn to hold on to the centralist state in the name of national unity. It is not only individuals who want to be presidents of smaller countries that can undermine Nigeria’s unity, hungry, sick, ill-clad, illiterate, homeless citizens not in positions to become presidents are equally dangerous to national unity—whether the nation is Nigeria, Biafra, Oodua, Edo or Opobo republic.

    This may be a good time for the country’s rulers to take a long-term view of fluctuations in the price of oil and the threat precipitous drop in oil prices brings to the country periodically. We are never going to have control over the price of crude oil at any time, except when Nigeria becomes the only oil producer and there is still need for oil elsewhere on the globe. But our leaders, especially those who believe they hold the country by the jugular, can give political reform a chance, especially if doing so can cut resources spent on governance considerably and enable Nigeria to become modern.

    It is remarkable that after almost five decades of running a monocultural economy, the current government has initiated a return to economic diversification. Nigeria had economic diversification before 1966. This was why the four regions of North, East, West, and Mid-West were able to function. But there is need for a political reform that can make economic diversification policy more effective across the country. Diversification policy without political decentralization is bound to continue to slow down diversification projects. Leaving major decisions on the economy, especially agriculture to the central government and states without fiscal autonomy may continue to make economic diversification a pipe dream, regardless of the stridency of the rhetoric that promotes the policy.

    For example, the Central Bank governor recently announced the intention of the federal government to assist in boosting the production of palm oil, with the promise to do the same for cocoa production much later. Any good reason why the two could not go together? Regional governments pumped funds into the development of palm produce, cocoa, cotton, rubber, and groundnut production at the same time before 1966, largely because of a different model of governing Nigeria. Each state ought to have been assisted to improve the production of any cash crop that can earn foreign exchange, especially since 2014 when the price of petroleum collapsed shortly before the coming of Buhari to power.

    Reducing the size of the federal budget is a good idea, but this decision may not address fundamental problems of spending most of the country’s expenditures on recurrent items. Lawmakers, regardless of what may be the level of the obsession of the executive branch over the centralized governance system ought to take the current challenge of economic uncertainty thrown up by the low price of crude oil to call for more creativity in governance. Undoubtedly, the easy flow of petrodollars during the years of military rule encouraged the centralization of governance, the massive political corruption that followed, and the decapitation of federating units.

    The prediction that oil may go down to $20 per barrel or worse calls for courageous and creative leaders to push for a polity that will cost much less than the parasitic governance model of the last half a century. There can be no better time for a government committed to reducing the cost of governance to commit to rightsizing government at the national and sub-national levels. Returning to the Oronsaye report on reducing the cost of governance is a good start.

    The worst form of over administration of the country is the number of states and local governments that are sustained principally from revenue from petroleum. Our leaders should not wait until the price of crude oil goes to $10 per barrel before they do a major review of the constitution that sanctifies 774 local governments. Nothing about governance is cast in stone in a country that cannot fund its budget. Just as we can reduce the budget by a stroke of the pen or after a visit of ministers to the president, so can there be other ways to cut out the pork of federal and state governance.

    Even with 36 states, a federal system that stops handing over funds to governors to spend on a monthly or quarterly basis is likely to be more cost-effective than what we currently have. The quality of life of the average Nigerian needs to be improved. There is no evidence that this can happen under the current system of collecting all revenues into the federation account and allocating funds to 36 states and 774 local governments to spend as they wish. States should be given the fiscal power to enable each of them to create an economy that can generate funds to run such states. Whatever revenue accrues from the oil and gas should be used as capital allocations to fund specific infrastructure projects in all the states, rather than transferring funds that now function like welfare checks to states.

    It is about time to recognize that a country that has not succeeded in giving citizens benefits of modern governance—access to potable water, reliable electricity supply, public education, healthcare system—deserves to be told by international leaders to brace up for the challenge of Covid-19 or any virus for that matter.

    As this column observed in 2012 in a series on Petroleum and the Future of Nigeria, failure to reform governance in before fossil energy becomes unprofitable can only produce a destitute post-oil Nigeria, more so if the generation of leaders that created the current parasitic system continues to argue that there is no better way to keep Nigeria united.

     

  • Time to drop immunity for government leaders

    Time to drop immunity for government leaders

    Ropo Sekoni

    If one may ask, what has the country gained from having a constitution that gives immunity to leaders of the executive branch?

     

    GIVEN the special circumstance of the birth of the 1999 Constitution as a Legal Will written on the death bed of military dictatorship in Nigeria, it is hard to know what percentage of the citizenry would have wanted immunity for the president, vice president, governor, and deputy governor had the constitution been written by true representatives of the people or subjected to ratification through a referendum. What was wrong in 1999 should not be repeated in 2020 in the guise of constitutional amendment. Leaders of the legislature should not get away with handing another form of absolute power to lawmakers, the way the 1999 Constitution gave executive leaders a carte blanche to govern with no fear of prosecution.

    The desire by lawmakers to extend immunity to themselves may have arisen from the assumption or presumption that citizens have no issues with making their political leaders un-reprimandable because of the offices they hold. Let no one be deceived; the argument by lawmakers that giving immunity to the legislative branch of government would enhance legislative independence is specious. It may only add to the number of above-the-law politicians in the country and expand the circle of do-as-you-please rulers.

    The circumstances of the country in 2020 do not call for any manner of indulgence for any branch of government. On the contrary, the condition of the country calls for more discipline and altruism on the part of members of the ruling group. At a time that the country is about to take loans to support its budget, it sounds insensitive for lawmakers to be looking for non-accountable powers. In the era before the arrival of military rule, lawmakers were part-time public servants, each with his/her own profession and occupation.

    Nothing spectacular seems to have happened in 2020 or since the military came to rule the country in 1966 for Nigeria to have full-time lawmakers, let alone to immunize lawmakers against prosecution. What seems rational at this point is to do away with immunity provision in the 1999 Constitution. Fortunately, the country currently has a president that is mortally opposed to corruption who is likely to be happy about ending the contradictions in values that giving special protection from the law to a president who has sworn to probity in governance implies.

    If one may ask, what has the country gained from having a constitution that gives immunity to leaders of the executive branch? In what ways has immunity for top four executive officers strengthened the fight against corruption? Strangely, immunity clause is pronounced more in the constitution of African countries and other so-called third-world or developing countries. And most African countries with immunity for their presidents or prime ministers have not graduated from the group of aid receivers from countries that do not have immunity from prosecution for their leaders. How useful has immunity protection been to developing countries, especially those (and they are legion in Africa) with reputation or notoriety for political and bureaucratic corruption? Statistically, most countries at the bottom of the global development ladder are countries with special protection that exempts their leaders from the accountability required from citizens in other occupations.

    Given the fanatical opposition of the current president to corruption, there is no better moment for an amendment that removes the immunity clause from the constitution, thus reassuring citizens of commitment to equality of citizens, regardless of political or social status. From the vice president’s readiness to waive his immunity last year to allow for free investigation of allegations against him by some individuals, it is safe to assume that President Buhari, who himself made relentless fight against corruption the core of his electoral manifesto in 2015 and 2019, would find joy with such amendment.

    The claim of lawmakers and their supporters that the complexity of their duties and those of the president makes giving immunity to both branches of government necessary is without any foundation. There is no evidence that the job of the Senate President or Speaker of the House and of the president is more rigorous and deserving of more protection than the job of a heart surgeon. Despite the high risk of malpractice for surgeons, they are not exempted from prosecution for medical malpractice. It is not fair to the nobility of character expected of presidents, governors, and legislative leaders to assume that they all need special protection for them to do a good job. To claim that Nigeria’s top political leaders need to be freed from the rigour or displeasure of accountable governance is to suggest that those who rise to positions of national and state power are of inferior moral and mental strength than surgeons, soldiers, pilots, and many other professionals who are required to do their jobs without any immunity from prosecution.

    Nigeria’s top political leaders should be more enthusiastic about gaining the trust and respect of citizens with evidence of their integrity than about seeking special exemptions from the laws that apply to other citizens in a democracy. Let us have a system that requires the best of us to have the enormous powers given to presidents, governors, and legislative leaders, with the confidence that such leaders can work with fairness and accountability without expecting them special protection before they can have the peace of mind to do such jobs. Holding leaders accountable while they are in office can prevent many in that position from having to be dragged to the Hague to face the International court for violence against humanity which they could have avoided while in office, if they had not been treated by constitutions as infallible.

    One thing that is not sure about the new zeal of lawmakers for constitutional amendment is how many of the proposed amendments have originated from consultations with constituencies, apart from the call for public hearings in Abuja where 99% of the population may not have the means to spend one night in hotels to discuss constitutional amendments with lawmakers whose allowance in a year may be more than what the average Nigerian can earn in a lifetime. But one thing that is certain is that most candidates for the federal legislature before the last elections did not share with the electorate their thoughts on changes they would make to the country’s constitution or new laws they would promote, if elected. Obviously, none of the current lawmakers told voters that they would like to use their mandate to extend presidential and gubernatorial immunity to legislative leaders.

    It is, therefore, not in the interest of voters to be cynical about the ongoing project by legislators to further feather their own nests with immunity from prosecution. Claims that efforts to amend the constitution are mere distractions may not be true. It is wise for voters to assume that one of the cosmetic changes to the constitution may be to award immunity to leaders of the two houses, in addition to the parliamentary immunity that all legislators already have as parliamentarians.

    For members of the 9th Assembly to have the full trust of voters, it is better for them to drop the bid for immunity from prosecution from their list of intended amendments. There are hundreds of other constitutional changes waiting for consideration by the National Assembly—establishment of multilevel police system, provision of fiscal federalism to subnational governments to enhance the new policy of economic diversification, changing the structure of the judiciary to leave the federal court with adjudication over only federal laws and replacing the current Supreme Court usually saddled with many issues that could have ended at the state level with a Constitutional Court, etc.

    By insisting on creating a new constitutional provision to extend immunity from prosecution to legislators, members of the 9th Assembly would make the following observation of Aristophanes applicable to them: “Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack democracy.”

     

     

  • Obasanjo and Lamido on paradigm shift

    Obasanjo and Lamido on paradigm shift

     By Ropo Sekoni

    A significant aspect of the arguments of Obasanjo and Sanusi is the potential of their arguments to revitalise political discourse in the country.

    We need not go the way of Yugoslavia or Sudan and certainly not the way of Rwanda and Somalia. But none of these countries knew the avoidable and divisive end from the beginning. Let us learn from the experience of others and of our founding fathers who resolved their political differences through dialogue and debate without resorting to violence and separation but accommodation, telling themselves hard truth, tolerance and give-and-take spirit. That was the foundation of Nigeria at independence and let it continue to be….If all we are interested in is power and not holding the country together harmoniously and wholesomely, we may hold the mirage of power and lose the nation or the country bequeathed to us by our founding fathers—Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria

    Nobody who is a leader in Northern Nigeria today can afford to be happy. You cannot be happy about 87 per cent of poverty in Nigeria being in the north….You can’t be happy with millions of Northern children out of school. You can’t be happy with nine states in the North contributing almost 50 per cent of the entire malnutrition burden in the country….It is education, it’s girl- child education, it’s women’s right, it’s child begging, it is parental irresponsibility, demographic growth, it’s managing a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious society and bringing them into one community where they are all citizens—Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Emir of Kano

    The authors of the two passages overleaf have been experiencing bashing especially in the social media and visibly enough in some traditional newspapers. The bashing has not been because of their message or argument but because of the messenger. But the focus of this essay is on the significance of the message for national and subnational governance in the country.

    There is no attempt to claim that there is no significance to discussing the influence of the messenger on the authority of the message, but the real meat of today’s discussion is about what the messenger has said. Of course, it is important to citizens not born during the two terms of Obasanjo as head of state to hear from experts how much Obasanjo contributed to governance failure that he is now proffering solutions for. But Obasanjo also deserves to be accorded full right as a human being to always have the right to develop his reasoning powers and acquire new perspectives anytime in the course of his life.

    Similarly, there is logic in the argument in the social media that Sanusi Lamido Sanusi himself may have contributed directly or indirectly to population explosion if, like most leaders from the North, he has multiple wives. But the core of Sanusi’s argument is not just about the number of wives that can lead to a high number of children per one citizen; it is about the failure of those in power to create policies and rules that can prepare the teeming population that may result from rise in population of the community that practices a pre-modern family size—principal cause of high population—from automatically wallowing in ignorance and poverty for being born into a feudal society.

    The two authors are making the same complaint in different words and with different illustrations: that prisoners of a pre-modern worldview are more susceptible to politics of inequality than those raised in a more egalitarian ethos. Obasanjo provides examples of poor governance from a country-wide perspective while Sanusi focuses on a subnational space very familiar to him to illustrate his thesis. It is the danger inherent in using feudalism as an instrument of governing Nigeria—a multicultural political territory—that worries Obasanjo while Sanusi is concerned about the use of feudal tactics for governing the northern section of the country and the consequences such approach has brought to degrading the humanity of citizens in the northern part of the country relative to its southern counterpart.

    Obasanjo had been a head of state of Nigeria for about 14 years as military dictator and elected ‘executive president.’  He was pivotal to creation of the national spread of feudalistic governance during his military presidency. He supervised the handing over of major regional or subnational institutions to the centralism that grew before him and blossomed under him—handing over of regional universities and other subnational institutions to the central government. In the case of Sanusi, he was governor of the Central Bank for five years during which he had access to data on distribution of national resources and transfers from the federal government to state governments in the north. Since he became Emir, he has served as traditional ruler of a state that receives the largest allocations from the federation account. In other words, both of them have adequate experience of governance in Nigeria to make the type of complaints they have made recently.

    The core of both speeches is the danger that political leaders with a lord-vassal vision of governance to the quality of governance and quality of life of citizens in a political space that favours inequality between citizens and between communities. However, none of the two authors has said anything new. Obafemi Awolowo warned for decades about the dangers of governing Nigeria without respect for its cultural diversity. He wrote books on the imperative of cultural democracy in a multicultural political space, warning with global examples of the disadvantages of governing Nigeria as if it is a political space of one language, one culture, and one worldview.

    In addition, Awolowo argued that democratic federalism was superior to any form of feudalism in Nigeria’s multicultural space, warning that direct or indirect attempts of one nationality to dominate others in a federation is usually a recipe for disharmony, conflict, and underdevelopment. Obasanjo who thought otherwise for decades, especially while he was in power at the national level, shows in his own lecture to have seen the wisdom in the warnings given by Awolowo and he is now repeating similar warnings to Nigeria, including some of his co-designers of unitary Nigeria.

    Similarly, Sanusi’s emphasises the imperative of literacy and education in a multicultural, multiethnic society, but this idea too is not new to the north. Awolowo and Aminu Kano and Awolowo preached a similar message to the north for decades.

    A significant aspect of the arguments of Obasanjo and Sanusi is the potential of their arguments to revitalise political discourse in the country.

    Given that the two dominant theories of multiethnic governance in Nigeria are 1) the imperative of centralism and homogenisation of diverse cultures in the guise of “even development and national unity,” and 2) the belief by some pundits that Nigerians should learn how to erase their pre-Nigeria cultural identities as a means of creating a sustainable and progressive united Nigeria. The positions of Obasanjo and Sanusi on Nigeria’s governance, though not original, appear to be more realistic than those of pundits who urge Nigerians to erase their ethnic identities because such self-definition militate against national progress and unity, as much as it to advocates for uniformity across the country.

    Both Obasanjo and Sanusi, despite their antecedents and pedigrees, have popularised at a critical moment in the history of the country the idea that multinational democracies can do away with the theory that circumscribed Westphalian nation-space. They see the benefits in creating a multiethnic state that is propelled by politics of equality of citizens and of cultural communities as superior to attempts to transform Nigeria into a nation of one visible nationality over others and of citizens in a multiethnic state to reinvent themselves through erasure of cultural identities.

    Readers of Obasanjo and Sanusi outside of what the authors have done or not done in the past. Readers may benefit from benchmarking the ideas of the two leaders with the discourse of and on federalism in Germany, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and other federal systems.

    Roposek@msn.com

  • Towards Senate bill for state police

    Towards Senate bill for state police

    Ropo Sekoni

     

     

    Even if the Ekweremadu bill does not become a law at the end, it is likely to erase No-go areas from the country’s political lexicon.

     

    LAW enforcement is the responsibility of each emirate of the United Arab Emirates (UAE); each emirate’s police force is responsible for matters within their own borders, but they routinely share information with each other on various areas. The forces also each have units to deal with protests, riot control or heavily armed suspects. The ministry integrates the police and security systems in the UAE.

    The respective Emirati police authorities in every single emirate are responsible for maintaining general law and order. Crimes against national security will be referred to the Federal Courts. There is also close cooperation between the law enforcement and the military. The police in the UAE come under the Ministry of Interior and are also responsible for maintaining the prisons and the arm responsible for this is the Corrections Department. Under this Ministry, is also the Immigration Department.

    The police forces of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are the biggest in the country, as these two emirates are the ones with most people and visitors. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates).

    The South African Police Service (SAPS) is the national police force of the Republic of South Africa. Its 1,138 police stations[citation needed] in South Africa are divided according to the provincial borders, and a Provincial Commissioner is appointed in each province. The nine Provincial Commissioners report directly to the National Commissioner. The head office is in the Wachthuis Building in Pretoria.

    The Constitution of South Africa lays down that the South African Police Service has a responsibility to prevent, combat and investigate crime, maintain public order, protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic and their property, uphold and enforce the law, create a safe and secure environment for all people in South Africa, prevent anything that may threaten the safety or security of any community, investigate any crimes that threaten the safety or security of any community, ensure criminals are brought to justice and participate in efforts to address the causes of crime. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Police_Service).

    One would have to be extremely naïve politically to expect that the two bills for consideration in the Senate on community policing and state police would arrive at a compromise that can enhance federalism at the expense of what already looks like an overgrown centralism in the country. But the optimism that two such starkly different bills can generate is that the juxtaposition of the two bills can sharpen the conflict between political leaders obsessed with unitarism and senators in the opposition party with interest in self-government at the subnational level. However, it may be too optimistic to assume that the Ekweremadu Bill for State Police is a PDP bill, despite the endorsement by Atiku Abubakar in the last presidential election of demand for state police and devolution of other functions from the central to subnational governments. Atiku’s promise of decentralisation was not presented as a party manifesto but only as an election promise by Atiku as a presidential candidate. Atiku as a person was interested in sustainable unity that can grow more readily from a governance structure and style that engenders trust than from a system that emphasises coercion and uniformity.

    The two police systems whose structure and method of law enforcement are summarised in italics above represent multilevel and monopolistic police systems respectively. Including the materials copied from the websites of the two countries is to let readers know that there is nothing ontological about the two police systems and that they are both products of construction by leaders from different historical circumstances. However, the focus of today’s piece is to draw attention of readers to what seems to be new difference in perspectives of two parties—All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party—that used to have an agreement on what they both for decades used to believe to be the only effective approach to securing the nation and maintaining public order in the various communities that constitute the federation.

    The two bills are distinct. The bill on Community Policing is essentially to put federal law around the Inspector-General’s conception and design of a remotely managed policing of subnational communities. But unlike the lack of sensitivity to cultural nuances of the existing central police system, police constables and volunteers under the community policing scheme are expected to be culturally competent in or literate about the language and culture of the community to work in as police officers while or competent management of the scheme remains exclusive to the current Nigeria Police.

    On the other hand, the second bill sponsored by Senator Ike Ekweremadu (PDP, Enugu), seeks to establish the Federal Police, State Police, National Police Service Commission, National Police Council, and State Police Service Commission. Under this bill governors would be empowered to appoint commissioners of police in their states, meaning that authority over the state police is expected to rest with the constitutional chief security officer of the state. According to the bill, the existing federal police will be restructured as part of a new law that integrates various dimensions of security and law enforcement in the country and in the states.

    The existence of two distinct laws on the same problem in the same legislature may be puzzling, more so that the community policing bill is entering its final phase while the state police bill is at the incipient stage. Is there any significance to the timing of the two bills or should the timing not matter in a legislative context of two parties that should present alternative views on the same problem? Whatever may be the answer to these questions, a new ideological division seems to be growing on an important national issue, as belated as this might be, in the national legislature.

    One possible effect of the competition of ideas over how to secure and even govern our multinational federation in the legislature can add to the enrichment of perspectives among citizens, especially advocates for federalism who in the last two decades have been seen as querulous citizens or professional alarmists by leaders who are fanatics of centralism. Even if the Ekweremadu bill does not become a law at the end, it is likely to erase No-go areas from the country’s political lexicon.

    The two models described in italics above speak to two approaches to national security in two countries that should be familiar to citizens who have opportunity to participate at public hearings on the two bills. The South African model is close to what obtains in Nigeria where it is the national government that controls and directs security and law enforcement in the federation. It is important to note that in South Africa, the model is part of constitutional provisions agreed to by citizens after the end of apartheid while in Nigeria how to secure the country and maintain public order in various states was given to the country by military dictators without any chance for citizens to agree or disagree on choice of structure or model.

    Further, people planning to participate in public hearings are urged to pay attention to the UAE model, especially the freedom for each federating unit to create and manage its own law enforcement system with a provision for intelligence sharing and standards and coordination of efforts across federating units. Federation watchers ought to juxtapose the security profile of UAE with that of Nigeria as a way of drawing attention to different outcomes in UAE and Nigeria to illustrate that giving freedom to federating units self-govern in a federation does not necessarily diminish chances of a federal state to achieve national unity, as many political leaders in Nigeria often claim.

    It may also be necessary for those at the public hearings on the two bills to draw attention of lawmakers about federations older than Nigeria’s, since the UAE model is younger. The United States of America, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia are examples worth using for illustrations of what types of police system provide more effective examples than Nigeria has been able to achieve with over half a century of mono-level police system.

     

    Roposek@msn.com

     

  • Constitution amendment and ideology of centralism

    By Ropo Sekoni

    The excitement of fellow Nigerians about the 2020 amendment exercise should not surprise observers of politics in the country.

     

    By constitution we mean, whenever we speak with propriety and exactness, that assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, derived from certain fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the general system, according to which the community hath agreed  to be governed—H. Bolingbroke

    The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defence are the constitutional rights secure¯ Albert Einstein

    I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times¯ Thomas Jefferson

    As it often happens in Nigeria, citizens have started get excited about the 9th National Assembly’s  decision to embark on another round of amendments of the 1999 Constitution. The excitement of fellow Nigerians about the 2020 amendment exercise should not surprise observers of politics in the country. Like many other nationals, Nigerians are easily infected by what the Yoruba refer to as Aisan Karounwi (the Karounwi Syndrome), literally, “just to have something to talk about” or creating huge noisemaking over something of little significance as a way of distracting people from more serious issues. Given the experience of amendments to a constitution inherited by post-military governments after the 1999 elections, serious-minded federalists ought not to be impressed by the huge noise about the 2020 amendment already in progress.

    Of the close to forty amendments to the constitution from Obasanjo to Buhari, just a few amendments have addressed decades of agitation by critical sections of the society against centralism that has taken self-government away from federating units since the end of the Biafra-Nigeria War. Such amendments addressed peripherally the call for restoration of federal governance, such as  (Financial Autonomy of State Legislatures) that seeks to provide for the funding of the Houses of Assembly of States directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the State; alteration to the Second Schedule, Part I & II to move certain items to the Concurrent Legislative List to give more legislative powers to States and simultaneously delineate the extent to which the federal legislature and state assemblies can legislate on the items that have been moved to the Concurrent Legislative List.

    Most of the amendments to a constitution that never received consent of citizens before coming into force  in 1999 focused on enlarging managerialism rather than expanding democratic governance: Bill to  amend the Third Schedule to include former Presidents of the Senate and Speakers of the House of Representatives in the composition of the Council of State; institutionalising legislative bureaucracy in the Constitution through creating National Legislative Commission to complement or rival the Civil Service Commission for the executive and the Judicial Service Commission for the judiciary, to cite a few.

    In the character of previous amendments of the constitution, the 9th Assembly is already in the process of piling up amendments that further detract from a federal system of government by reinforcing institutions of centralised governance. For example, the first focus of 2020 lawmakers in respect of the constitution is to create a bureaucracy to de-radicalise former terrorists and reintegrate them into mainstream politics. Of all the problems facing the country from one decade of terrorism, compensating the country for a high percentage of national resources—internal and external—expended on fighting and reducing the negative outcomes of terrorism which could have gone into development of the Northeast and the country illustrates a warped sense of priority on the part of the 9th National Assembly.

    Another item high on the list of the 9th Assembly, if news reports are anything to go by, is the proposal to delete the Land Use Act from the 1999 Constitution so as to make it easier to alter the Act and enable the federal government to be in control of ancestral pre-colonial land of indigenous communities that constitute the federation. The 8th Assembly tried to do this but failed, just as the same Assembly was unable to establish a law to pass control of all bodies of water—surface and underground—within the country to the control of the central government. If proposal to delete the Land Use Act is only kite-flying, it is a serious one for genuine believers in a united Nigeria to pay address at the right time.

    Attempting to remove the most important provision of the current constitution that recognises existence of organic communities amalgamated by the British colonial government and such communities which all agreed to form an independent Nigeria in 1960 and to transform into a republic in 1963 may be too risky a constitutional amendment for a country as divided as Nigeria with ten-year threats to the membership of the Northeast as a peaceful part of the republic; and constant farmers-herders conflicts to undertake, more so when division along religious lines are already an international concern to friends of Nigeria and kidnapping and banditry abound across the country.

    There is no doubt that federalists in many parts of the country are expending a lot of energy to fight what Oby Ezekwesili has characterised as “Monopoly Democracy.” Federalists have also been experiencing constant frustration from centralists or unitarists in power since 1999.  For example, during the two-term administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, an elaborate conference on political reforms achieved nothing to decrease centralist governance. Another conference to decentralise governance in 2014 at the instance of President Goodluck Jonathan did not have any outcome other than what happened under Obasanjo, just as General Muhammadu Buhari’s pledge to re-federalise Nigeria in 2015 is still in the cooler in the president’s second and final term in office.

    But the task before federalists as the 9th Assembly embarks on constitutional amendments is to make their federal and state lawmakers democratically accountable. It is hard to know how many legislators have an understanding of what the issues are between unitarists in power and federalists in the constituencies. But democracy enjoins voters to guide their representatives about matters that voters consider very important to development of their communities. The notion that lawmakers in the National Assembly see themselves as federal lawmakers that owe their loyalty solely to the federal government is false. Lawmakers—state or federal—are first and foremost accountable to the electorate, before voting on matters that are crucial to the wellbeing of the constituencies that elect them. For example, a Nigeria with a constitution emptied of the Land Use Act is one that can spell doom to federalism in the country by completing the task of homogenisation of the polity and society started by decades of military dictatorship and civilian reproduction of unitary governance.

    One important task that federalists must not miss is mobilising local communities and cultural leaders to re-educate representatives from their communities about the importance of the Land Use Act to their traditional roles in the various nationalities in the country. It is risky for traditional rulers to assume that their legislators understand the difference between centralism and federalism, especially the centrality of continued existence of the Land Use Act to protection and promotion of Nigeria’s distinct civilisations.

    So far, the Land Use Act protects rights of minority nationalities in the country while bolstering existence of the country’s cultural diversity. Put most graphically, there is no space for Oba, Obi, Obong, and Emir where there is no indigenous community and removing the Land Use Act can only put an end to traditional communities as we know them.

    Further, the struggle for restoring federal governance to Nigeria after several decades of military dictatorship and election into offices—executive and legislative—of men and women who may have knowingly internalised the consciousness of centralism or accidentally fallen victims of false consciousness, needs to transform into a political movement across the country. Doing this will demarcate the line between unitarists (in and out of power) from believers in federal democracy, with the consequence of sharpening the ideological differences between centralists and autonomists, especially at elections. In addition, federalists should push for a popular referendum provision as part of the 2020 constitutional amendments.

    Roposek@msn.com  

  • Keying profitably into FG’s ‘community policing’3

    Ropo Sekoni

     

    THE present Police Act is not only fraught with deficiencies, but strangely, the major organisation, duties, and powers of the Nigeria Police Force, as encapsulated in the present Act, have largely remained as set out in the 1943 Police Act…. It is the recognition of the inherent shortcomings in the extant Police Act and the seemingly intractable challenge of insecurity in our country that has necessitated the proposed repeal of the extant Act and the enactment of a new one in its place, in consonance with the dictates of international best practices and the realities of present-day Nigeria—Halliru Jika (APC Bauchi)

    Last Thursday in Lagos, governors of the Southwest and the Inspector General of Police celebrated subsuming the Western Nigeria Security Network under the NPF’s “community policing initiative” currently a bill awaiting enactment in the National Assembly. And with the Amotekun bill under consideration in the six affected states, it is obvious that “keying into the NPF’s community policing has been completed. The recent announcement by the governors of the Southeast that they too have bought into the community policing strategy confirms that the central government seems to have won on the argument about differences between community police system and policing of communities by a national police force.

    All that is left for community policing to become another function of federal policing and put, perhaps temporarily, demand for multilevel police system on hold is to wait for the remaining four regions: Northwest, Northeast, North-central, and South-south to create Vigilante and Neighborhood Watch units to work under supervision of the central police, rather than having Hisbah in the Northwest and Forest Guards in the Southeast operating without any support by federal laws.

    And what may be left for people of the Southwest is for the governors to convince citizens in the region that their leaders have not bought a lemon. As things have always turned out in a federation with a history of paternalistic central government, the Amotekun controversy sparked by the federal attorney-general may soon be over on a compromise that keeps subnational governments saddled with a police system that is unsuitable for a diverse society.

    To assure people in the Southwest that their leaders have not bought a lemon after weeks of bargaining with the central government, there are many issues that require further explanations to people of the region. For example, in what ways would the agreement to include representatives of all arms of the Armed forces as members of the governing board assure citizens that the NPF, sole parent of “community policing,” is going to solve the problems that led to founding of Amotekun? How for example the preponderance of federal representatives on the board affect preferences of individual states to maintain public order, the absence of which in the first place necessitated founding of Amotekun?

    Further, what is the inclusion of representatives of the Armed Forces in the board of Amotekun, something that does not apply even to the Nigeria Police Council or Commission, designed to accomplish in the context of law enforcement?  Are members of the military on the board to come from each state in the region and are commissioners of police on the board to be from outside each of the six states? How is the goal of NPF’s community policing to be achieved if almost half of the board members happen to be from states outside the orbit of Amotekun, in view of NPF’s assurance that deploying people from specific communities would enhance efficient community policing?

    Whatever the answers may be, the central point is that the age-old bias against multilevel police system since the emergence of military rule in the country remains intact. Shouldn’t the mass support in the Southwest for a security network and the rising security challenges across the federation signal to President Buhari that there is need for new ideas and methods? And how long must the country continue to be a victim of policies of the past?

    It is about time that President Buhari and his men break with the past and remember Buhari’s promise in 2015 of a visionary government. He promised that he would “initiate action to amend our Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties and responsibilities to states and local governments in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit.” Nigerians who want more freedom and citizens in federating units that want more self-rule for the purpose of providing governance responsive to yearnings of the people voted for Buhari in 2015. Many of such people also voted for him in 2019 against Atiku Abubakar, believing that he should have a better chance to fulfill his 2015 pledge during his second term.

    The political past of Nigeria that President Buhari needs to break away from should not be new to him; he too was one of the past actors during the era of military rule. Successions of military rulers re-designed Nigeria in the image of military command system. They smashed the balance between national and subnational governments that was the core of the federal constitutions of 1960 and 1963. Believing that centralism modeled after military system of giving orders to subordinates would produce guaranteed unity of the country, military rulers made law enforcement and security of lives and property an exclusive function of the central government. But now the assumption about how to create a united country through centralism has not washed and the president should know this. The popular saying across town is “how did things get this bad for Nigeria?”

    Surely, the problems Nigeria is facing today are not solely of Buhari’s making. It is a cancer that has taken time to grow, and for failure of early detection, has acquired the chance to metastasize. The democratic deficit or lack of democratic accountability created by decades of military dictatorship has turned Nigeria into an administrative ‘federal’ entity where governance at the local level is directed by the central government. No further manifestation of this anomaly in a multinational country is needed after the release of the Amotekun bill, especially the bill’s insistence on a balance between federal and state representatives for a board to direct protection of life and limb within the borders of a specific state.

    If diversity in other federal democracies, such as the USA, Canada, South Africa, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, is believed to be a source of innovativeness in federal countries, infusing the blood of a security system that itself is up for renewal into the board of trustees of Amotekun may defeat the purpose its creators wanted to achieve: a new and culturally sensitive way of ensuring security of life and limb. Evidence of decline in many spheres of life in the country suggests that it is high time to do away with over centralisation.

    Values are understandably diverse in a multiethnic federation but such diversity ought not be seen as a setback that must be removed by over centralised governance as has happened in Nigeria for decades. The theory of military rulers that centralisation of governance is needed to unify a diverse society has lost its relevance, if the Nigerian condition 20 years into post-military era illustrates anything. The colonial masters and Obafemi Awolowo recognised this problem as far back as 1946. They recognised that diversity may create difference of ideas about how to govern a multiethnic state; they also recognised that self-rule for federating units is the most assured way to prevent differences in values of constituent groups from descending into culture wars that can paralyse the entire country. For this, the colonial government recommended a federal system that shared power and sovereignty between national and subnational governments. No area requires freedom of parts of a federation to govern themselves more than protecting lives and property, the main purpose of modern democratic governance.

    The conclusion to this series is to urge federal legislators not to just add “community policing” to the functions of the existing NPF and elongate the tenure of inspector-generals of the force but to also reflect change(s) in the architecture of law enforcement in the federation along the line of best practices in other federations’ multilevel police system. Neither Amotekun as constituted and Nigeria Police now to be impregnated with community policing function is likely to serve the security needs of a culturally diverse country of 200 million people.

     

  • Keying profitably into FG’s ‘community policing’2

    By Ropo Sekoni

    We are doing everything that needs to be done…In fact, we have to now recruit more into the army, and much faster than we ever did because we need men on the ground; resources also—to buy more arms, to buy more platforms—Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

    We discussed everything that matters as far as the issue of security of this is concerned. We believe that it is imperative that we are able to provide those necessary equipment and welfare for the armed forces of this country and the police, to ensure that they are able to operate and perform efficiently and effectively—Senate President Ahmed Lawan.

    Major progress was made in this discussion, which is a meeting that lasted over an hour and I believe Nigerians will begin to see traction, they’ll begin to see changes. You can be sure that concrete steps were taken in that direction—House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila.

     

    The three quotations above are from two branches of the government: executive and legislative. The leaders reflect latest decisions taken about the country’s rising security deficit. Although the leaders said many other things about recent meetings over national security, the crux of what they said refers to changes only in respect of content—recruitment of more officers; improvement of conditions of service and benefits for dependants of police officers. None of the leaders mentioned anything about the form or architecture of law enforcement in the federation.

    The stance of the Vice President, Senate President, and Speaker on how to make the existing security system profitable to all in the federation seems to have accepted the mantra of ‘No-Go’ areas in the discussion of the country’s governance. Many politically exposed Nigerians would not be surprised by the congruence of ideas that came out of meeting of minds of political leaders over deterioration of security of life a few days ago. Going through all the statements made on the meeting, it is hard to see anyone at the meeting that referred to the role of state and local governments in law enforcement. One would think that there was a deliberate effort on the part of those who had earlier called for reform of the security system to avoid such words as state, local government, or subnational police. Emphasis was on vague words such as “all hands on deck” and ‘support of government by all citizens, as if citizens live in a federation of just national space without subnational space—states and local governments.

    The ‘No-Go Area’ mantra that has characterised central government’s concept of federal governance since 1966 till today is reminiscent of every Christian marriage vow of ‘till death do us part,” a vow that is as unrealistic as it can get, if the statistics of divorce all over the Christendom is anything to go by. Nowadays in knowledge-driven rather than religion-propelled societies, newly-weds know how unrealistic ‘till death do us part’ so well that do other things that show that their vows are more of prayers than of knowledge of the dynamics of companionship and the obligations required to sustain any form of partnership.

    Such understanding at the interpersonal level of perpetual nurturing of relationship explains why two individuals in a marital relationship take time to do pre-nuptial agreement and create a space for perennial negotiation as they grow their marriage. Such pragmatism makes it possible for only couples that have sense of preservation to last till death parts them. Is there any reason why Nigerian leaders should put the country at risk, by refusing to listen to partners in the Nigerian Union on matters that affect their humanity?

    The focus of the rest of this piece is on why politicians, especially legislators in a Separation-of- Powers governance system should not volunteer to remain hostages in the prison-house of ideas about how to make Nigeria achieve its potential fully as one of the largest multinational federations in the modern era. It is inhuman for individuals to expect to survive or thrive by limiting their knowledge about what to do right to the way leaders have done for decades in the country in respect of search for solutions to problems. Human growth and the growth of societies occur largely because of imitation of best practices available to learn from than from obsession with one’s traditions or preferred ways of doing things.

    Nigeria’s governance in the last 55 years has been shaped by democratic deficit—understandably under military dictatorship but inexplicably under elected ones. And current lawmakers need to understand that no federation can thrive in a context in which one section or ruling group chooses to foist its values on the others. Democracy is not just a ritual of election but a way of life for countries that espouse this political system. Over centralisation of governance structure and process constitutes the most graphic illustration of attempts by one group or political party to impose ideas of one cultural or intellectual tradition on a federation of states. Destruction of Nigeria’s pre-military era of federalism by military rulers and sustenance of a degraded federal system by elected public officers illustrates the tradition of imposition of values of one group on others in a multicultural political space.

    Since 1966, it has been the arrogance and resistance to new ideas of whichever group in power that has blocked direly needed innovation in governance and that has prevented Nigeria as a federation from making the kind of progress its natural endowments demand and which peer federal states exemplify. For example, suggestions in 1959 by Obafemi Awolowo that the fastest way to national progress and development in multiethnic Nigeria was provision of free access to public education for all citizens were poohpoohed by those in charge of federal power. Today, the country is paying heavy price for opposition to new ideas at that time by growing to become one of the most illiterate countries on earth in need of donor assistance to move up.

    Further, when citizens started to complain about the danger of centralisation of provision of electricity in the form of a central agency to be in charge of generation, transmission, and distribution, no government in power until recently believed there was any other way to do things outside of centralist mode. Citizens who were not born by then are now the victims of the myopia of our country’s leaders of the past. The same fate had befallen refineries. Similarly, calls for the need to decentralise provision of railway to subnational governments were ignored because such option was believed by rulers to water down centralism as a preferred mode of governing a federal state. The consequence today is that the country is paying hundred-folds of what it would have paid if its leaders had seen wisdom in listening to others or paying for petroleum subsidy with funds that could have been saved to provide a nation-wide mass transport system. Demands for decentralisation or re-federalisation of the polity to stimulate unity of Nigerians through mutual trust fell on deaf ears for decades like other suggestions, and now the country is faced with growing threat to life and limb across the country. Examples of bad effects of governing the country with frozen ideas are too numerous to list on this page. But the few examples are given to encourage our lawmakers to identify where the rain started to beat the country.

    What are the issues that lawmakers in a system of separation of powers ought to be realistic and innovative about? It is important for members of the 9th NASS to understand that in politics the choice of policy and action of political rulers depends largely on assumptions made by such leaders. So do the outcomes of policies and actions are tied largely to the rightness or wrongness of such assumptions. This principle explains why politicians who believe in the importance of human rights, freedom of speech, association and faith, for example, opt for democracy while those who believe in absolute power over gravitate toward autocracy in the choice of values for their citizens. It is specific assumptions about life, people, and progress in an atmosphere of freedom within the law that should define the choice of policies and actions in a democracy. Put proverbially, in politics, like in life, it is illogical to plant chili pepper and expect to harvest okra.

    As our lawmakers now set out to embark on constitutional amendments, they need to be reminded that they ought to study why the country needs a new constitution or an overhaul of the 1999 Constitution. They also need to pay attention to the assumptions that had misled succession of rulers—unelected or elected—to take and glorify policies and actions that seem to have focused on unity of Nigeria at the expense of unity of Nigerians.

    To be continued