By Tunji Adegboyega

Criticisms have expectedly trailed the bills for the amendment of the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) Act, and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Act now before the House of Representatives. Ordinarily, one would have been silent on this obvious journey to nowhere. But it is good to join the critics as a lover of free speech, at least for the record.

It is good that the Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, has said that the Federal Government is not the sponsor of the bills, contrary to insinuations in some quarters. The sponsor is Representative Olusegun Odebunmi, chair of the House Committee on Information and Orientation. But it is immaterial who the sponsor is. The fact is that the minister has appeared before the house committee on information and indeed defended the sponsor as doing what he was elected to do. (Says who?) He even added that the social media which was not part of the bills should be included, for effect. Mohammed has always looked forward to a day like this, to render impotent, if not kill outright, the same media that they put to effective use in smoking President Goodluck Jonathan out of power. As the Yoruba proverb says, the executioner is never at ease when a sword is dangled on his child’s head. There is no other way to endorse a bill. Without doubt, these bills are going to make more enemies for the government. Perhaps it would have been case closed if the minister had only appeared before the committee like any other stakeholder, and distanced himself from the bills. Since he even added the inclusion of the social media which obviously was not part of the draft showed the Federal Government is comfy with the media annihilation bills.

We do not expect anything less, especially for a government that has been having challenges with its goodwill in the last few years. But, no government in Nigeria ever succeeded in muzzling the press. Not even in the most brutal of the military era. It is not going to be different this time around. So, the government would do well to advise the sponsor to drop the idea. There are more important ways to work for his constituency rather than by further helping to overheat the polity.

Down memory lane. Let’s take our minds back to Decree Four of April 17, 1984, otherwise known as the Protection Against False Accusations Decree promulgated by the then Gen Muhammadu Buhari as head of state, which made it possible for the Nigerian government to imprison any journalist who ‘embarrassed’ the then military leaders. Two journalists were the major victims of that decree – Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson, both of The Guardian stable – but the decree hadn’t much lasting impact on the media. As a matter of fact, their imprisonment made them national heroes.

We still remember the June 12, 1993 experience and its aftermath. The proscription of newspapers as a fallout of the annulment of the election was a monumental failure. Whether by the Babangida or Abacha regimes, proscription did not work. Rather, it led to the founding of underground press which, in spite of the military’s attempts to kill them, remained largely popular among Nigerians. I remember, rather nostalgically, The Tempo magazine, Toplife and even Razor, which were all very instrumental to the success of the struggle to make the military leave the political stage.

Let the sponsor, be it the hands of Jacob or Esau, be reminded that in those days of the underground press in Nigeria, there was no social media. Today, any attempt to force the media underground will make the government contend with many media outlets of no fixed address. The understaffed police and military would now be chasing after invisible media while terrorists and bandits would be having a field day wreaking havoc.

What to do is not to be sniffing for media houses to stifle. Experience is our best teacher. Even when Decree 4 was promulgated, we knew the reason was not what the government gave as reason. When newspapers were proscribed back then, it was not for any national interest. The same applies to these bills.

If this attempt to review media laws for greater responsibility had come when the ovation was loudest for the present government, not many would have raised eyebrows. Not today when people are reacting negatively, even if expectedly, to the pangs of its governance. The truth is that, the problem is not with the journalist, per se. So, the government should look beyond criminalising journalists for doing their job. The 1999 constitution, in section 39 (1) clearly spells out the role of the media as watchdogs of the society. It is not for fun that the press is regarded as the Fourth Estate of the Realm.

As things stand, there are more than a surfeit laws that regulate journalism in Nigeria. The government does not require any crutches to hold the media accountable. The media merely mirror the society. And unless some photoshopping is done, there is no cheating in photography: you see yourself exactly the way you posed for the photograph. If things are hard in the country, the media cannot say things are rosy, and vice versa. It is only a matter of time for any medium that cannot report or analyse events correctly to lose its life, not just its licence. It is a natural sequence; it does not require any governmental intervention or legislation for such medium to die suddenly, ‘after or during a brief illness’. Any arrangement that gives an individual sweeping powers to issue and withdraw licence to media houses at will is one sure way to kill democracy and, ultimately, the country itself. God is yet to create such a mortal, with the requisite patience and maturity for such a sober assignment, especially in our kind of clime.  Certainly not the present drivers of the sector.

So, what is to be done? Simple. The National Assembly (NASS) should do its work such that it would make the executive come down from its high horse. When people who were shouting “hosannah” yesterday suddenly begin to say “crucify” him today, there must be a reason for it. When a child stumbles, he looks forward, but when an adult stumbles, he looks backward to see what fell him. The government and the NASS should behave like the adult in this case, instead of looking for the media as fall-guys for their actions and inactions.

The truth of the matter is that President Buhari appears not keen on reshuffling his cabinet despite criticisms that the government is not doing well, that have been making the rounds over the years. We keep hearing of some inner cabinet; the inner cabinet that could not gift him the presidency despite the millions of Talakawa votes he had been able to garner in his three attempts at the presidency before the 2015 experience. I have no issue with inner or kitchen cabinet, don’t get me wrong. But when such cabinet continues to expose the government to ridicule home and abroad, like the government has been experiencing over the years, then there is need for rethink on the part of the president on whose desk the buck stops.

This government has not been able to deliver much by way of democracy dividend and it is painful to those of us who, even in spite of the president’s past inadequacies, still campaigned for him without any prompting whatsoever. The security issue still lingers just as the economy is not responding to treatment. Unemployment rate remains dangerously high. We do not seem to be making any appreciative progress on the economic front, contrary to our high expectations from the government in 2015. We certainly did not expect the government to perform any miracle given the rot left by its predecessor. But many people, including myself, got pissed off with the government on insecurity and the kid gloves that the government initially treated it with, a thing that emboldened the bandits and terrorists. That tardiness is what has led us to where we are today, where we are now beginning to see bodybags as part of the norm in the country.

This is the crux of the matter. Nothing can be more painful for people who are being whipped and are not expected to cry despite the flogging. This is the light in which many Nigerians are now seeing the proposed review of the press code. The government has all the while turned deaf ears to the calls of the present, despite all the seemingly intractable challenges on ground, obedient only to those of our inglorious military era.

But President Buhari must have stunned many people on Thursday when he told the National Executive of the Ijaw National Congress (INC) led by Prof Benjamin Okaba who visited him at the Presidential Villa in Abuja that he would assent to any amendments to the constitution on restructuring.  According to him, it is only the NASS that has responsibility for amending the constitution. “As soon as they finalise the process, necessary action would not be delayed on my part,” he said. This is unlike what he has always said before, that advocates of restructuring are dangerous and naive. Even if they are, that is the beauty of democracy. In a democracy, the majority carries the day. This is the right spirit. The fact is that, not all those clamouring for secession are really interested in it but they are frustrated by the unitary system that is stagnating the country’s progress. Majority of Nigerians want a return to our glorious past where each region developed at its own pace. They want a situation where competition would drive development. A situation where the centre would devolve more powers to the states/regions because it is too far and detached to understand what the constituent parts want. It is only when they perceive that rather than accept the reality of restructuring, the government keeps romanticising the system that is not working and therefore unsustainable, that they are going for broke.

The scripture enjoins Christians to rend their hearts and not their clothes. I likewise urge the government to ‘rend’ its heart (read policies) and not the press. It is time for it to change tact. The press is not its problem. Even if the number of online platforms that want the country to disintegrate is more than the about 450 quoted by Mr Mohammed, all their efforts would come to naught if the government is not providing the fuel or fertiliser to catalyse their endeavours.

Foremost journalist, Chief Segun Osoba, despite being a member of the ruling party has joined a legion others to condemn the proposed law: “It is a terrible draconian law. It has never happened in the history of Nigeria that a law as sweeping as this will be proposed.” Not even under the military was this done. That is for Chief Osoba. No journalist worth his salt would support such a law.

President Buhari cannot be absolved of non-involvement in this matter even if the Federal Government is not the sponsor. His information minister’s statements at the stakeholders’ meeting have given a clue as to where his government stands in the matter. I however rest my case with the consoling words of George Githii, the only editor to have headed Kenya’s two largest media houses, and Daily Nation’s fourth editor-in-chief in 1965: “For governments that fear newspapers, there is one consolation. We have known many instances where governments have taken over newspapers, but we have not known a single incident in which a newspaper has taken over a government.”

Definitely, this too shall pass; and so shall the sponsors.

 

By Tunji Adegboyega

Although President Muhammadu Buhari did not disappoint many Nigerians when he hinted of his obstinate intention to revive what he called open grazing routes in the country, it is sad and indeed regrettable that this is the kind of policy a potentially great country like ours is talking about in the twenty-first century. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Arise TV on June 10, the president said he had directed the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to exhume the appropriate gazette containing this provision. “What I did was ask him to go and dig the gazette of the First Republic when people were obeying laws. There were cattle routes and grazing areas. Cattle routes were for when they (herdsmen) are moving up country, north to south or east to west, they had to go through there,”, the president said. He added:”If you allow your cattle to stray into any farm, you are arrested. The farmer is invited to submit his claims. The Khadi or the judge will say pay this amount and if you can’t the cattle is sold. And if there is any benefit, you are given and people were behaving themselves and in the grazing areas, they built dams, put windmills, in some places there were even veterinary departments so that the herders are limited. Their route is known, their grazing area is known. So, I asked for the gazette to make sure that those who encroached on these cattle routes and grazing areas will be dispossessed in law and try to bring some order back into the cattle grazing.” And this in the year of our Lord, 2021? Holy Moses! We are in trouble indeed. Forward march to the Stone Age!

If President Buhari does not know, it is statements like this that embolden the Fulani herders, making them feel they own all parts of the country and could do as they wish with impunity. But, granted that the president is provincial in thoughts and deeds, (and sadly, we may have to tolerate that for the next two years when the Buhari presidency would terminate), one finds it difficult to believe that a far younger, supposedly more enlightened and perhaps more cosmopolitan Malami would have a similar mindset. It is unfortunate that it was the same Malami who is the country’s chief law officer, that made the not-particularly brilliant comparison between killer herdsmen and Igbo spare parts dealers a few weeks ago! When gold rusts, what do we expect iron to do? Since Malami is also Fulani, it would seem it is also a case of blood being thicker than water.

But if he is reasoning the way he is, and the president is also telling us that alien Fulani herdsmen are our problem, then, there is little hope that we will make any headway with this government on the vexatious issue of killer herdsmen. What is our business with his distinction between local and alien Fulani? Do we beckon on the presidents of those alien Fulani to come and save us from their citizens’ murderous activities in Nigeria? Who does the president want to shift the responsibility of taming the alien Fulani to?

Yet, it is the same President Buhari who, during the Arise interview, lampooned governors for running to Abuja in search of solutions to their challenges all the time instead of putting on their thinking caps to solve the problems. In other words, they should stop shifting responsibility to him. Yet, the president is aware, like many discerning Nigerians, that the governors are largely chief security officers of their states only in theory. In practice, this is not so because they do not control the army or the police force. Even the president who controls these instruments of coercion has not been able to solve the security problems facing the country. Yet he is telling governors to go fix their security issues! With what? Bare hands and batons? In the military era, Buhari would have rolled out decrees to achieve a seeming atmosphere of peace. It is the pent-up anger that decrees had suppressed in the past that are now haunting the president. Yet, it has not occurred to him that there really is the need to discuss the basis of the country’s co-existence.

Let us even hold the president to his own statement; if criminal elements who ran foul of the so-called grazing routes were disciplined, how come he did nothing when the farmers’ /herders’ crisis started? How come the security agencies looked the other way when those crimes were being committed?

I do not know why the president singled out Benue State governor Samuel Ortom during the Arise interview, as if Ortom is the only one complaining of his (Buhari’s) kid glove treatment of his fellow Fulani. According to the president, “The problem is trying to understand the culture of the cattle rearers. There is a cultural difference between the Tiv and the Fulani. So, the governor of Benue said I am not disciplining the cattle rearers because I am one of them.” It is the president that sees Ortom’s anti-open grazing law as aggressive. Ortom was elected by Benue people to meet the yearnings of the people of the state, not necessarily to please strangers. And the governor merely made a law that is in consonance with the wish of his people and the law was ratified by the state house of assembly. So, what is the problem? Benue’s anti-open grazing law is not in any way in conflict with our 1999 constitution. The other time, the president who should be an impartial arbiter asked the governor to learn how to live peacefully with his neighbours. What is that supposed to mean?

At any rate, what is there to understand in the cattle rearers’ or anybody’s  culture for that matter? Culture by its very nature is dynamic. I am not sure anyone is saying they cannot continue to do their business the way their ancestors did it, but that cannot and should not be at the expense of other Nigerians. If  some people insist on doing a business in the anachronistic manner the Fulani herdsmen want, and the majority of the other people say this is no longer the way to go in this day and age, how come it is the wish of the cattle rearers that would prevail? That is what President Buhari’s insistence on reviving some purported grazing routes amounts to.

By the president’s actions, more Nigerians are now convinced that he has a hidden agenda. Nothing else can explain his fixation with an inglorious past. Even those who were sitting on the fence before have realised this, and that is why everyone that matters is saying it loud and clear that they don’t have anything like grazing route in their states. Again, let us even assume that, indeed, there were grazing routes in the First Republic, it is not wise for the president to cherry-pick which of those ancient practices to bring back and which to jettison. If the president is so fascinated by those ancient practices, no problem. Then he should let’s go whole hog for federalism, after all that was also what we practiced in the First Republic. There should be no standing in the way of people who want restructuring. Bring back grazing routes (if indeed they ever existed) and let us federalise the system such that every region can grow and develop at its own pace. No one should attempt to tie the destiny of millions of other Nigerians to ancient practices that have no place in modern times. President Buhari should let the people who want to develop do so.

And, if he must be reminded, it is the fixation with such ancient practices that has led to the insecurity we have been experiencing in the last few years, particularly in the north. The products of that ancien regime are themselves beginning to see the light and are revolting against the system that condemned them to Almajiris. How could some people still find it comfortable to be wandering about in the forests when they have the choice of living in towns with some modern amenities for at least minimum comfort? There must be something more to such a choice.

The way the Buhari government has been pushing this toxic agenda has only succeeded in deepening the dislike for, and distrust in his Fulani kith-and-kin. I doubt if the relatively good relationship that hitherto existed among the Fulani and their respective hosts before the advent of the Buhari administration can ever be regained. And no one but the Buhari government should be blamed for this. After all, he is not the first Fulani to rule Nigeria.

As things stand, not a few Nigerians now believe that President Buhari would be working so hard in the wrong direction for nothing. His Yeoman’s efforts on this matter cannot just be for the sake of cattle.

As a matter of fact, some people are beginning to feel that the president has himself realised that not much can be achieved by the government, hence his government is looking for distractions to divert the attention of Nigerians from the critical issues of governance. They say this is another possible explanation  for his obsession with a jaded idea that would still make human beings to be trekking hundreds of kilometres with cattle in this time and age, despite the disadvantages of that system for themselves and even the cattle.

Majority of Nigerians have said no to open grazing. As a matter of fact, some people have said there is nothing like grazing route in any known law of the country. Another school of thought says there are some 140 such routes, with about 138 being in the north. Whatever the case, a government that wants peace would not be pursuing such a matter so doggedly as if that is the main solution to the country’s multifarious challenges. Even where such provision had been cast in stone in our statute books, a dynamic administration would simply drop the idea, not only because it has become antiquated but more important because majority of Nigerians have rejected it. President Buhari would only continue to waste his time to think that he can force this parochial idea down the throats of majority of Nigerians. Even as a military ruler, such a thing would not have been a soft piece of meat for him to chew, not to talk of trying it in a democratic era. If he understands Nigeria’s history very well, he would know that he would require almost all the armed forces on the continent to force such an anachronistic system on Nigerians. If in doubt, he should ask Gen Ibrahim Babangida, who was obviously smarter than the late despot, Gen. Sani Abacha. Babangida is alive today probably because he knew when to beat a retreat. Only a greedy fly ends up being buried with the corpse. A smart one knows when to beat a retreat.

Since the June 12 crisis, I am yet to see any other issue that there is unanimity of rejection among Nigerians than open grazing. As my people will say, dogs cannot be snoring in a situation where human beings can’t find a place to sleep. We may love beef; but that would not make us call cow  ‘brother’. That is an abomination.

 

By Tunji Adegboyega

But for an advertorial in one of the national dailies on Tuesday, June 8, eulogising General Sani Abacha, and probably trying to present him as one of the best heads of state Nigeria ever had, there would have been no basis for me to remember the late despot today. As the advertorial rightly observed, Abacha died on that same date in 1998; some 23 years before. So, the remembrance was not a landmark. The advertorial, sponsored by Sani and Maryam Abacha Support Foundation, noted that despite the fact that General Abacha died 23 years ago, it was just like yesterday. “The man, Gen. Sani Abacha, GCFR, and the impact of his four years and seven months administration to the growth and development of Nigeria at a glance,” was more or less the summary of the message.

We were reminded that Abacha was “the only Nigerian soldier that attained the full rank of a General without skipping a single rank.” Hunnnnn! That he fought in the Nigerian Civil War as a platoon and battalion commander, and later became Commander of the 2nd Infantry Division, he was General Officer Commanding of the 2nd Mechanised Division and a member of the Supreme Military ?ouncil, among several of his military accomplishments. We were also reminded that he raised the “country’s foreign exchange reserve from $494m in 1993 to $9.6bn by the middle of 1997, he reduced the  external debt from $36bn in 1993 to $27bn. Projects credited to his administration included the National Assembly Complex, Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG), establishment of Federal Medical Centre in  all states of the federation, he built the National Hispital, Abuja, the Women and Children Hospital, Sokoto. Others included building of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Apo Legislative Quarters, Aluminium Smelting Co., Akwa Ibom, etc. Even creation of six geopolitical zones and six additional states were also listed, among others. Without doubt, some of these could pass for achievements properly so called. Although I do not have the time to verify the veracity of all the claims, some of them were laudable indeed. It is rare for anyone to spend about four and a half years in power without some achievements. So, I congratulate the late general and his family for the achievements.

The matter would have ended here if Gen. Abacha had been a private individual. I would not have been under compulsion to react to whatever his immediate family or relations claim he did in his lifetime. After all, as they say, “comments are free, but facts are sacred.” But Gen. Abacha was not a private individual. He was not just a military general, and one of those whose influences have had (and probably continues to have) profound impact on our lives as Nigerians, he was also a former head of state. And one at a critical juncture in the country’s annals for that matter. He was reputed to have had a hand in virtually all the military coups in the country until he became head of state through a palace coup.

For the benefit of millions of Nigerian youths who were either babies at the time Abacha was head of state, or were yet to be born then, it is important to  briefly remind us all of who the man, Gen. Sani Abacha was. This is useful not only for historical purposes but also for posterity. We need to be putting such record straight in our kind of country where most of our youths do not know much about even our contemporary history, before they are fed with garbage that they will also merely regurgitate when analysing the country’s affairs.

To add what the Abacha family erroneously omitted, and show that I am not just interested in pulling down their man, I hasten to add that exchange rate in 1996 when Abacha was in power was N85 to one US dollar, as against today’s about N500 to one dollar.

Sweet, indeed, is the memory of the righteous.

However, as editor of The Punch in those trying moments of Nigeria’s history, I am eminently qualified to comment on the man, Sani Abacha, at least in his capacity as head of state. The Punch was one of the three major newspapers that Abacha proscribed for about 17 months, alongside National Concord and The Guardian. Meanwhile, Abacha had, in his quest for legitimacy, deproscribed the three newspapers in November 1993 when he sacked the illegal Ernest Shonekan Interim National Government hurriedly put in place by Gen Ibrahim Babangida, as he ran, his tail between his legs, when the heat of the annulment of the June 12 election became unbearable for him. The election, one of the freest and fairest in the country’s history was won by Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola. Barely six months after deproscribing the three influential titles, Abacha too became uncomfortable with the bashings that his regime got from the newspapers whose philosophy was ‘no retreat, no surrender’ until the military quit the political stage. It is on record that Abacha’s re-proscription of the papers was one of the longest periods of proscription of newspapers in Nigeria. It was most callous in that thousands of people who were getting their livelihood from these establishments, either directly or indirectly, were rendered jobless. Sadly, this was not for any patriotic interest but to ensure that Abacha reigned as a military dictator unchallenged. This is why as Nigerians we have to be circumspect whenever our rulers (including the present ones) bring out policies and programmes, ostensibly in our interest. We should interrogate those ideas because if successive administrations had been as patriotic as they often claimed, Nigeria would be one of the best-run countries in the world today.

It gladdens the heart that some of these newspapers which more than paid their dues in the June 12 debacle and other lesser issues of nationhood are doing well today, at least within the context of ‘Buharinomics’. The only regret in this instance being National Concord and other titles owned by Bashorun Abiola. How these senseless media closures escaped the minds of those Abacha relatives who are feeding us with half-truths as his achievements is baffling.

The same applies to Abacha’s economic policies. It would seem from available record of how much the man and some of his close relations stole from our treasury that Abacha tried to run the economy well so he could have more than enough to steal. Record shows how billions of dollars  was stolen from our Central Bank into private pockets in the now better-forgotten Abacha era. An account has it that “In 2004, a list of the 10 most self-enriching leaders in the previous two decades was released; in order of amount allegedly stolen, the fourth-ranked of these was Abacha and his family who are alleged to have embezzled $1 billion – $5 billion.” Indeed, the Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, that the Olusegun Obasanjo administration contracted in 1999, to help find the loot Abacha could not spend before he died in 1998 gave insights into what has been recovered so far. About $508m found in the Abacha family’s many Swiss bank accounts was sent from Switzerland to Nigeria between 2005 and 2007. By 2018, the amount Switzerland alone had returned to Nigeria had reached more than $1bn. These included $277m from Liechtenstein in 2014; $308m from the Channel Island returned in 2014. Mr Monfrini says he is still expecting $30m from the U.K., $144m from France and another $18m from Jersey. That stealing was a business in the Abacha family was evident from their reaction to efforts towards recovering the loot. “The Abachas were fighting like dogs. They were appealing about everything we did. This delayed the process for a very long time”, Monfrini recalls. Indeed, further delays came as Swiss politicians argued over whether the money would just be stolen again if it was returned.

The Swiss lawyer’s admonition to his own children is instructive: “When I speak to my very many children about this case, I tell them I found money and I blocked the money, I persuaded the authorities to go after these people and get the money back to the country for the good of the Nigerian people. We did the job.”

It gladdens the heart that the Abacha family is not as rich as they used to be after the monies had been recovered from them. They should not be. Their patriarch stole the patrimony of millions of people. This was money that could have been spent on infrastructure and other projects for the benefit of Nigerians. Abacha stole as if stealing was going out of fashion; so unabashedly. Yet, his people chose to ignore this monumental character flaw in him; perhaps in their genes.

Then, human rights abuses in the Abacha era were legendary. We have seen how he attempted to muzzle the press. There is no one with his kind of over-ambition that would not do that. No one with Abacha’s kind of agenda would not spill blood because Nigerians would give him a run for his money. Many people were imprisoned. My predecessor in office in The Punch, Bola Bolawole, spent four days in detention – three in the office and one at the State Security Service (SSS) facility in Ikoyi. I spent four days out of circulation too, in the military’s bid to keep Abacha in power. But we were part of the lucky ones, given the hell The Punch gave both the Babangida and Abacha regimes. We lost some of our friends to the June 12 protests. To say that Abacha went to the grave with so much blood in his hands, including protesters’ that were haunted down by his goons, and all, was putting it mildly. Yet, no reference or apologies were given in his family’s 23rd remembrance advertorial.

We can go on and on. But most of these can be read online. Now, Abacha is no more; and therefore cannot correct his mistakes. The lesson is for today’s leaders. I still remember how this country erupted in jubilation the moment Abacha’s death was officially confirmed on June 8, 1998. I still have the picture in my memory as his body was dumped (not lowered) into his grave. The  ‘gbim’ sound that I heard when his corpse was dumped in the grave still resonates in my mind. Such is life; some kings would die and people would be jubilating and go to church or their respective places of worship for thanksgiving. Yet, other kings would die and there would be melancholy all over. It is not enough only to die well; it is good to sleep well as well.

President Muhammadu Buhari has to choose how he wants to be remembered. Age is no longer on his side. At 78, if the ultimate leveller comes today, will he be sorely missed or will Nigerians be wishing that he dies and even his corpse should die several times over, if that was possible? As I concluded in my piece last week, the ball is, again, in his court.

But one thing is clear: today, ‘sai baba’ is no longer as strident as it was in 2015. The irony is that even in his region where the slogan ruled the waves then, it has become too silent to ignore because the challenges in those places are by far more serious than in other parts of the country. There is probably a divine purpose for this.

A word is enough for the wise.

 

By Tunji Adegboyega

Unless his appointment is revalidated by President Muhammadu Buhari, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede will bow out as registrar/chief executive of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) come August 1. He assumed duties on August 1, 2016, for a five-year tenure in the first instance. At the time of his appointment, his mandate was clear: change the old order. This mandate was indication of government’s dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the board, despite the fact that it had always been somewhat fortunate to have successive chief registrars who had always built on their predecessor’s achievements. But Prof. Oloyede’s five-year stint has been spectacular. Given his accomplishments in just five years, he has not disappointed.

Indeed, if JAMB were to be a lady, she would be wondering why it took successive Nigeria’s governments the  long time it took them to identify a soul-mate like Oloyede for her. She would be wondering why the governments had left her to be abused and serially raped before bringing an Oloyede to her rescue. JAMB, lest we forget, was founded in 1978 for the primary purpose of conducting examinations for candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions in the country and offering admission to those suitably qualified. Like most other establishments, it must have had its teething challenges. But, apart from making provision for such periods, there can be no justification for the kind of abysmal performance that the board recorded for the most parts of the years before the coming of Oloyede. To say that JAMB was not up and doing before the Oloyede years, is to put what had become the board’s lot in the better part of the pre-Oloyede years, mildly.

It was not until Oloyede came that government knew that JAMB could be a money spinner, at least in its own right. It used to be a money guzzler, living, like most government’s establishments, on government subventions. It had, in the last four years turned in about N28billion to the Federal Government’s coffers, despite reducing some of its charges. This excludes what the board would turn in for the current year.

Until 2016, business had continued as usual. Indeed, we had all accepted our fate – candidates, parents, and all – that commotion was part of what made the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) tick. We seemed to have resigned to fate that our children must always go through stress to sit for the life-defining examination. Virtually everyone knew that UTME was going on whenever the examination was taking place. It was like our election periods when movement has to be restricted and all manner of other restrictions are put in place for a thing that is done elsewhere without disruption to their socio-economic activities.

All that has become history. Just as the global system for mobile (GSM) communication has revolutionised the way we do so many things, Oloyede has revolutionised the way JAMB examinations are conducted. He has revolutionised the administrative and financial processes even as he has done so much to entrench accountability and transparency in the system in a way no other chief executive ever did.

For the Professor of Arabics, it was technology to the rescue. He devoted substantial time and energy to examination malpractice which was the bane of UTME at the time. Convinced that examination malpractice starts with the registration processes, Oloyede introduced profile creation during registration with the use of USSD to strengthen the registration processes. He also scrapped the use of scratch cards for pin vending, as well as the capturing of 10 fingers for capturing. He did away with expensive and corrupt VSAT for the telcos, thus saving the nation about N2 billion. He introduced live coverage of the examination centres during examination times and even after, with the aid of CCTV cameras.

The board’s primary responsibility was not left out as it also witnessed tremendous changes. The Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), an automated system that eliminates human interferences and biases and also provides candidates the opportunity to interact with the board such that they can even raise queries when shortchanged was also introduced. It is significant that candidates and other clients have been taking advantage of the complaint platform – the ticketing- for live interaction, with prompt response within 24 hours.

Part of Oloyede’s dream is to make UTME so credible such that universities would be persuaded that there is no need for post-UTME again, except if they want it for the purpose of raising funds. This is doable and, in fact, indications are that things are looking up in this direction.

Indeed, JAMB’s rising profile in the conduct of its examinations in the last five years has endeared it to some organisations that have been taking advantage of its increasing credibility to conduct their recruitment and promotional examinations. As a matter of fact, the fear now is whether the board’s primary responsibility would not be impaired the way these organisations are seeking its services.

There are so many other achievements too numerous to mention within these five years. We can go on and on.

Expectedly, at a time, Oloyede’s measures became unbearable for people who had been exploiting the loopholes of the past to fleece the system and even the candidates and their parents. They cried out to stop the reforms but mercifully, no one listened to them.

Even if Oloyede’s appointment as JAMB registrar/chief executive was fortuitous, we must still commend the President Buhari administration for locating a man like him to direct the board’s affairs when it did. This credit must be given because if Oloyede had performed otherwise, we would still have posted the debit into the administration’s accounts. We would have said he merely represents a typical emblem of the Buhari government. At any rate, we might not even have known that something better could have come from JAMB if Oloyede had been contended with mere average performance. We probably would be clapping for him by now if al? he has done was to follow tradition or rock the boat a little. Indeed, he too would, (like the lizard that fell from a wall and nods its head in acknowledgment of the feat it has performed, since human beings are not ready to do that), be beating his chest that he has done a Yeoman’s job. Since we do not have any proof to the contrary given his predecessors’ antecedents, we would not have known whether we have been conned or shortchanged as usual, or both.

What is not in dispute today is that it took an Oloyede to rewrite the JAMB story; to change the narrative.

However, whatever I have said so far should not be misconstrued to mean that all of Oloyede’s predecessors at JAMB were corrupt or incompetent. Indeed, Oloyede himself is likely to feel uncomfortable celebrating his achievements, especially the one having to do with the board’s humongous yearly remittances to the Federal Government since he became the JAMB helmsman because the immediate question to ask is ; so, what has been happening to these monies now being remitted by Oloyede? In truth, he respects some of his predecessors, and this is obvious from the way he interacts with them whenever they attend the board’s functions. It is obvious that, for some of them, the problem could just have been sheer incompetence. For others, it could be lack of imagination. Still, for some, the problem could have been seeing their appointment as mere routine and all they did was follow the tradition. Oloyede possessed none of these negative tendencies. What he has done in JAMB in five years clearly suggests a man prepared for the job. Not only that, he was determined to make a difference.

JAMB’s progress, at least in the last five years, is indication that there is still hope for Ñigeria. It shows something good can still come from Nigeria. What we just need are round pegs in round holes. It is indication of the importance of the head in any institution. A proverb says that a fish starts to rot from the head. In like manner, good things also come from the top, from where they percolate. Although Oloyede alone could not have logged the achievements in JAMB all alone. He needs the buy-in of the management and staff of the board. But he must provide the leadership; he must point the way forward. It is significant that he has recorded the tremendous achievements with substantially the same workers who were part of the ‘ancien regime’ in JAMB. Yes, some members of the staff of the organisation who could not fit into the new order, including the one who alleged that a snake swallowed N36million belonging to the board, were shown the door, there has not been any ‘Tsunami’ in terms of retrenchment in JAMB since 2016.

No less important is the cooperation that Oloyede’s team has been able to get from the board. The kind of reforms that Oloyede has brought to JAMB is such that could trigger in-fighting between the board and the management if they were not on the same page on anti-corruption and matters of integrity. We have many institutions where internal wrangling between both bodies has truncated the otherwise noble aspirations of either the management or the board, to the country’s disadvantage.

Born on October 10, 1954, Is-haq Olarewaju Oloyede is both an academic and a public servant. He hails from Abeokuta South Local Government Area of Ogun State. The question now is, what next for this former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, who has transformed one of the country’s most despised public institutions in ways that could not have been envisaged six years ago? The reward for good work, as they often say, is more work. If that is the case, will Oloyede be given another opportunity to continue his good works in JAMB since he has the legal backing for such continuity?

Is he going to be promoted to more relevance so he could replicate what he has done in JAMB elsewhere? Or, will he be promoted to ‘Siberia’ to reverse the progress so far made in JAMB, as punishment for the powerful toes he must have stepped on in the course of transforming the board?

The ball is in President Buhari’s court.

 

By Tunji Adegboyega

In spite of the fact that Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State had caused the searchlight to be beamed on him many times in his six years in office, often for the wrong reasons, I guess this is the first time I am opportune to comment on him. Perhaps the first time I would have done that was in February 2018 when he demolished the property of Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, the senator representing Kaduna North Senatorial District in the National Assembly. Somehow, I shelved the idea. After all, Governor El-Rufai  would not be the first governor to do that. That seems one of the ways some of our governors prove their ‘executiveness’. But they hardly do this until there is a quarrel between them and their victims. Hunkuyi was factional leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state whose faction suspended the governor from the party. That was when the state government opened the book of remembrance that proved the senator was in arrears of some charges to the government.

Also, a very recent opportunity presented itself when the governor said the government’s plan was to use force to free the abducted students of Greenfield University, Kaduna, and that only a few or some of the students would be killed in the process. Again, somehow, something else caught my fancy and I skipped that topic.

Now, the big masquerade. The Labour strike. Clearly, it was certain Mallam El-Rufai would sooner or later enter into what one of my lecturers in those days called ‘the circle of confusion’, given his style of governance and his acerbic utterances. I know he won’t admit he was more than rattled by the workers’ strike that paralysed the state between last week Monday and Wednesday. He likes posturing as a super man that is perturbed by nothing. He could do that and get away with it now, not before 1999. His masters in Abuja who intervened in his crisis with Labour knew why they did: they won’t sit idly by and watch one man bring the whole house down on their heads because of his inordinate grandstanding.

Labour had to shake the state following the government’s decision to lay off thousands of workers again. The fear is that the state government would just throw the hapless workers into the unemployment market without any plans or consideration for their future. The Labour leaders easily pointed at the thousands of teachers sacked by the El-Rufai administration in 2017 and have not been paid ever since. Moreover, they accused the state government of violating ³abour laws through premature retirement and failure to consult or carry Labour along before sacking workers.

Labour understandably has a case; it should not fold its arms and watch workers suffer undue lay-off. But then, it is wrong to blame El-Rufai if he says the state government cannot focus on workers who constitute a tiny percentage of the population at the expense of the silent majority. Kaduna State is not alone in this quagmire.

But, come to think of it, what is Kaduna State doing with about 100,000 workers? What is its internally generated revenue (IGR)? Would Kaduna State ever have employed such huge workforce if it were to pay them from its IGR? But the state could afford to bloat its workforce because its government does not need any especial motivation to think out of the box to pay the workers; oil money would always come from somewhere to take care of such an unwieldy workforce. Again, Kaduna is not alone in this. Many other states are as guilty as charged. This is part of the reasons some people don’t want restructuring. They don’t want an arrangement that would make states eat as they work. Yet, it is only a matter of time, that is where we are going. What we have now is unsustainable.

In a sense, El-Rufai may be right to want to rightsize, given the declining revenue accruing to the state government. But then, his approach appears both crude and draconian. His problem is there is no milk of human kindness in his approach. And that seems the way he has been running the state. Some of us who had been sitting on the fence trying to understand his personae seem now convinced that there is something wrong with him or his style.

The second leg of the argument is somewhat related to the first. It is also a function of our warped federalism. Labour must admit the reality that states cannot pay the same minimum wage because they are not equally endowed. It was clear that some states cannot pay the minimum wage right from the time it took off and some of us said so; that it was only a matter of time for the bubble to burst. I don’t know why a state like Zamfara will want to pay what Lagos or Rivers pays. The fact of the matter is that a state like Osun or Ekiti should not be in competition with the two states that are relatively comfortable with their IGR.

But I must confess I do not understand what Mallam El-Rufai expected his colleagues in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) to do when he complained that he did not have the kind of support he expected from them on the strike. The truth of the matter is that many of them are going to have a similar baptism very soon. We do not need any prophet or soothsayer to predict that. In essence, it would be a case of the dead weeping for the dead if they had intervened the way the Kaduna State governor wanted. El-Rufai’s Kaduna State only happens to be the guinea pig for an experience that would soon go nationwide.

But why is the Nigeria Labour Congress and its affiliates dancing themselves lame on Kaduna State when the actual dance is yet to come? It is interesting that the Federal Government had to intervene in the imbroglio between the state government and Labour. May be the African Union would have to be invited to intervene when the looming crisis between Labour and the big masquerade itself starts because, the atmosphere is pregnant and that ‘baby’ is certain to be delivered anytime soon, as all the governments are crying for money. All of them are broke and they think the burden of their successive maladministration and corruption should be borne by the defenceless people. The same people they are rendering jobless by the day. The same people they have been unable to provide a conducive environment to make their businesses thrive. They want petrol to sell for N380 per litre. What is painful is that they too are now parroting the same silly excuse that their predecessors parroted which they criticised vehemently when they were not in government: it is our neighbours that are reaping the  benefits of fuel subsidy meant for the ordinary Nigerian. So, the solution to that headache is to behead Nigerians. I dey laugh o!

Back to Mallam El-Rufai.

I had all the while thought I could stand the governor’s acerbic tongue until about two weeks ago when he made what he claimed to be the government’s proposed solution to rescue the abducted Greenfield University students public. Hear him: “I was assured by the Airforce and Army that they know where the students are, and have encircled them. We are going to attack them. We will lose a few students (emphasis mine) but we will attack the bandits and recover some of the students”.

“That is our plan and that is the plan of the Army. The Airforce will attack them from the air and the Army will engage them on the ground”. Not funny enough, Mallam El-Rufai still recommended taking the war to free the students to the kidnappers despite acknowledging that the initial military plan to free them had hiccups. According to the governor, the initial attempt made by the military authorities was futile, because “they (armed bandits) slipped through the cordoned area of the army.”

“We are not just saying we will not negotiate with bandits; we try to trace them, engage them, using military force. We know it is risky, we know in the process we may lose some of the students” (again, emphasis mine). Pray, how would anyone be talking about ‘losing a few or some of the students’ as if we are talking about cows? In the first place, it was not the students’ fault that abductions have now become a lucrative business in Nigeria. We have that situation because of incompetence and corruption in government. So, we should just sacrifice innocent students whose parents had invested heavily both financially and emotionally in to get them to that level in life? Just like that, because of someone’s incompetence or empty grandstanding, or both?

Clearly, what this tells us is that there is a lot wrong with the sense of judgement of a man reasoning like this. Indeed, he cannot be trusted with power. In a civilised clime, such an unguarded statement would have ended El-Rufai’s political career because he would take many irrational decisions that would put others at risk. Must the man comment on everything?

What should inform any comment on such a sensitive issue should be for the person making the comment to first put himself in the shoes of the parents and assume one of the students is his child. Would El-Rufai himself have offered that his child be made the sacrificial lamb if his child happened to be one of the abducted students? And would he now go to other parents to say now that his child had been sacrificed to free their children, they should let him ‘share’ their own children that benefited from that sacrificial indiscretion with them?

I want to believe the governor is grandstanding because he is not the one directly taking the heat. Again, when the labour strike began and his state was paralysed with darkness and all and he insisted he would not shift ground, was there no light or water in his government house? How did the strike affect him or his family? I have no problem with tough leaders because sometimes that is what is required to fix our decadent system. But when there is no clear demarcation between being tough and fair and being arrogant, there is a problem.

I remember the story of a military governor in the old Western State who experienced a similar strike like the one in Kaduna State, with water not flowing in Ibadan for about three days. Reports had it that the military governor leapt thrice from the staircase in the water corporation in Ibadan in his desperation to get water supply restored to the metropolis. And now we have a civilian governor who said his people could stay without water or light for as long as those on strike liked, that he would not be moved. Meanwhile, he was not part of the suffering. That cannot be the hallmark of leadership. It definitely reflected his arrogance and the contempt he has for the electorate.

Governor El-Rufai has increased the state’s IGR as well as recorded some other achievements. But all of these would eventually amount to zero if he does not come down from his high horse to embrace the appropriate leadership virtues. But for the fact that he is in his final term as governor, I would have told him what Sonola Olumhense told the Shagari government in December, 1983: that he (Shagari) had to change his style or himself be changed. Granted that El-Rufai does not have an opportunity of contesting for governor again, he risks being a liability to whoever he might want to back in 2023. He may not even be able to get a senate seat if, like his colleagues, he wants to retire in the senate.

And that won’t be funny. Examples abound.

By Tunji Adegboyega

At first, the story came across to me as one of those sponsored stories by our politicians for cheap political popularity. Indeed, any discerning reader of Nigerian newspapers would get that impression, seeing the headline: “Bayelsa councillor rejects fundraising after building bridge with funds meant for official car”. How could a councillor do such a thing in a country where many people struggle even to be councillors because of the privileges of that office? Councillorship is the lowest political position that can be contested for in the country. Then, somebody who is lucky to win such a seat would now decide to use money meant for his/her official car to build one goddamn bridge for the community? Even members of that community would ask the councillor’s parents if witches from the village had not tampered with their child’s faculty.

However, when, somehow my attention was drawn to it while preparing for this newspaper’s editorial board meeting last week, and I decided to read the story, something told me the report was about genuine philanthropy from the bottom of the heart of a philanthropist. For me, this is heartwarming, especially in our kind of clime where one is bombarded with depressing news left, right and centre almost 24/7.

I love celebrating such stories. This is much more so when the newsmaker is not one of those big names that can ‘spoil’ one with money. I am glad that many Nigerians have also shown appreciation for her kind gesture. That is the way it should be. Such people need to be celebrated for their selfless service in order to encourage them to do more, and also to ensure that the source producing such kindhearted people does not dry up.

Let Councilor Tyna Miracle Onem step out for recognition. She is the councillor from Otuokpoti community representing Ogbia Ward 2 in Ogbia Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. What the female councillor did is spectacular in several respects. She decided to build a link bridge between her community and the neighbouring community with the N2.6m she got to buy an official car. Prior to the time she constructed the bridge, people in the two communities passed through hell to access medical care or even to seek police assistance or protection in times of emergency. It was reported that several women fell into the creek in the process of crossing the dilapidated wooden bridge which had served several generations.

According to Tyna, “It got to a point that I got confused but the reality to me then was that, without the bridge, vehicles could not have access to the only police station and health centre in my community. Another issue was that the  wooden bridge was the only bridge connecting our farmers to their farms. In fact, the elderly almost always fall off the bridge while going to the farm or health centre. In many cases, they got injured in the process.” In other words, people had their hearts in their mouths whenever they had cause to use that bridge.

The narrow wooden bridge, called monkey bridge, was constructed by the community. Miracle said she had been nursing the intention of fixing that bridge ever since she was a child, seeing the hassles people in the two communities passed through in their attempts to interact. This is the second thing that makes her intervention spectacular.

“Growing up as a child, I have been crossing that creek before a narrow wooden bridge known as monkey bridge was constructed across it. So, when I became a councillor, I said to myself that this is the opportunity for me to change this situation.” Miracle is definitely not the first councillor in that community. The communities must have had council chairmen who never gave a thought to the bridge, close to home as it was. Many of us nursed such ambitions as children. But as soon as we have the opportunity to do the needful, we get distracted and start pursuing less  important  things. Talk about the power of focus. “While I am focus on making lasting impact within the little at my disposal, I know and I believe without doubt that H.E Senator Douye Diri will support me 2 do more for the people. Let’s all stay focused on being a true Servant to the people.” The other key word is impact. Then, true servant-leaders. These are concepts that are lacking in many of our politicians today.

First, there is no focus. They are perpetually distracted, dissipating energy on things that add no value to the lives of their constituents. Second, they are not seeking political offices to impact their environment, and when they do, it is for the negative values. Thirdly, many of them are leader-servants. That is why they become inaccessible after being voted into office. That is why they want powers to sack local council chiefs that they did not create.

Then, there is doggedness or determination. The can-do spirit. This was what made Miracle see possibility where many others would have seen impossibility. This was what urged her on even when some elders were dissuading her from pursuing the cause because they knew she did not have the financial wherewithal to see it through. She said “after commencing the project, it got to a point where I had the fear that I wouldn’t be able to finish the project because the money available to me was not enough to complete it. But, because of the zeal I had for the project, I added the money that was given to me to buy an official car to the project.” That was N2.6m. This, plus the N2m that the governor gave her for ward project made a total of N4.6m. Yet, the money was not enough. She said, as should be expected, some people had already started mocking her that she had started a thing she lacked the capacity to complete. It was at this point that the governor, Douye Diri, mercifully invited her and gave her some money to complete the project.

Many people would have abandoned the cause midway when all hopes seemed to have been lost and it appeared the world was going to crumble under their feet as soon as they had exhausted the money on them without the dream project making any headway. Mercifully, the state governor,  came to her rescue at the very point of her need.

Perhaps the most spectacular thing Miracle did was her rejection of donations from appreciative Nigerians who felt touched by her selfless generosity. They wanted to compensate her and I am sure, knowing Nigerians well when it comes to such cause, they would have donated generously in spite of their own economic difficulties. Miracle would have had many portions of what she parted with to construct the bridge. That a car was not her priority in the face of the sufferings her people were passing through due to lack of a bridge is significant. According to her, the bridge gift was a sacrifice she had to make because she saw it as something that was more important than driving a car at the moment. She appreciated those who wanted to organise the Gofundme project but declined the offer. How many of our politicians reason this way? We have had cause almost every National Assembly cycle to protest their extravagance lifestyle, sometimes to no avail. They still go ahead to do as they please with our common patrimony. They want to ride some of the best exotic cars even as they are busy approving billions in loans to the executive government. Meaning they too know there is no money or the government is broke. Without producing any product that could fetch foreign exchange for us, our NASS members are said to be some of the highest paid law makers in the world. And in what way has that impacted our lives? Is the substandard and subhuman standard of living we are in today the best we could get for the fat envelopes our NASS members take home monthly?

Only last week, I had cause to draw Nigerians’ attention to the plan of our House of Representatives to increase by 111 the number of National Assembly members, with all the financial burden. Their reason is that they want more of women representation in government. Who says that cannot be achieved within the current strength of the NASS? But they do not want to do that apparently because many, if not all of them intend to return to the comfort zone in the next elections. The zone where there is immunity to economic hardship, irrespective of what becomes of the economy. The House of Reps would rather shift the unsustainable burden to the hapless Nigerians that they claim to be representing.

However, with people like Miracle, we should not lose hope that this country can still get its bearing right. But she needs to be consistent as she would have all kinds of trials and tribulations on her way in a bid to do things differently. As a matter of fact, it may even get to a point where the very people she is serving selflessly would be the ones to make her stumble. I remember the story of a legislator in the southwest who gathered his people and was preaching to them about making them fishermen instead of their unending pleas to be given fish. He wanted to empower them with some tools and they told him to forget about that, that he should just put the money he brought for them down so they could share! If this could happen in the southwest which is supposed to be better enlightened, one can imagine how much perversion values have suffered in the country.

I join Miracle’s community to celebrate and thank her, at least for giving me the opportunity to write something refreshingly positive today, instead of the usual depressing news that dominate our news channels.

By  Tunji Adegboyega

 

How truly representative are our House of Representatives members? I asked this question against the backdrop of the report that the house is planning to increase the number of lawmakers in the National Assembly (NASS) by an additional 111 members. NASS currently has 469 members comprising 109 senators and 360 representatives. If the proposed bill titled ‘A Bill for an Act to Alter the Provision of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, to create Additional Special Seats for Women in the Federal and States Legislative Houses; and for Related Matters,’ scales through, the number will rise to 580. The bill passed second reading in the lower legislative chamber on April 28. It is being sponsored by the Deputy Chief Whip, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha,  and 85 other members.

The bill seeks to, among other things, create an additional 111 seats dedicated solely to women at the federal level. A similar raise is expected in the state legislatures. The bill is looking at an additional Senate seat for each state, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), making 37 extra seats and bringing the total senate seats to 146. As for the House of Representatives, two additional seats are to be created in each state as well as the FCT, making an additional 74 seats, bringing the total to 434.

For me, the problem is not with the number. Giving that the 36 states have three Senate seats each and a representative of the FCT, and membership of the House is based on the population size of each state, we can say the number is tolerable. In other words, 580 NASS members are not too many for a nation of 200 million people.

But then, what is the cost implication for a country said to be the poverty capital of the world? This would appear one question that the House of Representatives did not consider in pushing forward such a phenomenal increase in the number of law makers in the NASS. Yet, it should be the first consideration in most decisions they take.

Now, let no one get me wrong: I am not against having more females in the NASS, or even in the state legislatures. After all, there is nothing that men have become today that women have not been. Whether in the public service or in the corporate world, our women have been making their marks. Indeed, the saying that what a man can do, a woman can do (probably better) strictly adheres. As a matter of fact, there is a school of thought that more compassion would be brought into governance if more women go into politics. Although there does not seem to be any scientific basis for this assumption, the fact remains that the female-folk, by their very nature, are supposed to be embodiments of compassion.

Again, women constituted an average of about 5.8 per cent of the NASS membership between 1999 and 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. When juxtaposed with the average 94.2 males in the NASS and even the state legislatures within the same period, the unfair representation becomes too glaring. It is clear that without such affirmative action, like the one in the works in the House of Representatives, many women in the country are not likely to come out to vie for political positions. In the first place, seeking elective positions in the country is an expensive venture. Money plays a lot of role in politics here and not too many women are ready to take the risk of entering into what seems a blind race.

Secondly, politics is seen as a dirty game in this part of the world. The assumption is that one must be ready to act like a thug to clinch political posts. We have seen this done directly sometimes by politicians and sometimes by their thugs during elections, when they snatch ballot boxes or thumbprint ballot papers for their ‘clients’. Again, many of our women cannot afford to be associated with such tendencies.

In a sense, therefore, the House of Representatives is right in seeking more representation for the women in politics. But then, this can be done without tearing the pockets of Nigerians. The representatives cannot claim ignorance of the clamour by Nigerians for a reduction even in the present number of law makers in the NASS. I am sure they are also aware of suggestions by some Nigerians for a unicameral legislature. The two suggestions are premised on the grounds of the astronomical cost of maintaining the legislators in NASS.

The Punch report on the story gave a rough estimate of how much additional burden the ordinary man would have to bear if such a law is passed. At least that is for what we know. Many Nigerians believe what we do not know about what this class of legislators take monthly is also huge. Working on the known, it is estimated that the proposed increase would cost an additional N1,206,200,000 per month, that is by way of basic salaries and allowances. This translates to about N14,474,400,000 per year!

The report on the financial implications of the additional law makers was based on the disclosure by the 8th National Assembly that each senator earns about N700,000 basic salary and N13.5m as running cost (including allowances), totalling N14.4m while a member of the House earns a basic salary of N606,000 and running cost of N8.5m, totaling N9.1m. These exclude other welfare packages and the principal officers who earn more than their colleagues. Law making does not have to be this expensive. Even if it is an industry, productivity would play a major role in how much the stakeholders take home.

What the NASS members should realise is that law making has never been this expensive in this country. There has been no going back since 1999 when the clamour by the NASS members for furniture allowance led to a national uproar. Unfortunately, despite the firm grip that the then president Olusegun Obasanjo had on the National Assembly, he allowed the law makers had their way. What special laws or role do our law makers perform to make them earn one of the most incredibly high emoluments in the world? What entitles them to salaries and allowances that the country’s economy cannot carry? All over the place, there is anger and frustration due to the strangulating economic policies of the government. As we speak, there are talks about attempts by government to cut workers’ salaries. For God’s sake, how much does the so-called minimum wage amount to in an economy already bastardized by hyperinflation?  Yet, our representatives are busy thinking of further ballooning the number of NASS members when the rest of the people that they claim to represent are walloping in abject poverty. This, definitely cannot be what Nigerians bargained for when they elected the representatives. Yes, they may have been elected to ‘go and chop’ on behalf of the people; they do not have the right to eat them to the marrow.

Read Also: JUST IN: House of Reps seeks postponement of 2021 census

 

Nigerians must stop the House on this road to insensitivity. Without doubt the idea of bringing more women into the legislative chambers is good; but this must, at best, be accommodated within the existing 469-member template.

 

 

Insecurity complex

 

When last week I said that our hospitals now were  worse than they were in 1983 when the then General Muhammadu Buhari and his co-coup plotters sacked the inept and corrupt Alhaji Shehu Shagari government, citing as a major plank for the coup the parlous state of our hospitals, neither the DSS nor the Presidency had alleged that some people were plotting to topple the Buhari government then. By implication, as I mentioned in that write-up which had been well-received by many Nigerians, things were far better even under the Shagari government than they are today. So, if a major actor in the coup that toppled the Shagari government then is now president, it is expected that such a person cannot feel comfortable to sleep with his two eyes closed, considering the mess that the country is now in due to a chronic leadership deficit, worse than that of the Shagari era. That is to say that a hangman would not like to see anyone dangle a sword over his child’s head (abenilori ko ni fe ki won gbe ida koja lori omo oun). I stopped short of saying Nigerians should expect the government to come up with the usual allegation about ‘disgruntled elements’.

And, barely 48 hours after that piece was published, Nigerians were alerted to the plot by some ‘disgruntled’ former political and religious leaders to cause disaffection and make the country ungovernable for the government such that some military adventurists could topple the government.

I am happy with the response from across the country to that allegation. I really love that of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which appears to have been woken from its slumber by that allegation. The party took the heat off my zone when it said the government was being haunted by the coup-plotting past of the president.

Equally soothing was the response by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) which chastised the government for seeing every critic as an enemy. Again, last week, I said of the Nigerian pathetic situation that there are certain constants, and that all that will change in the Nigerian narrative in the past decades are the actors, dates and probably the magnitude of the evil occurrences when talking about Nigeria today. Tell me, which of the past governments in the country did not uncover ‘disgruntled elements’ wanting to overthrow it? Rather than look inward to see what they are not doing well, and thereby remove the log in their own eyes, all they see are the ‘disgruntled elements’ and the mote in the eyes of the elements.

The good news for President Muhammadu Buhari is that even if the conditions precedent are there, coups are no longer fashionable in this age. The greatest ‘mumu’ in the military knows that. So, the president should rest assured that he does not need the assurance by the military that its men remained loyal to him and to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

But the military intelligence would do well to also advise government whenever it is straying into the bush like the proverbial hunter’s dog. It is not sufficient to accuse people who are protesting bad governance and hardship, of bad faith; what of the government coming up with killer-policies?

Let it be known that if the Buhari government continues to wobble and fumble like this to 2023, then it must be ready to do what the Goodluck Jonathan government did in 2015. It must be ready to voluntarily hand over power to the party of choice by overwhelming Nigerians, to stop baboons from bathing in blood (apologies to the inventor of that phrase). The greatest disservice anyone can do to a nation is to govern it badly and still expect continuity. Even if Nigerians are ‘mumus’, that ‘mumu don do’. Virtually all sections of the country are groaning under the weight of the government’s incompetence.

It is immaterial whether the ruling party claims to have 200 million registered members. Party membership and voting pattern are not always synonymous. Indeed, it is not all the time that there is a correlation between both.

 

By Tunji Adegboyega

What President Muhammadu Buhari has thrown his weight behind Dr. Isa Pantami, his Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, against the tide of public opinion (that the minister resigns or gets fired, in view of his dangerous past utterances which bother on religious fanaticism) should not come as a surprise to anyone who has studied the modus operandi of the Buhari administration in the about six years of the man’s second coming. Indeed, Nigerians should be grateful to the president for even coming out with a position on the issue barely two weeks after it hit the headlines.  Usually, mum is the word on such matters from the government. Recall how long it took him to react to the call for the sack of the immediate past service chiefs, among other examples.

Minister Pantami I never knew from Adam. But, something struck me a few months back, when he came up with unrealistic deadline for Nigerians to have their National Identity Numbers (NIN) linked to their phone lines, lest they got yanked off from telephone subscriber database. Really, this is the way to go if we must improve security in the country. NIN is not peculiar to Nigeria. But the timing was wrong and we made this clear to the minister who did not appear swayed by the arguments put forward for extension, at least initially.

Asking Nigerians to get NIN under the then existing process was a recipe for disaster. Indeed, the process ran contrary to the government’s admonition to Nigerians to maintain social distancing as a result of the second wave of the coronavirus which was ravaging some countries, including Nigeria, at the time. Yet, Minister Pantami stuck to his gun. Not even the chaotic scenes of hapless Nigerians at the various National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) offices nationwide (in flagrant violation of the social distancing protocol) in both the print media and on television could convince the minister for long that the deadline be jettisoned until a better time, or the process be liberalised by allowing major telephone companies to be involved in the exercise, as was later done.

I did not know where Minister Pantami got the temerity to come up with such a directive which ran counter to the wish of the government that appointed him, in the circumstance. Obviously, he must be one of those cabinet members with whom his boss is well pleased and whose word was law, of sort. It would appear the minister himself realised this and probably did not mind flaunting it. Again, how the minister had expected over 170 or so million Nigerians to meet the deadlines he set for NIN enrollment and linkage with SIM cards (a task that successive federal governments failed to achieve in 40 years, in less than two months), was baffling.

I had all the while been feeling somehow about what manner of man would pursue an exercise so dogmatically, despite the huge risks involved; risks that the very government the minister is serving so acknowledged. Something kept telling me something that I really cannot explain until Patami’s past began to haunt him.

I have no problem about how anybody manages his religious life. I do not even care about what religion anyone may decide to practice because I have always believed this is a personal affair. The same way I don’t care a hoot if someone is a religious fanatic because religious fanaticism is not peculiar to any religion. I care less about all of these and probably more, provided that other person understands that where his freedom to practice his religion stops, others’ begins.

But there is everything wrong when someone who had eulogised terrorism, al-Quaeda and all is a top-ranking minister in a country that has been having issues defeating terrorism for over a decade. To say that he has repented is begging the issue. Yes, he may have repented, and he might not have. We do not have a way of verifying the veracity of his claim; the white man is yet to invent a machine that could test for such repentance. So, it is his word against those who researched into his past to exhume what the minister would never have wished was exhumed. That was probably why he threatened the Daily Independent that first published the story alleging that he was on America’s terror watchlist. This, no doubt, is overboard.

But a truly repentant minister would not have threatened the newspaper the way Pantami did. Rather, he would simply have told the paper and any other person or institution that cares to listen what he told those who cleared him for ministerial appointment, in spite of that ugly past, that warranted  the waiver they gave him, i.e. that he has repented.

The initial questions that came to mind when the story broke were, one: was the minister not screened by the State Security Service (SSS) before his name was forwarded to the senate for ministerial confirmation? If the SSS missed detecting the past about the then ministerial nominee, how did Pantami pass the senate screening? Possible answers were that both institutions were either derelict in their duties or they did their job but the government ignored their recommendations.

But, if the report in The Punch edition of April 22 is anything to go by, then, the Buhari government is to blame for insisting on its choice of Pantami. The report, titled “Pantami was imam when ATBU Muslim community issued fatwa, killed my son in a mosque – Prof” even introduced a new dimension into the story, which naturally should compound the minister’s troubles.

What was in the public domain before The Punch story was about religious fanatism. But the newspaper’s story alleged something much more serious. According to the paper, Pantami was the chief Imam of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) mosque in Bauchi State in December, 2004, when the son of a former lecturer of Industrial Chemistry at Kaduna State University, Prof. Samuel Achi, was strangled to death. The 24-year-old man was a 400 Level student of Architecture at ATBU. He was alleged by some Muslim students then of circulating a tract with blasphemous content. A fatwa was then pronounced on him, consequent upon which he was strangled to death. The father, Prof Achi, said his son was then the leader of the students fellowship of the Evangelical Church Winning All Ministry. He denied that the tract his son distributed contained blasphemous content. “…It was from the night of December 8 to the early hours of December 9 that it happened. From the fact that I had… from the confirmed information that I had, he was not stoned. He was actually strangled inside the mosque. His body was discovered outside the university mosque”, the father said.

Without doubt, this story has opened a Pandora’s box that should interest the security agents. Could such a thing have happened in a Nigerian university which is supposed to be a citadel of learning and civilisation? And in this 21st century? Which of our laws give people the right to kill in the name of religion? Pantami has not personally reacted to the story. But one Uwa Suleiman, one of his aides reportedly told The Punch that “The allegations are not true” adding “Do your research but the allegations are not true.”

I am not saying they are true or not yet. But then, the security agencies must wade in at this point. Unless the story is concocted, it is not only Pantami who has a case to answer. Even the then university authorities owe the world an explanation on how they handled the alleged murder.

Mercifully, the same Punch story provided what could be a clue on whether the secret service did not do due diligence before clearing Pantami. According to the paper, a former Assistant Director with the Department of State Services (DSS), Dennis Amachree, said the secret police screened the ministerial nominee before his confirmation in 2019. But then, the powers-that-be ignored the report chronicling some of the allegations of religious fanaticism against him. Apparently, he had to be picked because he is the only member of the Federal Executive Council from Gombe State. Another evidence of Nigeria’s skewed federal character principle and lopsided federalism! The same applies to the senate confirmation which, oftentimes is a non-event due to political party considerations or camaraderie (otherwise known as ‘bow and go’).

How the President Buhari administration could have found such a person suitable for appointment not only as minister of the federal republic, but one handling a sensitive portfolio of supervising the country’s database, tells volumes about the government’s sense of fairness and judgement. The country might be in trouble because we do not know how many other ‘repentant’ Pantamis the Buhari government harbours. This is quite unfortunate.

Since it was the government that insisted on the choice of Pantami (even against security report, at least as reported without official denial up till the time of filing this column), it is incumbent that the government had to come up with an epistle to defend its choice.

Without doubt, there could be people who are not happy about some of the minister’s activities, particularly with regard to data charges and would therefore stop at nothing to “cancel” him (to use the government’s exact word). For me, all of this would have amounted to nothing without what Pantami said in the past. Moreover, even when he said those things, he was already an adult. It is good that even the government admitted that what he said was wrong then and even now. The only snag is that he has apologised and that should suffice.

It is only that we are usually in a hurry to gloss over issues in this country. It is debatable whether the minister can be exonerated over what he said, in a court of law, despite his so called apology. Perhaps the only defence that could avail is that he never said those things, a thing the minister is not claiming in this instance. After all, there had been instances where our courts had ruled against some people, including eminent Nigerians who claimed to have integrity, based on their antecedents. Not based on apologies they tendered.

Be that as it may, the Federal Government should not stop at threatening to expose the ICT companies that tried to induce editors to run a smear campaign against the minister. That is unacceptable, even if we must admit there is no way a lizard can penetrate a wall if there are no openings on the wall.

All said, the government would have done well to limit its reaction to the Pantami issue. It should have saved us thinking about a past we are now remembering with nostalgia. It should stop getting on our nerves by reminding us that it is in the course of bettering our lot that it is attracting or amassing enemies. We knew what our lives were like when it took over in 2015. The average Nigerian knows what life is like today.

We can only hope a day would not come that we would lament the Buhari government’s decision on this issue. May “had we known” never be our collective portion on this matter. Amen. But, there is nothing personal or sinister in it. The fears of those that are afraid are not unfounded, given the centrality of the minister’s portfolio to our safety and collective security.