The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • Misguided letter

    Misguided letter

    Jonathan’s ministers’ self-assessment is in bad taste

    When a lizard falls from a wall and no one around seems to appreciate what it has done, the lizard nods in self-appreciation of the feat it has performed. That was what struck me when, last Sunday, the Minister of National Planning in the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, Dr. Abubakar Suleiman, issued a statement asking President Muhammadu Buhari to give his principal his “due respect”. Suleiman said he was speaking for himself and other ministers who served in that discredited administration.

    Little wonder the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, described the former ministers as “members of the country’s latest trade union formation, the Association of Ex-Jonathan Ministers”. Shehu ought to have qualified the pack as ‘association of sad or disgruntled ex-Jonathan’s ministers, to make it complete, because that is what they are. And we should understand where they are coming from and what it is that has made them sad or disgruntled, or both.

    According to Suleiman, the efforts of the Buhari government have been to portray all members of the Jonathan administration “as corrupt and irresponsible, in an orchestrated and vicious trial by the media,” which he said had created “a lynch mentality that discredits our honest contributions to the growth and development of our beloved nation.”

    Suleiman speaks further: “We, the ministers who served under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, have watched with increasing alarm and concern the concerted effort by the Buhari administration and members of the APC to condemn, ridicule and undermine the efforts of that administration, in addition to impugning the integrity of its individual members. While we concede that every administration has the right to chart its own path as it deems fit, we nevertheless consider the vilification of the Jonathan administration, to be ill-intentioned, unduly partisan, and in bad faith”.

    He added, for effect: “We are proud to have served Nigeria and we boldly affirm that we did so diligently and to the best of our abilities. The improvements that have been noticed today in the power sector, in national security and in social services and other sectors did not occur overnight. They are products of solid foundations laid by the same Jonathan administration.”

    We congratulate Dr Suleiman and Co. for these wonderful achievements. But it would appear they conveniently forgot in the course of their assessment of their better-forgotten administration that President Jonathan spent more than five years in power as president, having inherited about a year of his predecessor’s tenure when the latter died, whereas the usual tenure is four years at a go, unless a president is reelected. So, if the former president spent five years preparing the grounds for what Dr Suleiman and his fellow ex-ministers want us to see as stellar performance that the Buhari administration is getting the glory for, and if I may add, undeservedly, when would he (former president) have begun to actualise same? Definitely, something is not adding up here; that one government could have started all these wonderful things without being able to bring any into fruition.

    We should give it to Dr Suleiman though, that he was charitable to admit that there have been “improvements that have been noticed today in the power sector, in national security and in social services and other sectors”. The other leg of the story that he failed to add is that these have been possible because of the public perception of President Buhari as a no-nonsense president. At least one of those heading the power sector confessed that much in a media chat, that, for them as with many others, zero tolerance for corruption is the beginning of wisdom now.

    The truth is that President Buhari might not have added a single megawatt of electricity to what he met on ground; this fear is what has made many people to sit right. The same applies to the refineries that had witnessed several turn-around in the past without any benefit; some of them are now working. Again, Buhari might not have done anything to add to what he inherited on May 29, the fear of jail is doing the magic. Perhaps it is only in the area of national security, particularly the terror war, that the Buhari government might have added some arms and ammunition to what they met on ground, the war is better prosecuted now not necessarily because of what the former president did but more because of the support the country has been able to get from the outside world which now sees the country as being in the hands of a better manager; and one they can conveniently do business with.

    While one concedes the right to the ministers to give themselves distinction during their tenure, and even see their principal’s government as the best thing to happen to Nigeria, the ministers should know that it is only facts that are sacred; comments are free. The fact that the former president conceded defeat even before the conclusion of the announcement of the results officially showed that he was aware that Nigerians had spoken and had said a loud “no’ to his reelection bid. Maybe Dr Suleiman was away from the country when Nigerians gave their verdict. Because if he had been around, he would not have been romanticizing their failed and corrupt government they way he did in the letter to the president.

    Without doubt, some of the former ministers might have done fairly well, but overall, the team was a monumental disaster. Indeed, the perception out there is that good men could hardly have lasted in that regime, especially with the unceremonious exit of the Minister of Power then, Prof Barth Nnaji. In other words, one must be comfy with the ungodly things being done in the Jonathan years to stay long in that government.

    Perhaps Dr Suleiman’s letter might have made sense to some people if he had spoken for himself alone, but he messed it all up by trying to tell us the opposite of what we know about their government. If that government was not corrupt, or those who served in it are yet to admit this much, then we can see where the former president himself got the idea of making a distinction between stealing and corruption. He and most of his ministers were all gone; far gone. Apart from the fact that their so-called best was not good enough, their government would have a pride of place when we talk about corruption in this country and even beyond.

    I never said so, says Itse Sagay

    Mr Adegboyega, I never said at any time that the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) was finding it difficult to get judges of integrity. It is a newspaper (not THE NATION) source that is supposed to have said so. So, the very premise of your presentation is wrong. – Prof Sagay.

  • Wanted: incorruptible judges

    Wanted: incorruptible judges

    The dearth of upright judges is lamentable

    Although I would have loved to see where the Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, was quoted as having said the committee was finding it difficult to get judges of integrity to try those who looted our treasury, especially in the immediate past, I have no doubt he said so because he has not denied the report days after it hit the headlines. Definitely, Prof Sagay must have come across the report, or his attention drawn to it; so, to the extent that he has not denied it, I take it to mean that he was not misrepresented as many public officials are won’t to claim when they realise the import of what they have said.

    It may be an overstatement to say there are no more judges of integrity in Nigeria. This is because it is only if we do not walk far that we cannot find a squirrel with a hunchback; if we look close to the ground, it is not unlikely that we will see ants that are lame. So, I guess what Prof Sagay is saying is that judges of integrity are so rare in the country such that it takes time and effort to see them; which is bad enough. The rule should be that in the judiciary, we should be able to find so many good and incorruptible judges, and only a few bad ones because, among every 12 disciples, there will always be a Judas. But it seems the reverse is the case with us in Nigeria, with 11 Judases amongst every 12 disciples!

    To put Prof Sagay’s statement in context, however, we should not be surprised that we have found ourselves in this situation. It could not have been different in a country where we eat corruption and drink exotic wines to wash it down. We could not have got a different result in a country where we are trying to draw a line between stealing and corruption! That we can’t find enough good judges merely shows the depth to which the county has sunk.

    But nothing I have said should be misconstrued that corruption, whether in the judiciary or elsewhere in the country, started in the Goodluck Jonathan years. As far back as December 1993, the then Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha had appointed Justice Kayode Eso to head a panel on judicial reform. But the committee’s findings and recommendations were so radical that the government simply ignored the report, except for the aspect recommending the setting up of a National Judicial Council (NJC), a thing which was done six years later via the 1999 Constitution. This means that perverse as the Abacha government was, it saw the need to do something about the rot in the judiciary, even if ostensibly so.

    What I am saying is that Sagay has not said anything new. A few years ago, Justice Eso too had told us about the emergence of ‘billionaire judges’ after the 2007 elections. Of course, we knew that some of our judges were corrupt or corrupted in that era, what we did not know was that the corruption made some of them billionaires. But what would the politicians of that era not do in their desperation for power and influence? That was a period when President Olusegun Obasanjo allegedly said one of the ruling party’s governors (names withheld) could bribe God!

    We have seen instances where some judges gave permanent perpetual injunctions in cases that made an open mockery of the judiciary. But no one seemed to care, as the judges smiled to the banks.  I am yet to see any other country where public officials would go to court to ask that they should not be probed or investigated. Nigeria’s embattled former petroleum minister in the Jonathan era, Diezani Alison-Madueke, had rushed to court to seek an interim injunction ordering the House of Representatives to discontinue an ongoing investigation into how she allegedly squandered more than N10billion of public funds leasing private jets for two years. Mercifully, the judge who was earlier reported to have granted the injunction denied ever doing so.

    But the case of former Rivers State Governor, Peter Odili, is a good example. The former governor approached Justice Ibrahim Buba, then of the Port Harcourt Federal High Court and secured a perpetual injunction restraining the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) from prosecuting him or even investigating his tenure, despite the fact that he was alleged to have diverted about N100billion public funds during his tenure as governor. Eight years after, the EFCC is yet to discharge the injunction to allow for Odili’s prosecution.

    Interestingly, many groups, including the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), have been calling for a full implementation of the Eso panel’s recommendations. Even the Obasanjo government that promised to do something on it did not go far. The Justice Babalakin-led review panel, that was set up later, in line with the Justice Eso’s report, made ground-breaking recommendations for the radical transformation of the nation’s judiciary, including the establishment of a monitoring committee to monitor the performance of judges all over the country by requesting them to produce mandatory quarterly returns of cases completed by each judge to the Chief Justice of Nigeria. Other measures recommended to sanitise the system include the establishment of a system of monitoring and declaration of assets by serving judges, with a view to curbing corruption.  The panel also requested the NJC to make honesty and hard work the fundamental benchmarks for appointment to higher judicial offices. But how many of these recommendations have been implemented?

    What the integrity question in the judiciary has brought vividly home is that, as with other spheres of our life, the problem is not about a dearth of ideas about what to do to correct the lapses in the system, including the judiciary; rather, it is more about implementation. But the judiciary is the last place where we should tolerate corruption. To have corruptible judges at the temple of justice is to sleep under a burning roof. If the court is the last hope of the common man, it follows that we must have trustworthy, credible and honest people to dispense justice. Otherwise, the society is doomed. So that we are not doomed, the time is now for us to revisit the Eso and Babalakin panels’ recommendations. If the judiciary stinks, then all facets of the society suffer from that stench. The judiciary must be sanitised if we are to have a sane country. Otherwise, the war against corruption is dead on arrival. That is why we must support the Buhari government to cleanse the Augean stable so that we all can have a fresh breath of air in a truly transformed country.

  • The Sagay committee

    The Sagay committee

    A pragmatic approach to crack corruption

    President Muhammadu Buhari moved another step further in his government’s anti-corruption war with the constitution of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, headed by a prominent professor of law and civil rights activist, Prof Itse Sagay. Femi Adesina, the president’s special adviser on media and publicity, said the committee’s brief is to advise the government on the prosecution of the war against corruption as well as the implementation of required reforms in the country’s criminal justice system.

    Other members of the committee are Prof Femi Odekunle, a professor of criminology at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; Dr (Mrs.) Benedicta Daudu, an associate professor of international law, University of Jos (UNIJOS); Prof E. Alemika, professor of sociology also of UNIJOS. Others are Prof Sadiq Radda, professor of criminology, Bayero University, Kano; Hadiza Bala Usman, a civil society activist while Prof Bolaji Owasanoye of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies would serve both as member and executive secretary of the committee.

    One area of the committee’s brief that interests me is that having to do with the reform of the country’s criminal justice system. Without doubt, unless something drastic is done about this, we would only be moving in circles on the anti-corruption war. As things stand, our criminal justice system appears inadequate to tame the corruption monster. Where it is not, some judges have made a mess of it in a way that gives criminals and the criminally-minded undue protection.

    The celebrated Halliburton scam is a case study. This is a scandal that allegedly involves several prominent Nigerians, including former heads of state. As a matter of fact, this seems the very reason why we are making progress in reverse on the matter. Today, the case is ordered reopened; tomorrow it is ordered closed. So, we have been going back and forth on a matter for which some of our big people should have been left to rot in jail as a result of their involvement in the $182m bribery scandal. The latest information is that the United States is insisting that the case be reopened for it to return the $130m in its coffers to the Federal Government.

    Without doubt, the judiciary has been complicit in some of the corruption cases such that it is even possible to smell a rat in some of the decisions taken on some of them. Of course judges are also part of the society; and may not necessarily be immune to what obtains in the society. But then, it is because we hardly punish corruption, especially at the top. If we do, judges who hawk injunctions would think twice before doing so. Imagine the last time, shortly before the general elections when the chief justice warned judges against unethical practices, the warning sank and that was part of what ensured the sanity witnessed in our courts in many of the cases brought by politicians, with many of them ready to bribe God if he would make himself available to be bribed.

    It is only in this country that people who are to be investigated for corruption would rush to court and ask for injunction not to be investigated and the court would grant the injunction. This is one of the few countries where the courts would waste a lot of time trying to decide whether James Ibori and James Onanefe Ibori are one and the same person, even as the substantive matter is yet to be heard.

    The point is, for the country to make progress in its anti-corruption battle, the government has to be systematic in its approach. Otherwise, those who looted our treasury would continue to flaunt the ill-gotten wealth to our chagrin and nothing can be more disheartening than that for victims of treasury looting. I could feel the tears welled up in the eyes of one of my readers a few weeks ago when he sent an sms concerning a particular oil baron in the eastern part of the country who still goes about with a retinue of official security men, with siren to boot, even when we all know the damage he has done to the nation through fuel subsidy racket and other scams. Hopefully, President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive that security men attached to important personalities be pruned will reflect on the number of security details protecting this oil baron. I can only imagine the millions of other Nigerians who are weeping silently over similar unfair and unjust protection of treasury looters.

    Apart from systematically approaching the issue for maximum benefit, there is also the need to reinvigorate the anti-corruption agencies. The way they sometimes lose important cases in the courts seems to show that they lack the requisite professional expertise to successfully prosecute especially high profile cases. And it is some of these big fishes that we need as scapegoats to show the government’s seriousness in this matter and drive home the point that, truly, no one is above the law. That is not the case for now as these big people often buy justice and only get a slap on the wrist for serious crimes committed against the state.

    The courts too must be strengthened with the needed modern facilities provided to assist them in the administration of justice. Moreover, judges found wanting, especially with regard to corruption should not only be retired, they should also be made to face the law. There is a lot to do if the country is to make any serious dent on corruption.

    All said, however, given the credentials of most members of the committee, there is no doubt that they have the essentials to make a success of their assignment. The chairman is himself a man of proven integrity, and one who should know where the judiciary is being abused to miscarry or delay justice.

    President Buhari must realise that his integrity is at stake in this matter. Indeed, it is this question of integrity that has made three influential international development partners, the Ford foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Foundation to establish an Anti-Corruption and Criminal Justice Reform Fund with $5m to assist in the implementation of key components of the Action Plan and the work of the Presidential Advisory Committee. The government must realise that this is an unusual partnership and must therefore strive to ensure there are results. It is doubtful if any international organisation could have extended such assistance to the immediate past Federal Government to tackle corruption. On their part, the committee members must realise that all eyes are on them to see what they would make of the assignment.

    My daddy is gone!

    Finally, my dad died on August 11, after battling with death for about one week. It was exactly eight days to his 80th birthday. He took ill on August 5, was rushed to a hospital, appeared to have recovered and was returned home, only to be taken back to the hospital the next day when the sickness relapsed. In our efforts to get him better medical care, we changed his hospital. But death, that necessary end that will certainly come when it will, according to Shakespeare, came and snatched him away at about evening on August 11.

    For the benefit of readers who had been wondering why this column had been off in the last two weeks; this explains it all. I spent the first week trying to assist so that the old man could make it, and the next, when he didn’t, trying to recover from the shock. What could have come as an 80th birthday present by way of celebrating him on this same page would be published shortly before his burial. My only regret is that he is no more alive to read or feel it.

    I say thank you to all those who have been calling to commiserate with me. It was an experience indeed.

  • Confusion over the Ooni

    Confusion over the Ooni

    A case of culture clashing with modernity

    Last Wednesday, the news was all over town that Oba Okunade Sijuwade, the Ooni of Ife, Olubuse II, had passed on at Saint Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London, United Kingdom (U.K), where he was being treated. He was reportedly flown out penultimate Friday in an air ambulance for treatment at the hospital when his health suffered a relapse. But Ife traditional chiefs quickly dispelled as ‘wicked rumour’ the news of the Ooni’s death. According to them, the foremost traditional ruler in Yoruba land was ‘hale and hearty’. Ever since, the confusion has continued as to whether the Ooni is dead or alive. While the media stuck to their stories about his demise, the traditional chiefs have also maintained their stance that he is well. As of the time of submitting this piece on Friday, a condolence register had not been opened for the Ooni, thus giving the impression that the chiefs’ position is the authentic stance on the matter.

    It is instructive that none of the media that reported the death of the monarch retracted the story, thus putting the Ife chiefs who insist the paramount Oba is alive on the defensive. Apparently the editors must have been waiting for the Oba to debunk the rumour of his death by speaking from wherever he is. As at Friday however, that had not happened. The chiefs had said that the Oba would be at the wedding of one of his sons, Adegbite, with ace television presenter and actress Dolapo Oni, today. I am not in a position to say whether that happened as this write-up went to bed on Friday. But, as a colleague jocularly said, if the Ooni appeared at the function, even the children would ‘pick race’.

    At 85, the Ooni is not too young to die; so, naturally his death should not be controversial. Many people would wonder that if, as Shakespeare said, death is a necessary end that will come when it will come, why then would someone’s death be a subject of controversy? The answer lies in the Yoruba tradition that Obas don’t die. Thus, when an Oba passes on, the Yoruba simply say ‘Oba ti w’aja’, which means he has joined his ancestors. Not only this, there are also procedures for announcing such passage. The Oba is not just anybody whose death should be heard of first in the media or on the street. Even in the days of yore before the advent of the mass media, the town crier could not just go to town with the news of an Oba’s passage; he had to be instructed by the appropriate authorities before breaking the news. It would appear the bypassing of that protocol by the mass media and the social media is responsible for what is now making the Ooni’s issue controversial.

    Yet, we may just be seeing the beginning of such defiance of culture, especially with regard to traditional rulers. It is simply a case of   tradition caught in the web of modernity. The mere fact that Oba Sijuwade had to be taken abroad for treatment had made it impossible to hide anything concerning him or his health, worse still, his death if he died abroad. Apparently the culture that forbids announcement of the death of an Oba until certain rites are performed, or until certain protocol is observed, did not envisage that an Oba would be flown abroad for medical attention, not to talk of him dying there. Apparently, too, that culture did not reckon with the fact that a time will ever come when the world would become a global village that today’s world has become, with the advent of the ubiquitous internet. If Oba Sijuwade had died in London, that is an open society and the demise of such a personality cannot be a guarded secret for long. This, indeed, is why it is surprising that the chiefs are angry that the media broke the news of Oba Sijuwade’s death or rumour of the death (since the Ife chiefs appear to prefer the latter). There is no hiding for the fish; not a big one as the Ooni of Ife.

    But, Nigeria is a country where we have had many examples of deaths and rumoured deaths.  Prominent Nigerians rumoured to have died included the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe. Indeed, I remember that of Zik vividly because I had the onerous responsibility of splashing his pictures on the centre-spread of The Punch title on the day he was reported dead in 1989, appropriately titled “The life and times of Zik”.

    Moreover, this year alone, the Ooni is not the first traditional ruler that has been rumoured to have died. The Oba of Benin, Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolopkolo, Erediauwa, was also said to have died since about a year ago because he had not been seen in public. In February, the Benin Traditional Council had to refute publicly, the rumour of the Oba’s death, which intensified with his inability to personally receive President Goodluck Jonathan in his palace when the president visited during his campaign for reelection on February 4. Secretary to the council, Mr. Frank Irabor, explained that it was the responsibility of the council to issue a formal statement, if such a development (death) did occur. “They have been peddling that rumour for more than a year now, because the Oba has not been coming out. If there is anything like that, there is usually a statement from the palace or from the Benin Traditional Council”, he said.

    However, in March, the same council came out with the news that the Oba was indisposed. The council said in a statement signed by Irabor that: “It is hereby announced for the information of the general public that, in the Palace parlance, ‘Uhunmwun ve Ekpen vbý’ Ato,’ meaning the Leopard is ill in the Savannah bush. The explanation is that Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolopkolo, Erediauwa, CFR, Oba of Benin, is indisposed. Public engagements, including courtesy visits, hearing of complaints from individuals, families and communities, and in particular, complaints over inheritance and land disputes, are therefore suspended until further notice. All palace chiefs and functionaries are to note that their routine traditional duties continue as usual.”

    Mum has been the word from the palace or the council since then. The point I am trying to make is that because the rumour and counter-rumour making the rounds about the Oba of Benin are all happening within our shores, it is easier for the palace and the traditional council to manage the information. This is not the case with the Ooni. If anything happens to a big fish like Oba Sijuwade outside our shores, that thing is of significance not only to Ife people; it is something that would interest the entire Black race because of the importance of Ile-Ife to many of them. So, it cannot be made a secret.

    Another point though is that culture itself is dynamic; it is ever changing; never static. A time there was when albinos were an endangered species. If they walked aimlessly, even in daytime in many places in those days, they were done for. A time there was when people with hunchback could also not move freely without the fear of being caught for ritual purposes. A time there was too when twins were also thrown into the evil forest in certain parts of the country until Mary Slessor came and put a stop to the barbarity.

    Anyway, whatever becomes of Oba Sijuwade is expected to unravel in a short while. This is much more so when the chiefs had reminded us that this would not be the first time Oba Sijuwade would be rumoured to have died. They said it was so in 1982 and 2004. So, is this a reenactment of those years’ rumours? Time will tell.

  • Beyond minimum wage

    Beyond minimum wage

    Labour is at it again! Our problem is more fundamental than just salary increase

    Organised labour missed the point on Thursday when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) president, Ayuba Wabba, led other labour unionists to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, to bare their minds on certain burning national issues, including the bogus pay our lawmakers earn, minimum wage review and sundry other matters. Although the labour leaders were right when they said that the lawmakers themselves constituted drain pipes, considering what they take home, but they failed to call the lawmakers’ pay the proper name it should be called, i.e. corruption, given the steady rise their allocation has been witnessing, from about N23.347billion in 2003 to its current N150billion; and in spite of the downturn in the country’s economy.  And, despite the fact that minimum wage in the country has remained at the paltry N18,000 per month since 2010! Can anything be more callous and ungodly?

    Anyway, I won’t waste too much time on that because a lot has been said on it and we should be awaiting the review of the National Assembly budget that Senator Saraki promised when the issue took the front burner of national discourse a few weeks ago. We will always return to that again in full force if mum continues to be the word from him, in the usual expectation that Nigerians would soon forget the issue.

    My concern today is Labour’s notice to the senate president to the effect that it would soon come with a new National Minimum Wage proposal which the congress wants the senate to quickly approve in view of the country’s present economic realities. The NLC seemingly has a point to want to push for an upward review of the present minimum wage because if salary is expected to take people home, it has since failed in that regard. A time there was when Fela sang that 20 kobo bean cake was too small (akara nko, 20 kobo for one; na janjala e be); these days, I doubt if there is anything like that, not even in the rural areas. Moreover, at the current exchange rate of N242 to the dollar, the average Nigerian worker earns about $75 in a month, just a little more than $2 a day. Pray, what can anyone do with this? Yet, we don’t want people to steal. Yet, we want people to put in their best. Are we not deceiving ourselves?

     I sympathise with Labour on this matter, especially given its unassailable reasons to justify its position. As a matter of fact, too, I do not expect any member of the National Assembly with conscience to raise issues even if Labour eventually comes up with a N50,000 monthly minimum wage proposal for approval. In the first place, this is a figure that workers had been clamouring for all these years. Moreover, that would only amount to N600,000 per annum, which is about N100,000 more than our National Assembly law makers spend on clothes alone per year!

    But, jokes apart, asking for a new minimum wage is not the answer to the question posed by the Nigerian economy. When the present N18,000 was secured in 2010, it was well celebrated. Then, it never occurred to anyone that our National Assembly law makers would get more than double that amount as wardrobe allowance in a month. Then, no one thought the naira would be so devalued that it would now be exchanging at N242 to a US dollar, up from the N140 it was in 2010 when the now moribund N18,000 minimum wage was implemented.

    A quick travel down the memory lane on minimum wage reviews in the country will suffice to buttress my point. By the 2000 National Minimum Wage (Amendment Act), minimum wage was pegged at N7,500 for Federal Government workers (and N5,500 for state government workers). This was raised to N18,000 in 2010. So, within a period of just 10 years, our minimum wage had more than tripled. And this has been the pattern since 1981 when the minimum wage was N125 per month; it rose to N250 as a result of the Minimum Wage Amendment Decree 1990. Ten years later, it had ballooned to N7,500. The implication is that between 1981 and 2015, minimum wage in the country had jumped from N125 to N18,000! I am yet to see any good country with that paradigm.

    For example, when National Minimum Wage was first introduced in Britain in 1999, it was pegged at 3.60 pounds per hour. Between 1999 and now, a period of 16 years, it has increased only by 3.30 pounds per hour. Indeed, when salaries are increased in many other places, it is not as ridiculous as ours and the workers are far better off. Not so in Nigeria. Without doubt, the situation here concerning the astronomical rise in minimum wage over the years tells us that the problem is not about asking for high wage. It is much more fundamental.

    This is what the NLC should be in the vanguard of unravelling (assuming it does not yet know why) and clamouring for its correction. What successive increases in wages has done is to enable the politicians (whether those in military uniform or their civilian counterparts) to keep deceiving Nigerians and giving them the impression that all is well because, as soon as the workers get the salary increase, they jubilate. But when they get to the market a few weeks or months later, they discover that the money has further lost its value. I still remember what I was able to do with my N96 monthly allowance as a youth corps member in 1985. Those on national service now cannot boast of same despite the fact that they earn by far more. Even for the brief period I worked with my School Certificate result, I know the things I was able to do with my salary of about N110 per month. Today’s graduates who are lucky to have jobs are groaning because the wads of naira notes in their pockets can hardly buy anything of substance. My fear is that, at the rate at which we are going, a time will come when we would have to carry money in Ghana-must-go bags to buy an average loaf of bread as is the case in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe which I guess must be brimming with trillionaires!

    Therefore, what Nigerians should be clamouring for is good governance. Without good governance, we are only going to be wasting our time moving in circles, irrespective of the frequency of periodic reviews of minimum wage, or the magnitude. If we had done the needful in this regard, especially in the immediate past, this country would not be where it is today. If we had been alive to our responsibilities as Nigerians, we would not have had the kind of corrupt government that brought our economy to its knees as the Goodluck Jonathan government did, without giving it any serious fight until the general elections.

    Perhaps Labour’s thinking by insisting on new minimum wage all the time is that this would mop up some of the surplus money that public officials steal. If that is the reasoning, we must have seen it has not worked. As a matter of fact, the public officials might grandstand and make negotiations for minimum wage tedious and laborious; they would be more worried the moment they see that the critical segments of the society are clamouring for good governance because that alone is the antidote to the massive looting of our treasury that has become our lot over the decades.

    My fear however is whether Labour itself is not complicit in the situation we find ourselves because if it had been doing what it should do to call the country’s leaders to order, things would not have been this bad. The other problem is the state of the labour union itself; recent revelations on its housing scheme, its transport scheme and NLC’s last election which almost reflected our national elections are enough cause for concern as to whether the congress can provide the desired leadership to take us out of the woods.

  • The real pay cut

    The real pay cut

    Buhari may mean well by reducing his salary, but that is usually not where savings will be made

    One thing that cannot be taken away from President Muhammadu Buhari is his passionate interest in checking corruption in the country. Another is his disgust for the high cost of governance which he is desirous of reducing drastically, given his countenance and his electoral promises. This should be expected from someone who rode to power on the crest of his anti-corruption credentials. Apparently, it was as part of his intention to send appropriate signals to public functionaries that the era when public funds are spent anyhow is over that he announced the reduction of his monthly salary from about N1.2million approved by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), by 50 per cent. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, apparently taking a cue from this, also announced a personal reduction of his salary too by the same 50 per cent.

    This can only be symbolic. It does not seem to me that it is going to have any dent on savings for the government. Indeed, if you ask me, the remuneration is small. I do not understand what the country’s First Citizen is expected to do with that. And I am being serious. Anyway, perhaps it was in consideration of how many minimum wage earners’ salaries his salary will pay monthly that the president felt he had to reduce his. He might have meant well, but he should not take the matter that far.

     I am an advocate of good pay for a good job. And as far as I am concerned, we are only deceiving ourselves with the kind of salaries we pay our civil servants, even at the very top. If many of them who had retired had lived on their miserable pay alone, they would not be in a position to buy the official quarters they gave them the option of first refusal when they were leaving the civil service. That is even if they never spent a dime of their salaries in their 35 or so years in service, and even if they had been receiving the salaries they received at the point of exit right from when they joined the civil service.

    So, President Buhari should continue to earn his salary as stipulated by the RMAFC. I am not going to concern myself with whether it is legal for him to reduce his salary via a letter instead of collecting the full pay first and now returning the half he has pledged to reduce it by to the government. For me, there can only be legal issues if the president decides to increase his pay himself, or directs that other people’s pay must be increased or reduced simply because he has reduced his own.

    One thing I know for sure is that the president needs money to enable him fulfil his campaign promises. And quite unfortunately, many of those who are asking him to do miracle even as he is yet to settle down are those who looted the country’s treasury, necessitating the decision to slash his pay himself, as a way of sacrificing for the country. Now that it is the very people who looted the treasury that are asking for democratic dividend from Buhari, with what do they expect him to do the magic? I guess the right place to begin is to make them cough up what they stole and not the self-denial by the president of a lawful and rational salary.

    If therefore President Buhari is desirous of making money for government, he already has his job cut out for him. The appropriate place to begin is to insist that those who stole public funds, especially in the immediate past, should return same or face the music. What I am saying in essence is that, as for pursue, President Buhari must pursue the public officials who stole so much for Nigerians to notice. As for catching up, he must catch up with them. And as for retrieving the country’s money that they stole, he must retrieve the stolen funds. This is the position I canvassed on this same page a few weeks back. We would be surprised at how much the country would recover from the shameless looters. It is only those of them who repent and return a substantial part of what they stole that we can be talking about forgiveness or plea bargain for.

    But to be running from pillar to post, as former President Goodluck Jonathan was reported to have done last week due to his phobia for probe will not yield any result. President Jonathan cannot feign ignorance that his government was damn corrupt; all of us said that even when he was in power. But since he chose to see the massive looting as mere ‘stealing’, he should not start blaming anyone now that a king that does not think there is wisdom in distinguishing between stealing and corruption is in power.

    Moreover, President Buhari should prune the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet. We do not need 10 or 11 aircraft, gulping more than N10bn annually. It is a luxury we should not have any business with in the first place but for the profligacy of the immediate past. Also, Nigerians must be ready to resist the attempt to make law making a big deal that should deserve all manner of outrageous pay and comfort. People did this same job in the first and second republics and, in spite of the financial recklessness of the Alhaji Shehu Shagari era, there was still some sanity on the question of remuneration for the country’s law makers then. In spite of the over-pampering that our present law makers enjoy, they have not performed better than those of the past. The only thing they have excelled in is the outrageous wealth that they keep making and annoyingly display at the expense of the average Nigerian. Their pay and allowances must be revisited.

    Furthermore, President Buhari should study the expenses at Aso Villa; there are too many areas where he could curb wastage there. We have had cause to shout in the past when we saw some of the budgets made in the villa for all manner of items; say on entertainment and feeding, generator sets, presidential pets and all.  The president should continue to send the right signals about his seriousness to fight corruption.

    This is not to say that President Buhari has not been sending some signal already. He had, only on July 8, for instance, rejected five new armoured Mercedes Benz S-600 (V222) valued at N400million cars for his use. The Permanent Secretary, State House, Mr. Nebolisa Emodi, who told President Buhari of the plan to buy the cars was not doing anything wrong or new; that had been the tradition – new president; new cars! But do we have to waste money changing such vehicles that have the best of attention and care simply because the users have changed? That is part of the ways money is wasted at the seat of power.

    The president would do well to peg the number of  special advisers at the 15  that he had sought the approval of the National Assembly to hire, as against the 23 hired by his predecessor. He should also have a look at the Orosanye committee report on the need to prune the present number of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs)  from the present 541. Of course the president may slightly increase or reduce the number further in view of the country’s present economic challenges and even the need to remove duplication of functions by some of these MDAs. He does not have to punish himself for the sins of his prodigal predecessors.

  • Amor Vincit Omnia

    Amor Vincit Omnia

    America sanctions same-sex marriage as ‘victory for love’. Oh love, I am coming home!

    Some decades back, a Yoruba musician sang about some future date when bush rats would be shooting hunters. (Lojo’waju o, okete a ma yinbo f’oloko), he said. That musician must have been speaking metaphorically, though. But his message is not lost: that a time would come when things stranger than fiction would be happening. I had always expressed optimism that I would have been long gone before bush rats would be shooting hunters. Alternatively, I should be a bush rat myself. Or better still; if I happen to be around at that time, humans must have developed more potent weapons that would make the guns the bush rats would turn against them look like a child’s toy.

    But that time that I had thought would take eternity to come if it ever did appears to be here, with as many as 21 countries legalising same-sex marriage, the United States being the latest of such countries. Other countries that had done same since the Netherlands went that way in 2001 include Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden the United Kingdom and Uruguay. With the judgment by the American Supreme Court on June 26, it would appear that supporters of gay marriage in the United States finally had the last laugh. That day would therefore forever remain indelible in their minds, given the bitter contest and activism for the soul of the marriage institution between the ‘naturalists’ (the one man one wife people) and the ‘un-naturalists’ (those in support of gay marriage).

    Five judges voted for gay marriage while four opposed it. Expectedly, the judgment has elicited reactions that could be described as mixed; or simply different folks, different strokes. Whilst those in support of the judgment have been celebrating across the country, those who object to it also have expressed their dissatisfaction. Indeed, to demonstrate how shocked some Americans were about the court’s decision, some counties initially refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the judgment, with their officials insisting that doing that also offends their religious sensibilities. But it is apparent it is only a matter of time for all across the country to comply with the judgment.

    Although there is a 25-day period after a decision is handed down where individuals can petition the Supreme Court for a rehearing, hopes of supporters of traditional marriage would appear dimmed because the court had almost never granted any rehearing.

    So, what are the likely consequences of this judgment that has been variously described as ‘freedom for marriage’ and ‘victory for love’, for the rest of the world, now that the all-powerful America has pitched its tent with those that many people feel are depraved? I mean how does it feel when a man decides to take on another man from behind, in the name of marriage? Or when a woman has to do it orally with another woman? Or, when it has to be done differently through ways that were not contemplated by God as enshrined either in the spirit or the letter of the holy writ, the Bible?

    Holy Moses! When God created man and woman, He did so for some purposes, among which is procreation. Again, God first created man and then created woman to be his helper. Let’s even assume that same-sex marriage does not in any way hamper the help-mate aspect of the relationship; that is, that man can still help man and woman can still help woman in same- sex marriage, what of the aspect of procreation? Are we not going the way of the Tower of Babel? Or Sodom and Gomorrah?

    Of course, nothing here suggests that homosexuality is new even in our own country. Indeed, one has heard several tales, some sounding like moonlight tales, about its prevalence in very high places and even among some students in a particular part of the country. Moreover, the competition among leisure spot owners and some hoteliers in Lagos for the pockets of their clients has pushed many of them to engage young girls and ladies of between 18 and 38 years of age to work as strippers and dance provocatively nude in their bars. In some cases, the girls even reportedly engaged in anal sex in the open. It was the 14 years imprisonment by the National Assembly for gay sex that has reduced the activities of these girls and their patrons who at the height of arousal reportedly engaged in homosexuality, also openly.

    Of course, too gonorrhea we know; syphilis we know, even staphylococcus we know as sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs). As a matter of fact, a time there was when gonorrhea became so common in the country that it was referred to as a sickness of the famous (arun gbajumo). When in the late 1980s (or thereabout) I wrote a piece titled “The danger down below”, I had thought that the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was going to be the height of the consequence of sexual perversion.  But, with same-sex marriage, the worst is  probably yet to come.

    With this latest development, it would appear that America has passed the mundane stage of ‘victory for democracy’ that we perpetually celebrate whenever a court gives any judgment in our favour in Nigeria. That appeared settled many years ago in America, their America. In America, what is in vogue is ‘freedom for marriage’; ‘victory for love’, etc. In effect, in America, love conquers all (Amor Vincit Omnia).

    But America has to be careful about this its usual ‘one-cap-fits-all policy all over the world. It must resist the temptation to impose this as world standard as it tried to do by threatening Nigeria with sanctions when the then President Goodluck Jonathan signed the anti-gay marriage bill into law last year. This was even as America’s Supreme Court was yet to give its blessing to same-sex marriage. As I have always argued on this page, one man’s meat is another man’s fish (please pardon my adulteration of the original saying). The rest of the world too should have the right to freely decide whether given their socio-cultural circumstances, they want it gay or straight. That is the beauty of democracy.

  • Our hallowed chamber

    Our hallowed chamber

    Our lawmakers should start fighting for the people and not for themselves

    It was forward march to the past on Thursday as the House of Representatives members exchanged blows on the floor of the House over the sharing of its principal positions.  The angry lawmakers tore each other’s clothes, exchanged blows, upturned tables and threw bound copies of law books, kicked chairs and shouted on top of their voices during the fracas that lasted for about 105 minutes. So, those who thought we have seen the last of fisticuffs in the hallowed chambers of our National Assembly now know how mistaken they are. Although the June 25 crisis was somewhat expected, the surprise, again, is that it has come this early. Indeed, it must have been obvious to the discerning by June 9 when the National Assembly was proclaimed that all was not likely to be well in that arm of government for some time to come.

    The bile this time was not significantly different from that of the past: sharing of positions in the House. Two main things that our lawmakers don’t joke with are their salaries and allowances, as well as political offices. In the Thursday instance, the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had written to the speaker, Yakubu Dogara, to announce Mr Femi Gbajabiamila as Majority Leader; Mr Alhassan Ado Doguwa as his deputy; Mr Mohammed Monguno as chief whip and Mr P. Iriase as his deputy. As the party with the majority members of the House, this appears within the party’s prerogative. These were the names the APC members expected the speaker to read to members with their various positions on Thursday. But, instead of doing that, the speaker called for an executive session. This did not go down well with those who felt he should have announced those names as the party’s candidates; and trouble started.

    The Senate President had earlier on June 9 rebuffed similar instructions passed to him by the party leadership. The dirty horse-trading eventually had the post of deputy senate president ceded to Ike Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a senate dominated by APC members. Mercifully however, the kind of fracas that occurred in the House of Representatives was averted then because 51 other APC members were at the International Conference Centre in Abuja for a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari when Senator Bukola Saraki quickly conducted the election (coup) that saw him emerge as senate president.

    However, anyone who is seeing the developments in the National Assembly only in the context of intra-party squabbles over leadership positions is making a big mistake. I see it more in the context of President Buhari’s anti-corruption war.  I have often said that corruption would not fold its arms and watch being rubbished as President Buhari might want to do; it would always fight back, especially in a country like ours which it used to see as a haven. It is in the interest of corruption that the ruling party does not know peace. In all these crises, the president has his own share of the blame. As a matter of fact, the PDP said that much. Even if I so believe for different reasons, I would neither elucidate nor amplify, at least not now. Suffice it to say that it would be myopic and naïve of the president not to have so far seen the nexus between the National Assembly crises and his anti-corruption war.

    Secondly, those who thought it would take ages for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that was defeated in the last general elections to learn the ropes as opposition party must be prepared for even more shockers. The party is fast adjusting and must be savouring the developments in the National Assembly; that is if not saying outright that it serves them (APC) right! The point is, PDP might be pretending to be standing aloof, but it is working underground and it is the result of its surreptitious endeavours that is manifesting in the National Assembly. But nobody should blame the former ruling party; it is not easy to be out there in the cold just like that, after being in power for 16 unbroken years.

    So, it is the ruling party that has a lot of job to do to show that it can manage its success at the polls. Unless the APC is able to find amicable solutions to the challenges as some of its stalwarts have been promising, some of these matters may end up in the law courts, given the fact that each of the caucuses is digging deeper rather than beat a retreat. The big questions that could make it near-impossible for the dramatis personae to retreat include, for example, whether it is possible for Senator Saraki or Dogara to back down at this stage, because of the circumstances under which they emerged as senate president and speaker of the house, respectively. Where do they put their allies in the PDP who made their emergence possible if they do that? I guess at this point, the question of who is right or wrong is almost late in the day. Suffice it to say that a matter that ought to have been an internal affair of the ruling party has been exposed to external manipulation and the PDP, expectedly, is taking full advantage of the situation.

    What is happening is that, since the elections had been won and lost, the scales had since fallen from the eyes of the hitherto romantic multitude of incompatible lovers. Everyone, it seems, can see clearly now that the rain that lumped the pigeons with fowls is either gone, or at least subsiding. Whether it is to thy tent O Israel is however still in the womb of time. As a matter of fact, that is left to both sides to decide. They both hold all the aces as to whether to stay together and enjoy their wedlock, or endure it, as the case may be.

    But, if the legislators must fight in the hallowed chambers again, they are free to. As a matter of fact, they can even remove each other’s teeth with blows  but not over their obscene salaries and allowances or over political positions, but over the multifarious problems facing the country. As one of my fans once said, that (their salaries and allowances) is one point on which they are ever so united. Mum is usually the word across party lines when the issue comes to legislators’ pay. It has been like that since the lawmakers began by approving for themselves N5m each as furniture allowance in 1999.

    The point I am making is that, so far, the lawmakers have been fighting the bad fight. Let them resolve henceforth, to fight the good fight. Dogara seemed to realise this when he said on Thursday: “To be candid, we have promised so much in the course of our elections and even the very party I belong to… the APC… we have promised change and Nigerians expect us to really talk about those matters, those issues that bother them most. They want to hear us talk about unemployment, poverty, in my region they want us to address insecurity and as long as this House is divided and not united, we cannot achieve that”.

    He did not fail to mention that they have been lucky indeed to be elected. “Let me remind us of the fact that, we are a very, very fortunate people. In a nation of 170 million people, only 360 of us are selected or elected to represent the people and we should be grateful to our constituents for sending us here”, he said before adjourning the House to July 21. July 21 may seem a long time, but it is not. That is why it is important for the ruling party to get its act together and give Nigerians the promised ‘change’.

    So far, that much expected change is not yet born. It is still in the womb of time.

  • Nigeria’s own ‘Rotten Parliament’?

    Nigeria’s own ‘Rotten Parliament’?

    What our National Assembly members take home is ungodly and inhuman.
    They should slash, instead of trying to justify it

    Even if our senators and House of Representatives members went to the National Assembly naked, they would not require N506,600 each per annum as wardrobe allowance in a country where minimum wage is N18,000. Of course we cannot stop those of them with the means to wear the best of apparels money can buy. But those who cannot should wear whatever the country can afford given its dire economic predicament. After all, the law makers were elected for the primary purpose of making laws and not for fashion parade. The rest of us do not have to go naked for our law makers to look good. Even at the all-time low N18,000 minimum wage, many states are months in arrears. Our lawmakers are not talking about this.

    That over 16 years after the N5million each furniture allowance for our legislators raised ruckus in the country we are still grappling with allowances for them, has proved that we are nowhere near getting the legislators to shed weight. About two months ago, a legislator from one of the state houses of assembly was asked on a live television show, what his take-home pay was. Apparently caught off-guard by the question from an angry caller, the lawmaker murmured some mumbo-jumbo. When he finally found his voice, he said “em em … about (I think) N1m per month”. The angry caller was not impressed by the ‘about’ and he resorted, “so, you don’t even know how much you earn monthly?” The legislator made frantic effort to justify his inexactitude. The caller then asked why the legislator was trying to justify that lawmakers’ pay was not outrageous. He replied that the caller did not know what the issues were. He said there are a lot of people that the legislators ‘settle’ and that if they did not ‘settle’ them, the legislator would not return to the house. Now, the question is: must he return to the house? Was he born there?

    One may say this legislator is naïve for revealing that much, but what he said is the truth. Most legislators want to return to the house. Yet, I have not seen any of them that has convinced anyone as to why they should receive the bogus pay they get. Even when Dimeji Bankole, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives visited The Nation when he was speaker and he was asked the same question on their pay, he laboured in vain to convince the editors that he was addressing on the issue. He brought  his pay slip to the newspaper house and even waxed dramatic by handing it out to us for perusal. But we saw beyond the miserable figure in black ink and quickly pointed out to him that what we were talking about was beyond what was contained in the say-nothing pay slip; so, he should not call dog monkey for us.

    Some legislators say they must be well paid so as to insulate them from corruption, especially from the ministries, departments and parastatals they are carrying oversight on. For me, they are talking like this because this is Nigeria. In other places, both the giver and the taker of bribes, if caught, would go to jail.

    Besides, legislators’ primary responsibility is to make laws for good governance. But our own lawmakers have placed oversight and constituency projects over and above this primary responsibility because of the quick money they make from them. Even the newly inaugurated legislators are already scrambling for what they call juicy committees in the National Assembly instead of struggling to ensure making laws for good governance. It is because of the greed for oversight and constituency projects that our senators in the 7th National Assembly passed 46 bills in 10 minutes on June 3, barely 48 hours to the end of their tenure!

    If good pay is an antidote to corruption, then our lawmakers should have little or nothing to do with the cankerworm, as some of the most pampered in the world.  Despite being well paid, some of them even in the just-ended Seventh National Assembly still got involved in scandals. If we stretch the same logic of poor pay to the police and other sectors, then it means we should understand why police men and others too are corrupt?

    The point is, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) should ensure that whatever the legislators get is what our economy can sustain.  What obtains is outrageous. For example, as at June 2007, under a new salary package, each Senator was entitled to N53.7 million and a House of Representatives member, N47.9 million per annum. By 2013, the Nigerian lawmaker had become the world’s highest paid at N3million per month (basic salary minus outrageous allowances).  Given the new figures released for some of these emoluments, the senators are to get N4,052,800, N6,079,200 and N8,105,600m for housing, furniture and vehicles, respectively. House of Representatives members will however get N3,970,425, N5,955,637.50 and N7,940,850.50 each for the same purposes. These are mere percentages of their basic salaries and it also excluded the real money spinners for the lawmakers as contained in the fabulous constituency allowances, as well others that are hardly in the public domain.

    I am not aware there was any lawmaker that was drafted into the race. Many of them fought bitter struggles to get their tickets; many spent a fortune to get elected apparently because they expected to recoup their ‘investment’ later. But lawmaking is serious business and is meant for people who want to serve and not those who want to be served. Any of them who is not comfortable with what the country can afford should return home.

    It is fraudulent and self-serving for lawmakers to compare themselves with career civil servants as some of them are trying to do . If there is any issue with civil servants, it is not about their pay; rather, it is about corruption, particularly the ‘ghost workers’ syndrome’ and over-inflation of contracts. Many civil servants who served meritoriously for decades get nothing near what many of these political appointees get for working (?) in just four years. Our present lawmakers conveniently forget that this same job was done creditably by people on part-time basis in the First Republic.  Moreover, legislators in some other countries, including Britain and the United States of America, travel by rail; many live in rented apartments, etc. So, what is the big deal in being a lawmaker?   Why are our own lawmakers making a fetish of lawmaking?

    Our present legislators must begin to make the point that change has finally come rather than keep justifying the absurdity. Part of the ways to herald this change is by shedding some of these indefensible drains on the public till that they collect as pay, either directly or indirectly. We all must have learnt from the last general elections that Nigerians are no longer fools. Indeed, that was amply demonstrated by the protest over the wardrobe allowance last week, even though that was over-bloated. If we all agree that “charity begins at home”; then the ruling party’s lawmakers must live by this dictum. That is the only way they can make nonsense of the saying that there are no firstborns among pigs because all of them (from the oldest to the youngest), play in the mud.

    The legislators must be reminded of the British experience, specifically the public outrage that trailed the revelations by The Telegraph Group which in 2009 leaked the expense claims made by members of the United Kingdom Parliament over several years. Just as our own lawmakers are trying to shield the actual amount they take home annually, so did the British MPs too before the great revelations which caused a lot of public outrage. The MPs lost out and the matter got to the front burner of national discourse. The revelations led to a loss of confidence in politics and politicians. This was eventually followed by a large number of resignations, sackings, de-selections and retirement announcements, together with public apologies and the repayment of expenses by the over- pampered MPs. Indeed, some of them were prosecuted and convicted.

    In summary, it was sundry matters like allowances and excess payments by the British MPs that led to political reforms even beyond these issues and ultimately to the derogatory reference to the British parliament elected in 2005 as the ‘Rotten Parliament’. Our National Assembly members must let reform come from within because coming from without could be catastrophic. They should not give Nigerians the opportunity of storming the place as the French people stormed the Bastille. They should spare a thought  for the  over 75 per cent of the citizens condemned to destitution and  living on less than $2 per day. They should remember the over 40 million youths which official statistics reckon to be jobless.

  • The fear out there

    The fear out there

    Can Saraki fight corruption?

    President Muhammadu Buhari became an issue in the last presidential election because of his antecedent in the anti-corruption war. The ‘Change’ slogan of the All Progressives Congress (APC) under which he contested itself became appealing to Nigerians as a result of this perception of Buhari as a man with zero tolerance for corruption. So, Buhari’s victory at the polls was Nigerians’ powerful statement of rejection of the Goodluck Jonathan administration and its romance with corruption which it glorified as ‘stealing’.

    That was why many Nigerians were shocked by what transpired in the National Assembly last Tuesday, when Senator Bukola Saraki was elected Senate President. He was able to get 34 votes from senators of his former party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as well as 23 from the APC, a clear indication of the gulf in the party. This was at a time majority of the other APC senators were said to have gone to honour an invitation from President Buhari, probably in a last ditch effort to mediate in the crisis that had rocked the party before Tuesday and make the party speak with one voice in the election.

    Although the APC does not have two-thirds of the membership of the Senate, it has a simple majority. With that, Nigerians went to sleep after the elections, thinking that they had done their bit to give the party the opportunity to dictate the policy thrust in the National Assembly, which is crucial in the fight against corruption.

    The same situation applies to the House of Representatives where the APC also has simple majority. Speaker Yakubu Dogara who (alongside Senator Saraki) defied the party to contest the position of speaker defeated the party’s favoured candidate, Femi Gbajabiamila, by a slight margin of 182 votes to 174. Apparently, the development in the Senate influenced the voting pattern in the House because the south west (where Gbajabiamila comes from) alone could not have produced the vice president, Senate President as well as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Apparently too, the crisis reflected the party’s inability to reconcile the different tendencies in its fold, especially with regards to the legislature’s leadership, a thing that eventually led to the mock primary that it held on June 6, preparatory to the inauguration of the National Assembly on June 9.

    Regrettably, the mock primary was itself mocked by the Saraki group which rejected its outcome outright and decided to defy the party by standing for election into the National Assembly positions against the party’s directive. Senator Saraki and his group promptly reported in the National Assembly and went straight to business. The rest is history.

    It is instructive though that, in a Senate with 108 members (one is dead), the upper legislative house started on such a shaky note. The APC initially threatened to deal with Senator Saraki and Co. even as some other senators also threatened to go to court to challenge the process of Saraki’s election. Unless the matter is amicably resolved, the eventual winner of the caucuses flexing muscles would depend on a lot of factors, including financial inducement, given the role that money was said to have played in the Senate even on Tuesday. This position is further strengthened by reports that some of the APC senators have been pledging to work with Senator Saraki.

    But the incident should not have caught anyone by surprise, unless we want to deceive ourselves. It was inevitable, whether in the long or the short run. The surprise element is that it came this early.  When you have political juggernauts and those who see themselves in that light in an alliance, there is bound to be problem. Remember too, the way and manner the APC was formed is another issue. It was not as if most of the people there are bound by any ideology; they just came together by happenstance. And that happenstance was the common enemy: former President Goodluck Jonathan. So, the only consideration that brought the different people from different backgrounds into the APC was the need to ease out the former president, probably for different reasons, too. It is now that that has been achieved that the centripetal tendency is now giving way to the centrifugal contradictions.

    But let me leave politics to politicians. After all, some of the APC senators who earlier said they would not accept the result of the senate election are reported to have resolved to work with Senator Saraki. These politicians, they work in mysterious ways, and that is why it is difficult to stick out one’s neck for them! I hear the reason for the volte face is to enable them be in the good books of Senator Saraki for consideration for juicy committee appointments!

    That, if true, is part of my fear for our politics. But my main worry is about Senator Saraki’s emergence as Senate President and the likely implications for the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption war. Even the uninitiated knows that President Buhari won the presidential elections because of his anti-corruption credentials. Indeed, I said in this column after the retired general emerged the presidential hopeful of the APC that the PDP was in trouble. Even the PDP knew; and that was why they resorted to hate campaign when they should be advertising their achievements.

    Mercifully, I am not alone in my fears that President Buhari’s anti-corruption war may soon enter into some troubled waters with the developments in the National Assembly; many other people share a similar sentiment.  Indeed, some of them called on Tuesday as the event unfolded to ask how the war would be won with Senator Saraki as the Number Three Citizen. Many of my colleagues received the same message either via personal calls or through text messages. Will Senator Saraki be comfortable when laws are to be made to make people who once grounded our banks pay for their crime? Will he be at home with laws or efforts to make those who exploited and are still exploiting Nigerians through fuel subsidy account for their actions? Or will he be at ease when the powers that are keeping Nigerians in perpetual darkness despite the humongous amounts of dollars we have spent on power projects are asked to vomit the public funds that they had swallowed? These and many more other questions went on simultaneously in my mind and made me uncomfortable throughout last Tuesday and even for the better part of Wednesday. I am just recovering from the stupor. Again, many people who sent similar messages of depression wondered aloud if this would not be a mere continuation of the business as usual in the Senate.

    It should be understood that there is nothing personal about my fears and Senator Saraki. It is just a matter of his antecedent and the antecedents of some of those behind him. I have no doubt Senator Saraki would be shocked if he conducts an independent opinion poll about what I am talking about. Of course I am not unaware that some people would want to ask whether some other people or persons are better than Senator Saraki when the issue is corruption. But that is beside the point. Those people are not the country’s Number One or Number Two citizen or even Number Three; even if they were, they had served in different periods, including when the government did not see any need to deal the corruption cankerworm a serious blow that would make all other things fall in place, because corruption is at the root of almost all our problems in the country.

    I have said it before. And I am restating it; that corruption is not the easiest thing to fight because it would always fight back. To put it bluntly, not a few persons saw Senator Saraki’s emergence as part of the plot by corruption to put a clog in the wheel of President Buhari’s anti-corruption battle, even if the ruling party itself contributed inadvertently or otherwise to the development. I can only hope this is a misplaced fear. I sincerely pray so. For now, however, I hold my peace.