The Nation Newspaper

Category: Banji Akintoye

  • Reminder: Igbo have other messages for Nigeria

    Nigerians from all directions, including some of our most prominent citizens, have been raising their voices to condemn the noisy agitations by some Igbo youths for a separate country of Biafra. These condemnations are proper because we Nigerians are afraid to have a repeat of the barbarous confrontations and civil war of the late 1960s. However, it is critically important that we should not look only at the noises by the youths in the streets but also at very respectable statements that some Igbo leaders have made concerning order and stability in our country. I refer to the memorandum sent to the National Conference and by extension to Nigeria and the world at large, by the leaders of Ohanaeze Ndigbo early in 2014. Their highly respectable memorandum does not call for secession, or the breaking up of Nigeria. It calls for a sensible restructuring of our federation so as to give our country a chance to settle down, survive and prosper. I hereby put forth their memorandum in order to remind Nigerians that not all Igbo are calling for secession or the dismemberment of Nigeria, and that many highly placed and respectable Igbo citizens have given very serious thought to the future, prosperity and greatness of our country. Here then is an excerpt of their memorandum:

    The recognition of the significance of ethnicity was clear at the birth of an independent Nigeria in 1960. The larger ethnic units of Hausa/Fulani-Igbo-Yoruba formed the basis of the three regions –North-East-West. Ethno-based agitations aimed at asserting the separate identities of the smaller groups promptly sprouted in the Midwest, Middle Belt, and the Calabar Ogoja Rivers (COR).

    The current concept of six geo-political zones is also ethnically based, with three zones for the larger nationalities, and three for combinations of the small nationalities. Thus the nationalities are recognized and accepted as the building blocks of Nigeria.

    In all policy making, Nigeria must allow to its component nationalities free-play and equitable access to our country’s resources and strategic political command posts. Sustained imbalance in sharing responsibilities and the ‘national cake’ could make some nationalities feel not belonging. The break-up of ethnically composite countries, some very powerful and prosperous, like the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, took place along ethnic lines. We must avoid going the same routes, and we can only do so through an equity-oriented formula that creates a comfortable sense of belonging for all our nationalities.

    At independence in 1960, what our founding fathers settled for was a full-blown federal structure, with three regions, East-North-West, as the federating units of our nation. All three regions were constitutionally equal in status. A fourth region, the Midwest, was created by regular constitutional amendment in 1963.

    Thus, the 1963 “Constitution of the Federation” (Republican Constitution), Chapter 1, Section 5(1) states:

    “Subject to the provisions of this constitution, the constitution of each region shall have force of law throughout that region, and if any other law is inconsistent with that constitution, the provisions of that constitution shall prevail and the other law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency be void”.

    Almost thirty (30) years of military rule has transformed our federation into a quasi-unitary state bringing along with it political instability. It is important to admit that the federation upon which Nigeria was born and founded no longer exists. What now exists is an over-centralized central government called “federal” government.

    For the sake of a SUSTAINABLE NIGERIA as ONE COUNTRY; AND FOR THE SAKE OF DEVELOPMENT; AND FOR THE SAKE OF FUTURE GENERATIONS OF NIGERIANS, we must face the FACT that the STATUS QUO is untenable. We must reaffirm and re-establish TRUE FEDERALISM as the best system for Nigeria.

    TRUE-FEDERALISM is CRITICAL to the strengthening of the foundation of ONE NIGERIA. TRUE-FEDERALISM eliminates the fear of domination by one or a combination of groups of Nigerians over others and reduces ethno-cultural tension, thus releasing the positive and creative energies of Nigerians to the building of a nation that will be a pride to all black people on earth.

    In other words, NIGERIA HAS A BRIGHT FUTURE AS ONE COUNTRY ONLY TO THE EXTENT THAT THE CONSTITUENT COMPONENTS ALSO HAVE A FUTURE. The primary challenge for us Nigerians is to reduce potential ETHNIC and SECTIONAL conflict areas to the SAFEST MINIMUM.

    This means a sincere affirmation of true federalism by all Nigerians. This implies appreciable decentralization of power and responsibilities from the centre (federal) to federating units. This implies greater financial resources to the federating units in tandem with increased responsibilities etc.

    One of the most important advantages of TRUE FEDERALISM is the equilibrium between the CENTRE (Federal) and REGIONS (Federating Units). In a country like Nigeria with multi-ethnic nationalities, the constitutional balance required by TRUE FEDERALISM should limit the tendency towards over-centralization.

    The major danger and risk of imposing a strong central government (over-centralization) is that it can only be achieved only by those who control the levers of power. An all-powerful federal government controlling the bulk of NATIONAL PURSE and economic development is not desirable. It cannot endure and will not be tolerated indefinitely by the disadvantaged sections of the country, and there shall be several attempts to reverse it leading to serious and constant disequilibrium in the polity.

    There can be no doubt that Nigeria was making more progress in national development in the pre-independence decade and the  early years of its independence when it practiced a true federalism of three or four regions with more extensive powers devolved from the centre to the regions. Those were the days of the significant export of groundnuts, hides and skins, and the tin ore from the North; of cocoa from the West; of rubber from the Mid-West; and of palm produce and coal from the East of Nigeria. They were also the days of such achievements as the free universal education in Chief Awolowo’s Western region, and of the burgeoning industrialization of Dr. Okpara’s Eastern region.

    To return to true federalism, we need a major restructuring of our current architecture of governance. We would need six federating units, instead of our present 36 units which not only sustain an over-dominant centre, but also compel the country to spend not less than 74% of its revenue on the cost of administration. If the existing 36 states must be retained in some form, they could be made cost-effective development zones with minimal administrative structures within the six federating units.

    WITH THIS BACKGROUND NDIGBO STRONGLY ADVOCATE THE RESTRUCTURING OF NIGERIA INTO SIX (6) REGIONS BASED ON ETHNIC/LINGUISTIC GROUPSNAMELY:

    1. South-east region
    2. South-west region
    3. South-south region
    4. North-central region
    5. North-east region
    6. North-west region. With ABUJA as the FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY

    The (boundary) inequities and injustices of previous exercises shall be redressed In the delineation exercise for the new six-region federal structure.

    Each region shall have the right to determine the number of states, local governments, and district/community councils that shall constitute the region, according to the limits of their resources.

    The federal government shall not be involved in state, local government, and district/community council’s matters.

    The powers of the central (federal) government shall be drastically reduced in favour of the regions as federating units. As a guide we recommend that federal government functions shall not exceed those exercised by the centre (federal) at Nigeria’s Independence in 1960.

    We recommend that the institution of Police shall be two-tiered – a federal police, and a regional police.

    The Nigeria armed forces shall be organized into six regional commands.

    RELIGION: The government of the federation, of a region, of a state, or of a local government shall NOT adopt any religion as national, regional, state, or local government religion.

    This is a noteworthy contribution to the Nigerian debate. We Nigerians should consider this memorandum and similar memoranda from other nationalities in the interest of our country, Nigeria.

  • Mr President, take a look at our 1970s 

    Mr President, I am sure you hear this everyday so I am not saying anything new – namely that you are producing a revolution. It appears that your promises are no longer just promises but a major programme of change and improvement in the quality of life in our country. A young Nigerian living abroad telephoned me a few days ago and he was totally ecstatic about the news from home. I am sure that many Nigerians at home feel the same way. From various directions, you are doing things that Nigerians had never imagined possible.

    Take for instance what you are doing with our military bosses – about 20 generals being called to answer for the money they have allegedly been looting for decades. We used to be told that the military was incapable of fighting Boko Haram, that our young soldiers were being sent into battle without the right quantity and quality of arms and ammunition which meant that they were being sent to their sure deaths. Desertions became a regular feature in our military. It was so bad that the wives of soldiers demonstrated in the barracks because their husbands were being sent to their deaths. Some of our soldiers tried to kill their commanding officer. Morale in the military was at an all-time low. All in all, the image of Nigeria was being destroyed worldwide.

    Thanks to your war on corruption we are now getting to the roots of these things. The number of hitherto untouchable eminent Nigerians involved and the huge amounts of money that are being mentioned makes the average Nigerian wonder how this country has survived until now. Obviously, the people stealing these humongous amounts of money were not only seeking to enrich themselves, they were actually engaged in an effort to destroy their country. If your effort against corruption succeeds to its logical conclusion, you may go down in history as the man who saved the image of the black man in the world.

    It’s for these reasons that I have been coming up with suggestions about the directions in which you could take our country to the best advantage.  Last week, I suggested that you focus on empowering our youths, giving them new skills and training them in job ethics, thereby attracting businesses and investment to our country. I described how the small country of Singapore achieved those purposes. Today, I want to show you an opportunity that existed in the 1970s but was rejected by our leaders of that time. The 1970s were a decade of choice for Nigeria. After putting an end to our civil war in 1970, we suddenly began to find ourselves in a lot of money coming from the mining and export of our oil. The rush of money was so great that our young head of state, General Gowon, told us Nigerians that we were making more money than we had the executive capacity to utilise. He then decided to pump the money into the pockets of Nigerians through wage increases and arrears of increases. It was a good and patriotic thing to do, but it was not backed by a careful study of its possible effects. The effect that immediately arose was that we began to import anything and everything.

    Moreover, in the midst of the euphoria, our military rulers decided to themselves that they were entitled to become rich by sharing public money. A system of government was quickly established in which the stealing and sharing of public money was the norm. They destroyed the old rules and regulations that protected the nation’s purse and instituted various ways of direct access to it. The system became known as kleptocracy i.e. government of thieves for the principal purpose of stealing government money. The name became popular but unfortunately the system also became popular. It became the norm that if one got a job in the government it was paramount to show that one is doing very well for oneself. From all directions, Nigerians struggled to benefit from the system. The rest of the story is well known. Its chief consequence is poverty for masses of our people.

    There was however another tendency alive at the same time. After Chief Awolowo came out of the Gowon military cabinet, his unhappiness with the growing system of corruption became gradually well known. Fortunately he was appointed Chancellor of the then University of Ife and that brought him frequently into the company of intellectuals who agreed with him on a whole lot of things. Around him a whole national movement gradually crystallised. The direction sought by the new movement was to terminate the corruption in the regime and to institute a new effort to use the huge oil revenues for a broad based development of our country. I write confidently about this movement because I was one of the persons in the centre of it. The objectives were to strengthen Nigeria firstly by improving upon the educational system and by empowering the local leadership of the various sections of Nigeria to promote the new education in their areas.

    Secondly, we intended to promote a widespread programme of skills and entrepreneurial development among the youth. We intended also to put a lot of money in various programmes of micro credit and assistance to small businesses among our people. We planned to promote a strong programme of exportation of Nigerian goods, especially to the richest markets in the world. We wanted to make Nigeria the Japan of Africa. We also wanted to promote a programme of integrated rural development which would not only develop agriculture but also strengthen our rural populations.

    Then we pinpointed certain broad national challenges that Nigeria needed to attend to emphatically, such as the encroachment of the Sahara desert, gully erosions in our eastern states, the terrible challenge of environmental degradation in the Niger delta states, and the growing threat of flooding in the Lagos area. But perhaps the most important of these challenges was the low level of education in the northern region. We intended to consult with our leaders in the north to produce a system acceptable to northerners for the expansion of education in the region.

    The summary is that we wanted to put the opportunity to prosper within the reach of every Nigerian. We were confident that if we had the chance to institute these programmes, there would be no need to fight corruption at all because all the available money would be going into urgent development programmes. In the constitutional realm, we were sure that our country needed a properly structured federation. We studied the Indian example and came to the conclusion that each of the largest nationalities of Nigeria should constitute a state in the federation, and the small contiguous nationalities in various parts of the country should form local federations that would become states in the Nigerian federation.

    This would have given us not more than 20 states in all. The objective of this was to give each Nigerian people a stake in their development and in the overall development of our country.

    I urge you, Mr President to look again at this whole programme.  It is a very significant part of the heritage of our country. We who put it together were sure that it would make our country prosperous – a great and powerful country in the world. I believe that if you look seriously at it you will agree that there cannot be any better way to destroy corruption. The actions you are taking now against prominent barons of corruption are commendable but I believe that the system that was developed in the 1970s would go a long way in destroying corruption for good and making our country prosperous and great.

    Ultimately as you would remember Mr President, our movement became the Unity Party of Nigeria. It was a broad and bold national effort towards greatness, prosperity and power. There was absolutely nothing sectional about it. Our leadership included brave men and women from all over the country eager for a new and prosperous Nigeria. As most Nigerians would remember the movement succeeded tremendously but the military leaders of the time did not want that kind of change. I believe the time has come for that change and I wish you Godspeed and I wish Nigeria the very bestof luck.

  • Let’s strike a bold new economic direction

    The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics recently informed us that 60.9% of Nigerians live in ‘absolute poverty’, and that more of us are daily falling into that category. One of our former presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo, has warned repeatedly that youth unemployment in our country is over 70%, stating that it is a major factor of our poverty and that Nigeria, for this reason, is sitting on a time bomb. Most Nigerians don’t understand the enormous weight that youth unemployment means. Our youths (aged 17 to 38) constitute the overwhelming majority of our population. Some statisticians say that people of this age bracket constitute as much as over 60% of our population. But they are not merely the majority amongst us, they are also the naturally strongest, most dynamic and most capable of production. They produce and nurse most of our babies and therefore have an enormous impact on our national character. They are the most agile, most inquisitive, most inventive and most venturesome section of our population. When we say that 70% of them are unemployed, we are saying something of tremendous importance. We are saying that we are losing the productive contribution of the largest, strongest, most dynamic and most productive section of our population. Rather than receiving production from them, we are having to provide for them from the little that the rest of us are able to produce. That is a major reason why more and more of us are falling into abject poverty. Massive youth unemployment is not something we should even think of living with. It is too dangerous. For instance it is not only robbing us of productivity, it is also plunging our society into crime. Denied productive employment, the agile hands and legs of our youth are producing aberrant behaviour in all sorts of fearful directions. As a result, informed observers classify Nigeria as one of the most unsafe places in the world in peacetime.

    For decades, the truth of our existence as a country has been hidden from us (especially from the leaders and rulers of the nation) by the large revenues from crude oil. Our federal rulers could look at the endless seas of cash brought in by the rents and royalties of crude oil and delude themselves that we are a rich country. Our state governors and local government managers could go to Abuja and return with fat cheques and also deceive themselves that we are a rich country. Upon that whole edifice of self-deception, they proceeded to build a gigantic culture of public corruption. But now, the oil bonanza seems to be vanishing. Our self- deception is about to come to a crashing halt. We are obviously about to confront some very unpleasant truths as a nation. It is time for us to rush back to our youths – the most productive part of our economy- and call upon them to help. A bold new direction is urgently called for in our economy.

    Fortunately at this critical moment, we have a president who has promised change and has declared war on the culture of public corruption. It is therefore greatly welcome that President Muhammadu Buhari, in his first budget, is promising major steps towards youth development in order to empower and employ our youths. We must pray that he is able to push it as fast and as far as the situation demands. While he and his men are putting together the elements of the programme on youth development, I would like to offer him the suggestion that he should look at what Singapore did between 1965 and 1975. By 1965 Singapore was a desperately poor province of the Federation of Malaysia. It had no resources in land, forests, minerals, or even soft water. It was riddled with violent, corrupt and riotous politics. Almost all its youths were unemployed and unemployable. Crime was rampant. To do business at all, business owners usually had to surrender to extortion and make regular secret payments to criminal gangs. Masses of youths frequently rioted in the streets and the federal government regularly deployed security forces there to tackle the riots. One huge riot in 1965 went on for three months! As a result of this constant trouble, the federal prime minister proposed at the parliament that Singapore be expelled from the federation. Parliament overwhelmingly approved and Singapore suddenly found itself a separate country without any preparation. No country can be poorer than that. The leading Singaporean politician, a lawyer named Lee Kuan Yew, wept as he made the devastating announcement to his country. “For me and for Singapore”, he sobbed over the radio, “this is a day of anguish”.

    Yet, by 1975, 10 years later, Singapore had become one of the most successful economies in the world.  By 1976 when I visited Singapore, most of the world was already celebrating Singapore as “the Asian Success Model”. So how did Singapore do it? The central piece in their programme of development was to focus on the youth and to call them out to work. But first as preliminary, all the politicians agreed to commit to a responsible, cautious and orderly politics. As the country’s partisan and inter-ethnic politics simmered down, the youth riots gradually waned too. Then the government and leaders agreed on a bold new agenda to make the youths employable. Various institutions were created to teach modern job skills. Some businesses were licensed to teach job skills in their premises under government supervision.  All of the training was accompanied by very serious programmes of work ethics. To prepare the younger children for the system, very serious effort was put into improving education at the primary and secondary levels. Within years, Singapore’s workers had become known worldwide as skilled workers and highly dependable employees. As a result, businesses hurried to establish branches in Singapore and investors rushed there. Singapore’s people themselves then developed confidence to start businesses. By and by, a strong programme of infrastructural development followed. Singapore has continued to prosper. Its workmen are proud in their skills and in their efficiency and high work ethics. They are known to always seek to improve their service in all directions. Singapore’s educational system is now widely regarded as one of the best in the world. In fact, in education, this little country has much to teach the world, including even the giant, United States of America.

    In short, Nigeria’s youth development programme must focus on a sound combination of job and entrepreneurial skills and work ethics amongst our youths. It is not enough for a young, agile, intelligent and creative person to have good job skills, it is also critically important that he should be loyal to the success of his employers. A great deal of unemployment among our youth is a result of a lack of modern job skills. Even the job opportunities that are available struggle to find skilled workers. For instance our cities are expanding tremendously and that means a lot of jobs in the building trade. Sadly, it is well known that builders these days are having to recruit workmen from other countries.  A foreign company that won a contract to clean and plumb ships in the Apapa ports just could not find suitable Nigerian plumbers and had to recruit low level plumbers from their own country in Europe. It is also well known that there is a myth in Nigeria and abroad, that Nigerian workers are too disloyal to be employed. Of course the myth is unfair to a lot of our youth, but that’s what myths do – they include the good with the bad. Our youths desperately and urgently need a massive national programme of job and entrepreneurial skills and work ethics. We are well able to turn our economy around in just a few years. One must add of course is the promoter of this programme, each state must be used as the development unit in it and the state authorities empowered for that role. I hope President Buhari’s people are reading this. We must all wish them good success.

  • We need desperately to restructure

    As ever, we hear daily, stories of inter-ethnic conflicts in countries of Black Africa. We read of unrest in the Central African Republic, turbulence in Burundi, the probability of a return to violence in Rwanda, the continued disaster of Somalia, ethnic animosities and threats of secession in Uganda, continued terrorism and the rampage of warlords in the eastern provinces of the Republic of Congo, similar agitations in Angola, Mozambique, trouble in Mali, Chad – the list goes on.

    When we read these things, we Nigerians must recognise that these are things that can happen in our country too. In fact, we must be honest and admit that signs of them already exist in Nigeria. The Biafra agitations in Igboland, the endless inter-ethnic conflicts in the Middle Belt, the contribution of ethnic discontent to the strength of Boko Haram, the growing dissatisfaction among the masses of educated Yoruba youths – are all developments that we must accord the seriousness they deserve.

    The glaringly obvious answer is to restructure this federation appropriately and empower each people group as much as possible to develop itself in the context of Nigeria and to gradually banish poverty from among its peoples.

    It is in the light of these that I re-read the written message brought by a distinguished delegation of Northern leaders, representing the Arewa Consultative Forum, to a meeting of the Yoruba Unity Forum holding at Ikenne on December 15, 2012. ACF is the topmost organization of the Hausa-Fulani political leadership of the North; and the Yoruba Unity Forum is one of the topmost organizations of the Yoruba political leadership of the South-west. The said document is therefore a message exchanged between two organizations representing the two largest nationalities of Nigeria – the Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba.  That makes it a truly historic document. What the prestigious delegation of the Hausa Fulani leadership had to communicate to the august gathering of Yoruba leaders that day says much about our country.

    I first read this document soon after its message was delivered at Ikenne and I was highly impressed then by its form and formalities. I am still impressed by the same today.

    Even so, I find the core proposition of the message shocking and embarrassing. The central proposition of the message was that no real change is needed in the way that Nigeria is organized and managed today! That proposition is summed up in the following staggering sentence: “Today, we have reached a point at which certain groups are calling for a re-negotiation of many settled issues in our nation”!

    What does ACF mean here by “many settled issues” that “certain groups are calling for a re-negotiation of”?  Surprisingly, as they spell out quite unmistakably in their message, they mean the structure that the Nigerian federation has today – the structure that, gradually and deliberately between 1966 and 1999, the Federation of Nigeria was given by a succession of northern military dictatorships punctuated now and then by northern-led civilian presidencies.

    The ACF message urges that, in discussing the issues relating to Nigeria’s decline and near-failure, we should eschew recriminations. I agree with that. And I am sure that most Nigerians would agree. Recriminations will not solve the titanic problems of our country.

    But I am sure too that most Nigerians want Nigeria’s political leaders to be sincere and open in discussing Nigeria’s problems. Our country’s situation is desperate, to put it mildly. The war on corruption by the present Buhari presidency is a step in the right direction; but the most important step in the right direction would be to restructure our federation properly. Corruption is one of the symptoms of Nigeria’s decline; the warped and distorted structure of our federation is the root of our country’s decline.

    Any group that continues to insist now that our federation’s structure as it is today is “settled” and not open to discussion obviously needs to rethink in the interest of us all. In the interest of Nigeria’s recovery, orderliness and prosperity, the ACF and its principals must recognise that continued resistance to a proper restructuring of this “federation” by a prestigious nation like the Hausa-Fulani nation is dangerous to Nigeria.

    The stakes are simply too high to allow for continued evasions and dogged stonewalling. This country must sincerely and seriously sort itself out. Our country is a country of many nations. These nations had evolved over thousands of years before the British came along and used their stronger technology to push all of us together into one country. In spite of one-hundred years of living together in Nigeria, these nations are still alive and strong. Even in similar multi-nationality countries where the nationalities have lived together as one country for many centuries, the general tendency today is to give each nationality some local autonomy to manage its affairs in its own way and to make its own kind of contribution to the country it belongs to. Britain, India, Switzerland, Indonesia, Spain, and others, are doing just that. I repeat that even the British who forced all our nationalities together to create Nigeria are now pursuing the policy of “Devolution” – which means giving each nationality (the Scots, English, Welsh and Irish)  the freedom to design its constitution, control its own national government, and develop its own economy – in the context of the oneness of Britain.

    As we prepared for independence in the 1950s, our political leaders were in no doubt that our nationalities should be given the recognition and development freedom that they deserved. That is why they agreed to a federal structure for Nigeria and allowed each of the regions of the federation to manage itself in its own way. The regions made commendable achievements in development, and at independence, our country was a land of hope and pride, a country that the world viewed with great expectation. All that was needed was to take the regional autonomy lower to the level of the nationalities – to grant the petitions of the group of minority nationalities in each region for a region of their own.

    But, unfortunately, after independence, the northern politicians who controlled the Federal Government decided that the Federal Government must control all things in Nigeria, and that the federating units must all be subject to the whims and caprices of the controllers of the Federal Government. By the beginning of the present century, our country had become a battered and broken entity on the edge of a precipice. An overwhelming majority of our citizens, in all regions of our country, are wallowing in poverty and hopelessness. Even the North was beginning, as at independence, under Sir Ahmadu Bello’s highly respectable leadership, to make impressive economic and social progress. I had the privilege in 1961 of visiting this great premier of the North in his office, and of listening to him for a few minutes as he told us what he was doing for the people of the Northern Region. I left his presence very proud of him, and very proud of my country and myself.  Now, the North is sunk and sinking in poverty, and countless youths of the North are reacting to their hopelessness by giving their energies to callings that are dedicated to destroying, killing and wrecking. And yet, some of the men who have been elevated to high positions of leadership in that same North are telling us and the world that the distortions that have led our country to these disasters are “settled” and not open to discussion? It is unbelievable!

    Most Nigerians are saying that the present structure and situation of their country is untenable and unsustainable. The Yoruba nation, the Igbo nation, the nations of the Delta, the nations of the Middle Belt, and the Kanuri and related peoples of the Northeast, all speaking through countless voices and organizations at home and abroad, are saying so. It is time the Hausa-Fulani leadership come forth to say so too.

    The dream of one region’s domination of Nigeria is anachronistic and unattainable. Striving for it is chasing shadows – and chasing shadows in a manner that only generates Nigeria’s decline and promotes ever-increasing poverty and hopelessness for the millions of Nigerians. The dream of a prosperous and great Nigeria is attainable. We can make Nigeria prosperous, and we can all prosper together in Nigeria.  That is a goal worthy to strive for.

     

    • This article was first published on December 17, 2015.

  • Buhari presidency: Where we stand

    It’s the end of one year and the beginning of another. In the past seven months, we have had the Buhari presidency. Predictably, his is probably one of the most important presidencies in the history of our country. So where do we stand today?  Buhari started his bid for the presidency with a big promise of change. His credentials for change were good and impressive. Moreover, the circumstances made him supremely believable. Most of us Nigerians were simply embarrassed to be ruled by a presidency that had become a byword for lack of thinking, planning, doing and achieving. So when Buhari with his history of opposition to corruption stepped on the scene, most of us were ready to believe.

    Today we can say that we are not disappointed. Buhari does sincerely hate and despise corruption. He consistently demonstrates that through his rhetoric and his actions. So what do we expect from his war against corruption? He waged war against it before as a military dictator but the barons of corruption raised up another military dictator to boot him out. Today he is fighting corruption as an elected leader of a democratic government. Can we expect better results than before? Of course we hope so, but the facts in front of us tarnish that hope somewhat. The barons of corruption are still very much at work and are achieving a measure of success against Buhari from various directions. Manifestly, they have recruited the National Assembly as their allies. They are also using the legal system to resist the Buhari anti-corruption agenda. They are evidently determined to maintain their position and the benefits accruing therefrom. So it is beginning to look to observers, that the role of Buhari in the war against corruption in our country may be only that of a forerunner. He may be the man who will re-awaken the awareness of the importance of anti-corruption as well as invigorate our hope that corruption can be beaten. Meanwhile, what the future may hold in store is that a young passionate patriot may somehow step into the presidency and proceed to do for Nigeria what Jerry Rawlings did for Ghana. That is gather the richest, the most recalcitrant and the most influential barons of corruption and line them up before a firing squad. It would appear, unfortunately, that nothing less will rid this nation of the scourge of such deep rotted corruption in the high places of our land. If that is what our future brings, we must not forget, then, that there had been a man called Buhari who inspired us never to give up the fight against corruption. That seems likely to be the heritage of Buhari in the history of our country.

    On the economic front, Buhari has stepped into the presidency at a most difficult moment. Since about 1970, Nigeria’s rulers have built Nigeria’s whole economic life on the assumption that crude oil will forever pump floods of revenue into our national coffers. Building on that assumption, they progressively neglected other resources of our country. They also systematically distorted our federation, accumulated all power and resource control in the hands of federal government and took away from our states all capabilities to champion and promote development in their domains. Ultimately they have turned our states into beggars, ever waiting for doles from federal government. They have turned governance in our states into merely taking financial allocation from Abuja and dispensing it. The result is that poverty has been enthroned in our lives. Education has collapsed in our state schools. Our youth is mostly alarmingly unemployed and un-provided for, our infrastructure has largely collapsed and our communities have deteriorated abominably. It is good to have a man of Buhari’s sincerity at the helm of affairs, but what can he achieve since the foundations have been so fearfully destroyed?

    We can all see that he faces serious challenges to needed action. One major challenge is the steep fall in the price of crude oil and the resulting revenues therefrom. From about $115 per barrel in mid 2014, oil is now selling for about $35 per barrel. Under the pressure, the naira is now declining precipitously – from about N180 per dollar just a few months ago to over N280 now. Inevitably, Nigeria’s borrowing capacity in the world is eroding out of hand, and so we must ask, what is the possible road ahead?

    Another challenge facing Buhari is one stubborn feature of our country’s political tradition. One section of our country insists on controlling everything in line with the system created by the British for us at independence. As we can all observe today, no matter how Nigerian-minded Buhari may be, he is still somewhat subject to the demands and expectations of the Arewa North. We saw this in his appointments into the non-ministerial positions in his presidency. After appointing northerners to almost all positions, he made the unfortunate statement that he had appointed only the persons known to him. Of course we know that Buhari is aware that his duty as president is to seek the best from all over the nation to fill such important posts. The feeling in other parts of the country is that he did so to satisfy the powerful Arewa North voices. Most Nigerians also believe that the way his party, the APC is being treated is also because he is trying to please the Arewa North. It looks as if certain forces are seeking to sideline the APC in the making and management of this presidency. And that is certainly not good for our country. Our system provides that a political party will put itself, its agenda and its candidates before us to vote for. After we have so voted, we are supposed to expect that the party will be fully part of the whole package of governance. The duty of our president is not merely to govern by the day, it is also to ensure orderly progression and growth to our future as a country. Operating the system as it is provided for in our constitution is critical to our future as a nation.

    Moreover it also appears that it is because President Buhari must yield to a section of our country that he is not responding at all to repeated demands for the restructuring of our federation. The demands come in daily from all areas and he has studiously abstained from touching the subject. Yet, restructuring is the key to a lot of the problems that we face now as a nation. To revamp our economy, we must now have a federation in which the states and their governments are dynamic centres and agencies of development. That means that we must show respect to our nationalities in the making of our states. It also means that we must redistribute power and resource control to give considerable power and capability to our states. This will also greatly advance the fight against corruption. Unfortunately our Arewa North leaders have consistently opposed these measures. Some of them have threatened to start a war rather than allow a disruption of the status quo. Most sections of Nigeria are saying that the status quo is untenable and President Buhari must respond to that. Some are even going as far as to threaten trouble for our country if these measures are not taken. Our President cannot continue to ignore these voices.

    President Buhari has earned himself many sincere friends across Nigeria. A decent man like him who so sincerely despises corruption deserves our respect and support. Therefore those of us who respect and support him must urge him to muster the courage to do the best by our country. That will make us very proud indeed.

  • Look out!

    Something historically mighty is happening on the border between Nigeria and Benin Republic in the area of Kwara State. Like most of the borders created by European founders of Africa’s modern countries, the Nigeria-Benin border here splits an ancient African people into two, one half in Nigeria and the other in Benin. What is happening now is that the people themselves, the Bariba, are slowly erasing the colonial boundary and re-unifying themselves as one people. In the process, the Nigeria-Benin border is reported to have moved – and to be moving – eastwards in favour of Benin and against Nigeria, and as many as 16 villagesare reported to have changed from being part of Nigeria to being part of Benin Republic. And all of this is happening peacefully, almost imperceptibly. As far as is known, this is a first in Sub-Saharan Africa.

    It raises the big question: Is this a beginning of a trend in the future of the countries which European imperialist agents bequeathed to us in Africa? Could a time come when the political map of Sub-Saharan Africa would undergo massive redrawing?

    As a result of the largely irrational borders created by imperialist agents all over Africa, practically all Sub-Saharan African countries were faced immediately at independence by serious border problems. For instance, take Nigeria, Africa’s largest country in population and third largest in territorial size at independence. Hardly any one mile of Nigeria’s thousands of miles of borders stands free of serious, and potentially explosive, border conflicts. In its south-western length, it cuts through the homeland of the Yoruba; further north from there, it cuts through the homeland of the Bariba; in the north-west, through the country of the Hausa; in the north-east through the country of the Kanuri and related peoples; in the south-east through the homelands of peoples who straddle the Nigerian-Cameroons border in the Adamawa Mountains and the Cross River swamps. Naturally, since independence, Nigeria has more or less regularly had one border problem or other. The most publicized of such problems has been the dispute with the Cameroons over the Bakassi Peninsula. This dispute started soon after independence, was occasionally marked by armed conflicts, and sometimes threatened outright war between the two countries. It was resolved in 2006 as a result of intensive mediation by the United Nations. Even after that, significant residues of the bad blood have continued to linger. Even as recently as the first months of 2010, there were reports that Nigeria might send, or was sending, troops to the area because of seriously deteriorating security conditions for Nigerians living there.

    Though the Bakassi situation has attracted the most attention in the world, it has by no means been the only cause of dispute between Nigeria and the Cameroons. All along their 1,600 miles of border from Lake Chad in the north to the Gulf of Guinea in the south, Nigeria and the Cameroons have been locked in disputes since the 1960’s. Indeed, but for Nigeria’s intimidating size and influence in African affairs, the comparative weakness of the countries that are her neighbours and her own cautious restraint in her attitudes to border uncertainties, Nigeria should be perpetually engulfed in destabilizing border storms.

    Most other African countries have not been that fortunate. In fact, border conflicts became such a great potential threat to peace in the new Africa in the first years of independence that the OAU had to pass a resolution in 1964 binding all African countries to agree to maintain the borders bequeathed to them by the colonial powers. Even though most members of the OAU subscribed to that resolution, many neighbours have never been able specifically to settle their border disputes.

    In eastern Africa, Somalia and Kenya have suffered from serious border difficulties since independence. In fact, the great crisis that destroyed all order and government in Somalia started with multiple border problems – especially with Kenya and with Ethiopia.  With a substantial ethnic Somali population inside the Kenyan border provinces, independent Somalia has never recognized the border with Kenya. As soon as Somalia became independent, she began actively to encourage ethnic Somali insurgency inside Kenya and Ethiopia. Her quest for military help for these border situations pushed her into an alliance with the Soviet Union. Receiving substantial military help from the Soviet Union, Somalia became deeply involved in the world-wide Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers, and that meant very influential enemies from among the Western powers. When a revolution came in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian revolutionary government became Soviet allies, Somalia more or less found herself abandoned by the Soviets – and the fragile political system of Somalia (of clans and clan leaders) fractured under the pressure, and then in 1991 totally collapsed. With the collapse of orderly government in Somalia, her border conflicts became more tense and more confused, producing serious complications with Kenya and then with Ethiopia, and forcing Ethiopia to send troops repeatedly into Somalia in order to keep peace there.

    While battling border troubles with Somalia, Kenya has also had to face border problems with Uganda and, to some extent, with Ethiopia and Sudan. The British took some trouble to demarcate the Kenyan-Ugandan border in 1926, and the two countries subscribed to the 1964 OAU resolution on the preservation of colonial borders. Even so, their border remains unsettled. On their land borders, conflicts are caused by irregular crossings from either side, especially by livestock herders. In the area known as Migingo, the dispute has been particularly intense. The border through Lake Victoria, where no agreed demarcations exist, is even more problematic. And so also is the uncertainty of the border in the Bukwa and Morumeri area where the three countries, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan (now South Sudan), have conflicting claims. The Kenyan-Ethiopian border has been comparatively peaceful, but it too is occasionally disturbed by conflicting claims of pastoralist communities from both sides. A stretch of territory known as the Elemi Triangle, administered by Kenya, is claimed by Sudan and partly also by Ethiopia. This region of Africa is also the scene of one of the worst inter-state wars on the continent – the war over a disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. For two years, 1998-2000, this border war reached a peak. In 2000, negotiations produced a settlement, but in spite of that, tension has continued between the two countries. An estimated 70,000 people have lost their lives in these hostilities.

    In summary, the border problems confronting our countries in Black Africa are very serious. And they are not our only fundamental political problems. The same irrational actions of the European colonizers that produced these tortuous border problems also produced for us countries that comprise many different nationalities with different political traditions and expectations, countries that are extremely difficult to manage and extremely difficult to make stable.

    Our tragedy as citizens of these wobbly countries with these trouble-prone borders is that we have never produced leaders who are capable of handling our fundamental problems with the needed amount of statesmanship. For virtually every Black African leader, the quest always is for power and more power. In Nigeria since independence, we have produced only the kind of leaders who seek to maximise power at the so-called federal centre – in a country where the obvious need is a policy of conscious respect for our nationalities and a constitutional arrangement guaranteeing a thoroughly rational federal structure. It is the same in virtually all other Black African countries. The result is that we Black Africans are citizens of countries that generate discord, conflicts and poverty, countries with very doubtful futures.

  • We need desperately to restructure

    As ever, we hear daily, stories of inter-ethnic conflicts in countries of Black Africa. We read of unrest in the Central African Republic, turbulence in Burundi, the probability of a return to violence in Rwanda, the continued disaster of Somalia, ethnic animosities and threats of secession in Uganda, continued terrorism and the rampage of warlords in the eastern provinces of the Republic of Congo, similar agitations in Angola, Mozambique, trouble in Mali, Chad – the list goes on.

    When we read these things, we Nigerians must recognise that these are things that can happen in our country too. In fact, we must be honest and admit that signs of them already exist in Nigeria. The Biafra agitations in Igboland, the endless inter-ethnic conflicts in the Middle Belt, the contribution of ethnic discontent to the strength of Boko Haram, the growing dissatisfaction among the masses of educated Yoruba youths – are all developments that we must accord the seriousness they deserve.

    The glaringly obvious answer is to restructure this federation appropriately and empower each people group as much as possible to develop itself in the context of Nigeria and to gradually banish poverty from among its peoples.

    It is in the light of these that I re-read the written message brought by a distinguished delegation of Northern leaders, representing the Arewa Consultative Forum, to a meeting of the Yoruba Unity Forum holding at Ikenne on December 15, 2012. ACF is the topmost organization of the Hausa-Fulani political leadership of the North; and the Yoruba Unity Forum is one of the topmost organizations of the Yoruba political leadership of the South-west. The said document is therefore a message exchanged between two organizations representing the two largest nationalities of Nigeria – the Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba.  That makes it a truly historic document. What the prestigious delegation of the Hausa Fulani leadership had to communicate to the august gathering of Yoruba leaders that day says much about our country.

    I first read this document soon after its message was delivered at Ikenne and I was highly impressed then by its form and formalities. I am still impressed by the same today.

    Even so, I find the core proposition of the message shocking and embarrassing. The central proposition of the message was that no real change is needed in the way that Nigeria is organized and managed today! That proposition is summed up in the following staggering sentence: “Today, we have reached a point at which certain groups are calling for a re-negotiation of many settled issues in our nation”!

    What does ACF mean here by “many settled issues” that “certain groups are calling for a re-negotiation of”?  Surprisingly, as they spell out quite unmistakably in their message, they mean the structure that the Nigerian federation has today – the structure that, gradually and deliberately between 1966 and 1999, the Federation of Nigeria was given by a succession of northern military dictatorships punctuated now and then by northern-led civilian presidencies.

    The ACF message urges that, in discussing the issues relating to Nigeria’s decline and near-failure, we should eschew recriminations. I agree with that. And I am sure that most Nigerians would agree. Recriminations will not solve the titanic problems of our country.

    But I am sure too that most Nigerians want Nigeria’s political leaders to be sincere and open in discussing Nigeria’s problems. Our country’s situation is desperate, to put it mildly. The war on corruption by the present Buhari presidency is a step in the right direction; but the most important step in the right direction would be to restructure our federation properly. Corruption is one of the symptoms of Nigeria’s decline; the warped and distorted structure of our federation is the root of our country’s decline.

    Any group that continues to insist now that our federation’s structure as it is today is “settled” and not open to discussion obviously needs to rethink in the interest of us all. In the interest of Nigeria’s recovery, orderliness and prosperity, the ACF and its principals must recognise that continued resistance to a proper restructuring of this “federation” by a prestigious nation like the Hausa-Fulani nation is dangerous to Nigeria.

    The stakes are simply too high to allow for continued evasions and dogged stonewalling. This country must sincerely and seriously sort itself out. Our country is a country of many nations. These nations had evolved over thousands of years before the British came along and used their stronger technology to push all of us together into one country. In spite of one-hundred years of living together in Nigeria, these nations are still alive and strong. Even in similar multi-nationality countries where the nationalities have lived together as one country for many centuries, the general tendency today is to give each nationality some local autonomy to manage its affairs in its own way and to make its own kind of contribution to the country it belongs to. Britain, India, Switzerland, Indonesia, Spain, and others, are doing just that. I repeat that even the British who forced all our nationalities together to create Nigeria are now pursuing the policy of “Devolution” – which means giving each nationality (the Scots, English, Welsh and Irish)  the freedom to design its constitution, control its own national government, and develop its own economy – in the context of the oneness of Britain.

    As we prepared for independence in the 1950s, our political leaders were in no doubt that our nationalities should be given the recognition and development freedom that they deserved. That is why they agreed to a federal structure for Nigeria and allowed each of the regions of the federation to manage itself in its own way. The regions made commendable achievements in development, and at independence, our country was a land of hope and pride, a country that the world viewed with great expectation. All that was needed was to take the regional autonomy lower to the level of the nationalities – to grant the petitions of the group of minority nationalities in each region for a region of their own.

    But, unfortunately, after independence, the northern politicians who controlled the Federal Government decided that the Federal Government must control all things in Nigeria, and that the federating units must all be subject to the whims and caprices of the controllers of the Federal Government. By the beginning of the present century, our country had become a battered and broken entity on the edge of a precipice. An overwhelming majority of our citizens, in all regions of our country, are wallowing in poverty and hopelessness. Even the North was beginning, as at independence, under Sir Ahmadu Bello’s highly respectable leadership, to make impressive economic and social progress. I had the privilege in 1961 of visiting this great premier of the North in his office, and of listening to him for a few minutes as he told us what he was doing for the people of the Northern Region. I left his presence very proud of him, and very proud of my country and myself.  Now, the North is sunk and sinking in poverty, and countless youths of the North are reacting to their hopelessness by giving their energies to callings that are dedicated to destroying, killing and wrecking. And yet, some of the men who have been elevated to high positions of leadership in that same North are telling us and the world that the distortions that have led our country to these disasters are “settled” and not open to discussion? It is unbelievable!

    Most Nigerians are saying that the present structure and situation of their country is untenable and unsustainable. The Yoruba nation, the Igbo nation, the nations of the Delta, the nations of the Middle Belt, and the Kanuri and related peoples of the Northeast, all speaking through countless voices and organizations at home and abroad, are saying so. It is time the Hausa-Fulani leadership come forth to say so too.

    The dream of one region’s domination of Nigeria is anachronistic and unattainable. Striving for it is chasing shadows – and chasing shadows in a manner that only generates Nigeria’s decline and promotes ever-increasing poverty and hopelessness for the millions of Nigerians. The dream of a prosperous and great Nigeria is attainable. We can make Nigeria prosperous, and we can all prosper together in Nigeria.  That is a goal worthy to strive for.

  • Making Nigeria succeed or fail is our choice

    Since the victory of General Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential elections, I have taken time now and then to brush up on my readings on development. I have focused, not so much on the development stories of particular countries, but mostly on the broad issues of development – why some countries succeed and others fail.

    I have read, re-read, and looked up the reviews and commentaries on the following books, and I urge leading citizens of my country to find one or two of them and, at least, browse through them: Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed also by Jared Diamond; Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity & Povertyby Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson; The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly; and The Wealth & Poverty of Nations by David Landes.

    Each of these distinguished authors offers own profound thoughts on the question that is most important to Nigeria today – the question of whether we Nigerians will make our Nigeria a success or a failure. Altogether, the summary of the studies and thoughts of these authors is that we Nigerians are absolutely able to make our country succeed and to make it fail. To put it in another way, we have all we need to make Nigeria succeed brilliantly; and we have all we need to make Nigeria fail disastrously. The choice is entirely in our hands, and we are free to choose either way.

    Needless to say, various factors beyond human power are important  – factors such as geographical advantages or hardships, ethnicity, ethnic culture and history, availability or non-availability of natural resources, a country’s ethnic/cultural homogeneity or diversity, religious homogeneity or diversity, etc. But, in the final analysis, the ultimate determinant of whether a country shall succeed or fail is the choice made by its people, the institutions they set up, and the integrity or non-integrity of their operation of those institutions.

    For instance, being located in a desert makes development difficult for a country – but it does not make development impossible. The small state of Israel is a desert country, but its people have made it one of the most productive small countries in the world, agriculturally and technologically. Having two or more different nationalities (each with its own homeland) in a county makes stability and development difficult, but it does not make them impossible. Switzerland in Europe has no less than four nationalities, but it is one of the most stable, and one of the richest, countries in the world. Being richly endowed with natural resources is good for development, but it does not guarantee development. Nigeria is one of the richest countries in natural resources in the world, but it has been relentlessly declining, with the masses of its people becoming poorer, since independence. The key – the secret – in each case is the choices made by the people and their loyalty to those choices, and the institutions they give their country.

    In short, Nigeria has been declining since independence and becoming less and less stable, and over 70% of our people live in absolute poverty today, because we have been making the wrong choices, setting up the wrong institutions, and denying integrity to our institutions. The biggest of the wrong institutions is our federal government. Essentially, because we have hundreds of ethnic nationalities, our best choice was a federal structure. However, we ought to have borne in mind the danger of having too many states and too many state governments – and thereby putting too heavy a load of administrative costs on our country. (India with a population of about one billion at independence, carefully carved itself into 28 states, and gave most of the burdens of development to the state governments).

    Unfortunately, it suited the purposes of some our most influential policy makers to carve our country into smaller and smaller states, so as to transfer more powers, resources and assets to the federal centre. That paved the way for horrific inefficiency and corruption at the centre, turned our states into impotent entities forever at the mercy of the centre, destroyed most development energy at the state and local government levels, and plunged our country into deeper and deeper poverty. The old regional responsibilities and assets (like universities, export crop management, some crucial highways, control over schools and school curriculum, etc) that were transferred to the centre mostly floundered and perished.

    Those who controlled the centre arrogated to themselves the prerogative of deciding who would rule the states, and election rigging by federal agencies (INEC, police, secret service, and even the military) became part of our political culture. Similar relationships developed between each state and its local governments. Federal agencies, as well as the departments of the federal government, eminent institutions like the Central Bank, the state and local governments, all lost integrity. Leadership whims, caprices, and impunity, ruled over our country. We ceased having a country worth the name. Most observers began to say that our country was a failed state that somehow kept standing – a failed state that would soon crumble.

    Then a new day appeared to dawn in Nigeria. With the election of the new government, optimism and hope rose over our country. Understandably, most of our people are eager to see Buhari crush corruption. Buhari’s former stint at ruling our country, and his general reputation and body language, fuel the anti-corruption expectations. But, hopefully, Buhari understands that to crush corruption fully and abidingly in this country, we must reorder and revamp the institutional roots and fabrics of our country. The wrongly chosen, distorted and corrupted institutions are the roots of our country’s problem. Redraw, restructure, and straighten up, our institutions and, not only will corruption perish, our whole country will begin to rise again.

    But, of course, our country can continue to decline – and can decline until it crumbles. Whether our country revives and survives, or whether it continues to decline until it perishes – both depend on the choices we make in the next few years. That means that Buhari can lead us in ways that continue the decline one way or another. For instance, he could choose to revive and reinforce the ambition of northern domination of Nigeria, reinforce the accumulation of power, assets and  resource control in the hands of his federal government, and make the states more in number and weaker in stature – he couldeven adopt the insane proposal that the number of states be increased to 54! He could, out of loyalty to a section of the country and to a political party, sustain the culture of election manipulations. He could focus solely on the prosecution of proven treasury looters and ignore the inherent loopholes in the structures of governance which make such blatant theft possible. He could do all or any of these and more – and pave the ultimate path to Nigeria’s disappearance. But he could guide and lead us in totally different ways, and give our country a new lease of life.

    To build or kill Nigeria is our choice.

  • Desperate challenges facing Yoruba South-west

    One of the major foibles of Nigeria’s development management since independence is that Nigeria’s federal rulers generally prefer to adopt an integrationist attitude to the issues of development.  Every group that somehow steps into the control of the Federal Government assumes that it has been given the duty and authority to micro-manage all development issues and all sections of Nigeria.

    Such an integrationist stance ignores the huge size of Nigeria as well as Nigeria’s intense diversity in geography, people, culture, history, levels of development, people’s orientations, desires and development choices, etc. Each people, region and section of Nigeria has its own package of development challenges, and each package evolves along a logic and trajectory of its own, and keeps perpetually producing its own peculiar kinds of new challenges. In the final analysis, therefore, the aggressive integrationist orientation of our federal rulers has been wasteful and foolish, and it has generated enormous waste and discord. In fact, to spell out fully how foolish, wasteful and destructive it has been, one would need to write a whole book – a book that could become a worldwide text on how to lead a country to failure.

    But the theme of this column today is not the folly and destructiveness of the Federal Government’s mismanagement of Nigeria but the peculiar and urgent development needs of the South-west region of Nigeria. The Southw-est came into the 20th Century and into Nigeria as the most developed part of tropical Africa. Its defining strength was its urbanism, with towns and cities at short distances from one another, a situation that did not exist in any other part of tropical Africa. Partly because of this, what is now the South-west of Nigeria was better able to absorb and utilize the incoming transformations at the beginning of the 20th Century. There were already schools in probably most Yoruba towns by 1900. In fact, Yoruba people had been producing new college-educated elite in Engineering, Law, Accountancy, Medicine and so on. By 1859 Yorubaland already, had a newspaper and by the end of the century, there were newspapers in many Yoruba towns. Yoruba authors had written books in various subjects all the way from History to Fiction to the Sciences etc. Then in the 1950s, a peculiarly business-like regional government pulled the South-west much further ahead still. Fortunately also, the Yoruba had a culture that respected the religious choices of individuals and accepted and included people from any other culture of the world.

    The consequence of all these, as Nigeria has declined since independence and as poverty has intensified all over the country, is that people have been fleeing from all parts of Nigeria to the South-west. Within only the past few decades, many Yoruba towns and cities have become almost unrecognizable as a result of rapid increases in population. Most who come, do so because of what they believe to be abundant opportunities waiting for them in the South-west. But sadly, many of them are now discovering that the opportunities are not as abundant as they expected. The level and intensity of poverty in the South-west is becoming frightful. Many Yoruba towns are losing all of urban beauty and many parts of many cities are simply growing slums. The crowds of young people peddling little handfuls of articles in the streets represent an underemployed mass.

    In a better managed federation with more sensitive leaders, a region that comes under such bombardment would be considered for special input and assistance by the Federal Government. However, nobody who knows Nigeria would ever expect that Nigeria’s Federal Government will make such special considerations for the South-west or any other part of Nigeria. The summary then is that the South-west is being asked to bear a burden it is unable to bear, and the result of this is that the quality of life in the South-west is deteriorating rapidly.

    Of course, we in the South-west have a lot to criticize our state and local governments for but the bigger problem is from the federal source. This bigger problem is not merely that the Federal Government will not help the South-west, but that in fact they are forever trying to hold the South-west back. The examples of federal efforts to hold the South-west back are legion and the result is that life is being made difficult not only for the people of the South-west but for the millions flooding in from other parts of Nigeria.

    There is no point asking anything of the Federal Government. A new situation has arisen now, however, in which the party holding power at the centre may be fairly reasonably expected to relate more sensibly and more productively to the South-west than ever before. We in the South-west are expecting and waiting for that to happen and hopefully it will happen. But even if it happens, the main burden is still on us the people of the South-west, our state and local governments and the traditional Yoruba institutions that served the interest of our communities.

    The first direction we must go is to make our masses of educated youths seriously productive members of society. By our youths I do not only mean the indigenous Yoruba youths but all youths. We need without further delay to establish programmes whereby our youths will be equipped with modern job skills in various directions as artisans, machinists, modern farm hands and farm managers, builders, plumbers, masons, computer operatives and so on. We need to empower some of our businesses to offer such training in-house. We also need to encourage private individuals who are interested in contributing to education to participate in the establishment of technical and skills institutes. Side by side with these skills, our youths need to be educated to be good workers – loyal to their employers, ambitious for the companies they work for and dependable in the performance of their duties.

    The investment world out there is already interested in the South-west, but the fear is that the workers are not there. If we could create the skilled and dependable workers, we could turn our fortunes around in just a few years. Then we need to dig deep into the resources of our culture in order to carry out this transformation. We must assist those of our people already in small businesses to improve the quality of their services. An American who travelled widely in the South-west recently remarked that the small business culture (not just in trading) already exists and is an ancient culture with the Yoruba people. For example, he pointed out that if public authorities would assist the countless thousands of Yoruba women who cook food for sale in ‘bukas’, this industry could attract a lot of foreigners to the South-west.

    The South-west also has one of the richest resources for cultural tourism on earth. This is an industry that people of the South-west can develop at little expense. Thirdly, the Yoruba produce a whole range of traditional products, garments, fabrics and works of art which is another area which the governments of the South-west should look into. Moreover, Yoruba women have the reputation of being, in history, some of the greatest traders on the African continent – another area in which their governments should help them to improve and modernize.

    The summary is this. The people of the South-west command the capabilities and the means to transform their region and to help Nigeria to pull ahead. Those who hold the reins of power in the region owe their people and the world the duty of attending to all these possibilities without delay. That is the challenge of the Southwest today. The situation can be changed quickly and radically. But if we delay, it can become too complicated to handle. Nobody can stop the many millions coming to the South-west. The onus is on the South-west to seek urgently to command the strength to accept and include them constructively.

  • Tribute to Chief (Mrs) Awolowo

    The funeral celebration for the mother of our nation, Chief (Mrs) Hannah Dideolu Awolowo, commenced in Ikenne on Sunday, November 15. It includes daily events until Wednesday November 25 (the centenary of Mama’s birthday), when the grand finale of Internment will take place. On Tuesday November 17, a large number of members of the Yoruba national family, as well as many other citizens from all parts of Nigeria, headed for Ikenne to see Mama lying-in-state and to honour her with orations and tributes. Representatives of various civic organizations stepped forth to read glowing orations and tributes.

    One of such organizations was the Oodua Foundation, the Yoruba Diaspora think-tank organisation which has members in countries across the world. At the direction of the members, the Oodua Foundation International headquarters in the United States of America sent a befitting tribute. At about 11 am on Tuesday, Senator Babafemi Ojudu stood forth before the large assembly and read the tribute by Oodua Foundation.

    I have the privilege of being the signatory to the Oodua Foundation tribute, as patron of the foundation. I had also undertaken to feature the tribute in my column of today, which I very proudly do now in honour of our departed mother, and to the prosperity and glory of the Yoruba nation and of the family of nations of our Nigerian federation:

    Dear Mother: We, officers and members of Oodua Foundation from abroad humbly bring this tribute as we say goodbye to you our mother, friend and mentor.

    As a think-tank organization of Yoruba intellectuals and professionals with members in many countries of the world, and with our headquarters in the United States, we have often been in contact with you in our efforts to research and bring new ideas into the well-being and progress of our Yoruba nation at home. Even in your great old age, even in your very last days, you were keenly attentive to us as we spelled out our concerns about the prevailing conditions of the Yoruba nation in South-western Nigeria, and as we put forth our thoughts and proposals for solution and progress.  You listened, interacted, and encouraged us, as mother of our nation. And you always gave your love and warmth as mother of us all.

    The last time, only this past May, when a delegation of ours visited you in Ikenne, you treated us as usual to the kind of love and care that only Yoruba mothers can give. We sat around you as you prepared a beautiful Yoruba dinner for us your children. We had a great time answering your questions, receiving your answers to our questions, and listening to your charge and guidance to our further steps. Altogether, in those few hours, we savoured a tender family moment. You told us that we must come back this November for your 100th Birthday, and we dutifully pledged to do so. Mother, we are here– to celebrate not just a Birthday, but to celebrate your whole shining life.

    Yours is a life that has shone brilliant light into the life of our whole nation. The examples and precepts that you are leaving behind for our whole nation are such as we today, and all generations of our nation, will always be grateful for. It is a great lesson to all young Yoruba wives and mothers today that when fate lifted you to a leadership role in the modern history of the Yoruba nation, you were only a very young wife and mother. You were only 30 years old (more or less only a girl) when your illustrious husband and our nation’s father, Obafemi Awolowo, stepped into the gap and founded Egbe Omo Oduduwa in 1945 as an instrument for fostering unity among the modern elite of the Yoruba nation. You were 34 when he founded the Action Group and only 36 when he became the first Premier of our Western Region and you became the first First Lady of our region and nation.  Far beyond what should be expected of a person of your age, you rose to the position of First Lady with great dignity and poise, and with unwavering loyalty to your ever-busy husband, to the course of progress, and to the struggle for the well-being and prosperity of our people.

    Our nation saw your dignity and poise even more powerfully from 1962, after the Federal Government of Nigeria chose to foment a crisis in the Western Region and plunge our lives into instability and turmoil. You were only 47 years old in that year – though most of us are used to thinking that you were already a very old mother by then. To the shock and disbelief of all of us in the Western Region, our great leader and your husband was whisked from detention to criminal trials and then to prison. Your son, Segun Awolowo, who belonged to the same age as many of us who are now members of Oodua Foundation, died suddenly in the terrible storm.  Most of us today in Oodua Foundation who were old enough to understand these devastations at the time thought that our whole life was collapsing. But, through the darkest hours of it all, you stood like a rock behind your great husband, behind our father and leader, behind us suffering youths, and behind the weeping and mourning millions of our people. In the pitch darkness of the time, the light which you held bravely up reflected the great light from our great leader to all corners of our homeland.

    Mama, we your children are not mourning your departure. We are happily and gratefully celebrating your beautiful life and the gifts you have bequeathed to us and to our nation. Your great husband and our great father taught us to remember always that it is a cardinal principle of  Yoruba culture and traditions that rulers of society respect the ruled, and that Yoruba rulers always hold themselves in great dignity,  observe serious discipline in all their doings, devote their own energies and the resources of society to the promotion of the well-being of all members of society, apply themselves to knowledge and understan-

    ding, and live a life that elevates the moral and social tones of society. When you see him face to face in the afterlife, tell him that we his children are still holding true to the lessons that he taught us.

    Thank you for standing always loyally by his side in this life as he beamed the great lights into our lives. Thank you for never wavering, even in the face of the worst storms and tempests. Thank you for giving yourself unreservedly to us and to our nation as our Great and Loving Mother and Guide.