The Nation Newspaper

Category: Banji Akintoye

  • Yes, ours are respectable nationalities – 1

    A number of times in this column, I have urged caution and common sense in the way we handle our many nationalities in the course of our efforts at building Nigeria. I have urged that we can build a harmonious, stable and prosperous country only if we build everything upon a culture of respect for all our nationalities, large and small, and if we structure and manage our country according to that culture. Repeatedly, I get compatriots who ask me whether I am right in comparing our nationalities – Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, Ijaw, etc – with European nationalities like the English, French, Germans, etc. I am asked whether our nationalities are not too primitive to be compared with these European nationalities.

    The answer is NO. Our nationalities are like any other nationalities in the world. Every nationality has its own uniqueness. On every continent, different nationalities have survived for many centuries as members of large countries (for example, the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh in Britain, or the Spaniards, Basques and Catalans in Spain). Therefore, we must assume that our nationalities will most likely be alive for many centuries to come in Nigeria (if Nigeria lives that long). It is extremely foolish to behave as if we are sure that our nationalities will meld together and disappear as distinct entities. To bequeath a stable and peaceful country to our descendants, our only sensible option is to handle our nationalities carefully and make each confident that its interests are protected in Nigeria.

    In answer to those who believe that our nationalities are primitive entities that we can deal with anyhow and treat anyhow, my answer is to describe a few of our nationalities – especially our three largest nationalities – Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo. In population and land area, each of these three is larger than most nationalities of Europe. I need to give some space here to each of the ones I choose to describe, and therefore I may have to extend this answer into next week. I start with the Hausa-Fulani and Igbo today.

    The Hausa nation is the single largest nationality in the broad West African grassland north of the Niger valley and south of the Sahara Desert. The Hausa had lived in their homeland for thousands of years, and had developed into a number of kingdoms (each with a main town) many centuries before the 19th century. Though separated by vast grasslands, the kingdoms had the same national culture and language, and were interconnected by powerful traditions. The Hausa country was copiously interconnected by trade, and had culturally and commercially rich contacts with non-Hausa neighbours in all directions. Located immediately south of the Sahara Desert, the Hausa country benefited greatly from the trans-Saharan trade with the Mediterranean world, and some of its towns ranked among the leading trading centres in the West African Sudan and Sahel. With this trade also had come Islam, with the result that the Hausa kingdoms and rulers were mostly Muslims, with the important cultural asset of literacy in Arabic.

    Another ethnic group, the Fulani, a mostly nomadic people, who had for centuries migrated slowly from the grasslands far to the west, had become part of the Hausa towns and countryside by the 18th century. In the first years of the 19th century, some of the town-settled Fulani started an Islamic reform movement, and launched a jihad against the Hausa kingdoms. The Fulani immigrant people were very few in comparison with the Hausa, but their call for reforms in Islam won the support of the masses of Hausa Muslim folks. The jihad quickly subdued the rulers of the old Hausa kingdoms and replaced them with Fulani rulers with the title of Emirs. Loosely federated, Hausaland became one large Fulani-ruled empire or sultanate.

    This homeland of the Hausa (more correctly Hausa-Fulani from the early 19th century) then grew more rapidly in commerce and wealth, as well as in Islamic literacy and scholarship. There is no doubt whatsoever that this sultanate, as it stood by the late 19th century, before the coming of the British, commanded the capacity to evolve into a dynamic and prosperous modern country of its own  in the heart of West Africa in our times. This was one large nation-state with clear attributes of a nation-state – a commonly accepted government, reasonably clear boundaries, common language (the Hausa language), a culture of writing, and a well-developed economy in agriculture, animal husbandry, very ancient and far-flung commerce, and a rich multiplicity of crafts and manufactures in iron and other metals, in leather, wood, otton, dyes, etc.

    Then, let us look at our Igbo nation. In the country east of the Lower Niger, the Igbo nation had evolved probably 6000 years before the coming of the British. They had early evolved a rich and artistic culture, mostly in small village polities that were parts of larger entities such as clans. All were however united by one cultural heritage, language, religion and customs. By the 19th century, the Igbo were a great trading people, and the available evidence indicates that they had been a trading people long before then. They were a major contributor to the very substantial trade that evolved with the outside world along the Lower Niger in the course of the century.

    Probably more than that of any other major Black African people, the image of the Igbo nation has, since the beginning of the 20th century, suffered much distortion and downgrading at the hands of European colonial agents, colonial scholars, and colonial propagandists. It has also suffered the same in the hands of even some Nigerians who believe that building Nigeria requires that the various nationalities in Nigeria be pushed down and suppressed. In general, the tendency among such writers has been to take the absence of large political structures (kingdoms, empires, etc.) among most of the Igbo as proof that the Igbo were a primitive people – or that they were not even a definite people or nationality at all.

    Happily, however, in more recent times, though that tone has not been completely silenced, stronger and more scholarly voices have arisen to restore to the Igbo nation a more balanced picture for its image. It would be difficult to doubt today that the Igbo nation had the cultural attributes that might have transformed their nation, on its own, into a virile and dynamic nation state in the modern world.  But then, in the last decades of the 19th century, the Igbo were forcibly incorporated into the evolving British Empire in West Africa, ultimately becoming part of Nigeria.

    In the course of the 20th century, the Igbo have proved to be a very dynamic and modernizing people. They command a kind of national uniqueness that would have built a restlessly exploring, experimenting, and pushful country in the eastern part of West Africa. The Igbo nation is an indisputable example of an African nation denied the chance, by European imperialism, of growing into a prosperous country on its own in the modern world.

    Once, in Obafemi Awolowo University in the mid-1970s, in one of the introductory Nigerian History classes that I loved to teach, one of my young Igbo students asked me a touching question. “I strongly believe, sir”, he started, “that if we Igbo people had been allowed to have our own country from the beginning of the 20thcentury, even if we had been a British colony, we would be easily competing with a country like Japan today in technology, industries and world trade. What do you think, sir?” I answered that I agreed absolutely with him, and I could see that he was surprised that I would agree so promptly and so definitely. The truth is that nobody who has spent a whole adult life learning the history of our Black African peoples, as I have had the privilege of doing, can deny that any of our peoples (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri, Edo, etc), is a proudly achieving nation that commands the native and intrinsic capability to make a success of its life in the modern world.

    I believe that we should, and can, stop the crudely integrationist policies, and the destructive centralization of power and resources, that we have been pursuing since independence.  I repeat – we need to make everyone of our nationalities feel belonging. Such steps are crucial to making Nigeria live long in stability and prosperity.

  • Nigeria’s fundamental problem

    I cannot help returning repeatedly to the fundamental problem of Nigeria. The reason is that without finding a reasonably broadly acceptable solution to it, we are not likely ever to make Nigeria a stable country. This fundamental problem is not peculiar to Nigeria; it is common to virtually all Black African countries. And it is because no Black African country has found a broadly acceptable solution to it that virtually all Black African countries are forever going through turmoil and conflicts. And the reason no African country has found a solution to it is that African leaders, in general, do not accept fact as fact concerning this problem and deal with it as reasonable humans.

    This fundamental problem is that Black Africa is peculiarly a land of mostly very small nationalities. Even at today’s population levels (after a century of rapid population growths), almost all of the sub-continent of Black Africa is still home to very small nationalities.  Its largest nationalities are the three that live in the West Africa sub-region, namely the three giants of Nigeria (Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani and Igbo, each of which is estimated at about between 35 and 50 million).

    After these three, the few that are next in population size are much smaller, ranging roughly between 11 million and 18 million. These include the Nguni of the Union of South Africa (consisting of many small loosely related linguistic groups), the Ijaw of the Nigerian Niger Delta (also consisting of many small loosely related linguistic groups), the Bakongo of the Congo basin (now split between Congo Kinshasa, Angola, Central African Republic and Congo Brazzaville), the Akhan  (in the Republic of Ghana) , the Fula spread thinly over much of the West African Sudan and Sahel,  the Shona of Zimbabwe, the Somali of the Horn of Africa, and the Amhara and Oromo of Ethiopia.

    The next ones below these are also few and much smaller.  Each of them is estimated at between five and nine million in population.  They include the Sotho of the Union of South Africa, the Kikuyu of Kenya, the Ewe of Ghana, the Kanuri and related peoples, as well as the Edo and related peoples, of Nigeria.

    The rest of the sub-continent is shared among thousands of very small nationalities. Some have populations in the range of a couple of millions. Of the overwhelming majority, each has much less than that – many having populations of only a few tens of thousands.

    With this minute ethno-linguistic fragmentation of the Black African sub-continent, every Black African country of our times, including the two (Liberia and Ethiopia) that are not creations of modern European colonialism, comprises tens of nationalities. Nigeria, the largest in population, with some 170 million people, has over 300 nationalities – of which the three largest share about 130 million.  Clearly over 100 of Nigerian nationalities have populations of only a few hundred thousand or less each. Nigeria’s immediate western neighbor, the small Republic of Benin with a population of about eight million, is home to about 40 nationalities – a condition about typical of most Black African countries.  Tanzania, with a population of about 38 million people, has about 120 ethnic groups.

    Therefore, no matter what form Black Africa’s entry into the world of the 20th century  would have taken, this fundamental problem would have been indeed a difficult reality to handle – since most countries would have needed to contain many nationalities. But, in fact, and unfortunately, Black Africa’s entry into the world of the 20th century actually took perhaps the worst form imaginable in the circumstance. It took the form of conquest, control and direction by European imperialists who had no respect whatsoever for Black African peoples. In the process, the European imperialists compounded and confounded Black Africa’s fundamental problem.They twisted and mangled this problem so much that it became a hideous monster, which, after independence in Africa, has been generating a massive and tenacious nightmare for all countries, and all peoples, of Black Africa. Approaching African peoples with deep disrespect, the European creators of our modern countries simply trampled down our various nationalities, cut boundaries through the homelands of countless nationalities, and created new countries in such ways as to make room for little or no likelihood of cohesion or stability immediately or in any future.

    To convey some picture of the sordid disrespect with which Europeans created our countries, I hereby quote two passages from those who created our countries. In 1884-5, representatives of leading European countries met in Berlin in Germany to share Africa among them. One of those representatives wrote later: “We have been engaged in drawing lines on maps where no white man’s foot has ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we have never known where the rivers and lakes and mountains were”. One British official who took part in creating the boundaries of Nigeria wrote later:”In those days, we just took a blue pencil and ruler, and we put it down at Old Calabar, and drew that blue line to Yola. I recollect thinking when I was sitting having an audience with the Emir (of Yola) surrounded by his tribe, that it was a very good thing that he did not know that I, with a blue pencil, had drawn a line through his territory”.

    That is the ignorant, disrespectful and shoddy manner in which our country, Nigeria, was created – and in which all other countries of Black Africa were created. That is the ignorant and disrespectful manner in which the internal boundaries of our Nigeria were created. When we feel like making noises about our Nigeria or about our North, or whatever, we needto remind ourselves of these sorry pictures. Starkly put, our country and its colonial internal boundaries are one package of ignorant and presumptuous errors. They are a package of wounds that still pain many of our nationalities.

    This does not mean, of course, that Nigeria is impossible to keep together and to build into a successful country. What it does mean, however, is that those who manage the affairs of Nigeria must keep consciously aware of the fundamental realities of the country we call Nigeria. It means that we must consciously nurture a culture of respect of every nationality, large or small. It means that we must be committed to a true federation, and to a federal structure and order based on respect for our nationalities. With these, we can make success of Nigeria; without them, we cannot.

    This is the wisdom that Elliot P. Skinner imparted when he wrote, “African countries will continue to be racked by conflicts unless leaders agree about how to govern their multi-faceted nation-states and how to distribute their economic resources equitably. Without compromise that would ensure “ethnic justice”, neither so-called “liberal democracy” nor any other species of government will succeed in Africa”.

    In short, no matter what else we do, we must provide a broadly acceptable solution to the fundamental problems of our ethnic national diversity – a solution acceptable to our various nationalities – before we can make a success of Nigeria. Asking us Nigerians to think of ourselves as Nigerians only and cease thinking of ourselves as Yoruba, Ijaw, Hausa, Ibibio, Igbo, Kanuri, etc, is no more than a piece of ridiculous childishness. We are what we are. Wisdom demands that we should make our country harmonize with that.

  • Nigeria’s greatest visit to America

    President Buhari has done Nigeria proud in America this week. Everywhere during his three-day visit, the American media welcomed him with great warmth, enthusiasm and optimism. For a change, here is one Nigerian leader who is re-assuring the world very convincingly about Nigeria.

    Known or unknown to us Nigerians, the world has, for years, been gradually giving up on our country. The stories, and the plain evidence, of public corruption in Nigeria have been simply overwhelming. They have been so overwhelming that a foreigner who wrote a book on Nigeria gave it the title This House Has Fallen. An American journalist, Richard Dowden, who visited Africa a number of times wrote a book on Africa and titled his chapter on Nigeria, “Look out world, Nigeria”, as if warning the world that a dangerous predator called Nigeria was on the prowl. Then, he wrote in dismay:

    “Nigeria has a terrible reputation. Tell someone that you are going to Nigeria and if they haven’t been there themselves, they offer sympathy. Tell anyone who has been to Nigeria and they laugh. Then they offer sympathy. No tourists go there. Only companies rich enough to keep their staff removed from the realities of Nigerian life do business there. And big companies rarely mention Nigeria in their annual reports for fear of what it will do to their share price. Journalists treat it like a war zone. Diplomats regard it as a punishment posting.”

    Dowden adds that, in fact, Nigeria’s popular image falls short of the reality – and that Nigeria is a failed state that somehow manages to keep standing. An American young man who took part in a Christian missionary group drilling water wells for poor villages all over Africa returned home and told his friends that he believed that God is probably using Nigeria for an experiment – that God is probably gathering the worst human beings into Nigeria in order to see what would happen if the worst human beings were gathered in a country. He added that he found in Nigeria something that cannot be classified as ordinary corruption – village heads demanding bribes from the missionaries as a condition for allowing the missionaries to drill the well for the villagers. A well-informed agency of the American government wrote in a report in 2004 that Nigeria could break up in 15 years.

    Of course, we Nigerians know that these images are not fair to most of us. The influential citizens who have given us these images are only a minority among us – but they are the most visible ones among us. The foreigner who comes to Nigeria for some business would inevitably encounter our immigration officials, customs officials, police and security officials, may be military officials, then various levels of civil servants, Central Bank officials, ministers of state – and perhaps our President. Predictably, all of these men and women of our country’s frontline are likely to demand or take an illegitimate something from the foreigner. If the foreigner is a journalist or researcher of some kind, he will see most of the above; he may also see, during an election, high public officials grabbing and taking away ballot boxes in broad daylight in order to rig the election – and he will see police, military, and security officials helping the high public officials. If the foreigner happens to be a senior bank official in his own country, he very probably will encounter some Nigerian high public officials who have stolen huge amounts of Nigerian public money and who are seeking help to hide the loots in secret bank accounts. If he happens to be a realtor in his country, he will probably encounter clients who are Nigerian public officials seeking to invest large amounts of stolen public money on expensive real estate properties.

    These are only a few examples. The manifestations are legion. And in reality, many of us too who are not public officials do cut corners in order to survive the poverty that our governments have foisted upon our country. Still, it is not fair to say that Nigerians are all thieves and takers of bribes – as lots of foreigners who come into contact with our country say (innocently or maliciously) about us.

    However, fair or unfair, the image hurts. It has hurt us Nigerians, as well as our country, terribly. We live today in a world in which capital owned by investors from various parts of the world is crucial to development in every country. Most of that capital is searching for the best countries to invest in. We live in a world in which commerce – the exporting and importing of goods – builds most of the wealth of countries. And we live in a world in which tourism is one of the generators of the wealth of countries. We have a country that is wonderfully rich in resources, and that should be one of the world’s largest focal points of manufacturing, commerce, tourism, movements of finance, etc, but our country’s awful image inhibits our share of these things. What this translates to is poverty. We Nigerians live in undeserved poverty, and much of that poverty is generated by the terrible image that we have acquired in the world.

    But now, with Buhari, new prospects are opening up for our country and us – new possibilities, new glimmers of hope. No Nigerian ruler has ever had the quality of image and perception that Buhari has acquired in only seven weeks. From the few steps he has already taken, nobody doubts that this is the real fight against corruption in Nigeria – and not just another one of the endless and empty promises of fight against corruption. And what that can do for our country and us is incalculable. Buhari is inviting the world to trust us and come, and the vibrations strongly indicate that the world will respond. From my home in a distant country abroad, I speak this message to my people back home: Buhari is putting together something big and good for our country.

    This is a war for all of us Nigerians to fight; it is not Buhari’s alone. We must all join hands and fight it. I hereby offer some contributions of my own. One of the things that have made corruption easy in our country is that, since the mid-1960s, we have removed the old civil service rules, regulations and processes that protected access to public money. Today, our president and governors more or less go about with all of our public money in their pockets. We need to revive and retool the measures that guarded public money before 1966. In addition, we need to establish watch-dog agencies that oversee budget performances and the movement of public money. And we need to make ethics laws that all must obey, and establish enforcement processes from which no public official is exempt. We did not have massive “security votes” before 1966 – security votes that nobody can audit. It is a poison from Satan’s own hand. We must review it.

    Finally, as I have said repeatedly in this column and elsewhere, the search for and recovery of stolen public money, the punishment of the culprits, and the establishment of rules and processes for protecting public money – all are just the surface battles of the war against corruption. In addition to them, we must deal with the fundamental root of corruption. When our military rulers robbed our states of their powers, resource control, and development initiative, and pooled all together in the federal centre, they created a super-corrupt federal government, the mother of corruption, the dispenser of corruption all over our country. President Buhari must not leave this unattended to.

  • Can we really hold and build Nigeria?

    I am still excited about President Buhari’s pre-election promises to suppress corruption and to effect change in our country. I believe he has the honest inclination to accomplish these things, but as I watch his presidency in the weeks since his inauguration, I am gradually being compelled to wonder whether the fundamental realities of our country are not just too powerful for anybody’s urge for change. I hope I am wrong – but I doubt that.

    In the circumstance, I find myself having to revisit universal thoughts about the feasibility of a country like ours – about the possibility of orderly and harmonious growth, progress and prosperity in a country like Nigeria. Of course, my strong desire has always been that Nigeria should survive, thrive, and prosper. But, even the little girl who is buying biscuits on one street to go and sell for a little profit on other streets must ask herself the question at every turn whether it is possible for her little transaction to yield her desired outcome. Questions of that nature about a huge enterprise like a country may not necessarily yield a “Yes” or “No” answer, but it can help to identify the fundamental problems and how to tackle them.

    Our Nigeria is a country of great diversities, but the most significant diversity is the ethnic national diversity. Nigeria is a country of about 300 ethnic nationalities large and small. Each ethnic nationality is identified by its own homeland, culture, acceptance of itself as a group, possession of its own image and pride and, having managed its own life somehow for probably thousands of years, desirous of managing its own life and destiny. For such a nationality, large or small, having to live with other nationalities in a country, sharing the sovereignty of one country with other similar nationalities, or even having to accept any sovereignty above its own ethnic national sovereignty, has never been easy in human history.

    Actions of the most powerful nations in recent history  ignored that vital fact and produced many of today’s countries in which many weak nations are combined together with one another, or subsumed under more powerful nations – such as the creation of  Belgium in 1831 by the Concert of Europe, the creation of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc., by the victors of the First World War, the inclusion of many small nations with Russia in the Soviet Union, and the creation of many multi-nation countries in Asia and Africa by late 19th  century European imperialists. In the course of the 20th century, nationalities included in these modern arrangements, and even nationalities similarly involved in earlier periods of history (like the Irish, Scotts and Welsh in Britain, the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the French Canadians in Canada, etc.) have increasingly sought to free themselves in order to establish their own autonomous and separate countries.

    In our modern world, the general growth of literacy and education has served, and is serving, as a dynamic stimulus to the growth of the phenomenon of ethnic nationalism and demand for ethnic national autonomy. Universally, education tends to enhance ethnic national group knowledge, pride and desire for self-rule.

    Another factor boosting the desire for ethnic national separateness in our time is the observed tendency of multi-nationality countries to be slow in socio-economic development. Among developing countries, those that comprise diverse nationalities have tended to suffer significantly slow socio-economic development. As one Gerald Scully points out in a report for a policy agency in the United States, “Culture standardizes relationships by allowing people to make reasonably confident assumptions about the reactions of those with whom they interact. Even if different groups live together peacefully (in the same country), the lack of a common language and common norms reduces cooperation and increases the costs of transacting.” And the consequence of that is usually the enhancement of inefficiency and waste in the economic system – resulting in slow development and poverty. Stephen Lampe in Building Future Societies argues that development finds a fertile ground in an atmosphere of homogeneity: “The more closely development projects reflect the circumstances of a people, the more the projects can be said to have conformed to the Law of Homogeneity; and the more sustainable such projects are likely to be”.

    Also, the growth of every culture has its own unique trajectory – the direction in which its customs, laws, economy, political traditions, and its system of rewards, are growing. When the diverse cultures of diverse nationalities cohabit and compete in a country, especially an underdeveloped country, confusion and inefficiency are usually the consequences. The common experience is that a dominant nationality (whether the dominance is numerical or political), is prone to structure economic and political opportunities to the benefit of itself and its members – with the usual result of conflict, economic inefficiency, and increased chances of poverty for the country. A report by Japan’s Institute of Comprehensive Studies asserts that without a strong national spirit and confident identity, a country cannot efficiently take advantage of development assets in the world and rise to high levels of development.

    Two Japanese economists with considerable experience in the study of the Japanese development model in the years after the Second World War, Yujiro Hayami and Yoshihisa Godo, assert that the development efforts of a culturally homogenous country are likely to be more productive than the development efforts of a culturally heterogeneous country – that the more development efforts, assimilation of technology, and transformation of institutions, are correlated to the culture of a people, the greater are the chances of success.

    Furthermore, experience in most countries indicates that a country, especially an underdeveloped country, comprising diverse nationalities, is less likely to adopt institutions of freedom, or to run them sincerely and with integrity. In such a country, the endless jostling of the component nationalities for advantage, and the manoeuvres of the dominant nationality to sustain its dominance and allocate the most advantages to its members – all these usually tend to result in distortions of the political process, the manipulation of elections, the falsification of vital records, the appointment of poorly trained and ill-equipped ethnic national favourites to vital public jobs (even when more educated and better trained citizens may be available), the padding of important institutions (like the courts, the police, the military, the regulatory agencies, etc.) with persons dedicated to ethnic-sectional missions, discrimination in the allocation of public appointments and economic opportunities, and so on. All these detract from human freedom and dignity. In the report earlier referred to, Gerald Scully opines that “a lack of personal freedom is correlated with the degree of cultural heterogeneity in many non-Western societies”.

    National heterogeneity in a country also fosters inefficiency in the political and economic systems in some other ways. There is no question that economic freedom and rule of law are fundamental requirements for the achievement of high levels of economic growth in the modern world.  According again to Scully, scholars are coming more and more to the recognition “that the key to economic transformation of the Third World is to move toward freer institutions, and that cultural heterogeneity is the major barrier  to such transformation”.

    In short, countries comprising diverse ethnic nationalities have very serious troubles. On all continents, the nationalities that are parts of such countries are agitating, and challenging in various ways the continued existence of the countries to which they belong. The poorer the quality of the governance of a multi-nationality country, the greater the chances of ethnic national conflicts in it – and the greater the chances of secessions and even total break up.

    The needed change of direction won’t be easy; but Buhari can lead us to accomplish it if he sincerely tries. Will he? Or, will they let him?

  • Bukola Saraki and the Nigerian problem

    Whenever I mention Senator Bukola Saraki, I find myself having to speak from different perspectives. First and foremost, he is one of the highest elected officials in the government of our viciously mismanaged, poor and stumbling country.

    But more closely, in our Yoruba culture, I have to regard Bukola as a son. His father, Dr. Sola Saraki, and I were about the same age – if Sola and I had been born and raised in the same traditional Yoruba town or village, we would have belonged to the same age-grade association or Egbe Ibile, and that is supposed to create a certain peer loyalty.  Moreover, Sola and I considered each other as friends.

    We did not know anything about each other when we first met in the Nigerian Senate of the Second Republic in 1979, he elected from Kwara State and I from Ondo State. For most of the four years 1979-83, each of us was so engrossed in our legislative and party duties (he as Majority Leader from the NPN and I as Secretary of the UPN Parliamentary Caucus) that we didn’t particularly relate to each other. But towards the end, we somehow gradually established some mutual empathy. And by the time we both came out of the Buhari Military Government’s detention in 1984, we had become much closer. Sola invited me to join him when he made his first return home after his release from detention, and I saw a whole night of very fond and tender reception by his Ilorin people.

    I congratulate Bukola for his successes in Nigerian politics – his elections and long tenure as Governor of Kwara State, and now his position as Senator of our Federal Republic. I have met many people who regard him as one of the likely bright lights of Nigeria’s future politics.

    From that hope-filled perspective, I sincerely wish that Bukola had not been part of what has been happening in the Nigerian Senate in the past few weeks. I have read the long statement he made to the media. I admire the way he went all out – open-mindedly canvassing and talking to Senators from every party – in his bid for the position of President of Senate.  That is how the democratic political game should be played.

    I don’t know, however, what one should make of his story that some persons wanted or tried to kidnap him in order to foil his Senate presidential bid, but as a father I would urge him to let go of that story. It sounds too much like a self-serving, self-justifying, fabrication – certainly, the kind of thing that can return to hunt Bukola in his future political career.

    And, more importantly, although he says he was not aware that APC Senators were asked to meet with President Buhari somewhere else, the moment he found that most Senators of his own party were not present in the Senate Chamber, he should not have rushed along to get himself elected as President of Senate in that kind of circumstance. I don’t know whether the laws mandate that the inaugural meeting of the Senate and the election of the officers of the Senate should be done at one and the same first meeting of the Senate. I doubt it though. I remember that on October 1, 1979, the Senate chamber was not ready for us, and we inaugurated the Senate, broke up in minutes, and returned days later (when the chamber renovations were completed) to hold a full meeting and to elect the officers of Senate.

    Since a whole 51 Senators out of the 59 belonging to Saraki’s own party happened to be absent from the Senate on May 9, respect for the orderliness of governance, and for the greatly needed stability of our country, should have dictated that the elections of Senate officers be not rushed through that day – or at least at that very hour. As things have now developed, as things now stand in our country, it is going to be extremely difficult to convince most Nigerians, and most foreign observers, that the Senate proceedings of that day were not deliberately rushed so as to make way for Saraki’s election as President of Senate. And that, believe me, is very far from good – for Saraki, and for our country.

    There is a time for everything, and there are times when some things are not merely inappropriate but downright hurtful. In the condition of Nigeria since the presidential election of last April, the widespread perception of manipulations in the Nigerian National Assembly has been very hurtful indeed. Here is the reason. For decades, crooked manipulations of the processes of governance, and unbridled corruption, have ruled supreme over the affairs of Nigeria. In some Nigerian leaders’ unreasoning push to accumulate power and resources at the federal center for their own ethnic and personal purposes, Nigeria’s federalstructure was essentially destroyed, local and regional development initiatives were ruined, and our people were handed over to oppressive and hopeless poverty.

    In the outcome, our country has been coming progressively closer to collapsing and imploding. In the Muslim parts of our country, some of our brightest youths became attracted to religious fundamentalism and violence. Ultimately, one of their terrorist groups became a very major threat to our country, seizing and controlling large swathes of territory in the North-east, and enjoying freedom to kill, wreck and destroy in most parts of the North and Middle Belt – including even the federal capital city of Abuja. Moreover, poverty and bitterness are breeding various kinds of rejection of Nigeria in virtually all parts of Nigeria.

    At what was beginning to look like the absolute peak of these troubles, one man named Buhari came forward promising to suppress corruption, straighten up Nigeria, restore sanity, and give Nigeria the chance to survive and revive. A leading politician from the South-west, Bola Tinubu, championed Buhari’s cause and provided the energy and means to put him before Nigeria. A lot of Nigerians didn’t like Buhari much, but most finally decided to give Nigeria the chance that he was promising, and they voted to give him the presidency. Across the country, hope seemed to start to revive.

    But then, unhappily, what looked like the same penchant for crooked manipulations, the evil force that has long been battering Nigeria, reared its head in the Nigerian Senate, followed by the House of Representatives. All of a sudden, hope seemed to vanish all over again. Even though we all know that there are other factors in the slowing down of the Buhari take-off, as well as in the growing cracks in the Tinubu-Buhari team, the feeling is likely to be strong  for a long time in the future that the happenings in the National Assembly started it all off.  And the story of the happenings in the National Assembly cannot possibly be told without having Bukola Saraki and his Senate presidential ambition squarely in the centre of it.

    It doesn’t look good at all. There are now growing speculations that influential Northern forces that are opposed to the Buhari agenda of anti-corruption and change, or that want to re-establish the bogey of “Northern Domination”, have been behind the developments in the National Assembly. That makes the picture much worse and much more troubling. The big questions now are: How would the record being made these days affect the future of the National Assembly barons concerned? How indeed would it affect the future of fragile Nigeria itself? In the latter case, we may soon begin to see.

  • Buhari’s possible place in history

    President Buhari, while speaking with Nigerians resident in South Africa recently, said, “I wish I became Head of State when I was…a young man. Now at 72, there is a limit to what I can do”.

    Quite a number of Nigerians have responded negatively to this statement, some of them claiming that it shows that Buhari is not fit, on account of his age, to be our president. I see it differently. A man who can make an admission like that is forthright and deserves to be trusted – and also deserves whatever help each of us Nigerians can give him. I have felt, since then, much more than I felt before, that I can trust Buhari as president of my country.

    Being a slightly older man than he, I know what he is talking about. When you are in your seventies, if you are the kind of person that dreams great dreams, you see a million worthy things that should be done and that you should do in the interest of your people or country; but you know that though your spirit itches to go, your body is not really up to much of the task.

    In that sort of situation, if you are in a position of power, and if you are the foolish kind, you try to hide the truth by posing as strong and conquering and invincible – and you end up wrecking yourself and wrecking a lot of things. If you are the wise kind, you own up your limitations to your friends – and you earn empathy, understanding, loyalty and help, and you end up achieving more than you would otherwise have achieved. Napoleon Bonaparte used to say, “I try always to rise above myself”. For a ruler or leader, part of the secret of rising above oneself is to let one’s team mates and helpers love and feel honoured to use themselves – their minds, expertise, wisdom, muscles and all – to serve one’s noble purposes for one’s country.

    As a Nigerian who has seen, and been somewhat part of, the Nigerian political experience since the late 1950s, I therefore humbly offer the following as help to President Buhari. Principally, I counsel him to keep things simple. If the load is kept simple, even an older man than Buhari can carry it successfully. If he lets it get complicated and tortuous, it will bog down, and it will hurt him and hurt Nigeria.

    One serious reality of the Nigerian situation today is that Nigerian politicians have built up an enormous amount of expertise in crookedness. As people say in Kenya, “Where there is a Nigerian there is a way”.  Kenyans don’t say that admiringly; they say it spitefully and derogatorily. Witness a couple of recent prominent instances of this expert crookedness: Members of the Nigerian National Assembly vote for their wages and allowances absolutely unreasonable amounts of money; and then they make those facts a total secret from the people of Nigeria –the owners of the National Assembly.

    Here is another: A senator who wants to be elected president of Senate, knowing that many in his party have someone else in mind, seizes advantage of the group absence of many senators of his own party from the Senate Chamber and, behind their back, sneaks in his election as Senate President, using the help of members of another party. And yet another: The Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives say that they had appointed the other officials of the two houses before the directive came from their party about the persons to appoint. In the presidential system worldwide, don’t Senate Presidents and House Speakers take the directives from their parties first?

    Can you imagine anything more crooked than these things? Could things like these possibly happen in the Nigerian government when Buhari and I were boys? Friends of the new Senate President say he was “smart”! Were our politicians that “smart” in those days? In what other country are the politicians this “smart”?

    That is the environment in which President Buhari has to work today. Obviously, he does not have the smartness of this crowd. Therefore, he should not try to compete with them in their muddy waters. He should not even go near their muddy waters.  He must let it be seen by all who work with him that his actions are open and straight-forward, and that he values his integrity. Politicians and others will approach him with all sorts of crooked packages – packages containing plans for stealing and sharing public money, or clever plans to defraud, or criminal plots for electoral fraud, or plots for ethnic group advantage over other ethnic groups – or even over the rest of Nigeria. Buhari should let the whole of Nigeria know transparently that such packages have no chance at all with him. In short, he can, and he should, establish for our country the ethical backbone for a new Presidency. He promised change. We voted for change.

    Keeping it simple also demands that the structure of the Nigerian federation should be aligned harmoniously with Nigeria’s ethnic national composition. It is simpler to walk with the truth than to keep trying to force the way forward with falsehood. If Buhari chooses to keep forcing the way forward with falsehood, he will only be complicating his load – and the load will bog down and he will hurt himself and hurt Nigeria.

    The truth is that Nigeria is a country made up of many different ethnic nationalities, each living in its own homeland, having its own culture and history, its own desires, and its own self-image and pride. Pooling all power, resources and resource control together in Nigeria’s central government, as has been done since the 1960s, is living a destructive falsehood, and it will never work. That is why Nigeria teeters on the brink of failure. The love of Nigerians for their different nationalities is much stronger than Nigeria’s most influential politicians like to think. The countless millions of us who cherish the integrity of our nationalities will never give up the fight – and that means that we will never cease harassing whoever is president of Nigeria to lead us to restructure our federation. Restructuring our federation s is the most important change.

    Finally, to keep his load simple, President Buhari must loyally keep his team intact and working. The ones who have worked with him in the past three years to put an alliance together, fought night and day by his side on the campaign trail, and mobilized the needed resources for the struggle, certainly deserve his loyalty. Trying to evade that loyalty, or letting others damage the team, will only whip up a truculent and unending war around him, with the possibility that massive numbers of citizens of whole regions could become involved – and that would make his load become impossibly complex. Naturally, his allies have their political enemies, while many who used to fight against him and his allies will now become his friends too. Of course, the president of Nigeria must be open to all Nigerians; but the world will adjudge Buhari as lacking character if he now denies his allies and compromises his team. It will also show that the promises of change made by him and his allies were fake all along. Buhari can carve for himself an honourable place in the history of Nigeria and of Africa.

  • President Buhari: This is the moment for change

    For nearly six decades, we Nigerians have been mangling and wrecking our country. Our leaders and rulers took the God- given resources and wealth in our land and turned them into dangerous weapons for breeding a culture of almost sub-human greed among our powerful and influential men and women, for pushing abject and hopeless poverty into the lives of our people, and for giving our country an image that makes most of the rest of the world fear, hate and despise her. The day of reckoning is here now.

    In the past three weeks since President Buhari was sworn in, we have, in various ways, come face to face with the truth of the evil we have done to our country and to ourselves. President Buhari has told us again and again that our country is in serious trouble. The Nigerian treasury inherited by him is empty. At the same time, he is being shown mountains of debt in all directions. And he is being shown utter confusion in the management of Nigeria’s public accounts. He is finding that nobody can tell him, because nobody knows, exactly how many accounts the Federal Government has.

    Some of his political opponents, especially high officials of the ousted Jonathan presidency, are doing all they can to convince us that Buhari is only playing politics, that things are not as bad as he says, and that parts of the debts are not owned by the Federal Government but by the state governments. But the facts are too plainly manifest to admit of politicking. More than 21 states cannot pay their workers’ salaries. Monthly allocations to the states have been slashed lower and lower in the course of the last year of Jonathan’s presidency. Months before Buhari took over, some states have failed to get their allocations when due. And now we are learning that even the Federal Government itself has been unable to pay salaries in certain federal departments and agencies since the final months of the Jonathan presidency.

    Of course, none of us can say, honour bright, that Jonathan single-handedly wrecked our country. But it is certainly true that he came, he inherited a country that has been gradually dying for decades, and he made it die a whole lot more. Virtually all the successive governments of Nigeria since 1962 have been motivated to destabilize and weaken Nigeria. Jonathan followed that tradition and intensified it.

    And, unfortunately, very unfortunately, the recent stages of Nigeria’s self-destruction have been taking place against a worldwide background of real and fundamental declines. The mineral oil wealth – the mighty power that led us into the dangerous euphoria in which we gradually abandoned productive enterprises, centralized all resource control,and destroyed all morality in our country – has been falling in the world.  From as high as over $125 only a year ago, the price of crude oil fell to as low as just over $50, and now hovers in the range of about $60 – plunging Nigeria into serious difficulties. It is estimated that, for Nigeria to be able to balance its budget, oil prices would have to rise back to $120 per barrel – and nobody thinks that that can happen again.

    According to experts on the subject, the worldwide glut that has been causing the fall in oil prices is not likely to end soon. And the development of new oil production technology, resulting in the pumping of oil from shale into the market by American producers, seems likely to continue to drag oil prices down. Even more ominous for the future of oil, the technology and development of renewable energy sources (especially energy from solar and wind sources) are growing very fast in the world. Renewable energy is growing significantly in some countries (like United Kingdom, Australia and the United States) and constitutes a big part of the future energy plans of some developing countries like India and China. Oil is expected to recede steadily in world energy supplies.

    But even if oil prices do manage to begin to rise again in the world, Nigeria would still have its own unique problems to struggle with in the oil market. The United States, the largest buyer of Nigeria’s oil, has recently cut off all purchases of Nigeria’s crude oil. When that happened, it was hoped that purchases by China and India would rise to take the place of the lost American market; but that is not happening. Earlier this week, Nigeria had to announce special price reductions of its own in order to attract buyers. The days of the popularity of Nigeria’s crude oil in the world market seem to be over.

    With these developments in the oil market, Nigeria has entered upon an era of serious economic uncertainties. But, sadly, this is a down-turn that Nigeria is grossly unprepared for. We have centralized our resources in the hands of the Federal Government, and thereby seriously depressed local enterprise and taught our people to wait for doles from the Federal Government. We have turned our most dynamic citizens into beggars at the door-steps of politicians. Our politicians, leaders and rulers are addicted to operating in the oil euphoria mode. For them, politics is a profession that yields huge fortunes to the politician – especially to those who win elections to public offices.

    In our recent elections, candidates still poured enormous amounts of money into electioneering, in the assurance that these were investments that would yield great fortunes. A friend of mine asked a couple of newly elected National Assembly legislators how they would react if President Buhari brought proposals to the National Assembly for a general reduction in the salaries and allowances paid to political public officials – and their prompt answer was, “We will impeach him”. In our states, governors are addicted to budgeting and mostly stealing large “security votes”, becoming rich from graft, and buying private jets. Political elites that somehow slip into such a disastrous mode never choose to change – it is too sweet to give up.

    But that does not mean that change is impossible. One thing is certain immediately – Nigeria must give up this awful culture of Federal Government control of resources, dependence on governments, treating politics as business, and general dependence on politicians for handouts and favours; and we must return to normal life in which everybody’s ambition, hard work and profit build and uplift society.

    That is where President Buhari comes in. He promised change, and most of us trusted him and voted for change. In view of the drastic conditions that confront him at this beginning, we don’t expect miracles in his “First 100 Days”. But we expect to have soon a solid and clear agenda for the changes that our country desperately needs. Oil may never be able to come back strongly as revenue earner. But our country is rich in various other resources, and change must include releasing them to the enterprising hands of Nigerians. Change must include turning our youths into skilled, efficient and dependable modern workers, and opening a wide door to the entrepreneurial ones among us. And change must reduce the emoluments of politics, until political involvement becomes sacrificial service to our country and people. Buhari can lead us to achieve all these.

     

  • Oodua Foundation speaks for the Yoruba

    The strange happenings in the new National Assembly in Abuja, especially the weird manoeuvrings accompanying the election of the President of Senate, have left many Yoruba people wondering. Yoruba people voted massively for the Buhari promise of change. Do these crooked deeds in the Nigerian Senate signify the end of the change? Yesterday, Oodua Foundation spoke out on these fears. They are my people and they have asked me to feature their statement in my column today. Here it goes.

    We Oodua Foundation, a Yoruba think-tank organization with members in countries across the globe, and with headquarters in the United States, have been closely observing and analyzing the developments in the Nigerian Federal Government since the swearing in of President Muhammadu Buhari. Our conclusions compel us now to speak up clearly for the Yoruba nation of the Nigerian Southwest.

    We do not speak for any political party; we do not belong to, support or oppose any. We respect the voices of all Yoruba groups and individuals. Our organization exists only to promote and protect the interests of the Yoruba nation.

    We the Yoruba people of the Southwest, by political tradition and culture, cherish truth, liberty, equity, justice and fair-play as fundamental basis of governance. These are the age-long cardinal principles that have defined our Yoruba nation’s political tradition for centuries, and we Yoruba people remain committed to them as pillars of order, peace and stability in society.

    As one of the largest nationalities in Nigeria, we have dutifully demonstrated our commitment to these principles, and to Nigeria’s success and prosperity, in all our contributions to the making of Nigeria. In that light, we have consistently and persistently proposed since the late 1940s that, because Nigeria is a country of many different nationalities, the only way to structure Nigeria for stability and success is to show careful respect to Nigeria’s various nationalities large and small and, therefore, to structure Nigeria as a proper federation in which each of the constituent units shall enjoy the right level of autonomy to manage its own unique concerns, competently promote its own development, and strongly make its own kind of contribution to the progress and prosperity of Nigeria.

    Since the culture of elective representative government was begun in Nigeria, we the people of the South-west and our leaders have sought partnership with the leaderships of other ethnic nationalities based on mutual respect, justice and the greatest good of Nigeria and Nigerians. In that light, many eminent political leaders of ours patriotically served in the leadership of political parties led by leaders of other nationalities. We also demonstrated this commitment to Nigeria’s success with open-mindedness when, in the final preparations for Nigerian independence in 1959-60, our foremost political leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, offered the position of Prime Minster in the Nigerian Federal Government to another leader from another nationality, while he himself was willing to accept for himself a lower position of Minister of Economic Development in the Federal Government. It was also in the same spirit of preserving and advancing Nigeria that our leaders worked with other nationalities to create the All Progressives Grand Alliance (UPGA) in the midst of the great crisis rocking Nigeria during the first years after independence.

    In terms of socio-economic development, we Yoruba of the Nigerian South-west have always loyally demonstrated great ambition for Nigeria’s progress, prosperity and power in the world. We have always regarded our well known ambition for socio-economic progress as our kind of service to Nigeria, our kind of contribution to the progress and greatness of Nigeria. We never desire or attempt to exclude other Nigerian nationals from our successes. Since we instituted Free Primary Education in our region, countless thousands of children from other parts of Nigeria have come to benefit from our free schools. Our tradition of hospitality towards non- Yoruba nationals, our culture of religious tolerance and freedom, and the economic and business opportunities liberally provided by our many urban centres, all have made our South-west the destination for millions of Nigerians migrating from their own homelands.

    However, for all our nation’s contributions to Nigeria, what we the people of the South-west have relentlessly been rewarded with is hostility, resulting in betrayal, as well as efforts to pull us down. Soon after independence, the powers of the Federal Government were maliciously employed to disrupt our South-west, generate conflict in our region, and eventually imprison our topmost political leader on totally trumped-up charges of treasonable felony. Even our other leader, Chief Ladoke Akintola, who took the step of forming an alliance with the group controlling the Federal Government, never enjoyed the full loyalty or respectful confidence of his apparent allies; and eventually, he ended up being violently killed.

    Still, in spite of this sordid record of Yoruba experiences in Nigeria, when civilian elective politics was revived in Nigeria again by 1979, Chief Awolowo embarked on a massive effort again for Nigeria’s progress and prosperity. He worked with forward-looking Nigerians from all parts of Nigeria, and created a political party with an enormously ambitious agenda for Nigeria’s greatness. And when, as presidential candidate, he needed to choose a running mate, he persuaded his party to let him choose a promising professional from among the Igbo nationality which had been the most viciously hurt nationality in Nigeria – his reasoning being that such a step was necessary for healing a major part of the wound which the Igbo nation and Nigeria had suffered. But what did Chief Awolowo and all who worked with him get for their great ambition for Nigeria and their titanic efforts? By employing a patently crooked formula, the Federal Government of the day robbed his party of victory.

    About 15 years later, in 1990-2, Chief M.K.O Abiola invested his resources mightily in yet another effort to bring Nigeria together and heal the scars of yesteryears, scars that had been wantonly inflicted on the citizens and peoples of Nigeria through years of military repression. His reward for his great efforts and sacrifices was that his body was brought back home from Abuja.

    Still, years later, when it seemed as if a citizen from the minority Ijaw nation, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, was on the verge of being robbed of his constitutionally legitimate right of succeeding to his late President, the people of the South-west and their leaders supported him powerfully through street demonstrations and global campaigns. Unfortunately, throughout President Jonathan’s six-year presidency, the people of the South-west were treated with hate and spite.

    We in Oodua Foundation, and informed people all over the world, have watched in the past three years as a section of the Yoruba political leadership has worked and sacrificed to knit together the current alliance with the core North, again out of the Yoruba ambition for a stable, strong and  just Nigerian society. Those efforts have now produced a solid possibility of a Nigerian Federal Government dedicated to the welfare of all Nigerians, dependably set against the cultures of corruption, ethnic chauvinism, and process manipulations, a Federal Government capable of leading Nigerians out of poverty into a new era of prosperity and national dignity and greatness.

    We Oodua Foundation and the entire Yoruba nation therefore hopefully expect positive outcomes this time around – even in spite of some disturbing happenings in the new government in the past two weeks. And we urge both sides in this alliance to stay fully loyal to their dedication to change, especially to obviously needed change in the structure of the Nigerian federation.

  • President Buhari: Respond to your soul

    When most Nigerians talk about President Muhammadu Buhari, what we talk about most is his strong rejection of public corruption – his very strong anti-corruption credentials. Almost all of us Nigerians are persuaded by now that this man is not just using hatred of corruption as a ruse to attract popular support. He sees public corruption as an intolerable evil and he wants to get rid of it.

    To realize how sincere Buhari is in his hatred of public corruption, we need to know that, though an anti-corruption stance is popular with the masses of ordinary Nigerians, it is very risky at some levels of the leadership of Nigeria. At such levels, Buhari has experienced rejection and hatred ever since he dared in 1983 to sack the huge corruption edifice that our Federal Government was becoming under President Shehu Shagari. There are even some who believe that Buhari committed an unforgivable sin against God by dismantling the Shagari presidency.

    For instance, one of our country’s most revered Islamic scholars, the Sheik Ahmad Gumi, wrote in an open letter to Buhari some months ago that Buhari’s weaknesses as a leader are “compounded further” by his “strict and obsessive rejection of corruption”. Reminding Buhari that the Islamic religion allows the use of public money “to pacify and lure influential people” and that “men are also controlled by money”, Alhaji Gumi warned, “So, if your policy of governance is obsessibly (sic) centred on sealing tight the use of money, you will have great problem with men”.  It says much for the depth of Buhari’s anti-corruption commitment, therefore, that he continues in that commitment, even in the face of such serious opposition by many influential members of the Nigerian elite – most of whom are from his own nationality.

    But strong feelings against corruption never stand by themselves alone; they are messages from certain deeper tempers of the soul. He who is given to passionate rejection of public corruption is expressing, in effect, his belief that all citizens –the strong, the weak, the smart, the dull, the influential, the unknown and obscure, etc – all are entitled to the benefits belonging to their country, and that it is evil for a few powerful and influential citizens to corner off all the benefits for themselves alone. It is because the masses of Northerners (especially the masses of Northern youths) see this spirit in Buhari that they have been heavily supporting him for years – even in spite of his repeated failures in the elections. It is also the reason why, in recent months, large numbers of Nigerians in other parts of Nigeria have stepped out to endorse him too. The northern masses held on doggedly in their support of him, until the masses of other parts of Nigeria came at last to their aid.

    In a foreign country during the 2011 Nigerian presidential election campaign, I participated in a meeting addressed by Nuhu Ribadu’s campaign managers, who had come to urge us to support and help their candidate. I remember remarking in that meeting that there were two northern political leaders whom the masses of South-west voters could easily vote for – one being Ribadu, and the other Buhari; and I added that both had some appeal in the South-west because of their anti-corruption records, which showed that they were concerned about the well-being of the common people. I am not surprised, therefore, that the voters of the South-west have endorsed Buhari so strongly this time around and, thereby, enabled him to win an election at last.

    So, now that Buhari has made it to the presidency, he must respond to the message of his soul. Fighting corruption per se, penalizing some of the corrupt public officials, and recovering as much as possible of stolen public assets, is not unimportant in the prevailing circumstances of our country, but it is not as important as actually spreading the material benefits of Nigeria into the lives of the masses of Nigerians, especially into the lives of our youths who constitute the majority of our total citizenry. Stories already beginning to be told about the enormity of recent public robberies by public officials are almost impossible to believe. It is beginning to seem probable that very many highly placed public officials will end up before criminal courts and in prisons. But President Buhari must see to it that we devote more of our country’s attention to the task of pulling our people out of poverty and bringing some dignity into their lives. Nigeria’s notorious public corruption has meant that most of Nigeria’s public resources, incomes and assets have been regularly stolen and shared by Nigeria’s rulers at federal, state and local government levels, by elected and appointed public officials, by professional civil servants, and by the secret friends, cronies and fronts of all these. Buhari owes his friends – the masses of Nigerians – the duty of bringing this brigandage to an end, and of creating a new culture whereby the resources of Nigeria shall be employed in a resolute and disciplined manner to empower the masses of Nigerians to enrich and dignify their lives and to build and enrich their country. In short, we Nigerians expect Buhari to lead us through a whole revolution.

    How would we achieve this? Let’s see what other Third World countries have done. Japan, starting in the last years of the 19th century, was the first; and within 40 years, Japan had become a technological, industrial and economic world power. When the Korean War ended in 1955, South Korea was far behind Nigeria in development. When, as a Nigerian Senator, I was invited to give a lecture at the Korean Institute of International Affairs in Seoul in 1982 and I had to brush up my knowledge of South Korea, I was staggered to find how much South Korea had surpassed my country in virtually all fields of development. In 1965, Singapore, then a state in the Malaysian Federation, was so terribly poor, so crime-ridden and so politically violent that the Malaysian federal parliament voted to expel Singapore from the federation. By the time I visited Singapore in 1976, the world was already singing the praises of Singapore as “Asia’s Success Model”. Other examples are Brazil, Argentina, China, Israel, etc. The revolutions took only a few decades in each case.

    The secret is investment in the people – education (with emphasis today on science and mathematics); training of the youths in modern job skills and work ethics; training in entrepreneurship; setting up of policy, financial arrangements and other programmes for helping the starting and growth of businesses; emphasis on energy supply; emphasis on product quality and on exports; incentives for attracting foreign investments and businesses, etc. This package has worked in every case.

    In our case, as in other multi-nation countries (such as India), we must empower our state governments to implement the details of the new growth. An attempt at federal execution of the details can only lead to a return to massive corruption. For best effects, our Federal Government should be limited to the commanding heights of our economy (fiscal policy, currency, etc), defence and foreign policy.

    Buhari can lead us to accomplish these things. It is all different from what we are used to. But most Nigerians believe that Buhari is different from the general run of our politicians.

  • President Buhari: Respond to your soul

    When most Nigerians talk about President Muhammadu Buhari, what we talk about most is his strong rejection of public corruption – his very strong anti-corruption credentials. Almost all of us Nigerians are persuaded by now that this man is not just using hatred of corruption as a ruse to attract popular support. He sees public corruption as an intolerable evil and he wants to get rid of it.

    To realize how sincere Buhari is in his hatred of public corruption, we need to know that, though an anti-corruption stance is popular with the masses of ordinary Nigerians, it is very risky at some levels of the leadership of Nigeria. At such levels, Buhari has experienced rejection and hatred ever since he dared in 1983 to sack the huge corruption edifice that our Federal Government was becoming under President Shehu Shagari. There are even some who believe that Buhari committed an unforgivable sin against God by dismantling the Shagari presidency.

    For instance, one of our country’s most revered Islamic scholars, the Sheik Ahmad Gumi, wrote in an open letter to Buhari some months ago that Buhari’s weaknesses as a leader are “compounded further” by his “strict and obsessive rejection of corruption”. Reminding Buhari that the Islamic religion allows the use of public money “to pacify and lure influential people” and that “men are also controlled by money”, Alhaji Gumi warned, “So, if your policy of governance is obsessibly (sic) centred on sealing tight the use of money, you will have great problem with men”.  It says much for the depth of Buhari’s anti-corruption commitment, therefore, that he continues in that commitment, even in the face of such serious opposition by many influential members of the Nigerian elite – most of whom are from his own nationality.

    But strong feelings against corruption never stand by themselves alone; they are messages from certain deeper tempers of the soul. He who is given to passionate rejection of public corruption is expressing, in effect, his belief that all citizens –the strong, the weak, the smart, the dull, the influential, the unknown and obscure, etc – all are entitled to the benefits belonging to their country, and that it is evil for a few powerful and influential citizens to corner off all the benefits for themselves alone. It is because the masses of Northerners (especially the masses of Northern youths) see this spirit in Buhari that they have been heavily supporting him for years – even in spite of his repeated failures in the elections. It is also the reason why, in recent months, large numbers of Nigerians in other parts of Nigeria have stepped out to endorse him too. The northern masses held on doggedly in their support of him, until the masses of other parts of Nigeria came at last to their aid.

    In a foreign country during the 2011 Nigerian presidential election campaign, I participated in a meeting addressed by Nuhu Ribadu’s campaign managers, who had come to urge us to support and help their candidate. I remember remarking in that meeting that there were two northern political leaders whom the masses of South-west voters could easily vote for – one being Ribadu, and the other Buhari; and I added that both had some appeal in the South-west because of their anti-corruption records, which showed that they were concerned about the well-being of the common people. I am not surprised, therefore, that the voters of the South-west have endorsed Buhari so strongly this time around and, thereby, enabled him to win an election at last.

    So, now that Buhari has made it to the presidency, he must respond to the message of his soul. Fighting corruption per se, penalizing some of the corrupt public officials, and recovering as much as possible of stolen public assets, is not unimportant in the prevailing circumstances of our country, but it is not as important as actually spreading the material benefits of Nigeria into the lives of the masses of Nigerians, especially into the lives of our youths who constitute the majority of our total citizenry. Stories already beginning to be told about the enormity of recent public robberies by public officials are almost impossible to believe. It is beginning to seem probable that very many highly placed public officials will end up before criminal courts and in prisons. But President Buhari must see to it that we devote more of our country’s attention to the task of pulling our people out of poverty and bringing some dignity into their lives. Nigeria’s notorious public corruption has meant that most of Nigeria’s public resources, incomes and assets have been regularly stolen and shared by Nigeria’s rulers at federal, state and local government levels, by elected and appointed public officials, by professional civil servants, and by the secret friends, cronies and fronts of all these. Buhari owes his friends – the masses of Nigerians – the duty of bringing this brigandage to an end, and of creating a new culture whereby the resources of Nigeria shall be employed in a resolute and disciplined manner to empower the masses of Nigerians to enrich and dignify their lives and to build and enrich their country. In short, we Nigerians expect Buhari to lead us through a whole revolution.

    How would we achieve this? Let’s see what other Third World countries have done. Japan, starting in the last years of the 19th century, was the first; and within 40 years, Japan had become a technological, industrial and economic world power. When the Korean War ended in 1955, South Korea was far behind Nigeria in development. When, as a Nigerian Senator, I was invited to give a lecture at the Korean Institute of International Affairs in Seoul in 1982 and I had to brush up my knowledge of South Korea, I was staggered to find how much South Korea had surpassed my country in virtually all fields of development. In 1965, Singapore, then a state in the Malaysian Federation, was so terribly poor, so crime-ridden and so politically violent that the Malaysian federal parliament voted to expel Singapore from the federation. By the time I visited Singapore in 1976, the world was already singing the praises of Singapore as “Asia’s Success Model”. Other examples are Brazil, Argentina, China, Israel, etc. The revolutions took only a few decades in each case.

    The secret is investment in the people – education (with emphasis today on science and mathematics); training of the youths in modern job skills and work ethics; training in entrepreneurship; setting up of policy, financial arrangements and other programmes for helping the starting and growth of businesses; emphasis on energy supply; emphasis on product quality and on exports; incentives for attracting foreign investments and businesses, etc. This package has worked in every case.

    In our case, as in other multi-nation countries (such as India), we must empower our state governments to implement the details of the new growth. An attempt at federal execution of the details can only lead to a return to massive corruption. For best effects, our Federal Government should be limited to the commanding heights of our economy (fiscal policy, currency, etc), defence and foreign policy.

    Buhari can lead us to accomplish these things. It is all different from what we are used to. But most Nigerians believe that Buhari is different from the general run of our politicians.