The Nation Newspaper

Category: Banji Akintoye

  • As Buhari steps in

    As Buhari steps in

    Today, Thursday May 28, is the eve of the swearing in of Muhammadu Buhari as President of Nigeria, and of Yemi Osinbajo as Vice-President. Something tells me that our country, Nigeria, is about to step into its most formative era ever. I have therefore chosen today as my day to start to speak face to face with Nigeria – after many past months of speaking as Gbogun Gboro.

    First of all then, I warmly congratulate the incoming president and vice-president of Nigeria. I rejoice with Nigeria that, against countless predictions, the presidential election of last month did not degenerate into conflicts, blood-letting and disaster. And I applaud outgoing President Jonathan for bowing out dutifully to the voice of Nigerians after their verdict had become clear and unambiguous through their votes.

    But above all else, I look forward today into the immediate future of Nigeria. All I say here today about our country’s past is really to provide a guide to our future. I know that our Nigeria can make it, and that it can thrive and prosper – if we sincerely determine so.  The knowledge, the confidence, that Nigeria has all it takes to prosper and become a great power in the world was the determinant of all my involvement in Nigerian politics in my youth (and in my University College Ibadan student days) from the late 1950s on, and after. In the years when we prepared for independence, our three regions were advancing quite strongly, and indeed proudly, in various directions of development. Each region took strides forward in its own way and at its own pace, and made its own kind of contribution to the overall progress of our country.

    The only serious weakness in this promising picture of the late 1950s was that the ‘minority’ ethnic nationalities in each region wanted to be constituted into a small multi-ethnic region of their own (a Calabar Ogoja Rivers Region out of the Eastern Region, a Midwest Region out of the Western Region, and a Middle Belt and North-eastern regions out of the vast Northern Region), but that our British rulers rejected their demands. However, there was good reason to hope that, after independence, our country’s leaders would attend properly to those demands – and that our country would then have even better chances to progress and prosper.

    Unfortunately, our leaders who controlled our Federal Government at independence bluntly refused to deal with this matter in a spirit of statesmanship and love for all our country. They thus set the stage for conflict, confusion and disorder in our country. Coming mostly from the Northern Region (with Eastern Region’s leaders as junior partners), these controllers of our Federal Government chose to approach the affairs of our country in a manner that immediately pushed our country onto the path of disaster. Determined to humble the Western Region which was the pace-setter region in most fields of development, they employed the powers of the Federal Government in 1962 to destabilize the Western Region – to suspend its elected government and appoint over it a sole administrator. Subsequent attempts to employ federal power to rig elections in the Western Region soon plunged the Western Region into a revolt; and this led to the first military seizure of power in Nigeria. The military in power then went on and distorted Nigeria’s federal structure completely, and turned Nigeria into a country ruled by a Federal Government that controls virtually all power and all resources, and that presumes to be able to promote development in all corners of Nigeria. Made smaller and smaller (until their number reached 36), the states of the Nigerian federation became impotent entities incapable of doing much for development and security in their domains, dependent on federal allocations, and constantly subject to federal bullying.

    In the context of this chaos, prosperity deserted Nigeria and poverty took over. Under federal management, Nigeria’s enviable agriculturally based exports (cocoa in the Western Region, palm produce in the Eastern Region, and groundnuts in the Northern Region), more or less disappeared. Petroleum from the Niger Delta became almost our sole export, and it poured increasingly large revenues into our economy. But it only increased the urge in the Federal Government to take over all resources. The Federal Government became abominably inefficient and corrupt, and public corruption became Nigeria’s pervasive culture. Most influential Nigerians abandoned productive enterprise and found ways to join in the scrambling for shares in the corruption. At lower levels in the Nigerian society, the escalating poverty destroyed almost all of productive orientation, and most Nigerians who could do so found some way to benefit from the fruits of corrupt politics. Increasingly harassed by their ever-demanding constituents, Nigerian politicians became more and more blatant in turning public offices into sources of graft and of indefensible remunerations.

    I am happy that Buhari has strong anti-corruption credentials, and I trust his promise to suppress corruption. I am sure that Osinbajo will be his kindred spirit and strong partner in the fight. But corruption is only a symptom of the deep-seated disease in the management of our country’s affairs. A president may suppress corruption, but unless the real disease is healed, corruption will return. Nigeria’s real disease inheres in the fact that we are neglecting, or evading attention to, the obvious fact that ours is a country of many different nations – nations different in culture, in history, in territory, and in culturally determined modes of response to issues and to the demands of modern development. Being different in these ways does not mean we cannot become a stable and successful country; what it means is that we must truthfully and even humbly accept that our nations are different, and we must pay due respect to those differences.

    The acknowledgement and respect of our differences must be clearly written in our constitutional structure, our practice of politics, and our inter-group relationships. When any of our component nations, especially any of our larger nations, chooses to disrespect our nations’ differences, the outcome can only be some wrong-headed attempt to dominate others, or a disruptive crudity in relations with others – each of which can only make our country unstable or even a failure. A relentless attempt by some to dominate our country and all its peoples  has been a constant factor in our history since independence, and it is towards that end that resolute attempts have been made by some to accumulate power and resource-control at the federal centre – the outcome of which has been massive inefficiency and public corruption, widespread hostility among our nations, attempts by federal authority to rig elections across our country, and our country’s sad decline across board.

    It is therefore imperative, if we sincerely desire the best for our country, that we must consciously try to evolve a Nigerian culture based on respect for our nations’ very real differences. Constitutionally, that calls for properly restructuring our federation; it also calls for giving back to the component units of our federation the task, resources, and strength for development. In all respects, it calls for respectful contacts and relations among our nations. Without these, it will be impossible to make Nigeria successful, or even to keep Nigeria as one country.  Focusing mostly on suppressing corruption while leaving our federation in its present chaotic structure may appear to succeed for a while, but it will fail in the end. I wish President Buhari – and I wish Nigeria – not a superficial and transient success, but a true and lasting success.

  • Swelling echoes of change over Nigeria

    All over Nigeria these days, and wherever else one may meet Nigerians, one can feel swelling echoes of change. I was only a teenager in the early 1950s when the big constitutional structures began to be put in place for preparing Nigeria for independent nationhood. But because my parents and other significant kinsmen were heavily involved in the local politics of those formative years, I was very much aware of the wind of change sweeping over Nigeria. Those were sometimes dizzying days, but the echoes of expectation and change now sweeping over Nigeria are hardly less dizzying.

    Today’s atmosphere of expectation and change is easy to explain. After a decade of vibrant growth, excitement and hope in 1952-62, we Nigerians have seen nothing but decline, decay, and hopelessness in our country since 1966. Sure, a petroleum bonanza began to gush floods of money into our economy from the 1970s, but it did so in a growing context of degeneracy among the men and women who guided the affairs of our country. As our father, friend and mentor , Obafemi Awolowo, used to say , it is not money that develops a country; it is the human mind, applied in a purposeful, focused, disciplined and self-sacrificing manner, that produces development, progress and prosperity. Increasingly lacking such high qualities of mind in our leadership cadre, our potentially great country slipped inexorably down a bottomless abyss. In fact, in the past 30 years (that is since 1985), we Nigerians have increasingly seemed like floaters in the world, disoriented floaters without a country we can call home with some modicum of certainty and pride.

    In these dark years, as Nigeria scuttled down its dark and darkening void, some rare flashes of light interrupted the darkness at some points, and seemed briefly to be about to arrest the fall – only to be immediately smothered by the powerful darkness. Today, surprisingly, the man who lit the last of those brief flashes of light is waiting to be ushered back to the presidency of our country. For the people of my generation who saw and experienced the golden age of the 1950s, and who experienced the short exhilaration of its probable return in 1984-5, this Muhammadu Buhari presidency is a rebirth of enormous proportions. The generation of our children and grandchildren, who today constitute the majority of our total citizenry, share this excitement or expectation too; but it is unlikely that they feel it exactly as we do – because, unlike us, they did not see the starting light of the 1950s, but have been raised almost entirely through the darkness and the fall after it. And yet it is they who must now grab the light that will, hopefully, be ushered in soon, and use it to breed real and lasting energy, sanity and prosperity for our country.

    As I wrote in an earlier series in these pages, my first reaction to the beginning of the Buhari war on corruption in early 1984 was one of hostility. And that is because he simply jumbled the good with the bad, and indiscriminately rammed into prison the barons of the corruption and those of us who had been fighting the corruption. When I was released from prison (after being asked absolutely no questions throughout my incarceration there for months), I was angry. Moreover, I could not settle down, because Buhari’s lieutenant in my Ondo State had ordered thousands of youths arrested and charged with various serious offences in connection with the massive violence that had greeted the rigging of the Ondo State gubernatorial election of 1983. Around court houses all over our state, angry youths and parents were getting into fisticuffs, and generalized violence seemed likely. I wrote to the state military governor, Governor Otiko, advising him to calm the situation by doing what Governor Fajuyi had done in a similar situation in the Western Region in 1966 – that is, proclaim an amnesty and give some help to those whose businesses had been damaged in the violence. He invited me to his office, but the 90 minutes I spent discussing with him there was just a waste of time – he could not understand the purport of what I was advising him. His simple-minded understanding was that Buhari and Idiagbon wanted him to be tough on all and sundry in Ondo State. It was weird.

    That, however, was 1984. Today, in retrospect, I seriously wish that the Buhari adventure had succeeded and lasted many years, wobbly though it had been in parts. All that has followed after the ousting of Buhari in 1985, and until now, has been horribly crooked and destructive. These are the years during which it has become the accepted tradition that whoever serves as president of Nigeria must be so rich afterwards as to be counted among the richest people on earth. And, as the Nigerian president has become the Robber-in-chief and Bandit-in-chief, he has inevitably also become the Corrupter-in-chief – because it is in his interest to throw the door wide open to all other public officials to grab and steal grow rich. He needs to do that to protect the process and the preservation of his own loot. He needs also to establish the control of the presidency over all of Nigeria’s money and resources – and the Nigerian president is now sometimes like a character in a comic opera, dancing and trampling over endless fields of cash. Some foreign reports suggested in recent months that a Nigerian president’s election war chest is usually bottomless.

    The constitutional, political and moral consequences of all these are boundless and cataclysmic. Our elected officials, and even our professional public officials, expend much of their competence over the scramble for huge personal wealth through the most creative corrupt practices known to man. Many stories about Nigerian public officials are like fairy tales – and are difficult to believe. Public officials who dutifully attend to the business of the public have more or less vanished from our land. Beyond the political elite and their friends and cronies, almost all the rest of Nigerians are paupers. Truly productive enterprise has become an endangered species among us – and the quest for money at all costs, and without any basis in true productivity, has become our common badge. Our country has long ceased to be a federation – and what it is now defies definition. A foreign author wrote in a book recently that Nigeria is a failed state that strangely manages to keep standing.

    But now, Buhari is heading back to the presidency, and with a very formidable deputy, Prof. Osinbajo. The echoes of change are rising and swelling.  We Nigerians can understand it if some of the changes are merely superficial and cosmetic – but the fundamental changes are imperative. For instance, can any abiding change occur in our country if the powers and resources wantonly accumulated gradually in the federal centre since 1966 remain there, and the state governments remain the beggar entities that they now are, and our country’s monumental inefficiency continues? We agree with Buhari that change cannot happen all at once, but it is crucial that plans for fundamental, structural, change be quickly forthcoming. These done, Buhari and Osinbajo seem set for the kind of enthusiastic support that no other presidential team has ever received in our history.

  • To make Nigeria succeed or fail: it is our choice

    Since the victory of General Muhhamdu 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 his own profound thoughts on the question that is most important to Nigeria today – the question 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, our 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. Of course, 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. And since some of our nationalities are large and many are small, our best arrangement should have been to make each of our large nationalities a state and, with caution and respect, we should have helped our small contiguous nationalitiesto form reasonably sustainable states. We ought to have borne in mid 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).

    But, 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 center. That paved the way for horrific inefficiency and corruption at the federal centre, turned our states into impotent entities forever at the mercy of the federal center, 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 federal centre mostly floundered and perished.

    Those who controlled the federal 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.

    A new day can soon dawn in Nigeria. As the swearing in of Buhari and Osinbajo draws near, optimism and hope rise over our country. Understandably, most of our people are looking forward 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 even make the states more in number and weaker in stature – for instance, 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 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 – it is our choice.

  • We Nigerians and the war on corruption

    Nigeria has good grounds for optimism about the coming Buhari presidency. So too does a world that has watched Nigeria with mounting anxiety for years. Improbable as it may sound, the Nigeria of the three short weeks since the March 28 presidential election is vastly different from the Nigeria of the preceding six decades. A land of utter hopelessness is beginning to breathe an air of hope.

    The expectations are high. But so are the perceptible promises and prospects. Muhammadu Buhari exudes qualities that seem tailor-made for serious transformational change in our country. In a country in which leadership positions have, for nearly six decades, been defined by all leading Nigerians (high and low) as warehouses for personal wealth-gathering, Buhari is well known as one of the few public leaders capable of rising above the primitive urge to steal, grab and engross. From his record, we know that Buhari sincerely hates the public corruption for which virtually all his peers salivate. And he hates it so much that he would wage war against it – as he did once before – even though he knows for sure that powerful persons close to him will rise up as defenders of corruption and fight against him. There is a fact that most Nigerians do not know – namely, that many of the leaders of Buhari’s own people hate him, and find it difficult to forgive him till today, for hacking down the castle of corruption erected around President Shagari  in 1979-83.

    I belonged to the Nigerian Senate in those Shagari years, and watched at close range the truly intimidating stature of the corruption edifice. We who stood firm in opposition to that edifice often doubted that anybody could ever demolish it. Yet, within only weeks of seizing the government in December 1983, Buhari had demolished corruption – and had started to guide our whole country onto some path of order, discipline, and probity. It was incredible!

    I tell this important story today not merely to remind us Nigerians of a major era in the growth of our country’s shame and decline. I do not tell it to reopen old sores, or to embarrass Nigeria’s former leaders. I do not tell it to adulate Buhari. I tell it because there are critically important lessons that Nigerians should learn from it.

    Altogether, the lessons are as follows: While Buhari was busy demolishing corruption and doing various patriotic things, according to his light, to straighten up Nigeria, some very influential citizens were meeting in dark caucus rooms and plotting to get rid of Buhari and his anti-corruption agenda, and to  re-establish the power of corruption over Nigeria. In about 18 months flat, they sprang their attack. Buhari was thrown off the stage and replaced with another military officer acceptable to the owners and mentors of the corruption edifice. Within months, corruption was not only back, it had become the well-established, and institutionalized, system of Nigeria’s governance.

    Obviously, in the post-Buhari years, the objective was to establish corruption so soundly that it would never again fear the kind of threat that Buhari had posed for nearly two years. And, by and large, that objective was achieved – and corruption has been our avowed system of governance ever since. As things are, corruption has no special kinsmen or friends among Nigerians or Nigerian peoples. All prominent Nigerians, from all corners of Nigeria, can be presumed to be friends of corruption. All presidents in the years since 1985, as well as nearly all persons who have served as governors, senior civil servants at and high officials of parastatals at federal and state levels, as well as chairmen and members of local governments, have taken corruption hideously to heart. A foreigner who visited Nigeria lamented, “In other countries, public corruption means that some public officials steal some of the public money under their care; in Nigeria it often means that all public officials steal virtually all public money under their care. Sometimes, stories about Nigeria sound as if Nigeria is not part of the world”.

    What then should we Nigerians take from this lesson? First, we must recognize that corruption is a very powerful force, and that getting rid of it is not going to be easy. Some who have tasted it are so intoxicated by it that they will do anything to defend or resuscitate it. Our common belief that the era of military coups is gone is sheer folly. All it takes to effect a coup is a handful of highly motivated military officers, pushed forward with irresistible incentives by one or two very rich and influential super-citizens.  The best antidote is that all of us, common citizens of Nigeria, should keep watch and never cease proclaiming that we will never again accept any military ruler – that if any military officer goes on radio and says, “My dear countrymen”, the rest of us, as citizens and as nationalities, will answer absolutely unambiguously that we are not his countrymen. All who love and want Nigeria must henceforth be ready to pay this price of vigilance.

    Secondly, we must give democratic support to President Buhari as he proposes and implements measures to rid our country of public corruption. Unlike in his showing in the 1980s, he is not going to be a military president this time. He must work with, in particular, the federal legislature. All members of the federal legislature are our elected representatives. Under the corruption regime since 1999, the National Assembly has generally acted as if it has some special authority beyond that conferred by the constitution and people of Nigeria. They have presumed, for instance, that they can keep whatever they like out of the knowledge of Nigerians, and that it is their prerogative to secretly threaten officials of the executive arm of government in order to extort bribes and enhanced emoluments and benefits for themselves. That has been part of the corruption governance. We Nigerians must put an end to that now.

    As part of the war on corruption, we must demand that President Buhari should promote a new political culture of “government in the open sunshine”. As part of this, we need to start the political practice, common in the greatest democracies worldwide, whereby citizens create citizen bodies that act as watch-dogs over various aspects of their government – for instance, over the budget, over the management of public contracts, over open governance, over accountability, over civil rights, etc. In the great democracies like America, citizens give such bodies money to keep them alive; and we Nigerians must begin to do so.

    Also, we must demand laws to bring discipline and some decency into our politics. The horse-trading that goes on now in our politics – the disgraceful slinking from party to party – is one of the worst features of our corruption.  And must demand that Buhari should cause to be reviewed the irresponsibly high remunerations of elected public officials.

    In summary then, we Nigerians must make sure that proper political institutions are created to make the death of corruption permanent. In addition to the steps listed above, we must therefore demand a properly structured federation, a change from the presidential to the parliamentary system, and the revival of the procedural rules that, from 1952-66, regulated the access of public servants to public accounts. We must give Buhari the support he would need to lead our country along these lines.

     

  • What the southwest wants!

    We, the masses of the southwest are living in poverty – a degree of poverty unknown before in our history. For us, independent Nigeria meant poverty and more poverty. We are not used to living in poverty and we cannot stand it much longer.

    The agency that hampers struggle and success in all parts of Nigeria today is the federal government. It was not so in the 1950s. From the time when our country became a federation in 1952 and until 1962, the federating units of our federation (the then regions), had enough autonomy and enough of control over their own life and resources to make progress in all directions. The federal government was not an obstacle then, as it is today.

    And the federal government was by no means weak. There was a careful and sensible balance between the powers of the federal and regional governments. The regions were empowered as seats of detailed development while the federal government was empowered to stand above all, protect the regions, defend our country and speak for our country in the world. That was the kind of sane and sensible arrangement that our leaders (our Awolowo, Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello) agreed upon. Each region had its own Coat of Arms, its own flag, even its own representatives in London to see to its affairs abroad. It was not perfect but it was good enough – and it worked very well.

    It was under this sensible arrangement that the genius of our Awolowo could blossom in our western region. He was a thinker, planner and achiever above all others. Our region was free to breathe and live and thrive. Awolowo and his team of capable colleagues were able to make miracles happen. That is how our region became “First in Africa” in a lot of developmental achievements.

    But the other regions were proudly achieving too. Gradually, in the eastern region, a culture of small industrial businesses raised its head. The northern region was starting far behind the western and eastern regions in education. But, under its great leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the northern region embarked upon a very admirable development progress in many directions too.

    In the midst of all this excitement, we celebrated independence in 1960. Our Nigeria was growing and prospering and heading for the highest in the world. And we young Nigerians proudly bragged to our friends in the countries where we were studying abroad that our Nigeria would soon become the Blackman’s world power of modern times.  Then came 1962 – yes, 1962.  In that year, the people in power in the centre thought that the western region was just too successful on its own strength, too confident, too proud. Therefore, they decided that the western region needed to be humbled and subdued.

    Our young people of today do not know the story but they need to know it. I was young then. I had just graduated from University College Ibadan. The day I finished my last BA degree examination, the car sent by my employers to bring me to my new job was waiting for me in front of the exam hall. By evening, I was a proud person in my new job. That was the way we citizens of the western region lived in those days.

    After graduating, we were immediately ready and able to start supporting the parents who had supported us through school and university and to start helping our younger brothers and sisters to get higher education too. Our life was orderly and sure. We walked the earth with assurance and pride. Then suddenly, the federal plot struck at our region.

    Everything started to crumble all around us. It was awful!

    Leaders of the eastern region should have advised against the attack on our region but they chose to support it. They calculated that our fall would benefit them somehow. Our pacesetter region was overrun and brutalized. At last, in desperation, we the youths of the western region rose in a mighty revolt which shook Nigeria to its foundations.

    And from that time, there followed a series of military coups and military dictatorships going on until 1999. Like the people who had held federal power in 1960-62, the military dictators also destroyed our federal arrangement and replaced it with a strongly centralized arrangement. They created more and more states until we reached 36.

    But that was not their real intention. Local demands for states gave them the opportunity to splinter the country into small weak states that the federal government could easily dictate to.  For instance, claiming that the new small states were simply too small and too weak to hold the assets and development products of the former three regions, (highways, universities, control over export products, etc), they seized all for the federal government.

    They even went as far as to listing our local governments in the Nigerian Constitution and provide that they should deal directly with the federal government – so that the federal government may be able to manipulate them. The federal system we had at independence disappeared and Nigeria became essentially a country ruled by an unruly federal government.

    As things stand today, there is hardly anything the federal government does not interfere in. The Federal Government has stopped some states from building or improving roads, claimed to be the sole controller of all natural resources, taken over taxes paid by companies doing business in the states, marched soldiers into states without any consultation with the state governments, insisted on determining the number of local governments in states, rejected decisions of courts and even used its unlimited power to rig elections across our country.

    The federal government presumes to have the right to sack the elected governors of states and to dictate the minimum wages that state governments will pay to their employees. The federal government is the mighty power behind the culture of corruption that has pulverized Nigeria and wrecked Nigeria’s name in the world. The federal government is the enormous agency that promotes and guarantees poverty in Nigeria.

    The federal government stands in the way of states that are ambitious and eager to fight poverty. If we do not urgently curb the excessive powers and presumptions of the federal government and restore considerable development competence to the federating units of our federation, poverty will rise to such heights that Nigeria will not be able to contain the anger it generates.

    That is why we the citizens of the southwest, as one people, want the Nigerian federation to be restructured without delay. In our regions or states, we can beat poverty and return to a life of progress and prosperity. This is not a selfish demand. All Nigerians will benefit. Nigeria will benefit.

    So, we say to all our Southwestern politicians, governors, federal and state legislators: Pool your energies and influences to get the Nigerian federation restructured now. The present so-called federation is an imposture.

  • President Jonathan’s finest hour

    At exactly 1:15 pm United Sates eastern time (6:15 pm Nigerian time) on Tuesday, my daughter called me from Lagos with the news that President Goodluck Jonathan had just called Gen. Buhari and congratulated him on his victory in the presidential election. I have seen Nigerian elections since 1952, have taken frontline parts in many, been a candidate in some, and won some. I can’t remember another election campaign that was so contentious, and so bitter and violent in tone, as the one that ended this past Tuesday. And I can’t remember any other federal ruler of Nigeria who so willingly conceded victory to an opponent as President Jonathan has done.

    In the history of Nigeria, the one or two minutes of greetings between President Jonathan and Gen. Buhari this past Tuesday is very likely to go down as President Jonathan’s finest hour as a Nigerian public official. And those one or two minutes may very well go down as the turning point in the hitherto tumultuous path of Nigeria as an independent country since 1960. If Nigeria goes on from this point to evolve into a country with a disciplined leadership, orderly management, openly democratic politics, and a dynamic modern economy, President Goodluck Jonathan could become the initiator of needed change for Nigeria. Some day in the future, our grateful descendants may erect statues to his memory.

    Sure, most of us Nigerians have spent the past four years lamenting President Jonathan’s inadequacies. Because he comes from the Niger Delta, where many brave youths have arisen since 1960 to war against excessive centralization of power and resource control, and against an insensitive federal establishment, very many Nigerians naturally looked up to him to start a process of constitutional changes – changes that would give the Nigerian federation a more rational structure, and restore to our federating units much of the responsibility for development and resource management that the Federal Government has been messing around with. But, not only did he not start the needed change, he even seemed for some time to be opposed to it. And when he was finally prevailed upon to take some step and call a National Conference, he did absolutely nothing to give it any direction.

    Quite rightly, therefore, when some eminent citizens in Nigeria’s most progressive region rose up during, the now concluded election campaign and urged their people to support him on the grounds that he would carry out the recommendations of the National Conference; their people were skeptical.

    During the same years under President Jonathan, our country has increasingly suffered distress on account of terrorism. At least, in the course of the first years of this century, we Nigerians grew used to believing confidently, and with considerable pride, that ours was the strongest military in Africa. In various trouble spots on the African continent, and even in places beyond Africa, we earned the reputation of being a key factor in international peacekeeping ventures. When Boko Haram began to raise a challenge against our country, therefore, most Nigerians felt sure that our military were more than capable of quickly getting rid of them. But the challenge mounted and mounted, while President Jonathan seemed more and more at a loss on what to do. The crisis attracted the attention of the whole world when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 students in a girls’ boarding school and we seemed to have no meaningful response. Various foreign governments and international agencies came in to offer help, and soon, through them, we got the shocking message that our military were hopelessly inept – as a result of rampant corruption.

    This national shame reached a peak when the armies of our supposedly weaker neighbours (Chad, Cameroon and Niger) intervened and began to achieve significant success against Boko Haram – success that seemed beyond the capability of our own military.  From this situation concerning our military, the image of our presidency as commanding chief over corruption assumed huge proportions. In fairness to President Jonathan, it is not right to charge him with being the originator of corruption in our federal government. Corruption was already a mighty power in our public life, and our Federal Government was already a monstrously corrupt entity, and the purveyor of corruption in our land, when President Jonathan was only a boy at school. The very constitutional structure given our country in 1978- 9 was designed to facilitate corruption – and it has done so more and more blatantly since then.

    But the recent stories of our military’s ineptitude due to corruption did a lot of harm to President Jonathan’s image at home and abroad – even though, on the basis of what we know about our former presidents (military and civilian), President Jonathan does not, obviously, have the audacity to do what some of our earlier presidents did in the realm of corruption.

    All these tend now to pale into only little significance side by side with what President Jonathan did last Tuesday evening. From all that we Nigerians know, when President Jonathan put that call through to Gen. Buhari, exchanged a few words with him and put down the telephone, he almost certainly saved our country from a major conflagration. For many months, many of our politically influential citizens have been exchanging threats of violence and war if the outcome they desired from the presidential election did not materialize. For years, some influential citizens have been, reportedly, importing and accumulating dangerous weapons for implementing their threats. Among us ordinary Nigerians, fearsome speculations have reigned. Then with one small gesture, President Jonathan commanded the rising tide of lawlessness and anarchy to be still. Soon, we will have another man in the position of president, and it is upon him we will then have to pin our hopes for our country. If he indeed is able to start off peacefully and smoothly, we will find it impossible to forget that it was President Jonathan who did that which made such a start-off possible.

    From our present situation, I have a message for our politicians. Because of my principal job as a scholar and teacher, with a significant amount of participation in the politics of my country, and with considerable contacts with politics, governance and development in many countries of the wide world, I am often horrified by the manner in which we Black African peoples conduct the politics of our countries.  I mean our tendency to infuse excessively violent passions into our relationships with one another, especially in the course of election rivalries. Some of the threats of war and violence, which we have heard in Nigeria in recent months, are simply unthinkable in most countries outside Black Africa. Besides, among persons intensely working for this or that presidential candidate, I have watched people say, write, or enshrine, unbelievably vicious and hurtful things about other persons – even persons to whom they are quite close by blood and other kinds of bonds.

    Where does this primitive urge to hurt and destroy our fellow men come from? How really does such savagery help our candidate? And, now that the candidates have ended this more or less amicably, how do we live with the hurt and barbarism that we so thoughtlessly generated in past weeks? Is it true that, as some say, we blacks are less human, and less capable of thought, than other races? We need to think about these things.

  • Yoruba Ronu: These times demand wisdom

    Hubert Ogunde sang his great song, ‘Yoruba Ronu’, at a time of great trial and stress for the Yoruba nation in Nigeria. For us Yoruba, it has been our lot in Nigeria to suffer trials, stress and distress from time to time to time. That is because, having been made part of Nigeria by the British in 1914, we have been forced to live for a whole century in a Nigeria whose standards are weird and unacceptable to us as Yoruba people. To us today, as the Nigerian presidential election of 2015 approaches, the Nigerian situation is not merely weird and unacceptable to us; it absolutely threatens our peace and security.

    Sure, we understand when our political leaders and political activists urge us to focus our attention only on the election that is coming. That is as it should be. As long as we Yoruba as a nation are part of Nigeria, we must be involved in her political processes, and our politically active men and women must do what politicians do in elective politics. They must seek to win our votes and, in the process, they will talk to us as if voting in the coming election is the most important thing in the world.

    But, as one of our proverbs says, even as one’s eyes sheds tears in the act of weeping, one still see through one’s eyes. Today’s situation demands that our politicians must give a big part of their attention to the needs of peace and security in our homeland. They must not ignore the very manifest fact that many prominent citizens in other parts of Nigeria have been talking volubly about violence and war, and that some of such prominent citizens have been importing and amassing weapons of war. Our politicians also must not ignore the stories circulating in recent months that some hostile elements, well armed for destructive purposes, have already entered into our homeland.

    This vigilance and readiness to defend our towns and cities and villages is a duty for all of us, members of the Yoruba nation in Nigeria. It is a duty for all our politicians from all political parties. It is a duty for our traditional rulers and chiefs. It is a duty for all our state governors and state governments. And it is a duty for all of us common citizens.

    As an example of what we should all be doing, a powerful Yoruba intellectual organization, Oodua Foundation (O.F,), headquartered in the United States but with members in various countries of the world, has been very busy mobilising the Yoruba nation towards a peaceful outcome for the Nigerian presidential election.  Oodua Foundation (O.F.) has, since its inception in 2006, adopted a strictly nonpartisan posture. Its objective is to work for the progress and prosperity of the Yoruba nation – as they usually put it in their writings, “within Nigeria if possible, without Nigeria if necessary”.  Their approach to the service of their Yoruba nation is based on a strong foundation of knowledge and facts; and it is tough and hardheaded. They see every prominent Yoruba person as a God-given instrument for the advancement of the Yoruba nation, and they have no interest whatsoever in any kind of partisan divisions among Yoruba people.

    In the past few weeks, they have been intensely busy trying to ensure that, if the presidential election leads to violence, their own Yoruba people must not get involved in the violence. They are calling and holding long-distance conferences with prominent Yoruba leaders and urging everyone to commit himself to the promotion and preservation of peace in Yoruba land. They are in contact with many foreign governments and international agencies.

    They have issued a jingle for airing on radios. And they are now beginning to circulate a Clarion Call, urging their Yoruba nation to exercise full Yoruba wisdom and commonsense in the developing Nigerian situation. Part of the Clarion Call reads:

    From all indications, this coming election seems likely to produce conflicts, violence and bloodshed on a larger scale than ever before in Nigeria’s elections. Many important Nigerian leaders (happily excluding Yoruba leaders) have been threatening violence and war; and many have been importing and amassing dangerous weapons. And, from experience, the Nigerian government is unlikely to have the readiness or ability to contain and stem such violence should it occur: Oodua Foundation calls on all Yoruba in Nigeria to remember that we Yoruba are a freedom-loving people, with ancient and sophisticated political traditions, and that we honour the right of every citizen to support any political party or candidate: Oodua Foundation calls on all Yoruba registered voters to go out dutifully and peacefully to vote on Election Day, and to strictly avoid any kind of violence.

    After we Yoruba have voted for candidates of our choice, we must strictly avoid any kind of violence, and strictly avoid being drawn into any violent act, in any part of the Yoruba homeland in the Southwest, Kwara, Kogi and the Itsekiri part of Delta State: Oodua Foundation calls on the Yoruba nation to resolve now in advance, and to pass it from mouth to mouth in our land, that any Yoruba person who starts or supports violence in any part of Yoruba land shall be regarded as an enemy of the Yoruba nation and be treated as such: Yoruba people are aware that, among the many non-Yoruba Nigerians who reside in Yoruba land, there may be some who may have their own reasons for choosing to instigate, start or support violence. If such should happen anywhere in Yoruba land, we Yoruba owners of our cities, towns and villages must promptly unite together and use our traditional community strength to stop and suppress the violence and to uphold peace.

    We Yoruba should remember the pains we have suffered in the political history of Nigeria, especially in our resistance to Nigeria’s culture of election fraud. We are owners of an ancient, orderly and highly respectable system of selecting our rulers, and consequently, we seriously respect the modern system of elections, and we find it difficult to tolerate election fraud of any kind. But we must remember the losses we have suffered in our resistance to election fraud in various Nigerian elections in the past – the lives and properties that we lost, and the hostile divisions that all were thereby generated in the life of our nation. We must now have the wisdom, as a nation, to recognize that we have always contended against envy, enmity and marginalization in the affairs of Nigeria, and that we have nothing to gain from inflicting pain on ourselves.

    If the violence in other parts of Nigeria continues uncontrollably or if it threatens to spill onto any part of our homeland, thereby threatening the well-being of the nearly 50 million Yoruba people, the leading citizens of our Yoruba nation must immediately set aside any Nigerian political and partisan roles, unite in the interest of our nation, and set in motion serious considerations and measures for safeguarding the peace and well-being of our homeland and people as well as the destiny of our nation. We call, in particular on all Yoruba leaders and functionaries of all political parties and groups, to speak out courageously in support of this clarion call.

  • The Yoruba and the impending Nigerian situation

    Nigeria’s presidential election campaigns of 2015 have developed into unprecedented confrontations. People holding extreme positions insist that their positions are irreconcilable, whip up the language of war, brutalize one another on the campaign trail, and accumulate sophisticated weapons for a final showdown. In the history of mankind, the accumulation of weapons has an almost irresistible logic and finale of its own: those who accumulate weapons almost always end up having to use them.

    Nigeria seems now to be about to reach the absolute bottom of the filthy slope that she has been descending determinedly and uncaringly since independence. Countless Nigerians at home and abroad, and countless citizens of a world that is increasingly worried about the impending disaster in Nigeria, have spoken, counseled, entreated and begged. But the captains who guide Nigeria have defiantly insisted on more concentration of power, and more concentration of resource-control and management – all in a country of heterogeneous nationalities. They are hurrying to construct more and more structures that are designed to minister to, and that do excite, the greed and other ignoble passions of man; they are designing more and more interference in, and pollution of, the basic processes of governance. For Nigeria, the hens are now about to come home to roost.

    I fear that those who are now beating the drums of war in Nigeria will soon stand condemned before the court of history for the rivers of blood they will soon cause to flow, for the families they will cause to lose loved ones, and for the mothers they will cause to weep for the loss of their children.

    As the feared storm gathers, Nigerian peoples will be hit in different ways. I have seen, and I have been part of the struggle through, many of Nigeria’s self- brewed storms since 1960, but I have never been as fearful as I am today for my Yoruba nation. By providence, history and culture, we Yoruba are a large and strong nation. By the time we were forced into Nigeria in 1914, we had had an enviable 1000 years of urban civilization, with a rich and sophisticated economy, and eminently well-structured, enabling and stable governance. We have therefore had, as a nation in a Nigeria of many nations, a lot to impart towards orderly, stable and successful governance. And in fairness, we can proudly say that we have done quite a lot – to persuade Nigeria to tread the path of orderliness, sustainable federal structure, modernization, and focused dedication of rulers to the improvement of the quality of Nigerians’ lives. In my younger years in Nigerian politics and government, my kinsmen and I used to serve with untainted pride, motivated by the realization that we had, as a nation, the duty to help our multi-nation country to walk in the path of decent governance. None of that has really worked – and Nigeria goes its own way towards its own destiny.

    But, at this critical juncture, I seem to perceive that my strong Yoruba nation is caving in to the deleterious afflictions of Nigeria, and appears to be becoming incapable of even holding itself together and defending its own. The sheep has kept the company of the dog too long. In all directions in our nation, weakness whimpers pathetically. The once glorious guides and guards of the 1000-year excellence of Yoruba political culture, disregarded and neglected by their own people of today, have abandoned the parapets. Service to the self reigns – with the result that the rich now say “I am poor”, and the strong say, “I am weak”, all because they all are unwilling to give towards the strength and dignity of their Yoruba nation. Little groups mushroom to march out, but nearly every one quickly degenerates into a self-serving cabal, builds a meaningless wall around itself, and then masquerades as too sanctified to touch, or to work with, any other group.

    Lone rangers dictate the tune of our national political life, and by their excessive and un-Yoruba presumptuousness, they provoke the emergence of detractors that become bent on fighting them to the death. In every political party, many influential Yoruba say, “We seek power, influence and wealth in Nigeria now; we will think of our Yoruba nation later”. The eagle that was fashioned to soar the heights now waddles in the mud ponds. The up-and-coming generation of bright youths is offered no vision or noble direction to hold on to.

    This is our day of weakness. But, it is the way of nature and of human society to experience times of weakness. What is more important, and what we need to grab, is the certainty that our inherent strength, nurtured over a thousand years, is alive and intact, that out there, everywhere, the men and women imbued with that strength are countless, and that the immediate need of the moment is to prod those elements of our culture and fundamental philosophies that can waken and accentuate their strength.  Coincidentally, I hear that a large conference of Yoruba leaders is meeting in Ibadan this day, and I hope that they will regard this column today as a message addressed to them.

    First and foremost, we need to reawaken our common consciousness as one people – one people with a common national character and a common destiny – no matter what becomes of Nigeria. No matter what political party or group any of us may belong to, our membership of it is chosen by us, and is evanescent and changeable – whereas our membership of the Yoruba nation is God-ordained, unchangeable, and passes automatically to our offspring. And, thankfully, our Yoruba nation is an enormously proud possession.

    Secondly, in the shifting sands of Nigerian politics, our only sensible and sustainable option is to revive and reemphasize our national ways and philosophies. From wisdom gathered for over a thousand years in our well-ordered communities, we know that it is not sensible or realistic that all of us should belong to one persuasion, either religiously or politically. The recognition of the right to choose is deeply ingrained in our culture; no Yoruba person disrespects the other because of difference of choice; and no Yoruba person, no matter how high, should claim that his partisan choice is the choice of all Yoruba.  Even if (or rather, when) we come to have our own sovereign Odua country, we will have different political parties with members across our land.

    Very importantly, neither of the two leading presidential candidates has ever been formally given the Yoruba agenda for Nigeria. We should appoint a delegation of leaders to put it in the hands of the two candidates now – and demand formal responses without fail. Then, we should urge all parties and candidates to respect the non-partisanship of our Obas, and to relate to our Obas with utmost respect.

    Finally, we must explore all means to ensure that if, as is widely feared, violence happens to cap the coming elections, no part of Yorubaland, and no Yoruba person, will be involved or hurt in it. On the contrary, we must close ranks, turn such a situation around, and make it the dawn of our day of strength.

  • Another of Nigeria’s deadly diseases

    I refrain usually from commenting on matters touching the employments and careers of highly placed professionals employedin the public service anywhere. My reason for that is that, having lived many decades of my life (since 1966)as lecturer and professor in universities in Nigeria and abroad, I can see, at any time, a broad spread professionals who had once been (or might have been) students of mine, in the public services of various countries and international agencies – in particular of my own country, Nigeria. For me, such persons are family. If I ever intervene in matters concerning their employment experience, it is only to commend or recommend them; I hesitate to raise issues that can tend to make them uncomfortable or make them wonder about the support of their former teacher.

    It is with utmost reluctance therefore that, in this column today, I raise issues of fairness concerning the recent employment experiences of two highly placedNigerian public servants, both of whom I regard as family in the sense explained by me above.   My comments here are really not about the two persons concerned – the two are commendably highly educated and experienced citizens of our country. It is about the awful quality of governance in Nigeria – about the use of inexplicably unfair considerations in the manning of our public service, and about the insensitive hurting of many of our own citizens because(and only because) of the place or nationality of their origin in Nigeria. For all Nigerians, the story below is a story to ponder.

    Furthermore, and most importantly, at this point when we Nigerians are about to elect or re-elect a president, a matter like this deserves to be put respectfully before us all. In this column last week, I called on certain highly revered leaders of the Southwest who are now being very supportive of President Jonathan’s re-election bid, and urged them to show us, the people of their Southwest, that they have obtained from President Jonathan satisfactory assurances that the Southwest, and the citizens of the Southwest, will henceforth get their fair place in a further Jonathan presidential term, and that the citizens of the Southwestwill not, for any reason, continue to be subjected to the marginalization and unfairness that they have suffered in the Jonathan presidency until now. I now recommend for these revered fathers a consideration of the information contained in this column today.

    Finally, I need to add that today’s column is not about supporting or opposing anypolitical party or anyelectoral candidate. It is about proper management of our country, about inculcating a tradition of fairness into the peaks of our country’s corporate life, about nurturing a spirit of common acceptance of all by all on a reasonably plain Nigerian field, and about using positions of power in our country to promote a spirit of harmony among our many different peoples.

    The Basic Story

    LamidoSanusi, the official who had served as Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for many years, had to give up that position suddenly in February 2014. President Jonathan immediately appointed LamidoSanusi’s Deputy Governor, a woman named Sarah Alade (Dr. Mrs. Sarah OmotundeAlade) to the position of Governor of CBN. But on June 3, 2014 (less than five months later) President Jonathan pushed Dr. Sarah Alade off that seat and back to her former position of Deputy Governor, and appointed  another person, Mr. Godwin Emefiele from a private bank, as Governor CBN. That is the basic story .

    Here now are the facts which are available to all in the public domain about the two persons concerned. I will merely present the facts as they have been published, add nothing of my own, and leave the public to do the comparisons and the judgment. Of the two persons concerned, I can’t remember ever meeting either before; and I have no contact with either.

     

    About Dr. Mrs. Sarah Alade:

    Dr. Sarah Alade attended Obafemi Awolowo University where she obtained the degree of B.Sc. (Hons) in Economics in 1976.  Later, she obtained the degree of M.Comm at the Unversity of Melbourne, Australia, in 1983, and the degree of Ph.D. in Management Science (Operations Research) from the University of Ilorin in 1991. She started her working career in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, in Ilorin, Kwara State, in 1977. After obtaining her Ph.D in 1991, she joined the University of Ilorin in 1991 as a Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance.

    In 1993 she was employed into the Central Bank of Nigeria as an Assistant Director in the Research Department. In that position, she served as Head, State Government Finance Office (1993-6), Head, Federal Government Finance Office (1996-2000), and Head, Fiscal Analysis Division (2000-2004).

    “Dr. Alade has served on the teams on major economic policy studies, and has been involved in the preparation of Central Bank of Nigeria’s Monetary and Credit Policy Proposals over the years. She was actively involved in the drafting of the Medium Term Economic Programme (MTP) for Nigeria and the IMF staff Monitored Programme/Standby Arrangement.Dr. Alade was appointed Director, Banking Operations Department of the Central Bank in May 2004. In that capacity, she served as Chairman Board of Directors, Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) as well as Secretary, National Payments System Committee (NPSC)”.

    Dr. Alade was a member of the Technical committee of the Vision 2010 and currently a member of the Technical Committee of Vision 2020 and member of the National Economic Management Team (EMT).

    Dr. Alade was appointed Deputy Governor (Economic Policy), of CBN, in 2007. In that position, she “superintends over the Economic Policy Directorate, comprising the Research, Monetary Policy, Trade and Exchange, Statistics Departments and Financial Markets Department. As Chair of the Monetary Policy Implementation Committee (MPIC), she interfaces with operational departments and coordinates technical inputs for the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)”.

    “Dr. Alade, has several publications to her credit and is currently carrying out research into Interest Rate Policy and Monetary Policy Implementation in Nigeria. Dr. Mrs. Alade is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Operational Research”.

     

    About Mr. Godwin Emefiele:

    Mr. Godwin Emefieleattended the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he obtained the degree of B.Sc. (Finance) in 1984 and also the degree of MBA (Finance).

    “Before commencing his banking career, he lectured Finance and Insurance at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, and University of Port Harcourt, respectively”.

    Mr. Emefiele served in the management of ZenithBank Plc from the inception of that bank in 1990, as its Deputy Managing Director from 2001, and as its Chief Executive and Managing Director from 2010.As Deputy Managing Director, Emefiele was directly responsible for all the Group’s local subsidiaries, Treasury and Correspondent Banking, and Multilateral, Conglomerates, & Private Banking. He also had responsibilities for direct supervision of majority of the bank’s branches in Lagos and Northern Nigeria.

    As Chief Executive officer and Group Managing Director of the bank, he served as the Executive Director in charge of Corporate Banking, Treasury, Financial Control and Strategic Planning of the bank.Mr. Emefiele has also served as Director of Zenith Bank (Gambia) Limited. He also serves as Director of ACCION Microfinance Bank Limited.

    “Mr. Emefiele is also an alumnus of Executive Education at Stanford University, Harvard University (2004) and Wharton Graduate Schools of Business (2005)”, all in the United States.

    I repeat that I need not add anything.

  • Nigeria: Public corruption is king!

    Greed, corruption, self-serving criminal conduct – all these and more are part of human life in every nation or society. They are part of what all known religions among men would classify as “man’s sin nature”. In every known polity in the long history of man, there have always been some leading men and women who use their offices to serve their personal purposes in obviously criminal ways. Public corruption is part of the experience of governance everywhere.

    As I write these words, I have open before me many lists from the United States governance and leadership experience. I limit my search to lists of public officials convicted of corruption or other crimes in the past decade. Each list runs to many many pages – lists of “Federal Officials Convicted of Corruption”, “Federal Officials Convicted of Crimes”, “Federal Officials under Sex and other Scandals”, “State and Local Officials Convicted of Corruption”, “State and Local Officials Convicted of Crimes”. Most of the officials on these lists were arrested while in office, and tried, convicted and jailed. The lists contain the names of state governors, federal ministers, federal and state senators and representatives, mayors, members of county governments, military officers, police officers, assistants working for these high-placed public officials, etc. As of this moment, there are tens of these former public officials serving jail terms in prisons across the United States. In short, no members of any nation are more, or less, prone to corruption and criminal conduct than the rest of humanity.

    But, at that point, we come to the differences.  In some countries, the degree of tolerance of public corruption is very low. In America, the degree of tolerance of corruption and criminal behavior in public office is so low that if any public official, no matter how high, engages in corruption or crime, he is very likely to get caught and to end up in jail. Very many things in America’s group life contribute to that picture. In general, Americans love their country so much, and cherish their laws and traditions so passionately, that if a public official engages in corruption or wrong doing, someone in his office, or someone close to him, is likely to step out some day to tell it. A person who speaks out like that (known as the ‘whistle blower’) is protected by the law – so that he does not have to fear persecution by his superiors. The news media play a very mighty role in this too. Once the news breaks that some public official is suspected of wrong doing, American journalists don’t seem ever to be able to give up the case as long as there remains any unresolved part of it.

    Much more importantly, America’s law enforcement officials are exceptionally dedicated to their tasks. No American public official is so high that the American police and secret service would not keep an eye on him. If any suspicion of wrong-doing arises against any official of the Federal Government, the Federal Attorney General (though a member of the party in power) would rev up his office (the Department of Justice) to investigate. If the wrong-doing is big, he may choose to appoint a Special Investigator from outside to handle the investigation. And if any wrong doing is found, his lawyers would start prosecution against the offender. If it is the President, he would hand him over the Congress for impeachment processes. A president was so investigated and impeached in the 1970s. Another was so investigated but narrowly managed to avoid impeachment in the 1980s. Recently, federal detectives got hint that a governor was demanding material rewards for doing official favours. They bugged his phones, recorded the criminal conversations -arrested him and landed him in court. He is in jail. Many years back, a popular politician, after serving as governor of his state, became Vice-President of America. Law enforcement officials in his state discovered that he had evaded taxes during the years when he had served as governor. They raised up criminal charges against him. He confessed in order to get a smaller punishment and not go to jail (Americans call it “making a plea bargain”). As his smaller punishment, he was ordered to resign from his position as Vice-President. He resigned in disgrace. While investigating a president for some suspicion of wrong-doing, law enforcement officials wanted to take some blood from his arm as evidence. Some secret service officers went to the White House and told the president what they had come for. The president rolled up his shirt sleeve, and the secret service officers brought out their needle and syringe and drew the blood they wanted and went their way. Yes, that is the way it is. America takes serious steps to protect itself from possible rampages by wrong doers. America is a land of law.

    In comparison with America, Nigeria is just one crooked and lawless jungle,  a land of the powerful and the influential, a land over which the whims and caprices of the powerful and influential reign. Corruption is therefore king in Nigeria – king unrestrained and impossible to restrain. And the reasons are quite easy to see. Altogether, it often seems as if Nigeria is a country without citizens. Everybody (including the journalist and the law enforcement functionary) is so consumed with trying to benefit from whatever is going on (no matter how terribly dishonest and corrupt) that nobody ever does anything to protect Nigeria against wrong doers. In Nigeria, the man occupying the position of the Attorney General is, unashamedly, a lawyer for the party in power. He himself would readily take part in criminal acts, if such acts benefit his party.  No powerful evil doer needs to fear him – except, occasionally, members of opposition parties who are foolish enough to refuse decamp to the party in power when they come under investigation by law enforcement. For public officials at federal, state and local government levels, if they belong to the party in control of the Federal Government, the freedom to steal public resources, to corrupt their offices, to distort the governmental system, and to commit crimes, is limitless. The police, the secret service and, now, the military would, as errand boys of the Nigerian president, readily flout Nigerian laws. Essentially, Nigeria is a country without any kind of law enforcement.

    An important feature of this awful picture is the nationality factor. Every Nigerian president tends to surround himself with appointees from his own nationality. And, cocooned in that inner circle, he and they can do any evil without any fear of consequences. For them to steal enormous amounts of public wealth is, to them, a fair share for their nationality. To some nationalities, in fact, public corruption is justified by the teachings of religion.

    It is day-dreaming to think that these aberrations can be eliminated substantially and abidingly in Nigeria. Conceivably, a major dose of power decentralization can help. But there are some nationalities to whom strong centralization is gospel and decentralization is anathema – and who would start a war to prevent decentralization. Those who advocate that Nigeria should split up into smaller and ethnically less diverse countries make a lot of sense.