The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Exit from ECOWAS by Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali

    Exit from ECOWAS by Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali

    An extraordinary statement was issued in Niamey by the military spokesman for the so-called Sahelian Alliance countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The statement claimed that the three countries mentioned  above cease to be members of ECOWAS immediately due to the fact that the Economic Community Of West Of African  States (ECOWAS) has in their claim, departed from its original aim of economic development of the member-countries following what the statement claimed to be  pressure from foreign powers. The statement further claimed this followed the “patriotic” move of the armed forces of those member countries to effect changes in their countries for reasons of defending the interests and territorial integrity of their countries following challenges posed against the very existence of their countries from internal and external aggression while their incumbent governments were ineffective in protecting their countries’ interests.

    This move should not have surprised the authorities of the heads of state of ECOWAS. The three countries are in any case currently under suspension until they transit from military dictatorship to democracy. There is also nothing new in a country leaving the ECOWAS because in 2000, Mauritania left and in 2017 signed a protocol of association with the ECOWAS. We can expect that these three countries united in their poverty and landlocked by their geography will come back home in the nearest future because of the instability and uncertainty of military regimes in West Africa and the developing or underdeveloped world.

    In the first place, the three governments of the new alliance countries were faced with impossible and intolerable situation but in different degrees and circumstances. Niger was confronting the problem of Boko Haram and ISWAP – an offshoot of the (ISIS) and the TUAREG insurgents from the Sahara which had benefited from the surfeit of weapons left over from the collapse of the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya. The country was also perpetually plagued with internal political instability arising from various sectarian Islamic movements and sharp ethnic divisions and rampant poverty. Apart from the regimes of Hamani Diori (president from 1960 to 1974) and Seyni Kountche (1974-1987), it had proved difficult for any other government to remain stable except by military force.

    Read Also; EFCC nabs religious sect laundering money for terrorists

    In the case of Mali, the situation is much more serious and complex. After more than 12 years of fighting the Tuaregs and others in the Operation BARKHANE against so-called self-styled WAZA republic, France felt compelled to withdraw its forces in Mali and their supporting staff in Niamey and N’Djamena Chad. This followed series of coups d’état and constant changes in government and direction of policy and frustrations and disaffection with French forces who seemed to rely mostly on its air force than ground troops. The Mali military junta then resorted to enlisting of mercenaries from Russia – (the WAGNER GROUP-) to beef up their fighting forces against the rebels from the North. The French withdrew its forces in 2020-2022 followed by its European supporters who apparently were not really committed to the perennial struggle against the Islamic militants in the Sahel and the Sahara.

    The problem was really the vastness of the space to be pacified by a relatively few French forces of less than 7000 troops scattered in several bases. The preponderance of weapons in the hands of the rebels apparently made pacification impossible. The poverty of the masses who expected French support would tilt the pendulum in favour of the Malian indigenous forces could not be assuaged and this led to general disaffection and anti-French revolt. This has now been exploited by the military to rally the ordinary people of Mali for support.

    In the case of Burkina Faso, the explanation is not too different from that of Mali with which it shares common border. Burkina Faso has been fighting the forces of the Islamic state in the Greater Sahara when it crossed in 2016 into the country from Mali and the forces of JNIM – (JAMA’AT NUSRAT AL ISLAM WAL MUSLIMIN) a militant group headed by a Tuareg named Iyad Ag Ghali which operates across West Africa but fighting mostly in Mali and Burkina Faso. All these groups are united by grievance, and opposition against France’s post-colonial policies after flag independence and  has now found expression in militant Islam and anger that France and America has not been able to save them from the destabilisation caused by militants both from within and from outside.

    This is the background of the anger of the military against France in Francophone Africa including Benin, Guinea, Senegal, the Cameroon and Tchad and distant Gabon. At independence these countries were tied by a protocol subordinating them to France economically forever. France and French companies had the right of first refusal of all contracts or rights to mineral exploration and exploitation in those countries before any other country or company could be considered. Their foreign exchange was kept in France’s central bank and France had ownership of 20% of the foreign exchange of these countries as payment for French “civilising missions” in their countries for the years they were under French control and exploitation and shall I say peonage! Countries in Anglophone West Africa, even though victims of neo-colonialism were not nakedly exploited as their counterparts in the Francophone zone. The apparent weakness of the international order in recent times, has given these countries room to ventilate their feelings and they cannot just understand their Anglophone neighbours shouting about restoring democracy in their countries if necessary by force.

    Unfortunately, the current ECOWAS is chaired by the president of Nigeria and this is where we as a country are directly involved. Nigeria provides a third of the budget of ECOWAS and is the seat of ECOWAS which it generously housed. Nigeria wants to be regarded as a thriving democracy and promotion of democracy is part of its foreign policy. So it was natural for it to be at the vanguard of the pressure to reinstate democracy in the neighbouring countries in West Africa. In the case of Nigeria, it shares about a thousand kilometre border with Niger to the North and the Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri people share common consanguinity with their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers in Niger. In fact, the ordinary people at the border do not seem to recognise the international border. The exit of Niger will therefore have existential problems with people in the border in both Niger and Nigeria. At official level, things can be worked out in terms of common borders with Niger and what each country is owing and will be owing to one another as we go on. This will include payment for electricity by Niger and customs duties for trans-shipment and immigration charges as is normally charged the Chad republic which is not a member of ECOWAS. The fear that their exit from ECOWAS will create a cleavage and a chasm between neighbouring sister countries will not arise but will be a bit more expensive. Other protocols would have to be negotiated with Burkina Faso and Mali to guide our formal relations as is the case with other African countries. The exit of the three countries is not the end of our relations. We cannot change our relations and  these countries will continue to remain our neighbours and our relationship will be guided by the belief that this is a temporary rupture in relations and we should be indulgent towards Niger in particular because we cannot change our reality that they are bound to us by history and geography.

  • Rush to judgement: The Ibadan blasts

    Rush to judgement: The Ibadan blasts

    There was a huge blast caused by some kind of explosion in the evening of Tuesday, January 16 which shook some areas of Ibadan to their very foundations.  The epicentre was the highbrow Bodija Estate built in 1958 by the Obafemi Awolowo government of that era. I take particular interest in this incident because the then supervising minister of lands and housing at that time was a young minister by the name Oduola Osuntokun with whom I share consanguinity. Ibadan also happens to be the second home of many Yoruba people and whatever affects the huge city has reverberating effect on many people. I had part of my secondary school education at the famous Ibadan Grammar School and my undergraduate education at the University of Ibadan of which I am proud to be an alumnus.

    There is a story about Bodija that I must tell my readers. Sometimes in 1985 or 1986, I wanted to acquire a plot of land in the same Bodija. I applied for land and the chairman of the Housing Corporation, Dr Omololu Olunloyo who later became the governor of Oyo State briefly invited me for an interview. When I got there, he summoned the permanent secretary of the corporation to bring him my file and introduced me to him. He said this young man’s brother founded this estate. Please find him a plot in Bodija. After some fruitless search, he came back and he said he located a plot in a watery part of the estate. Olunloyo told him a university teacher could not build in such a place because of cost. He then said he will allocate a plot of land to me somewhere near an estate under development. I thanked him profusely. The watery soggy place is near the epicentre of the current blast. Imagine if I had built a house near the epicentre of the blast. I may have been blown to pieces or may have had a heart attack because of sudden shock as happened to some home owners. This is the uncertainty of life.

    I know people in their late years who would have said to themselves that as far as shelter is concerned, they have nothing to worry about. Yet people slept and woke up and found themselves homeless or people went to work or to visit friends and on coming back to find their life property destroyed. I just narrated the  story  of my struggle to build a house in Bodija to show the dedication of those who served the country previously without any reward because Dr Omololu complimented my brother  for not allocating  plots of land to himself, children and siblings!

    We can therefore thank the Almighty that the epicentre of the blast was in the corner of the estate and not in the centre. In spite of the epicentre centre of the blast, it affected many parts of Ibadan including the government secretariat and the university where windows were smashed. Many commercial and worship centres were also affected. Many houses and hotels were irreparably damaged. I live quite a bit further away, almost four kilometres away and yet parts of my home was  damaged. Many people lost their homes and this included elderly people who may not be able to rebuild them. The same goes for people with housing investment and hotel. People have now had to move to live with friends and to stay in hotels just to temporarily catch their breath. There are reports of people who had heart attacks as a result of the sudden noise and tremor occasioned by the blast. There is no doubt that this blast is a major disaster especially occurring at a time of economic hardship and financial scarcity and difficulties.

    In the olden times, Bodija was home to the men of influence in government and academia. Unfortunately, most of them have passed on and the importance of Bodija has virtually died with their original owners of property. But at least for history of Ibadan, the estate still carries some weight and importance. Many of the houses have been sold by their inheritors either because of hard times or because the children have relocated abroad or because the houses have become incommodious or old and out of fashion. When I pass through Bodija these days, I become nostalgic about the place and remember what some of us experienced there when we were young.

    When the blast happened, I was lucky to have left for Lagos a day earlier, forced by divine providence because I was not scheduled to have left. I just decided to leave because of the inefficiency of public electricity company and I needed some respite in a place where I would not worry about lack of electricity just after I had just had a medical intervention in one of my ears. I was out of Ibadan just by a day when the blast occurred. On Wednesday morning, I started receiving telephone calls very early from former students of the Redeemer’s University. It was from them I heard about the incident. They were very specific about the cause of the blast and they were united in telling me it was caused by “Mali illegal miners living in rented houses in Bodija”. I asked them where they got the news and they all claimed that it was what the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde said. I must have received not less than 50 calls from former students and academic colleagues worried about my safety. I thanked them from the bottom of my heart and I felt I must have made some impression on these young people calling me.

    Read Also: Ribadu leads Ibadan blast probe

    When everything seemed to have settled down, I began to interrogate the events of the day and to wonder how we came to quick resolution of the complex question of bombing that led to much destruction and fatalities. In other climes, this will require proper clinical investigation. People began to react and questions were asked about the alleged dynamite or any other chemical used in the explosion. One must concede to the fact that being an engineer and also someone in possession of almost instant intelligence, the governor would know the probable cause of the explosion. But if he knew instantly, why was the whole thing not aborted by interdictory action? There was also a statement by a retired military officer who knew about ordnance who doubted the government’s assessment as to what caused the explosion. People then began to say it may not have been caused by what the governor said caused the action. The federal government promptly set up an enquiry with the National Security Adviser as chairman. I hope there will be a timeline within which he must report back to the president before the rumour mill begins to work overtime and lending authenticity to rumours. This is important in view of the gathering storm of kidnapping, ethnic violence in some parts of the country including Abuja, the federal capital.

    As the Chinese will say, we live in interesting times and we must nip in the bud whatever may undermine our fragile national security at this time. Perhaps this is the time to fast forward what new security the government plans in this budget year so that the government is ahead of enemies of the state. Concerned citizens have complained about lack security in our country at this critical time. Stopping vehicles at the entry points to our towns is not enough. We have to ensure that only security personnel and accredited people have access to explosives and to agricultural chemicals that can easily, like fertilizers, be converted to incendiary materials. There are markets in Nigeria where incendiary materials can be purchased as fertilizer which can be converted for deadly ends by people who do not wish our country well. A stitch in time saves nine! I do not believe every other Africans affected by revolutionary fervour in their countries and seeking refuge in Nigeria currently should be shut out of Nigeria. But because of our current situation, we have to be more careful about suspicious foreigners who live among us especially those involved in mining because of the past experience about miners in recent times. Our lax attitude has to change this year because of the dangerous climate pervading not just our part of Africa but the entire world.

  • Great expectations in 2024

    Great expectations in 2024

    On December 31, 2023, I went to Accra Ghana for a family occasion. I had not been to Ghana since the coming to power of the incumbent president, the very articulate President Nana Akufo-Addo.  Akufo-Addo was not my preferred candidate in his contest with his predecessor John Dramani Mahama who is a friend of Nigeria and a literary artist.  The current president of Ghana on coming to office gave a critical lecture at Oxford University, his Alma mater in which he cynically lambasted Nigeria for foolishly wasting its oil money. Even if this was true, I do not believe it is proper for an African president to ridicule another African country in a foreign land.  Permit me the digression.

    My visit to Ghana lasted a full week during which I experienced many things which I had not experienced in my several visits  to Ghana, first as a  secondary school student, then as an  undergraduate, then as an academic and now as a person with family ties because my youngest child is married to a Ghanaian. My father had lived in the then Gold Coast colony working in the Manganese mines around Nsutta in Central Gold Coast. This was before I was born. He made some money which he brought home to build a rambling house for himself and his two uterine brothers in Okemesi our hometown. I have always wondered why the Gold Coast was where my people went in search of the “Golden Fleece”.

    In my youth, sections of my town were inhabited by people who spoke as their second language Fanti which they picked up in the then Gold Coast. This is the second language spoken by most people in Ghana after Twi. The largest number of Yoruba people in Ghana in colonial times were Ogbomosho people and there were also people from such towns as Oyo, Ejigbo and Ede. The only explanation for this migration was probably scarcity of arable land. This was certainly the case in my home town being sandwiched in a valley surrounded by hills and where as a result of history of migration and our wars of liberation, we paid less concern for agriculture than for security. It is a long history which needs not bother us. I don’t know the reason for Ogbomosho people going in droves to the Gold Coast. But it is the same search for trade and profit that drove them to northern Nigeria as well.

    Back to my story. I flew to Ghana on new year Eve 2023 on an AIR PEACE plane, manufactured by EMBRAER. S.A of Brazil. Apart from Boeing and Euro Aerospace, this Brazilian company is the third commercial planes manufacturer in the world. This position may change soon when the Chinese commercial airline planes bulldoze their way into the world market, the usual massive Chinese way.

    My flight to Ghana was uneventful. In spite of the dusty Harmattan haze, the flight landed as scheduled. The flight was fully booked with a substantial number of the passengers made up of black Americans and Nigerian-Americans and their spouses who came “home” to Africa for Christmas and new year. I learnt it has become fashionable for these compatriots to celebrate Christmas in Lagos or Abuja and then fly to Accra for for elaborate new year celebrations. Tourism is big business in Ghana not just in Accra but in the country as a whole but particularly in the south. Hotels in Accra are absolutely exquisite. The beaches are primed for accommodation in beach hotels. The most remarkable thing is that electricity is regularly available every hour. Even though Accra strangely enough, is hotter than Lagos but air conditioning appears to be effectively available because of the regularity of electricity. Service in the hotels is friendly and efficient and the people are trained to be friendly. Ghanaians are on the whole much more friendly than our people. I am surprised about this because this was not always like this in the Ghana of my youth. At that time Ghanaians were very arrogant and proud. They had reasons to be like that. They beat every country in black Africa apart from the Sudan in the race to political independence. They also used to thrash everyone on the soccer field. Their voice was loudest in the struggle for pan African independence and unity and their president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah – the “ Osagyefo” or “saviour “ was the most well-known African leader and the youth of Africa including most young Nigerians admired him compared with our chaotic political leadership.

    Read Also: Tinubu approves three resolutions to reduce pharmaceutical costs, bridge brain drain in health sector

    Of course things changed with our petroleum wealth which apparently went to our head and we mismanaged the opportunity. But even up till today, the evidence of our conspicuous consumption is evident in the luxurious cars on our dilapidated roads compared with the small cars on Accra roads.

    When I arrived in Accra I noticed the difference. I wanted very badly to ease myself in a toilet. I was under severe pressure and I couldn’t wait for normal immigration or customs procedures so I dashed to a lady in uniform. I told her I urgently needed the use of a toilet. She did not start by directing me to a toilet she actually took me to one! I felt so good as an 81-year old whose bladder was about to explode would feel. When I finally got to the immigration desk and my pictures were to be taken, I was asked to remove my cap and glasses. For comic relief I asked the Ghanaian officer whether a chief’s head can be exposed just like that in Ghana. He apologised and we both laughed. Then the next port of call was the customs department. The officer insisted that I open my box. I asked him why? This time I was serious because he seemed for some strange reasons to have picked me out of the crowd. When he saw I was serious, he backed down and let me go.

    What would have been the experience of a Ghanaian if the roles had been reversed? When I returned to Lagos I discovered that touts had infested the new extension of the Murtala Muhammad airport. One of them tried to rip me off pretending he was helping to clear my luggage but I stood my ground. What was most impressive was the airline that was expertly run and the brand new plane safely flown to and fro showing the possibility of a new Nigerian business owner and run by young Nigerians of mixed ethnic background. I saw this with my own eyes in AIR PEACE!

    The Murtala Muhammad airport’s new extension shows what is possible. It is newly built and mercifully the air conditioning is working. The seats were clean and so were the toilets. If this can be maintained, then our airports would not be known for their ugliness and filth. How I wish the entire airport in Lagos can be as well maintained as the new extension. All things are possible. We just have to work at it. Small things are important. We cannot be talking about foreign investment if ordinary things like airports are in shambles. There are also too many desks one has to check at presumably because of security, drug trafficking, immigration, customs and so on and these things give room for the usual Nigerian malady of corruption. We just have to be determined to build our country because this is the only country we have.

  • Let’s be positive this new year

    Let’s be positive this new year

    When I read newspaper columns or posts exchanged with friends and colleagues nowadays, I ask myself whether there was ever a time when our benighted country, Nigeria was ever in a better shape than we presently are. I try to go back in a journey of retrospection and I zeroed in on the period between 1951 and 1962 when most of my readers were yet unborn. Most of them would probably say we do not care of what happened in the past especially faced with the hardship of the present.  

    I understand their predicament because not everyone has an idea of historical perspective. Yet without a perspective view of what happened in the past, we really cannot grasp the importance of the present and the now and whether there is a prospect of a better future. If we all agree about our golden past and how we got from there to the deplorable position now, we can probably go back to the past to achieve a better future.

    When we began our golden era was when we constitutionally practiced a system of fiscal and political federalism in truth and indeed unlike now when we deceive ourselves by practicing a unitary form of government and yet calling it federalism with essential powers concentrated in the hands of the federal government in not only just in the creation of states but even local government areas (LGAs) as well. What an absurdity which we should have deprecated but instead, we always asked for more states and local governments to satisfy our greed and not need. We thus created a monstrosity of the most administered land and people in the world. We create mini and miniaturised states whose finances were more or less tightly controlled by a powerful central government which had seized most of the financial resources and revenues generation of the constituent states. This destroyed innovation and local talent with everyone going to the centre where there is more recognition and unfortunately more resources to toy around with and to loot for the greedy ones among us.

    In my youth which coincides with my idea of the golden era of Nigeria, all men of talents and innovation remained in the regions where the action and the resources were most needed. This was the period when like Canada, Australia and the USA and smaller federations like Belgium and Switzerland, the constituent states of the union, created the centre rather than the situation in Nigeria after the coup d’état of 1966 where the centre created the states/ regions thus creating a situation in which the federal government stood on its head so to say. It was not just a question of distribution of power between the centre and the constituent regions but of resources because in the past before 1966, the regions kept their wealth and used it for what they considered most important for their peoples’ wellbeing. If it was building primary schools which admitted all children old enough to attend school that they considered important, that was what their money was used for. Every region had graded areas of priority and each state developed at its own pace. To a certain extent there was positive competition and no one was slowed down for others to catch up with the rest.

    In order to maintain power, the military emphasised our ethnic differences and maintained them to create states based on ethnicity but the more states and local governments that were created, the more fissure was created yearning for closure. There was no ending to the division of states until states littered the Nigerian political environment without the satisfaction of all.

    Read Also: Lawmaker gifts constituents New Year’s package

    Since we cannot really go back to the golden era, the question to ask is what then do we do?  We are persuaded that we need to overhaul our economy and build a powerful economy if the political edifice is to survive. If we have the most clinically constructed constitutional architecture without money in our pockets simply put, we labour in vain. We have to build this economy based on comparative advantage. We must base our production on what is available or what we grow in our neighbourhood.  If we are going to industrialise, it must be based on what we are going to add value to and share with our compatriots at home and the wider global community. If we are truly over 200 million, we should make this huge market available for those who can provide for the multitude of our people’s needs.

    I am not suggesting a kind of autarky but a system of economic independence unlike what we currently have in an economy of overwhelming dependence on importing household goods from China and India and industrial, chemical and engineering goods from Europe and America. We cannot do this suddenly but through a gradual process of weaning ourselves from the feeding bottle of the west generally over the shortest time possible.  

    At the period of trial, we must not expect home grown industries to produce at optimal levels of quality but overtime as had happened in other parts of the world the quality will improve. When it becomes increasingly profitable, the economy will leap forward and the question of constitutional structure will almost become irrelevant. In the most sophisticated and advanced countries of the world, how many people really worry about the constitutional arrangements when their bellies are full and there is money in the banks and in the pockets to have a shelter over their heads and money to pay for their children’s fees?

    Alexander Pope the English philosopher, I believe was right when he said “For forms of government let fools contest, whatever is best administered is best”. This a credo that would minister to most of us in this country and many academics will agree with it because any serious scholar can write a critique of any form of government as an academic exercise! The same way we can write about our past and present governments. What we need to do is to be a little more positive and make critical suggestions that can lead us from the economic doldrums in which we find ourselves. We all know our economic malady is one of conspicuous consumption without shame and this tendency is based on rampant corruption in which the few sit on the necks of the many and gorging on what belongs to all. If we continue like this, the entire territorial edifice will collapse. It seems as if our rulers cannot help themselves and this is why we have to call to order those who are over indulging themselves in affluence before the on-looking mass of the poor take on them and those of us who are looking unconcerned. We are all in danger and we must all join in the rescue of the states and its organs because if we don’t do this, there will be no state to rescue. If we want our contribution to be taken seriously, then it must be on the side of positive change rather than on the side of destructive criticism characterising most of criticism.  It is quite clear to us that we cannot continue for long in a situation where we frequently run out of ordinary currency printed money backed by state power and where the national currency has become a chiffon de papier and almost totally worthless and saving for the future is a fruitless effort in the face of devaluation, depreciation and decline.

    What was a national asset of a big market is now an albatross round our neck because internal travelling has become hazardous and dangerous. It behoves us to firm up the security apparatus in the country to guaranty the critical environment necessary for economic intercourse and communication with all the parts of the country rather than only what intrepid adventurers can now indulge in. Government has to rise to the level of guaranteeing the minimum level of security available to citizens of government in all countries of the world. This is the least we can expect from our government and we do ask for it and in asking for it we should pledge our support because this is right and our bounden duty as citizens.

  • Another year is ending and a new year begins

    Another year is ending and a new year begins

    Year 2023 that is ending has been a difficult year all over the world, but to say the least, it has been doubly, problematic in Nigeria. There is a shortage of food because we are not growing enough food, the farming population is aging and the young people are flooding into the towns for the bright lights in the cities. Secondly the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are disrupting the flow of food and cost of available food imports is skyrocketing. The cost of fuel and consequent devaluation of the local currency is making the cost of imports unbearable. 

    We are also witnessing the global inflation ravaging the entire world. We are going through a transition from living beyond our means to living within our means. We transited from one government to another despite the rather contentious and disputed national and state elections, a feature which has sadly come to characterise our elections in Nigeria. Election seems to be a festival of bountiful harvest of monetary rewards for lawyers and some would say, for members of the judiciary in Nigeria.

    I don’t think there is any other country in the world where elections are followed by so much litigation as we have in Nigeria. In our country, when a candidate loses an election, the refrain is that she or he has been rigged out. When he wins an election, it is either he or she has bought his or her victory. It is not that elections are not sometimes challenged in other countries but in Nigeria, it is the routine end of all our elections. This is sometimes accompanied by violence. This makes one to come to the conclusion like Marquis de Montesquieu came to in the 18th century that people in the tropics are predisposed to dictatorship than to democracy which is more suitable to people in the temperate regions of the world. I cannot think of countries in the tropics that run democratic constitutions seamlessly whereas democracy seems to be rather popular in the temperate countries particularly in the temperate region of Europe, the United States and Canada in spite of dictatorships of the Nazi, the Fascist, Communist ideology which were European export to the world.

    In Africa our monarchical legacies like other monarchies in other parts of the world did not tolerate opposition. We mostly do not have positive terms for opposition in our languages. Nowadays we all want to be on the winning side in any elections no matter in which country. Winning an election in Africa may be the difference between having flowing potable water in your pipes or dry pipes or no piped water at all. It could also mean no motorable roads or smooth expressways. It could mean absence of other great things like hospitals, good schools, good communications and transportation and other appurtenances of modern life.

    In other parts of the democratic world, some of these things are regarded as normal expectations from good democratic governance. The thing is that some of these things are also available to citizens in countries run by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The difference is that if the totalitarian and authoritarian rulers do not provide them, there is nothing the citizens can do because protest or demands for them are not allowed unless the protesters are sure of support for a change of government or the consequences of liberty or death as battle cry.

    What has our experience in Nigeria been since about 1951 since our country exited from British dictatorship based on racial superiority and western educational achievement of knowledge? The British conquest and domination was based on superiority of knowledge translated into superiority of weapons and intelligence and governance wisdom based on knowledge. When the British felt they had to concede to our fathers a share in government based on the fact that our founding ancestors had acquired western education, they brought into being constitutional provisions that made it possible to share with us the burden and opportunities of government with our fathers and sometimes with our mothers schooled in the same intellectual environment with our fathers. This first crop of rulers guided by the British overlords seemed to have imbibed the democratic culture which allowed difference of ideas not leading to blows and undemocratic exchanges in the public glare.

    But when the British left or surrendered to our pressure, the democratic edifice carefully constructed collapsed like a house of cards because the structure itself was built on faulty foundations. From the collapse we needed a civil war to realise our mistake and to build back on the debris and ruins of the previous sandy foundation. We learnt the hard lesson that it is much easier to destroy than to rebuild. Since our civil war, we have been writing constitutions only to find them not quite adequate to the problems that keep emerging and to tackle each new problems cropping up all the time.

    We have not found the magical constitutions that substantial portion of our people like. Once a new constitution is written, people use it to satisfy their greed. Those out of the gravy train would then commence on serious agitation to make the country unstable and if possible ungovernable. We then put together a governing coalition to ram down the throats of those who are out of the loop. This has been our story since independence. The devil is in the detail the skeleton of our problem is clear to any serious thinker. The kernel of our problems is the ethnic divide and the bringing of chicken and pigeon together in a cage. They will soon cohabit uneasily or they will fight against each other using whatever advantages they have against each other until they are separated or they fight till death.

    Read Also: Akeredolu was a patriot, Mimiko mourns

    Of course we have seen on the African continent in Somalia people of the same ethnicity and religion finding it difficult to stay together and reducing themselves to the level of the most primitive Homo sapiens and an atomistic society only tolerating each other at the level of clans, not even tribes. The option before us is to realise that no country is a paradise. We must make our country work.

    It is people who build countries we have to use who we have. Not all our people are devils.  Quite substantial parts of our people are indeed saints. If you are a religious person, you will know that God can use anybody to achieve His mission in His divine creation. Perhaps our mistake is that we want to be governed by saints rather than by practical men of action and women of action. There is no country on earth where their leaders and politicians will pass the test of righteousness. We just have to make do with what we have and confine them within the structure of established laws and constitution of our country and if they go out of line, we find a way of throwing them out and replacing them with next best offer we have.

    This seems cynical. But from all the recent revelations about those in commanding heights of responsibility, we see that virtually all those we hold very high have individually and collectively betrayed us  and stolen the resources of the country, resources that they cannot use up to the fourth generation. When people do this, it is not just greed but outright madness. This is not just a recent thing; it seems one regime has bettered the other in undoing the country in the nefariousness of undermining the economic health of the country.

    I have heard people say that the present regime is our last chance and that if it fails then we are done for. There is so much hope that judging from his antecedent of being a political brawler and being a street fighter, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the incumbent president should be able to put the country on the path of rectitude. This is a mistake we all make. The solution to our present problems has to be collectively designed, negotiated and executed. It cannot be solved by one Poobah at the head of government but by all of us having a change of heart and determinedly deciding to rebuild our country block by block of hard work and righteous living and serving the country rather than serving ourselves. It is by doing this that the whole world will know that there is a new day in our country and the beginning of moral rearmament in a country where for years people had always waited for our potential greatness to be actualised.  The time for a radical change is now.

    Happy new year my readers.

  • We need to protect and nurture our current democracy

    We need to protect and nurture our current democracy

    Recently in Phoenix, Arizona, President Joe Biden while declaring open the late Senator John McCain Library at the University of Arizona made some profound statements about democracy and America’s mission to defend it against its enemies all over the world. The American president has made it a point of duty to speak in support of democracy since he came into office about three years ago. This arises from his long service in the US senate and his service as vice president under President Barack Obama and his belief that democracy is America’s gift to the world. Going therefore to honour Senator McCain, a Republican, demonstrated his commitment to democratic ethos of accepting that differences of opinion without rancour is a basic attribute of democratic governance and principle.

    I listened carefully to the president’s call on Americans about the need to defend and protect their democracy by speaking against all acts and actions taken against it by political leaders and influential people in the society. The American president said without naming President Donald J. Trump that the greatest enemy was within America itself. It is of course debatable whether any country can save democracy if the people themselves feel let down by the democratic government they install after every election.

    In the same vein, I feel compelled to raise my voice against undemocratic actions of some functionaries of government that are undermining democracy and if attention is not called to such actions, this may lead to the demise of democracy in Nigeria. We have witnessed happily the return of democratic governance since 1999 when the military exited the scene of government. Although many people felt what we actually had was not democracy but militarised democracy. Whatever we have is however a semblance of democracy and if we protect and nurture it the possibility of it growing to what we want is there.

    About eight years ago there was an intra-party dispute between the retiring governor of Edo State and his deputy who wanted to succeed him. The dispute of succession led to the deputy leaving the governing party and joining the leading opposition party. Incidentally he was supported and financially aided by the leadership of the party in power in Rivers State. When he won the election he was faced with the majority members of his old party in the legislature. When he could not persuade them to follow him into the opposition party he refused to allow them enter parliament by not swearing them to the oath of allegiance to the constitution. He followed this up by removing the roof of the parliament thus daring its members to meet in the open. This went on for four years until the term of the parliamentarians expired. All threats against the governor even from the national parliament in Abuja came to nothing until the governor served two terms of four years each.

    Read Also: Three kidnapped while performing sacrifice at Enugu river

    The lesson here is that the governor is supreme if determined to stay in office even against the opposition of members of parliament and the courts. We are again faced with the same situation in Rivers State. The government there is confronting the former governor of the state who is currently serving as minister of the federal capital territory in Abuja. The new governor in Rivers State even though apparently supported to become governor by the previous holder of the office deservedly want to be his own man against the wishes of his former boss. The vast majority of members of the House of legislature, 27 out of 32 or so , who are beholden to the past governor decided to support the past governor and to impeach and possibly remove the incumbent governor despite the intervention of the president. The whole situation has assumed dramatic turn with the legislators leaving their former party on which they and the governor were elected. The scenario is that when and if they return to the legislative building, they would probably invoke impeachment procedure and send the governor packing. The governor has borrowed from the Edo play book which Rivers State which the incumbent governor and his predecessor had used successfully in Edo State. This time it was even more dramatic. The state governor sent bulldozers to pull down the legislative building on the grounds that it had been damaged when there was a fracas between the two groups.  This destruction of a building worth billions of Naira when the country is facing horrendous economic problems is not only insensitive but totally outrageous.

    In the meantime, the few legislators about four or five of them supporting the governor have approved the 2024 budget. The cabinet of the governor has been hollowed out with the resignation of the supporters of the previous governor. The governor is banking on the hope that if the House members cannot meet in the legislative building, all their decisions would come to nothing. I am not sure that his few supporters meeting in the governor’s chamber and approving the budget could pass through the cannons of law. The governor must be banking on previous history of this kind of contest between the executive and the legislature.

    During the first Republic, Chief S.L.A Akintola in the Western Region fought successfully the parliament’s intention to remove him. He had the support of the federal government at the time.  At the end of the day, the outcome was neither in in the interest of democracy nor the country. One is not sure the federal executive would support the governor now that the majority of the legislature are on the same side with the ruling party at the federal level. The minister of the federal capital territory even though still a member of the opposition party, is likely to follow his colleagues from Rivers State into the governing party. This will have effect on the federal position. The governor can hopefully take solace in that both in Edo and the old Western Region, the governors prevailed against the legislatures. One hopes the Rivers State judiciary will not be dragged further into the political miasma as it’s usually the case to the embarrassment of everybody.

    We have to take legally binding decisions on this kind of scenario for future occasions. There are constitutional provisions about resigning from parties that sent a person to parliament when leaving the party and joining another but those provisions are not strictly enforced. If enforced, the frivolous trading of positions in the parties will be eliminated especially if such people have to leave parliament. The constitutional provisions on impeachment have to be tightened up to include crimes which are justiciable in courts of law not just that the person has lost political majority.

    Certainly the physical attack on parliament must not only be deprecated, it must be forbidden. There ought to be laws to prevent former executives’ attempt to subvert the functions of the government of their successors. This kind of thing caused the crisis in the ACTION GROUP and remotely led to the civil war in Nigeria between 1966 to 1970. Anybody who thinks the present democratic dispensation in Nigeria is here to stay and that we don’t have to guard and protect it is not realistic. The country is too fragile and is beset by all kinds of fissiparous tendencies tearing the country apart ranging from ethnic and existential economic problems to social and political insecurity. Democracy is not a perfect system but it remains the best the human brain has come up with but it has to be protected and nurtured to preserve it.

  • Obstacles to seamless growth of tertiary institutions

    Obstacles to seamless growth of tertiary institutions

    Incredible as it may sound, the various Nigerian governments constitute the greatest obstacles to seamless and rational development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria especially in recent times. The University of Ibadan was established by the British colonial government after careful study, analysis and funding options and the country’s needs at the same time. This was also the time the British government established the university of the West Indies, upgraded the Makerere College which had been offering some form of technical education since 1922 to students in East Africa to a university college in Uganda.

    Contemporaneously, the British government founded the University College of the Gold Coast in Legon on the same principles. They were all to operate as colleges of the University College, London which moderated examination papers and the degrees awarded after three years post-Advanced Level of London or Cambridge universities as the case may be. The university colleges did not offer specialized degree courses but general degrees in Arts, the Sciences but by 1949, a few of them, namely Ibadan, Kingston and Makerere offered courses in medicine.

    Students from the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the Gambia came to Ibadan to study medicine while students from all the West Indian islands went to Mona (Kingston, Jamaica) and those from Uganda, Kenya and the then Tanganyika (now Tanzania after unification with Zanzibar) went to Makerere to study medicine. This careful planning ensured that the quality of the degrees offered was at par with those of London and their products could work in any country of the Commonwealth and even in the USA after fulfilling local conditions. Critics have justifiably said the curriculum  in these university colleges was too narrow and in some cases unrelated to local environment but nobody could say the quality of the teaching  and research were inferior to any offered in the Western world. The teachers and technicians and even librarians came from the advanced world of the white commonwealth. The few Africans who taught in these institutions were educated in British universities and rarely in American universities whose quality of education was usually thought not to be as good as those in Britain.

    Nigerians were proud to have gone through the portals of the University of Ibadan and their products provided the bulk of the civil servants on which the politicians relied in the transition period from colonial administration to independence administration.

    After independence in 1960, the new rulers of Nigeria began to criticize the colonial structure and limited academic offerings at Ibadan where the Social Sciences except Economics were not taught. Business Administration, Law, Architecture, Engineering, Accounting, Insurance and other modern disciplines were not on offering. Under this general criticism  of existing universities  in Nigeria, the Eastern Nigerian government  inspired by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and others largely educated in American universities, established along the land lease basis of  some state-owned American universities, the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, emphasising the all-round nature of universities in the USA with emphasis on agriculture, engineering, architecture, business, the social sciences, education with emphasis on sports medicine and physical education.

    Admission did not place too much emphasis on the restrictive Advanced Level passes of the London or Cambridge universities overseas examination. The school leaving certificate was adjudged good enough for a four year degree course instead of the three-year course duration at Ibadan. Even though the elite looked at this experiment as watering down higher education in Nigeria, the university stuck to its guns. The Americanism at Nsukka was later watered down by the influx of Igbo academics who went to Nsukka because of the civil disturbances and the civil war which lasted from 1966 to 1970. In 1962, the western and northern regional governments followed suit by establishing their own universities in Zaria and Ife in a competitive spirit which characterised politics of the first years of regional governments in Nigeria from 1951 to 1966. The two institutions tried to combine what was good in the British and American traditions but they remained largely tied to the British educational tradition.  The federal authorities were not going to allow itself to be run out of competition in the educational sector and it therefore established the University of Lagos combining business oriented courses of medicine, engineering, marine biology, architecture with the traditional arts, social sciences and the physical sciences.

    Read Also: NASS to remove tertiary institutions from IPPIS – Speaker

    The point I want to make is that the first five universities in Nigeria were established after very careful planning.

    Since that time, not much planning went into the establishment of universities in Nigeria. After the civil war of 1967 to 1970 and the stupendous rise in petroleum dollars accruing to the Nigerian exchequer especially following the rise in prices after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, Nigeria felt confident enough to decide that the five existing universities were grossly inadequate and went ahead to establish regionally located universities and to take over the existing universities in Ibadan, Lagos, Ile-Ife, Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and University of Nigeria in Nsukka. These new universities were located in Sokoto, Maiduguri, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Benin (taking over the existing state university) Yola, Bayero College Kano and Jos. Later, Makurdi , Abeokuta, Akure, Bauchi and Owerri were established as special universities of agriculture and engineering. The point that needs be made is the politics of establishment and location of universities without paying much attention to funding, equipment and staffing. The domination of politics in the establishment of universities was carried to an extreme point when President Goodluck Jonathan suddenly in an after-dinner speech decreed the establishment of universities in all federal states where there were no universities ushering the sudden establishment of 11 federal universities in some places that had no infrastructure on the basis that universities were part of what was called “democratic dividends”. Since then, politics seems to play more part in the establishment of universities than rational planning and the wherewithal to fund these universities.

    Some state governments that have not even succeeded in running good secondary schools have now joined in the mad rush to establish not one but two or three universities without having the financial resources to run them. The university idea has gone to the dogs with the indiscriminate establishment of universities which exist only in name but not in truth and in deed as my old secondary school anthem taught us. The National Universities Commission (NUC) which was established to monitor the rational growth of universities has been emasculated and reduced to a rubber stamping body of yes-men! To make matters worse, private individuals under the illusion that there is money to be made have joined in the rush to establish universities. Religious bodies have not allowed itself to be left behind; in fact, many beat individual businesses to it and established well organised universities which have been found good enough to beat the government universities except in the high level of fees which they naturally charged the students in their institutions.

    The establishment of universities in Nigeria has been reduced to absurdity. Any powerful politician can use the establishment of universities in their constituency as bargaining chips. Universities of Medicine, Air Force, Navy, Petroleum, Transport, Police, Army universities are widely located in isolated places of the birth of major political and military officers with hardly any planning apart from who to ennoble as vice chancellors. My hope is that water will soon find its own level and these unplanned universities will in future collapse like a pack of cards when students refuse to enrol in them as a result of employers shunning their products.

    No one is opposed to the establishment of universities because the present ones do not have the absorptive capacity to take the students who want to have the benefit of higher education. But what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

     The funding and staffing of these so-called universities leave much to be desired. If we have the correct statistics on our population, employment capacity and other data, one will be able to know the number and what kind of universities we need and can afford. If we are going to educate our young people for global employment places, then we must ensure that are graduates are of great quality and consequently of the desirable type. On the basis of our population which is estimated at over 200 million which are probably over estimated, our 170 plus universities of different hues, colour and quality is not too many but they must be quality universities. America has over 4,000 universities with five of them adjudged to be out of the best ten. Britain has 160 with a national population about a quarter of ours. Canada with less than 40 million people has just over 100 universities but we cannot compare our GDP with those of Canada, the UK and the USA. India about 1113 universities, 43796 colleges, 43796 so called stand-alone colleges producing different kinds of graduates but the product of its highly rated engineering colleges are attracting attention all over the world.  Perhaps we will get there but not through mushroom universities just established to meet the yearning of young people with no eye on end products. If we are to produce those who will put Nigeria on the world level, we have to pay more attention to our universities and the way we establish them without planning because it will be a scenario of garbage in garbage out! It is not the number or quantity that matters but quality and there is little quality in our existing mushroom universities.

  • COP28 Dubai December 2023

    COP28 Dubai December 2023

    It seems the campaign for reversing the environmental damage and climate warming caused by human activities leading to climate change and environmental degradation has become a jamboree like the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) meeting every year in New York from mid-September to the end of the year, passing many resolutions which are unenforceable.  The United Nations Conference of Parties to the Global Convention on climate change otherwise known as COP28 holding in Dubai in the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES from November 30 to December 12 has collectively called for accelerated action, higher ambition against the escalating climate crisis. It has focused on what has been done previously to address the issue of climate change and what can be done to address the urgency of the problem. There is no doubt that some efforts have been made to address these issues even though not sufficient to match the urgency. There is gradual move from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles in America, Canada China and some other nations as well as abandoning coal energy or its planned phase out in China and the USA and Canada even though countries like India and Australia depend on it for domestic use and export. Industrial processes are now embracing green technologies in manufacturing processes.

    Environmental policies are not generally popular and acceptable to everyone domestically. There has been general criticism about the huge sizes of country’s delegations at these conferences. The sizes of the delegations do not generally reflect the seriousness, commitment or ability to effectively affect the issues and the application of resolutions on mitigation, adaptation or reversal of the damage already inflicted on our common single human planet. The question of abatement, mitigation and possible reversal was taken much more seriously in the past than the present situation which seems to be influenced by domestic politics and audiences rather than the collective good of mankind. What goes on now reminds me of what the older president George Walker Herbert  Bush said in one of his reflections on leadership, that there is so much time wasted by long speeches by all countries at international fora and that the smaller the country, the longer the speeches. Cynical as it may sound, I ask the question of what impact the speech by an eloquent prime minister of one of the Caribbean island countries on climate change may have apart from the point of view of a victim if the big polluters like China, the USA and India continue their industrial production of, and dependence on hydrocarbons.  Morality is not usually a big factor in how international politics is played! The consequences of global warming and coming climate change are here with us in the unseasonable rainfall, snow fall, floods, bushfires, drought, high temperatures. This year’s temperature is the highest in recorded history; rise in ocean temperatures, melting of the ice caps, sea rise, coastal erosion and occurrences of pandemics and other health issues.

    We now generally know what to do to ensure that the rise in the temperature of world does not go beyond 1.5C by the end of this century above pre industrial temperature as agreed to in the Paris protocol of 2015. Anything above this poses existential challenge to mankind. The COP28 is the 20th meeting of global leaders to address this problem.  This is a conference attended by about 160 global leaders representing countries, business, academia, the press and critical leaders all over the world. The central core of the problem is economic. The vast number of mankind was not responsible for global warming. The developed countries of Europe, America, and the OECD countries generally whose advanced economies were and are still dependent on hydrocarbons  and consequent greenhouse emissions were responsible for global warming and they have now been joined by China, India and the oil producers of the Middle East in their contribution to global greenhouse emissions. Even though the “polluter pays “principle makes political sense but it does not address the existential problem of global environmental damage. The developing countries including even China and India and the rest of us in the Third world are right to argue that we cannot abandon our own industrial plan of development in order to protect the global environment unless those responsible for the damage ab initio come up with plan to help our development through economic and financial transfer to help the developing countries adapt to the present global situation. Countries like Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, whose forests constitute the lungs of the earth because of their absorption of carbon emissions and release of oxygen into the air would have to be assisted to preserve their forests.

    Read Also: Reps committee expresses anger as INEC fails to appear for Budget defence

    Nigeria also can make the same argument in preserving what is left of our tropical forests and also our plans for reforestation. The onus to contribute substantially to the global fund for this purpose lies on the developed countries. The domestic politics of these countries do not permit the kind of generosity or economic policies that would help the environment if people are going to lose their jobs. To arrive at a workable solution will require considerable amount of political will on the part of leaders in America, Canada, Europe,  China, India, Japan, Australia,  Russia, Brazil  and the oil producing countries especially those in the Middle East.

    A UN publication indicates that if we continue at the present trajectory of nationally determined abatement measures the world will reach 2 degrees Celsius above the pre industrial level of temperature which is clearly higher than the 1.5 degrees Celsius globally agreed to. Studies show we need 43 percent further reduction of our current levels of greenhouse emissions before 2050 or earlier. Climate finance stands at the heart of the problem. There is need to replenish the GREEN CLIMATE FUND (GCF), and DOUBLING FINANCIAL RESOURCES FOR ADAPTATION and to agree on the operational mechanisms for deployment of resources to tackle the problem of climate change. The host country – the United Emirates has pledged $200 million which is encouraging but is just a drop in the ocean of the trillions of dollars needed. The OECD countries and China would have to open their pockets to donate what is needed for abatement and for adaptation to address the problem of the climate. 

    There also has to be a paradigm shift all over the world in industrial processes and production away from the old fashioned way of dependence on hydrocarbons.  This must be collectively negotiated and agreed upon and hopefully the basis of this would be agreed upon before delegates leave Dubai in readiness for 2025 when stakeholders would have to assess how far we have advanced in our journey to save the environment and reach a sustainable level of economic development that would not damage the global environment. The emphasis from now on would have to be green energy based on renewable energy sources like wind, tidal, thermal, solar sources and the growing and cutting edge research on renewable energy.

  • Citizens’ social responsibility in Nigeria

    Citizens’ social responsibility in Nigeria

    All Nigerians are united in wanting the physical development of their country. They want better roads without potholes, efficient electricity supply and distribution, running water, good schools, financially endowed universities and tertiary institutions, functioning hospitals, clean environment, regular and punctual transportation system, clean potable water and all the services that make a country great.

    When we travel out of our country, as our elite does often, we are amazed at how other systems run and their citizens take the efficient operation as normal. We envy them and wonder why we cannot have the same system in our resource-endowed country. When some of us settle in these countries, we go along with their system and do what everyone does to keep the system going. We pay our taxes and if we don’t pay, we are quietly reminded and if we don’t get the hint, we are summoned to appear before the tax board or court and if we are recalcitrant we are sent to the slammer to learn a hard lesson. If instead of doing the right thing we try to bribe our way through, we are arrested for offence punishable by law and there is no pleading about not knowing that giving bribes is an offence or that we are related to the president, minister, governor or chairman of our local government area. If we are caught messing around urinating outside toilets or in toilets in the pubs or restaurants that are available on request to those pressed by nature, we are arrested for constituting public nuisance or if we plead insanity we are sent for psychiatric examination. In other words, there is punishment for social deviancy.

    This of course does not mean everyone complies with rules, regulations and the laws. It is a philosophical question which Plato the Greek philosopher answered in his book THE LAWS. He had argued that the existence of laws in any state is a manifestation of an imperfect state and that if a state was ruled perfectly, there would have been no room for laws!

    Read Also; Kano CTC: Judicial officers involved will be punished – NJC

    Now let us come back to the situation in our country Nigeria. It seems laws in our country exist to be avoided or broken because they are considered an inconvenience.  Our penal code needs to be thoroughly enforced. Punishment needs to be sure and certain. We need to introduce administrative justice to deal with minor infractions of the law instead of wasting time going to court when minor offences have been committed. This is what happens in the francophone countries. When a driver, for instance, commits a driving offence, the police can arrest and impose a financial punishment payable immediately or forfeiture of the vehicle until payment is effected.  But in our country, driving correctly on the right side of the road is avoided if there is nobody to arrest the offender. Digging across the road to lay pipes is routine. Selling stuff on the highway is foolishly considered a fundamental human right! Throwing effluents across the road when it is raining is regarded as urban smartness.

    I live some miles away from Lagos and it is usual to find traders along the highway wrapping their human wastes and excreta in paper and placing them on the concrete median on newly constructed highway. The aluminium hedges on the bridges are regularly yanked off by thieves to fabricate them into long spoons for cooking and for sale! Our people do not pay taxes and sometimes the tax collectors are not in their offices when there are people willing to pay taxes. Tax collectors sometimes collude with those who want to pay taxes to pay less for a cut. Nigerians except those on salaries who pay PAYE (pay as you earn) do not pay taxes. That is why huge conurbations like Ibadan, Lagos, Kano, Ogbomoso, Kaduna, Aba, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Maiduguri generate little or no internal revenue and have to wait for revenue from national revenue before they can service their urban needs. It seems our people do not recognise the link between development and revenue mobilisation.

    People do not do the jobs they are paid for but complain that nothing works while they neglect to do their own little bit to make the collective life of all of us better. People cheat at examinations and deny those who have genuinely done better, places of admission. Parents use their prestigious positions to deny the children of those less privileged admissions into colleges paid for from public purse. What is most frightening is that people cheat to get into so-called prestigious colleges, cheat to pass public examinations and enter universities through cheating and get into public services through manipulating the system or outrightly buying positions and promotions in the public services.

    Yet I remember that in this country, we all went through the system and came through public examination and interviews and were offered choice places and having to let go offers and telling our interviewers that we did not want the jobs offered because we had decided to go for further studies on the scholarship of foreign countries or even on the scholarship of one arm of our government or the other all on merit! When Chinua Achebe said there was a country, yes there was and he was damn right!

    What do we have now in year 2023? We borrowed money to construct railways and the rail lines are routinely stolen or those issuing tickets print their own tickets in replacement of the railways corporation’s ticket resulting in vastly underperforming revenue generation with no money available to pay foreign loans used to pay for the railway construction. The minister of aviation in a previous administration took foreign loans to build an aviation company in the name of our country but instead of buying new planes simply borrowed one or two planes from a sister country which is much poorer than our country, paints the borrowed planes in our national colours, and takes over public media to launch the borrowed planes as the nucleus of our national airline. When he was found out, he simply went into the shadows saying his patriotic efforts were misunderstood and nothing happened!

    There are a few things we can do as citizen-police without turning on each other in murderous rage. In Germany, the concept of citizen-policing is permissible. If one sees a person committing an offence, one can stop such a person by advising him or her that he or she is committing an offence. If the person does not stop, one can call the police. The people can be mobilized in a protest against open looting of a nation’s resources such as the case of the minister fooling around with the people’s money pretending to be establishing an airline. People cutting bridge railings or railways can be embarrassed and stopped in their actions. The commonest misbehaviour is that of trading on expressway or digging highways can be stopped by public action. It may not stop the bad manners but if citizens take their responsibility seriously, it will definitely have an impact. We should also take possession of our physical infrastructure and development by paying taxes and correcting those damaging public property. The current generation may be irredeemably lost in the struggle for citizens’ civic responsibility but we should revise our curriculum in our schools particularly primary and secondary schools to inculcate civic responsibility into our pedagogy so that in future our children’s children do not have to put up with our wretched life and experience. If we husband our resources, protect our institutions and ensure the mobilisation of our resources and their deployment in the improvement of the lives of our people instead of for the benefit of a few, our lot and that of those coming after us will be vastly improved.

  • Can Nigeria be great again? My personal observation

    I have been engaged with my children and my former students on the question of whether our country was once great. And if it was, whether it can be great again? That’s the question. My answers to these loaded questions are in the affirmative. The genesis of my answer has been to agree at the point of when Nigeria was once great and to identify the point of decline and what it can and it must do to get us back to the correct trajectory of positive development in the journey to greatness.

    Not everybody will agree with even the primary part of the question. There are people who still believe that the concept of Nigeria ab initio is false and that the country was and is still a geographical expression! My answer is that most countries in the world are geographical expressions and that no country was divinely created and leaders had had to fight for them. Great nations like the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, China,  Canada, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many others had had to be forced into being or made to evolve from larger empires and political configurations. 

    The fact of where each nation began is a matter of history. There is no end to the argument of whether a state is artificial or natural. I think 1960, the year of independence of Nigeria constitutes the beginning of our journey to nationhood. The beginning is however not the ending. The Chinese say that the journey of a thousand miles necessarily begins with the first steps. It is obvious to us still alive, that the constitution that took us to independence should have been confederal instead of being federal which gave the federal authority power of intervention in the governance and police affairs of the regions. But faulty as it might have been, if the politicians had been men of vision, we would not have had the crisis in the Western Region in which the government at the centre made up two rival political parties to the one in the Western Region, used police powers to impose its will on the Western Region whose resistance to federal intervention led to violence and break down of law and order which precipitated a military coup d’état by the small army of less than 10,000 soldiers. The fact that the constitution of the federal army was lopsidedly made up of persons favourable to the political desire of those at the federal level constituted the point of decline of Nigeria. In other words, Nigeria had not had time to fully attain its greatness when the whole thing was truncated in 1966 January coup d’état .The period of this potential greatness was not more than two years after independence climaxing at the Action Group crisis of 1962 and the declaration of emergency rule in western Nigeria by the federal government in 1963, marking the departure from constitutional rule climaxing in the army’s successful putsch in January 15 1966. This derailment what was essentially a collapse of a house of cards. This was however bemoaned by friends of Nigeria at home and abroad, captured and captivated by the appearance of a large and thriving democracy on an insurgent African continent during the historic global contest between democracy and free enterprise versus dictatorship of proletarian communism.

    Nigeria fought a bitter civil war between 1967 and 1970 in which the internal contradictions of the country were then exploited by the global political rivals but which eventually resolved in favour of the western alliance of free enterprise and anti-communist Islam. This also coincided with the huge accrual from sale of hydrocarbons which made reconstruction, rehabilitation and reunification of the country possible from 1970 to about 1980 when the country had a second chance at democratic renewal. The point I am making is that the road the country missed in 1966 was again made open to it when the military, not by conviction but mounting power struggle at home and pressure from abroad, forced the Obasanjo’s government to transmit power to Shehu Shagari in 1979.

    The period of decline temporarily ended in 1979 and the latency of greatness which had remained during the dark days of Nigeria was given a fillip by the restoration of democracy in 1979.

    Read Also: How Tinubu is fighting insecurity, by Gbajabiamila

    The constitution under which this government was meant to function was the revamped unitary grundnorm otherwise known as Decree 34 imposed by General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi  which dissolved the federating four regions of Nigeria into unitary government of several provinces . Of course, not many people knew this at the time, but the difference was between six and half a dozen. General Ironsi seemed in retrospect to have been sacrificed for a form of constitutional structure favourable to those who captured power at the centre because all the governments from Yakubu Gowon to Ibrahim Babangida, and other military rulers governed the country under this constitution and nothing has changed till this day. The changing of guard and revolving door of one military ruler from Buhari to Babangida, Abacha, and Abdul Salami for almost two decades was all part of keeping power in “safe” hands. When the military first came into government, it was triggered by youthful exuberance; this idealistic leadership was soon neutralised by their seniors who were manipulated by those who felt they knew what was desirable for the country and by traditional/ religious leadership of the country who if not directly but secretly, co-opted into power, could have made the country hot for the younger military rulers. At least they can beat their chest that they gave their one country back undivided to the politicians to have a second go at governance. The country they gave back to the civilians was a hollowed out structure. The rule of the gun had made corruption easy because no one could challenge a man holding a gun to the head of an accountant asking for cheques transferring to officers of government, money to be quickly signed. This led to a senior army officer saying the situation in the army in the 1990s was a situation of an army in which anything goes!  The appearance of democracy from 1999 to the end of Buhari’s so-called democratic regime was a military mirage not a democratic reality. Presidents like Obasanjo and Buhari remained essentially military men in democratic toga of agbada and Babanriga, wielding almost total control of power and responsibility and with whom they shared the power with. This situation presumably ended in May 2023.

    The new Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, we have been told, is a regime of renewal and we should trust the president not to forget his promises to the nation. He has publicly stated just last week at the NESG that he has made mistakes in the past and who hasn’t? And he is not above mistakes now but he is running a collective government and he wants to be corrected if he makes any mistakes in his current role as driver of a movement of renewal. If he sticks to this promise and makes access to those in government possible to those outside it, then I believe that Nigeria can be great again. 

    The future of the country belongs to all of us and not to any particular regime or ethnicity. The world will pass the black people bye unless we wake up in time. Look at where the Japanese, Chinese and Indians are today and the Arabs are not far behind. We blacks are the only laggards manning the rear. If we do not want to be remembered as freaks of nature or mistake of creation, we just have to buck up and tie our shoe laces for the present race of competition in the world. If we agree that Nigeria is at a critical state in the black world, then we must join with President Tinubu and forget the differences among the various ethnicities and fight together for the soul of our potentially great country whose greatness continually lies in its latency. We know when we deviated from the path of greatness. We must go back to the beginning and have a confederal constitution instead of four regions but of perhaps six regions and tinker with other areas of governance borne out of experience since 1960. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should lead by example and God can use anybody to achieve His divine mission. He should call to order any erring governor, minister and chairman of council that he has a covenant to change Nigeria and to start the building of a new Nigeria. Things will not be easy but let’s begin. If he succeeds history will be very kind to him and to all who rally round him to accomplish this mission but if he fails then we all fail with him and there would be no room for excuses! This is why we must all watch with eagle eyes!