The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Osuntokun

  • Kim Jon Un and end of balance of terror strategy

    To end the tenacity of the Japanese and their kamikaze bombing of United States’ ships in the pacific and their soldiers readiness to commit harakiri rather than surrendering in the face of overwhelming forces, the United States decided on the orders of President Harry Truman to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiping out hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and soldiers in 1945 thus ending the Second World War with a bang. With this, the genii got out of the bottle and warfare changed for ever. In 1945 the United States was the only nuclear power but by 1949 the USSR caught up with them. It took one or two years before the USSR developed bombers that could reach the United States which by then had bombers in European bases spread from Britain, Germany to Turkey. Thus began the arms race and American strategy of containment in the face of being outnumbered by Soviet and East European land forces. Containment relied largely on massive nuclear retaliation in the case of Soviet land attack on American forces and their allies in Europe. Decades later, the USSR’s strategy of putting nuclear missiles in communist Cuba led to the missile crisis of 1962 when the whole world faced the possibility of nuclear war between the two superpowers of USA and USSR. This brinkmanship was resolved when in a secret deal, President John F. Kennedy agreed with the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev of Russia to move out its missiles from Cuba while the USA moved out its own from Turkey on the border of the USSR. From then onwards, the emphasis shifted to development of ICBM and nuclear submarines carrying Polaris missiles as well as developing and deployment in various silos in the USSR and USA intercontinental ballistic missiles. This military advancement gave both superpowers second strike capability. This is to say if the USA were to hit the Soviet Union, it would have had the capability to retaliate because all its missiles would not have been taken out or destroyed. Realizing the futility of further development after the failed attempt of President Ronald Reagan anti-missiles system to be deployed in space to destroy on coming intercontinental ballistic missiles, the so-called Star Wars programme, serious negotiations to limit nuclear weapons by the two superpowers began. The previous SALT (strategic arms limitation talks) moved to the START (strategic arms reduction talks) by which considerable reductions were made in the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. In spite of whatever reduction that have been made, each of the nuclear weapons state of the USA and now Russian federation has enough nuclear weapons to bury the world six times over. The destructive awesomeness of nuclear weapons was captured in the statement of Albert Einstein when he said if there was a Third World War, the Fourth World War would be fought with sticks and stones meaning human civilization would have been destroyed and we would be back to the Stone Age. This was before China joined the nuclear weapons states in 1964 adding more explosion to the possible nuclear Armageddon. While the possible use of nuclear weapons in Europe was inconceivable because of the strategic balance then prevailing, it was not ruled out of consideration in other theatres of war outside Europe. For example, before China developed its own bomb, there was a move by General Omar Bradley of the US army and endorsed by his commander in the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur to prevail on President Harry Truman to authorize the use of nuclear weapons against China until he was relieved of his command in 1951.

    Because of the awesomeness of nuclear weapons, there has been no direct military conflict between the two major super powers since 1945. There have been proxy wars between the communist world and the USA and her allies as was the case in Korea (1950-1953) and in Vietnam 1955-1975). There have been other proxy wars in Southern Africa and South America. The main reason why there has been relative global peace was because of nuclear weapons since everybody knows that in a direct exchange of nuclear weapons, there will be no winner and the whole world will be victims. Those who survive being incinerated will die as a result of radioactive fallout. It is this fear of the consequences of nuclear exchange that has underpinned the theory of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and of nuclear deterrence.

    The relations between USA and Russian federation which inherited the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union have been based on this strategy of deterrence. When China joined the club, the same equation applied. Before the accession to the NNPT (nuclear non-proliferation treaty), other countries such as Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, covertly Israel and North Korea became nuclear weapons states. Iran has nuclear ambitions and apartheid South Africa actually became a nuclear weapons state clandestinely around 1975 but destroyed this nuclear infrastructure when it realized a black government of South Africa might inherit it. The new comers and prospective comers into the nuclear club argue that it is an insurance against being run over by powerful countries. This is the argument of Israel, Pakistan and apparently North Korea. But none apart from North Korea has threatened to use it to preserve itself or to threaten potential adversary especially the much more powerful USA. This has been the case since the young and impetuous Kim Jon-Un took over the reins of government in North Korea after the death of his father Kim Jon il.

    The Kim dynasty officially called the “Mount Baektu Bloodline” is a three generation lineage of North Korean leadership descending from the country’s first leader Kim il- Sung in 1948. Kim came to rule the country after the end of Japanese rule in 1945 led to its division into north and south Korea. He ruled with iron fist and led his country to the brutal Korean War in which he wanted to unify the country under his own rule and failed because of American resistance supposedly under United Nations auspices. Kim il Sung was succeeded by his son Kim Jon-il in 1994 and remained in power till his death in 2011. After his death, one of his teenage sons Kim Jon Un took over and began aggressive development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them. He has tested middle range missiles and once launched an ICBM over Japan and threatened to destroy American forces in Guam and Okinawa. The seriousness of this issue has led twice this year to unanimous condemnation of North Korea by the UN Security Council including the concurrence of China and Russia which usually do not see eye to eye with the United States.

    The open threat by North Korea to hit the USA has elicited strong reaction from the pugnacious United States President Donald J. Trump who openly declared before the United Nations General Assembly in September that if provoked the USA will destroy completely the government and presumably the people of North Korea. Since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the possibility of use of nuclear weapons has not been seen anywhere in the world, not even in the eternal conflict between India and Pakistan which developed nuclear weapons in the fear of being attacked by each other over their rival claims of the disputed territory of Kashmir over which they have fought several wars since the partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan 1947.

    The world is actually facing the breakdown of a long established strategy of world peace. This breakdown is occasioned by the apparent lack of fear of retaliation by North Korea, unless its leaders are engaging in a policy of dangerous posturing.  In a conflict between the USA and North Korea, there are several arsenals in the possession of the United States such as tactical nuclear bombs and neutron bombs that can be used to kill people without destroying physically the country. But of what use will the country be if its people are destroyed. Unless it is possible to take out its leadership surgically without the use of nuclear weapons, the present policy of North Korea may lead it to national suicide. If it can only moderate its rhetoric and behave responsibly as a nuclear weapons state, the country may survive. This will mean North Korea embracing the theory and practice of deterrence because it will be futile and dangerous for the USA to attack it if it is accepted as a nuclear weapons state. Then North Korea would have avoided the fate of Muamar Gadhafi’s Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that were invaded because of not having nuclear weapons. It is to avoid this fate that is also driving the nuclear ambitions of Iran in spite of its protestation of pacific intentions and innocence.

    The United States’ policy and  the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty which is internationally subscribed to by most non-nuclear  weapons states  has failed in the case of North Korea because  of America’s non-pacific intentions to North Korea. It may also fail in Iran because of the same reasons if America  under President Trump walks away from the carefully negotiated international agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (USA ,China, United Kingdom, Russia, France and Germany). It is ironical that while working for a peaceful world, America’s policy of intervention or threat of intervention is driving some of its potential enemies like Iran and North Korea to want to acquire nuclear weapons as some form of insurance against invasion. While Iran can still be prevented from becoming a nuclear weapons state, it is too late to talk about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula because North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. The fear of course is if North Korea does not behave responsibly as a nuclear weapons state should behave, Japan and South Korea, for strategic balance, may develop their own independent nuclear deterrence with or without American encouragement and sadly, the world will be less safe.

  • Quality assurance in varsities: Umudike example

    The news that 28 professors at the Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture in Umudike were demoted came as shock and a surprise to me as a retired university professor. Things have definitely changed in the university system in Nigeria. This watering down of standards was recently underscored when JAMB lowered admission scores into universities to 120 out of a total of 400 marks. Thank God this ridiculous admission policy was roundly condemned by the universities themselves and by parents who felt standards should be higher in the interest of academic integrity of the universities. What apparently happened in Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture was that 28 people who were either promoted or appointed professors were deemed unqualified by a committee of joint Senate and Council and were therefore demoted to either Readers (Associate Professors) Senior lecturers or lecturers grade one! How could this have happened in a university that has been in existence for at least two decades or so? Was there no Appointments and Promotions Committee (APC) which meets to do a final approval of an assessment and interview process when presumably papers of potential professors would have been sent out to senior professors who are experts in the fields of candidates being considered for appointments or promotions? In the old days when the university system in Nigeria was small, papers were always sent to the IUC ( inter university council) which was an outfit of the Association of Commonwealth universities (ACU) for assistance in sending papers to experts located in several commonwealth universities. All universities in the commonwealth were members of the ACU. It was therefore axiomatic that a professor in one university, say Ibadan would be accepted as professor in any Commonwealth university either on sabbatical leave or for regular appointment. The hallmark of a good university was the international make up of its staff. All this has of course changed. We do not have the money to recruit international staff anymore because a British university professor for example earns £100,000 per year which is about N50 million. Recently, the British government issued a warning to British universities vice chancellors to defend their salaries of £150,000 per year and this is about N75 million. Vice chancellors in Nigerian universities earn N12 million per year while their professor colleagues earn lower than half of that. The point I am trying to make is that it appears that people are being made professors because of the salaries attached to the category or class of appointees and not as a mark of academic distinction and excellence.

    Having said this, it is still puzzling to me why somebody who is a lecturer grade one would be appointed a professor. An extremely brilliant person could be promoted from senior lecturer to professor, but even then, his papers would have to have been assessed by external assessors suggested by his head of department or Dean of his or her faculty or college to guide the vice chancellor who will make the final decision about the external assessor. In all this process, anonymity of the external assessor is the rule rather than the exception. In extremely rare and exceptional cases, the number of years as teacher may not be relevant in appointing a person a professor.

    In the case of Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture, the vice chancellor and the council stand condemned and indicted and should be removed immediately if they are still in office. I am sure this travesty of the system is not limited to the university alone; the practice pervades the entire university system especially the new federal universities and some of their state counterparts. It is also a reflection of the low academic calibre of some of these vice chancellors. In the rush to establish federal universities, assistant professors (lecturers) from some American universities and senior lecturers from existing Nigerian universities were appointed vice chancellors. These unqualified people’s first action as vice chancellors was to promote themselves as professors and after doing this, they had no moral right to deny promotion to their academic colleagues and friends. I personally know of a case of a former student of mine who moved from lecturer to professor the same year by tactically shopping around and moving from one university to the other until arriving at his destination of professorship. This has been made possible by the ballooning number of universities without corresponding planning for staffing them. I know of a case of a young lecturer in a hard area of computer science applying for a job of senior lecturer in another university. As soon as he got it and without even assuming the position, made a bid as in an auction or in a market for a higher post in another university and got appointed a professor. There are professors and there are professors of course! This academic title has become like chieftainship title in the usual bad tradition in Nigeria. Academic trade unionists also sometimes blackmail their vice chancellors to make them professors and many weak vice chancellors have surrendered to these people by manipulating the appointments process to bastardize the system. If we are to be honest with ourselves, there is a systemic problem in Nigerian universities. First of all the crowding of the university system by the new mushrooms of federal universities and their private counterparts has led to too many unqualified people masquerading as academics in our universities. Any professor who is neither known by colleagues here at home and abroad is not fit to parade himself as a professor unless of course he is a band leader of one our musical groups! The calibre of people being made vice chancellors should be looked into because academic leadership in a university can only be provided by a true academic who knows his onions. Respect for academic excellence can only emanate from a boss who has gone through the academic grill and not from an academic parvenu or upstart who came to his or her position through political jobbery. The council of any university is crucial to maintaining academic integrity. A situation where failed politicians or any politician at all are routinely appointed pro chancellors and chairmen of councils does not augur well for the future. These buccaneers do not belong to universities because to them public office is for material exploitation and self-aggrandizement. Governments at state and federal levels must find other ways of compensating their colleagues after elections. There are several knowledgeable retired academics who can bring their experience to bear on supervising the universities and maintaining oversight responsibility for the good of the universities. There should be a stop to further licensing of new universities by the NUC. The more universities are established, the downward spiral the universities will experience in its academic integrity.

    Most universities in the country have units of Quality Assurance charged with ensuring academic offering in terms of good teaching and laboratory supervision of students as well as ensuring that lecturers go to their classes to teach. The unit also ensures the integrity of examinations and fairness in assessments. All this is good but any academic who has to be monitored to do what is necessary by my own book does not belong in the university system. What this Quality Assurance should also do is check the academic claims and certificates of those who are teaching. It will surprise us what we would find. In 1979 when I was director of the NUC office in Washington D.C, we found two members of staff in the Department of Business Administration in University of Lagos who falsely claimed they had PhD. from an American university. On investigation we found out that the so-called university was only a certificate-issuing one room office in California. When confronted with this fact, one of the people involved disappeared into the thin air and we never heard from him again and the other begged to go back to a regular university. I do not know why this latter person got away with this lenient treatment on the grounds that his Masters’ degree was genuine why the doctorate degree was fake. He later returned to the university and several years later became professor and head of department!

    The situation in Michael Okpara University has exposed the soft underbelly of the Nigerian universities. The federal government can set up independent audit committees of retired professors to look into the appointment and promotion processes of these universities and try to streamline them. The state universities should do the same. The NUC which has spread the joy of university ownership to all and sundry should be empowered to do the same for all private universities. Their reports should be submitted to the various councils of these universities for their implementation. Quality assurance should spread to every aspect of the university system from staff to students in order to remove the stain of low quality staff as well as people holding unmerited positions of academic leadership in our universities. This is the only way to avoid everybody in the universities being tarred with the brush of academic fraud which sadly pervades the entire university system in Nigeria and casting doubt on the quality of academic degrees and certificates awarded by Nigerian universities.

  • America: A country in perpetual adolescence

    Ben Sasse in his book “The vanishing American adult” gives a litany of what is wrong in the United States. Yet we all agree that the destiny of the world is tied up with that of the United States. Never in the history of mankind has so much depended on the political leadership in  one country as it is with contemporary America. This is why since the  past 100 years,  we have referred to these times as American century. American historians and even their politicians have described the achievements of the country in the past as their “manifest destiny”. This destiny manifested itself in the expansion of the original 13 colonies’ on the Atlantic Ocean coast in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, incorporating former territories of France in Louisiana and that of Spain in Florida and defeat of Mexico and annexation of its territories in Texas, New Mexico and California and purchase of Alaska from Russia.

    Thus the small English and Dutch settlements on the Atlantic coast in the east metamorphosed into continental United States of America. America is so vast that traveling from new York in the east to San Francisco in the west by modern jet planes takes up to six hours or more. The same will be true of flying from Montpelier in Vermont in the North to Houston Texas in the South. Apart from continental United States, the country through war in the latter part of the 19th century acquired several territories five of which are inhabited. These are Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana islands, Samoa, and US Virgin Islands. It had earlier on annexed Hawaii in 1898 during its war with Spain. With such a vast country and the idealism of its leaders, the domination of the world by this youthful country was a matter of time. There was however a flaw in the foundation of the country in its massacre or genocide against Native Americans and its building of its economy on the sweat and blood of African unpaid labour of slavery. Resolution of this twin evil was to plague American history up to contemporary times. But this has not stopped America from realizing its manifest destiny. The frontier has always been an important theme in modern American history whether in terms of expansion to the west or even the conquest of space. It is not just a coincidence that iconic American President Kennedy saw putting an American on the moon within 10 years beginning from 1961 as conquest of another frontier. In fact, his regime was dominated by the concept of Americans being “frontiers men”. But this new frontier was for good as it witnessed the sharing with the rest of the world American education and science through the Peace Corps and bringing hundreds of thousands of young men on American scholarship from the developing world to study and train in American excellent universities and colleges. This age of idealism was to terminate in the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers – John and Robert, and Malcom X and Martin Luther King jnr.

    Since the end of the Second World War in which America reluctantly played a major and decisive role culminating in the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on recalcitrant Japan to bring the war to an end with a loud bang, the country has thrown up some leaders of varying character and stature. These include Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Dwight  D Eisenhower , John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, James Earl Carter, Ronald  Wilson Reagan, George  Walker Herbert Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George Walker Bush, Barrack Hussein Obama and now Donald J Trump. The USA since the time of President James Monroe in the early part of the 19th century has been pulled in different policy directions of isolationism and internationalism. Going back to its founding fathers, America has always wanted to avoid entanglement in old world politics and wars but has always been drawn into it reluctantly as was the case with the First and the Second World wars. The roles of its presidents such as Woodrow Wilson in the formation of the League of Nations, a first attempt at international governance and collective security and the part played in the drawing up the Atlantic charter and the formation of the United Nations by President Roosevelt confirm American global leadership. But in spite of this, the lack of wisdom and moral inadequacy of America arising from its domestic problem of inequality, injustice and violence always exposed the flaw in American leadership. On top of this was its runaway capitalism which put profit before morals and global expansion in the name of democracy brought it into conflict with the other globalizing ideology of communism in Europe, Asia, Africa and in its backyard of Latin America. But in spite of whatever difficulties it faced, America to the widest spectrum of mankind remains a shining light on the hill that can never be extinguished. This is why its failure is seen as human failure all over the world. Because of its preponderant power, it is correct to say that when one sneezes in Washington the rest of the world catches cold. But this leadership imposes moral responsibility on America. It is a moot question whether America meets its moral responsibilities and obligations.

    We know of course that for years America paid sometimes a third of UN budget although it has now been scaled down to about 22% but in terms of humanitarian support, America bears substantial burden especially in global food security. American science is also at the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovation and conquest or mitigation of the scourge of diseases and epidemics. But all these positive things the country does is vitiated by its internal problems of racial discrimination and violence especially gun violence.

    The recent violence in Las Vegas, Nevada in which an apparently deranged man killed 58 innocent people and wounded more than 500 people calls into question the maturity of the United States as a civilized country. It is the only country in the world that constantly goes through this kind of man made tragedy in peace time. American so-called right for all individuals to carry arms is based on warped historical interpretation. In the formative stage of American evolution in a wild and hostile environment and in the absence of organized police and army, everyone protected himself by carrying weapons. This so-called Second Amendment to its constitution is a curse on America where more people have died in domestic violence than all the soldiers America lost since the Second World War. The gun lobby of the National Rifle Association (NRA) has made it impossible for commonsensical gun control to be put in place in America. The NRA argues “guns don’t kill people kill” and it says “it takes a gun in the hands of a good man to silence an armed bad man”. This kind of asinine logic is said often to confuse those who want to take guns from American society. This is one of the evils of American capitalism where profit comes before life. This carnage has become as American as apple pie.

    In its long history, four American presidents have been assassinated; another seven barely escaped the assassins’ bullets or survived the bullets. Those killed include Abraham Lincoln, James A Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. Those seven who survived include-namely Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, attempts were made on Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. It can thus be seen that almost 25 percent of American presidents have either been shot or escaped assassination narrowly.

    The terrible shooting in Las Vegas in which 59 people died and more than 500 people were wounded followed other ghastly shooting in Orlando Florida when a lone gunman killed 49 people and wounded 58 people in June 2016.This followed other shooting in Virginia Tech University in April 2007 which saw 32 dead and 17 wounded. Perhaps the most shocking was the slaughter of 26 children with two severely wounded in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. This killing brought tears to the then President Obama’s eyes yet it did not move lovers of guns to kick their addiction.

    These are just a few examples of gun violence in the USA but in actual fact one person is shot every minute in the USA. The question to ask is what kind of civilization will tolerate this kind of barbarism and violence in the 21st century? All this killing is done on the basis of the right to bear arms! This right was meaningful at the formative years of America but the country has just refused to grow up. It is this refusal to grow up that has led the country to elect a juvenile elderly man as president .This is a man who has broken all accepted norms of social behaviour and democratic tradition in the United States.  The recent violent language of President Trump in the United Nations General Assembly goes against not only the tradition of the UN but of the USA. Yet all he said could have been said in diplomatic language craftily drafted and conveying the same meaning. But by engaging in “tono fascista” he allowed himself to be insulted by those countries he attacked.

  • Finding a solution to our national problem

    It is difficult for any sentient being not to have a feeling of enveloping global insecurity. What with the possibility of nuclear holocaust being threatened by Donald Trump and Kim Jon Un, the uncertainty in Europe following the Brexit vote in the U.K.; the hurricanes destroying the Caribbean and several states in the USA, the rim of fire and the earthquakes in Mexico and the perennial suffering in Africa as a result of bad governance, sit- tight rulers, economic problems and poverty occasioning ethnic conflicts.

    Charity begins at home and in Nigeria we have more than our own share of conflicts and insecurity. The demand for devolution and restructuring is a manifestation of political instability. Demands for action in this respect range from calls for a return to the independence and republican constitutions of 1960 and 1963 respectively championed by opinion leaders in western Nigeria to outright secession by the so-called Biafrans in Eastern Nigeria. In the North of the country, we have heard people like Professor Ango Abdullahi apparently in moments of exasperation asking for outright independence for the North. Yet men and women of good conscience in Nigeria know we have no other country than Nigeria and in the words of the then General Muhammadu Buhari as military head of state “we must stay here and solve the problem together”.

    Our problem is that rather than finding practical solutions to whatever structural inadequacies confronting our country in a win-win situation that will endure for a long time and making adjustments where and when necessary, those in power see it as losing power and all the benefits that flow from it .But the point is that it will be better to hearken to the people’s demand for devolution than allow revolution from below. Local government workers, their counterparts at state level and even some staff of federal bureaucracy and parastatals have not been paid their salaries for months, most roads and vital infrastructure are dilapidated yet we pretend all is well. With everybody blaming the federal government, this is the time for the federal government to shed some of its weight and burden to the devolved proposed regions and states.  If this is done, the federal government will have breathing space and the problems of the country will not fall on the head of whoever is unlucky to be president at a given point in time. The share of honour and or blame will fall not on the federal government alone, but on all the regions to which power, responsibility and financial resources  would have been transferred .How this is to be done remains the problem.

    Ordinarily a constitutional conference should be convoked made up possibly of all elected persons at the Senate and House of Representatives including all governors, members of the Council of State, special interest groups like the intelligentsia, the press, labour, religious bodies, retired federal permanent secretaries, select groups of generals and former secretaries to the federal government to dialogue on the way forward. This body should be given legal status by a presidential proclamation. What I am suggesting means that I do not believe we can leave the future of Nigeria in the hands of the elected representatives alone. Whatever they agree upon must be the grundnorm on which our future constitutional architecture must be based. This can be accomplished within months and a new constitution can be put in place well before 2019 election. If the government embraces this suggestion, we can lay to rest the current agitations and while people are working on the evolution of a new constitution, government can face the task of governing. This country’s problems cannot wait while we engage in interminable disputes on the form of government and its underpinning structure. Whatever is worked out must be in consonance with our local reality and cultural environment. There is room to borrow front existing global best practices but we must not be too pedantic in the emulation of what works in other climes.

    One of our major problems is the fear of non-inclusion in government by certain areas or ethnic or religious groups in the country. While I feel that this fissiparous tendency needs not remain with us for ever, yet while it remains we must take care of it. In Singapore and India, minorities’ fears are taken care of by allowing them to hold posts of presidents albeit in ceremonial positions. Thus ethnic Indians in majority Chinese Singapore and so-called harijans( untouchables) and Muslims become president in India. The idea of rotation which has been embraced informally in Nigeria could be written into the constitution just to allay the fear of power being perpetually resident in any region or religion.

    Since I have been observing Canadian politics, power has oscillated between French-speaking Canadians and their English fellow citizens. Despite the fact that French speaking Canadians constitute only 28 percent of the population, they have occupied the post of prime minister more times than their English counterparts. In a well-developed economy, it will really not matter who is in or out of power. So the solution to our problems is the economy.  An economy based on extraction of minerals whether liquid or hard is not sustainable. I say this to warn those who glibly say we have enough hard minerals under our soil to replace the diminishing hydrocarbon resources that we need to build our economy on the principle of self-reliance. We must produce what we eat and what we wear as well as what we need. We must move away from foreign imports and unnecessary esoteric goods that add no value to our lives. An economy based on using our hard earned foreign reserves on importing junks from India and China is not contributing to the growth of the country. Industries that produce consumer goods and that add value to our agricultural produce must receive highly favoured priority. Industrialization based not on imports substitution but on adding value to local produce and raw materials must be the new industrial paradigm. The point being made is not that we should cut off ourselves from global trade because we cannot isolate ourselves from the global economic community, but we must build on our comparative advantages in tropical produce and cheap labour to build a formidable economy that would not be subjected to the vagaries of global commodity prices manipulated by the advanced global capitalist economies. Once done, then we will have enough food in the national port to go round. Each of our constituent states or regions would also produce what it is best at. Thank God our country spreads across four geographical and vegetational belts namely  mangrove swamps, rain forest , savannah and Sahel each of which if well exploited is suitable for one kind of agricultural ecology or the other. This is where we should direct our research and development effort in such a way that we can bake a national cake that we can share among ourselves while each of the states will  be baking  its own  cakes without waiting for the national cake.

    This is why we must move away from revenue allocation based on population, geographical size and so on to sharing revenue on the basis of contribution, national development, innovation, peaceful coexistence, production and productivity as well as stability of the country. It is obvious to everyone that what is at the root of our ethnic conflict is economic disequilibrium and sharing of scarce resources. These resources are in most cases not earned but are products  of locational accidents of oil or other minerals being found below the ground of one ethnic group or the other. This locational accident has bred a life of laziness and indolence whereby our people have abandoned the land and are now quarrelling over commission paid by foreign oil companies. Is it not even a shame that unlike all other oil producing countries that started this oil journey with us in 1956, we are the only one who cannot fabricate the means of production and cannot even maintain the refineries built at great cost and because of our failure we are spending the proceeds of crude oil export on importing of refined petroleum products with little resources left for diversification of the economy?

    Our sins of ineptitude and corruption have caught up with us because soon the hydrocarbons which have caused us so much  problem  over sharing will soon be rendered useless or no longer the black gold it once was because of advancing technologies and concern for the global environment.  With our galloping population, we do not have the advantage of time to waste in solving our structural problems or it will be the “fire next time” in the words of James Baldwin when our young people may kill those of my generation who survive the crash of the fast approaching train of violence in the country unless we change our current political trajectory of doing nothing and politics as usual as if the rest of the world owes us a living.

    Our inability as a continent to solve our problems and our remaining global laggards is already giving some right wing ideologues to think of a second era of recolonization. If this were to happen, the down trodden people under the rulership of people who had been in power for up to 30 or 40 years may actually welcome this. Nigeria owes it to the black humanity to prevent this from happening but it must not be a wish only but it must be followed by positive action. The only way we can prevent a future tragedy arising from the present chaos is to ensure that the foundational structure of our country is solid.

  • Season of referenda: Iraqi Kurdistan; Spanish Catalonia

    On September 29, Kurds in northern Iraq held a referendum which overwhelmingly asked for independence from Iraq. The Catalans in Spain also held their own referendum on Sunday October 1. Like the Kurds, the Catalans asked for independence on the grounds of self-determination. And just like the republic of Iraq has denounced the Kurds for wanting to secede from Iraq, the Spanish government has also rejected the outcome of the Catalan referendum. The Kurds are the largest nation on earth without their own country. There are 14 or 15 million of them in Turkey constituting 18% of the country’s population of nearly 80 million. They live in northern Kurdistan and in south-eastern and eastern Anatolia. Those that have just voted for independence are the six million of them in Iraq out of a total population of 33 million. They live in northern Iraq constituting 17percent of Iraqi population. Six million of this divided people also live in Iran out of total population of 80 million. About two million Kurds live in Syria out of that country’s 21 million and others live in Armenia and parts of the Russian Caucasus. In all there are about 35 million of them. The Turkish Kurds have traditionally been the most vociferous in their demand for a homeland where they can use their own language. They are Sunni Muslims generally but quite a large number of them are secular. At a point in their struggle, they fought guerrilla wars against the Turks but for some time now, the violence seemed to have been contained although the Kurdish militants do strike occasionally in urban centres in Turkey.

    The Kurds in Iraq have enjoyed some autonomy since the Americans drove out Saddam Hussein from their land in the first Iraqi war. In recent times and in the war against the Islamic caliphate of Abubakar al Baghdadi, the Kurdish Peshmerga force has been armed and equipped by Americans in driving ISIL forces out of northern Iraq and northern Syria. The Kurds in Syria and Iraq have earned their claim to self-determination. But the problem is that if independence is conceded to the Kurds in Iraq, those in adjacent areas in Turkey in particular may demand independence. Therefore Iran, Turkey and Syria are opposed to granting independence to the Kurds in Iraq. Both Russia and the USA are also opposed to their independence for different political and strategic reasons. America is worried that independence in Iraqi Kurdistan may affect the ongoing campaign against ISIL. Besides there is a disagreement about borders especially over the disputed oil city of Kirkuk which Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds have also laid claim to. America also does not want to upset Turkey, a member of NATO. Russia also has fears of the impact of independence on Russian Caucasus.   Iran which wields considerable influence in Shia-dominated post Saddam Hussein Iraq has also denounced the referendum and publicly stated that it was unacceptable. The Iraqi prime minister has publicly issued a ban on all international flights to Kurdistan and Turkey’s president has publicly come out that the result of the referendum is null and void.  Unfortunately, the Kurds are going to be the losers because of the interests of their neighbours.

    What is therefore the way forward? Apart from granting Iraqi Kurdistan large measure of autonomy, independence is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

    As for Catalonia’s referendum, was the culmination of what has been going on since 2003 over the question of autonomy. The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said he would do everything necessary to stop the referendum. Some leaders of the largely autonomous Catalonia have already been arrested. Mr Rajoy claims genuine ballots have not been printed and there is no mechanism in place to hold a credible referendum. The American President Donald Trump has publicly come out against breaking up Spain, a NATO member and American ally. In spite of all this, Barcelona and Madrid continue to drift apart. The population of Catalonia is about 7.4 million out of Spain’s population of 46.56 million. Apart from the Catalans, there are the Basque-speaking people who speak a totally different language from Spanish  and they number a couple of millions, who, like the Irish in the British Isles, have for years waged a campaign of terrorism against Spain but has quietened down in recent years. The domino effect on Spain if Catalonia is allowed to secede can be imagined. Catalonia produces about a quarter of Spain’s wealth. Although Catalans speak a different language from Spanish, but it is not totally unrelated to Spanish and other Latin derived languages.

    Whatever one may say the referendum in Catalonia, it has created more problems than it has solved. It is very unlikely that any European country will support Catalonia because a country like France has its own minorities in Brittany, Basque Country and Alsace. So does Italy with its Germans in the north-east. Belgium is almost equally divided between its French-speaking people in Wallonia and its Dutch speakers in Flanders. The United Kingdom with its Scottish and Welsh nationalism to cope with will not recognize Catalan independence. In recent European history of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Russia, one can ask what is the difference?

    Russia was an empire and it remains an empire hence it went the way of empires. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were relatively newly put together after the First World War. On the other hand, Spain has been a United Kingdom for centuries. What inference can one draw from this? It is that secession is doomed and only perhaps after bloody war is there a likelihood of secession succeeding anywhere in the world.

    What can Nigeria learn from this? The demand for a referendum by so-called IPOB in the South-east may not even be supported by a majority of the Igbo people. Even if it is supported, secession would have to be militarily asserted or negotiated and it is very unlikely that there will be a peaceful agreement.  Unless we want to fight another, I do not see secession being a reasonable and viable option. Besides how economically viable in the long run will an independent Biafra be?

    But calling for secession is a manifestation of deep disgruntlement with the current constitutional architecture of our country. It will be a mistake if we just ignore this without doing something about it.  It is also worth noting that it is not the Igbo alone who are dissatisfied and unhappy with the structural configuration of the country. This anxiety appears to be everywhere. There is a need therefore to look at our current structure and all of us should sit down and calmly see our way forward. As far as I am concerned, we have too many states and local governments and it is costing the nation too much to run these layers of governments. At the root of these agitations is the lack of development and economic opportunities for our people. So it is the economy stupid! –as Americans would say. We must find a way by which 70 percent of our budget will be spent on capital projects while the remaining 30 percent will be spent on administration unlike what operates now. To get to this happy situation, we must cut costs of government. We must also have a unicameral legislature by abolishing the Senate and reducing by half the number of people in the legislature.

    If we decide to keep the bicameral legislature, it must be part-time as was the case in the First Republic which was perhaps the golden years of Nigeria. This country cannot afford more than a maximum of 12 states/regions. Eight will actually be preferable and the federal government should handle only enumerated functions while every other thing should be reserved for the states which should also enjoy a transfer of commensurate resources that would go with the new responsibilities. This evolutionary path of constitutional development will be preferable to revolutionary path of secession which will amount to a leap in the dark.

    Looking at recent world history, many countries prefer to live with the imperfections in their countries than follow a violent trajectory of secession. The province of Quebec has tried three times to secede from Canada and the referenda have failed three times. Scotland has tried twice and failed. Eritrea succeeded after a bitter war, so also has South Sudan and has since erupted in ethnic violence. Casamance in Senegal has fought fruitless wars for several decades and it is now tired.  The Tamils tried unsuccessfully to carve out a separate state for themselves by force but eventually, the majority fire power of the Sinhalese overwhelmed them. Needless to mention the unsuccessful attempt by Biafra between 1967 to 1970 to justly secede from Nigeria. The record of secession or attempted secession is not too good to follow.

    The international environment seems satisfied with the political status quo as far as national boundaries are concerned, favouring where possible, regionalism as a strategy for world order. It seems the international order favours self-expression and ethnic self-actualization within the confines of existing states however imperfect the states may be. What this means is that national /ethnic autonomy and absolute independence is gradually becoming unfashionable. In this kind of global environment, secession in any state is doomed to failure. But this does not mean that apparent injustice and iniquity in the running of national governments should and would be tolerated by the global community.

  • Judicial activism in Africa

    The expression “judicial activism” is from contemporary American politics where legal interpretation of its constitution can have ramifying and fundamental impact on its society and politics. For example after years of segregation, the American Supreme Court in a landmark decision came out with the judgement that there cannot be separate and equal education as it concerns black and white schools maintained at public expense. It was this kind of decision that forced public schools to desegregate. Although during the colonial phase of Nigerian history, there was a colour bar in hospitals and housing as well as salaries, this remained largely legally unchallenged. There were European/white hospitals and blacks as recent as the 1950s could not lodge in Broad Street Hotel in Lagos and Hill Station Hotel in Jos. There were different salaries for African and European workers doing the same thing. The various GRA (Government Reserved Areas) where only whites lived, ostensibly to shield them from African diseases, ensured physical separation of races. In Kenya, the Congo, central and Southern Africa where there were white settlers, separation or apartheid was the practice.  This was also the case in Algeria where close to three million French men had settled. There is no legal record  saying this  separation even though unacceptable, was challenged systematically until the 1950s when  the wind of change was gathering pace and becoming an hurricane as remarked by Sir Harold Macmillan a British Prime Minister of the time.

    The point I am making is that political change took place as a result of direct action or what Kwame Nkrumah called “positive action”, by nationalists either through political protests and or armed pressure. In other words, one can say that the idea of judicial activism is alien to African colonial history and even to contemporary politics until recently.

    The recent decision to annul and invalidate the presidential election in Kenya won by President Uhuru Kenyatta has drawn attention to the role of the judiciary in Africa. It should be recalled that this is the second time Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga are squaring against each other politically. In 2013 Kenyatta won a highly and hotly contested election which eventually eventuated into violence when Odinga rejected the result. There is no difference ideologically between the two of them. The National Super Alliance (NASA) led by  Raila Odinga and the Jubilee Party, a reincarnation of the old Kenya National African Union (KANU) led by Uhuru  Kenyatta are  centrist parties politically speaking. Their difference like in most African countries is rooted in ethnic difference between Odinga, a Luo and Kenyatta, a Kikuyu. These are the two major ethnic groups in the country. Uhuru is the son of the founding President of Kenya, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who along with Raila’s father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, formed the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and Raila’s father was made the Vice President. They eventually fell out because after some years, Oginga Odinga also wanted to be president. Kenya to begin with would never have been independent but for the rebellion of the Kikuyu who bore the burden of British settlerism following the expropriation of their land for British settlers in the 1920s after the First World. The Mau Mau ((Kenya Land and Freedom army or KFLA 1952 -1960) uprising forced the British to realize that Kenya was not going to be a settler colony. Without the moderating hand of Jomo Kenyatta, an anthropologist and author of a scholarly book, “Facing Mount Kenya” there would have been more bloodshed in Kenya before the British finally conceded independence to Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta.  Jomo Kenyatta was President from 1964 to 1978 when he died. He was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi a member of a small Kalenjin tribe who was Jomo Kenyatta’s Vice President and he remained in power till 2013. He was succeeded by a Kikuyu Mwai Kibaki who remained in power till 2013 and again replaced by another Kikuyu the younger Kenyatta in 2013. In all this musical political chairs, the Luo the second largest ethnic group has always been worsted in the contest for power. Any unnecessarily ambitious Luo during the time of Kenyatta and after was not tolerated and for example the ambitious, affable and handsome young minister, Tom Mboya a Luo was mysteriously assassinated on July 5, 1969 within the first few years of independence and this sent a warning to anyone who might raise his hand against the dominant force of the ethnic status quo.

    This is the background against which to see the current struggle for power in Kenya between the Kikuyu and the Luo. Politics in Africa is a matter of numbers and the Kikuyus have the numbers. When in August, the 72-year old Raila Odinga lost to 62-year old Uhuru Kenyatta in a presidential election judged by international observers coming from the West, the Commonwealth and African Union, it was felt Kenya had overcome its monster of disputed elections. But Odinga protested the outcome and rather than asking his supporters to go on the streets, he went to the Supreme Court to challenge the validity of the election process.  Surprisingly, the court in a split decision along ethnic lines invalidated the election and called for another election within 60 days.

    This outcome has been welcomed by the opposition. The president accepted the judgement but deprecated it. He even called members of the judiciary “crooks” who had been bought over by “Jews and homosexuals”. This is really an unfortunate development. Raila Odinga while welcoming the judgement called unrealistically for the dismissal of the Electoral and Boundaries Commission. The cancelled election cost Kenya $500 million. This is a lot of money in a poor country. The logistics of holding another election in 60 days involving printing of new ballot papers remain daunting. It is therefore almost axiomatic that the result of a new election may not be different from the old one.

    The question to ask is whether the judicial decision has been worth it and whether it has met the yardstick of legal wisdom and sagacity in view of the fact that the decision was based not on grounds of actual rigging and intent of rigging but on the grounds of lack of compliance with transmission of results electronically from wards to collating centre. It will be a tragedy if the re-run were to terminate in violence costing thousands of lives as it was in 2013.

    Some commentators have commended the judicial decision in Kenya and asked other African courts to learn from it. What happened in Kenya is not new to us in Nigeria. Results of elections have been changed at local, gubernatorial, House of Representative and senatorial levels but not at the presidential levels.  In the United States, Al Gore went to court to dispute the narrow win of George Bush in 2000 presidential election after the political shenanigans in Florida where Bush’s younger brother was governor but in the interest of the country and democracy, he withdrew the challenge so that the USA was not plunged into a constitutional crisis.

    In 1999 in a similar situation and to hasten the departure of the military from power, Chief Olu Falae withdrew his case in the Supreme Court challenging Olusegun Obasanjo’s election. In 2003, 2007 and 2011, President Muhammadu Buhari challenged unsuccessfully the elections of his opponents. Even if there were grounds for annulling the elections of his opponents, the Supreme Court upheld the outcome of the elections. These decisions were the right and sagacious decisions if only to save our country from political uncertainty and violence.

    Legal purists may dispute the wisdom of political imperative in judicial decisions at the highest level of a country but the overall interest of the country must always prevail. This is not a call for electoral brigandage and deliberate crime but when as in the case of Kenya, no such grounds were established, it would have been prudent for the judiciary to make haste slowly. This is particularly the case in African countries where there is evidence of corruption in many courts including the highest courts as it is the case in our country as can be seen in recent exposures of corruption in Nigerian courts.

  • Population bomb in Nigeria

    I have just seen a BBC documentary on future demographic development in Africa zeroing in on Nigeria and its neighbour Niger Republic. The thrust of the documentary is that if both continue at the current rate of growth, Nigeria’s population will nearly hit a billion by the year 2050. Nigeria will be the number three most populous country in the world next to India and China because India would have overtaken China by that time.  The documentary points to the unsustainable population growth in Niger Republic which is over three percent and that this should be a cause for worry for Nigeria because the excess always spills over to Nigeria. Nigeria in other words, is the safety net for Niger republic. In the meantime, Nigeria itself is growing at three percent or more on average even though there are regional differences and diversities in this growth pattern.

    The question to ask is what is responsible for this exponential growth in population in these two countries and what can be done about it. In Nigeria and Niger the main reason is cultural. Niger is largely a Muslim country while the far north of Nigeria is similar to its northern neighbour. These are Islamic societies where polygamy is acceptable and not against the Islamic religion. One young man in Niger was interviewed on the size of his family of four wives and 16 children and he readily agreed that he is not able to feed them and virtually begged for available contraceptive measures. He immediately became an advocate of all measures to stop this obvious population explosion.  One of the things the man said which the documentary highlighted was that he will encourage his children to go to Kano and Lagos to seek their fortunes. The focus of the documentary was on the Hausa speaking town of Zinder.  One interesting thing the government of Niger has done is to embark on massive family planning campaign including public medical contraceptive practice on women from village to village in a desperate measure to stem this tide of uncontrollable population explosion.

    Now what is happening in Niger as far as population growth is concerned is also happening on the Nigerian side of the border on a bigger scale because of its huge population. Apart from religious similarities, the two societies are largely agricultural with farmers raising large families to help them on the farms. The level of illiteracy is also high. This is responsible for the people not benefiting from contraceptive measures that would readily be available to the people if they were educated. The status of the girl-child remains abysmally low in human development index. Illiterate parents pay little or no concern for the interest of their female children other than just looking forward to payment of marriage price or dowry by their suitors.  Children, sometimes while very young in age, are married off to their husbands where they are turned into breeding machines. In the past, the high mortality rate of children at infancy stabilized and moderated population growth, but the improvement in maternity care means that more children survive to live in abject poverty to the detriment of their families who need to be taught that large families are no longer of any economic value.

    It can thus be seen that there is a complex interplay of factors that lead to this extraordinary population growth. The difference between Niger and Nigeria is that there is some fitful effort to address the problem north of the border but here in Nigeria nothing is being done. Population growth is not limited to the north of Nigeria alone; it is no doubt a national problem. In fact, the size of population has become political! Like in Northern Ireland where the Catholics are trying to outbreed the protestants  for political parity, the  various ethnic groups  in Nigeria seem to fight a silent and perhaps unconscious “crib” war because as seen in their census battles, population figures have economic significance because of their being tied to revenue distribution from the federation account. This means nobody is seriously thinking about population control in the country or any part of it.

    In the south-east of Nigeria, some men encourage and celebrate their wives for their effort in outbreeding their neighbours. Some communities give their wives and their wives ‘ parents cows when a single woman is able to have 10 or more children without caring for the health of the woman involved. The factors of illiteracy, economic demand for more hands on the field of farming or even trading and preferably their own children drive people in the south generally to have large families and multiple wives.

    In the south-west of Nigeria, the monogamous example of their Christian cousins tend to moderate the polygamous tendencies of the Muslim community .This can be seen in the apparent slowing down of the population growth in the South-west. This is evidenced by national statistics. As western education spreads, the culture of small families and monogamy develops in all people irrespective of the religion one practices or the region where one lives. There is no doubt about the correlation between family size and education particularly female education. With women staying longer in school, the years left for them to have football size families have been reduced. There is also medically proven fact of too many children leading to high female mortality. On top of this is the fact that our economy and food production cannot really cope with this huge population growth. The situation calls for a national approach to defusing this population bomb. There must be a national population growth policy that would have to be enforced. This must be coordinated with the leadership of the two monotheistic religions of Islam and Christianity, because the clerics of the two religions seem to encourage large families by their followers. Even the African culture of seeing children as gifts from God would have to change if we are not to be overwhelmed by a deluge of children. There ought to be a legislation to discourage multiple wives. I pray we do not have to do what Indira Ghandi, the former prime minister of India did when she started castrating the men which eventually led to an assassin taking her life.

    We are actually facing an emergency and we must adopt enforceable population policy and coordinate it with that of the Republic of Niger and perhaps other neighbouring countries of Benin and Chad where massive movement of people into Nigeria is currently occurring. People from as far as Togo and Liberia are flocking to Lagos because of its attractiveness as an economic magnet. The thought of Nigeria having a billion people 30 years to come is frightening. We will just not be able to handle it. Our economy cannot sustain or support it. We do not have the technology or the medical facilities to support such an unthinkable population problem. Lagos State claims one million people are moving to Lagos every year. This massive movement of people to Nigeria is pregnant with social, economic and political consequences. We must reverse this demographic trajectory by all means.

    Because of the freedom of movement of people and capital enshrined in the ECOWAS treaty compels us to champion a population policy in the region, the control of population growth is not only an economic but a strategic and security issue. The population of Nigeria is also very young .Those under 30 years is more than 60 percent. This means they are at the high reproductive stage of their lives. If serious campaign of limiting every man to two children is not urgently embarked upon, it will be too late. The emphasis must be put on men not on women. Some years ago we had this debate but it was quietly forgotten. The time has now come when we must take serious measures to roll back this economically crippling population growth and  a phenomenon which has become unsustainable.

    When faced with similar problems, China limited a family to one child and medically enforced it. As a dictatorship, the communist regime was able to stabilize population growth at zero percent although the policy is being relaxed in special cases. In democratic India, this could not be done and this accounts for India catching up with China. In Europe, generally economic factor of the cost of raising children has stabilized the population growth. In the USA, massive immigration has led to what is an unsustainable population growth and this is responsible for the rise in right wing nationalism. Latin Americas’ poverty is related to its huge population growth and countries in the region, in spite of being largely, Catholics with their aversion for abortion are doing all they can to stabilize their population growth. Nigeria has a choice to make and this choice has to be made. The sooner the better. The time bomb is ticking.

  • Reflecting on yet another ASUU strike

    Many of us in Nigeria and particularly in the education sector have lost count of the number of strikes by university workers. The first strike that I remember vividly because I participated in it was the “industrial action” in 1973 taken against our employers, the federal government which owned the universities of Ibadan and Lagos, and the state governments that were the owners of the university of Nigeria (Nsukka) Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Ife. I was then in the University of Ibadan – Jos Campus. The University of Ibadan under Professor Adeoye Lambo  was invited to establish a university college in Jos by Joseph Gomwalk, an alumnus  zoology graduate of Ibadan who as police commissioner was the military governor of the then Benue-Plateau State.  Stories had it that he approached Ibadan after Ahmadu Bello University for political reasons turned him down. The college was therefore established in 1972 under the energetic and indefatigable Professor Emmanuel Ayandele. University staff then were not highly paid but they earned enough comparable with others in the public sector.

    When the strike was called, the Yakubu Gowon government reacted negatively and gave an ultimatum that university staff should either call off the strike or pack out of university accommodation. This was a wakeup call for senior university people who were living comfortably in university accommodation without the thought of owning their own houses. The government’s tough approach did the trick and the strike was called off. The university people learnt a bitter lesson from the experience. Those who had been in service for a long time began to look for land to build their own houses and they set the example for the younger ones to follow. I remember that Governor J.D .Gomwalk gave us plots in the GRA for us to build our homes in Jos. Some paid for the plots of land, but out of short-sightedness, most of us felt we were too young to be thinking of personal houses. Those also were the years of idealism when young people like us despised materialism and primitive accumulation of wealth.

    In those days, there was only one union in the university system unlike now when there are as many as seven or more if one includes the various unions in the university teaching hospitals. It will be wonderful if ASUU can just be “Association and Staff Union of Universities “to embrace all the existing unions and every category of staff can enter whatever salary scale approved for the entire university system at its own level. This will take care of academic, administrative, technical, clerical and cleaning staff. With the trend noticeable in private universities and universities in the rest of the world, there will soon be no need of those doing “bullshit” jobs in the universities.” Bullshit “jobs according to London School of Economics anthropologist David Graeber are jobs that add no value to the economy and that can be dispensed with and the people doing them know that their positions are superfluous. There are many jobs like that in our country including jobs of ambassadors! While on this, my rather sometimes probing ambassador-friend, Dapo Fafowora once cynically challenged me by saying many university people have no skills and wondered what skill I had. I mumbled something about being a teacher, writer, public intellectual and so on. But on reflection my job may not be critical to society as that of garbage collectors! I have just read a book with the title of “Utopia for realists and how we can get there” by a Dutch historian by the name of Rutger Bregman. The book has kept me thinking. He gave a comparative importance of garbage collectors in New York going on strike and after six stinking days, the mayor had to be begging them with huge salaries and pleading with them to save the city from being overrun by rats and stench. He compared it with the case of bankers who went on strike for six months in Ireland while people devised other mechanics of shifting wealth from one to the other!

    The point I want to make is that while the job of teaching from primary to tertiary levels of education is very important and should be recognized and adequately compensated, this must be balanced with other critical sectors needing resources. There is no point asking for the moon during a period of economic recession. By the way, I hope this time around, government will consolidate salaries and “earned or unearned allowances” which have been the knotty problem for university administrators in recent times. The second point I want to make is to ask how adequately have we as teachers transmitted to our students the right kind of culture that would be beneficial to our country. Do we impart the right kind of knowledge to our students?. Do we just equip our students for the work place or do we put emphasis on the good of society rather than what is personally beneficial ?Of course there is the eternal argument of the role of parents and society in shaping the character of young people who will grow up to hold leadership positions in our society.  Our universities should aspire to be incubators of ideas and centres of patents that could be harnessed to dominate our environment and make our lives better rather than shunning out esoteric researches that are totally irrelevant to the questions of development and societal progress.

    I will like to see academics get more involved in debating the future political, structural and economic trajectory of this country instead of just taking care of ourselves alone. There is the debate going on in western societies about the desirability of paying  everybody a basic universal  income irrespective of whether  one was working or not. The present  government is doing something like this following on the paradigm established by Kayode Fayemi in Ekiti State where poor elderly women were being paid N5000 per month. Imagine the effect it will have on our country if all unemployed people were given a living basic income monthly. This may sound an outrageous suggestion. But it is being done in some places and we must be thinking of how to adapt it to our clime. Imagine if all those who want to work and cannot find jobs were each paid N20,000 a month with promise of housing along the line. What this will mean is that we will have to cap the maximum anybody earns in this country. This will mean we will radically reduce salaries and allowances of federal, state and local government officials and their bureaucracies. If all were catered for, we will not need a huge army, police, prisons and many other security organizations.  Whatever is saved on these institutions will go into the basic fund from which the income will be paid to the masses of our hungry people. The fact that this sounds idealistic does not mean it cannot be done. There are trials on the universal basic income concept albeit on limited scale going on in Canada, New Zealand and in some places even in the USA.

    Before we arrive at this future utopia, I will like to suggest that the universities should be asked to have one union embracing all workers who work in the universities. If the purpose of higher education is teaching, research and public service, then everybody in the university system should work symbiotically with each other. Eventually the supporting staff in the university system will gradually reduce as it has all over the world because of increasing advance in technology. The days of clerks and secretaries are gone or going in many universities. In future, budgets of universities will be solely for research and technical support and the vast administrative paraphernalia in the universities will wither away. Universities will also gradually not be involved in providing municipal services and good universities will be able to generate their own power and provide water for their own use.

    Finally our governments must realize that universities are expensive to run and heads of governments must avoid after dinner announcements about opening of new universities without counting the cost. All this glib talk of universities of petroleum, university of transportation, marine university must stop. We should consolidate and possibly merge the ones we have so as to save costs. The government by giving license to all sorts of characters to establish universities has demeaned and devalued the cultural significance of universities.  Some of the private universities, especially the sectarian ones and a few others are excellent institutions contributing to shaping the character of the youth while also imparting knowledge to them but some of the existing private universities are caricatures of universities and fraudulent institutions sucking money out of deluded Nigerians looking for easy way out of this rather difficult Nigerian educational environment.

  • Terrorism in Europe: Moroccan connection

    Catalonia is an important part of the kingdom of Spain with separate national aspirations and its capital city of Barcelona is the second biggest city in Spain after Madrid and it is arguably the most beautiful and most cosmopolitan city in Spain. It was once host to the Olympics Games and it is host to the famous football team “Barca”. This is the city and neighboring other two towns that were reeling under terrorist attacks which at the last count have led to more than twenty people dead including some of the terrorists and tens of people seriously wounded. For more than a decade, Spain has been spared of terrorist attack  at least of the Islamic variant. The last time Spain had anything to do with terrorism was the fact that one of those Saudis, named Mohammad Atta, who piloted one of the planes during the 9/11 attack on New York once lived in Spain.

    The Iberian peninsula still known to the Arab world as Andalusia, was for more than five centuries, off and on, either partly or totally under Muslim rule. The most effective period of Muslim rule was when a caliphate existed in the Iberian peninsula from 929 to 1031 and and this was followed by the Almoravid’s (Al murabitun) conquest of Spain from 1031 to 1130. In spite of Christian reconquest of Spain  between 1130 and 1492, the blood of  Moroccan Arabs flow in the veins of many spaniards. Perhaps because of this and the proximity of Spain to Morocco in particular, Muslims particularly from Morocco until recently have always been welcome in Spain.

    Moroccans historically have been tolerant and moderate Muslims who shared with others in the Mediterranean, common cuisine and love for good life of wine and song. Wine is openly consumed in restaurants in the major Moroccan cities of Rabat, Fez, Marrakech and Casablanca. The sharifian dynasty established during the Arab conquest of Morocco  circa 700 to 900  provide a rallying point for the country.  The Sharif or sultan since the 19th century has been a modernizing monarchy perhaps as a surviving strategy in the face of European imperialism. The kingdom likes to see itself as a constitutional monarchy although even today the Moroccan king is still too powerful to fit into the category of constitutional monarchy found elsewhere in places like Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan. Morocco enjoys political stability unseen in many Arab and North African countries. It attracts because of this, western investment and political and military support. It is a major ally of the United States  in its fight against terrorism. When many Arab regimes were shaken to their foundations during the so-called Arab Spring, Morocco stood like a rock of Gibraltar against salafist jihadists, only making minor political  adjustment to contain demands for reforms.

    The political stability in the kingdom has not translated to economic prosperity and this has led to massive migrations of Moroccans to continental Europe particularly to Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany where they mostly did the jobs such as cleaning the streets, removing of garbage and other low income jobs that the Europeans were not eager to do. Through natural growth, the number of this immigrants has increased exponentially to the point that they have become visible minorities in these European countries to the point where politicians particularly in the Netherlands have exploited their presence for political leverage and support. The cultural divide especially religious divide has made it impossible for the immigrants and their children to be assimilated into the wider European culture. The Moroccans involved in these acts of Islamic terrorism are usually not the immigrants themselves but their children.

    In the same week Moroccans were involved in acts of wanton terrorism in Spain, they also showed up in Finland where an apparently deranged young man killed two women before he was incapacitated and brought down by police bullets on his feet. Finland has never witnessed this kind of terror before until now. A few weeks ago, a young Libyan in Manchester killed scores of young people at a musical concert. Some months earlier, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Nice in the Mediterranean coast of France were brought to their knees by young Muslims most of who were born in Europe. What is now new since Nice, Berlin  and London is the weapon of choice being employed by these terrorists to inflict maximum casualties. This new weapon is the automobile, either cars or trucks. Vehicles are driven into crowds of people at maximum speed with intention to kill. All the people targeted are innocent people. Be they men or women, children or adults, Christians or Muslims, firm or infirm or black, brown, yellow or white.

    The question to ask is for what purpose? Killing people at random and for no just cause than to attract attention is absolutely senseless and insane and is not in consonance with any Islamic beliefs. Even if these perpetrators of murder are angry with society for any reason,  the terrorism they indulged in is not the way to air their grievances. Unfortunately these people are giving the religion of Islam a bad  name to the effect that innocent Muslims are being tarred with the same brush of terrorism as those of the terrorists.

    What is to be done and who is to blame? One of the fathers of the Moroccan terrorists in Barcelona blamed the Imam of the mosque attended by his two children involved in acts of terrorism who were shot dead as being responsible for indoctrination of his children. Others blame some majority Sunni countries in the Middle East for spreading hate, salafism,wahabbism and fanaticism generally.  There is no doubt that some rich people in the Middle East, driven by more religious enthusiasm than wisdom are funding without control their own brand and interpretation of Islam. We can also point to the failure of society that may have been responsible for alienation of children born in these societies but  who are treated as aliens. There is also the failure of intelligence on the part of security organizations in host countries of the immigrant young people.

    Whatever reasons that may be adduced to explain this recrudescence of terrorism in Spain and other places would still not justify wanton killing of innocent people. Short of turning all centres of major cities into pedestrian area without vehicles allowed in, this problem will persist. Even if motorists were banned from city centres, it is inconceivable to ban them from all city roads which means determined killers can still hunt for their preys. At the end of the day, peace can only be built in human hearts through change of heart, correct teaching of the pillars of whatever faith we hold dear, and through mankind realizing that we are all children of God in spite of whatever apparent physical or religious differences we can identify.

    The immediate consequences of what happened in the weekend of August 17-20 is that Morocco and Moroccans will be stigmatized. I know Moroccans are basically good people. I have personal experience of Moroccans and some friends among  these generally friendly and tolerant people. The economy of the country depends hugely on tourism unlike any Arab country. Morocco is not like any Arab country in fact most of the people are arabised berbers with substantial portion of the population being descendants of African people. Morocco has always looked towards Africa rather than the Middle East and its  Sunni Islam is tempered by history and geography and this makes Morocco unique of the countries in the Maghreb. It is hoped that this time of national infamy will pass and Morocco and Moroccans will come into their own once again.

  • Leadership challenge in Nigeria

    The National Intelligence Council (NIC) report, ‘Mapping Sub Saharan Africa’s Future’, which painted a depressing picture of the African continent, had engendered several discussions. Using indices such as globalization, patterns of conflict, terrorism, democratization, AIDS, evolving foreign influences and religion, the report specifically estimated that Nigeria could fragment in the next 15 years. This categorisation of Nigeria as a prospective failed state had raised concern and even apprehension at the nation’s top policy making levels. Before now, the failed states phenomenon in Africa had often been associated with countries like Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Angola, Burundi and Congo at different stages of their evolving histories.

    Leadership plays a pivotal role in the descent into failure and collapse. Africa’s political history is replete with leadership crises. In Mobutu Sese Seko’s Zaire, Samuel Doe’s Liberia or Somalia, the ruler-led-oppression provoked a countervailing reaction on the part of resentful groups that led to the eventual collapse of the state. Governments are unable to set in place transparent and accountable institutions capable of securing economic progress, governing effectively, and protecting their citizens.  This lack of capacity is amplified by recourse to authoritarianism and repression, dramatic economic decline precipitated by indiscriminate corruption, and the adoption of exclusive (ethnic) policies to assure self-succession tendencies.

    In the absence of patriotic and charismatic leadership, corrupted elites model the state to serve their narrow interests, instead of the interests of the citizens.  As a consequence, the state itself is unable to fulfill its purpose or perform those functions of protection, delivery of basic social services and provisions of institutions to respond to legitimate demands and needs. The failure to perform these functions creates three major gaps in most African societies, notably ‘security gap’, ‘capacity gap’ and ‘legitimacy gap’.

    Security gaps have been most evident in Africa, because of the inability of African states to preserve effective sovereignty and order within their territories, situations that other states, non-state actors, and simple criminals seek to fill with violent, hostile, or illicit acts.  Capacity gap exists when a state fails to play a central role in meeting the needs of its citizens. In the same manner, legitimacy gap provides an opening for political upheavals and crisis. This gap exists when the state fails to maintain institutions that protect basic rights and freedoms, hold individuals accountable for their actions, enforce laws and ensures broad- based citizen participation in the political process.

    Nigeria provides a perfect case study on problems of leadership because only few countries in Africa have experienced greater trauma in the attempts to fill the gaps examined above. Years of military rule and the attendant problems of corruption and accountability had widened these gaps.  In his book Power And Leadership In Nigeria, Chuba Okadigbo (1987: 134) examined the role of leadership in Nigeria and concluded that: “The lack of national cohesion, indeed of any bold attempt by raising institutions or leaders to really unite Nigeria, is indicative of leadership failure in Nigeria, i.e. of failure of personal leadership as well as institutional or structural failure”.

    Professor Chinua Achebe came to the same conclusion in his book The Trouble with Nigeria, when he simply identified the problem of Nigeria as failure of leadership.  The Nigerian problem, he concluded, “is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example, which is the hallmark of true leadership”. Still on the problems of leadership in Nigeria, Mahmud Tukur (1999: 393) argued that generally most governments in Nigeria have failed to take “an activist conception of the purposes and functions of the state…the basic inclination (is) to regard the sphere of social morality as lying outside the purview of public concern”.

    To underscore the importance of the leadership element, reference is made to the South East Asian nations, where the quality of leadership had brought dynamism and greater prosperity even in the face of globalisation. These countries have also made a tremendous progress in building sturdier and more capable democratic institutions. By contrast, African countries have either stagnated or failed, due to an interplay of demographics, poverty, disease, and most importantly, poor governance.

    The NIC report’s projection that Nigeria would fail as a state in the next 15 years had drawn attention to the country’s enduring problem of leadership.  Interestingly, Robert I. Rotberg in his analysis even categorised Nigeria as a state that collapsed in the 1990s, but gradually recovered and is now weak.  If Rotberg’s categorisation is accepted with all its flaws, the question to ponder is, can Nigeria relapse into failed state as predicted by the NIC report and what is the critical role of leadership in averting this situation?

    Two responses are likely to quickly emerge reflecting the positions of the two dominant paradigms for analysing Nigerian politics. The realist paradigm would argue that Nigeria cannot fail, because it has all the physical characteristics of a continental or middle power: large population, a vast land area, huge mineral resources including petroleum, growing industrial work force, vast arable land and a large military force.  Underlying these characteristics is the widely held assumption that Nigeria being the ‘giant of Africa’ would not be allowed to fail by the West because of the consequent effect this would have on the West African sub-region. By contrast, the radical paradigm sees Nigeria as essentially a dependent state whose future, growth and influence are rather unstable and unsustainable. Such a state it could be argued is likely to fail or collapse. In deference to these two paradigms, the position this paper takes is that although Nigeria has potentials, its growth and influence cannot be assured unless it has a Strategic National Leadership that can harmonise and utilize its current capabilities to realize its national interest.

    The history of failed or collapsed states has clearly shown that failure or collapse is not equivalent to the absence of physical national attributes or capabilities. Many of the failed countries in Africa like Zaire and Liberia are rich in natural resources such as diamonds, oil, gold etc.  In the same manner, ethnic, religious and cultural homogeneity is not a guarantee that a state will not collapse as Somalia had shown. In all these cases the vital missing link was leadership, where political leaders were unable to deliver political goods or close the gap on the essential issues of security, capacity and legitimacy.

    Like most African countries, Nigeria is experiencing difficulties in the delivery of political goods for its citizens, despite the abundance of natural resources. At the level of security, while Nigeria is not confronted by an immediate external threat to its sovereignty, internally the government is battling with the problem of providing security for the lives and prosperity of its citizens. The problems of armed robbery and banditry are effectively challenging the nation’s internal security mechanisms.  In addition, there are other forms of ethnic and religious strives that threaten the state.  However, the most fundamental security problem is the proliferation of ethnic militia and separatist movements in the country.

    According to Nnamdi K. Obasi (2002: 1), “the proliferation of ethnic militia, vigilante and separatist groups has been one of the most significant failures of Nigerian society and politics in recent years.”  These groups subvert the rule of law, create violence in Nigeria, and thus constitute threat to national security. Crucially also, is the fact that Nigeria faces the problem of meeting the needs of its citizens due to years of mismanagement, profligacy and endemic corruption.  Thus inadequate capacity to meet social welfare need of citizens or sustain the intermittent reinforcement of social goods and services had resulted in the erosion of public confidence and popular support.

    While Nigeria does not fit perfectly into any of the categories considered, it would be no exaggeration to say that the country exhibits some of the characteristics of a weak state as identified by Rotberg, notwithstanding the imperfections in his thesis. It should be noted, however, that categorising a state as failing, does not necessarily doom it irretrievably to full failure. Failure is a fluid halting place, with movement forward to weakness and backward into collapse always possible.

    The problem of failed states remains a core security problem of the 21st century, not only to the countries that suffer the fate, but also to the international community. Failure and collapse are undesirable results for states, but fortunately they are preventable. Human factors rather than structural flaws or situational insufficiencies are almost invariably responsible for the slides from weakness (or strength) towards failure and collapse.

    The most fundamental measure required in confronting the challenge, and averting the Nigerian state from failure and collapse is strategic and progressive leadership. The importance of strategic leadership is that it identifies and harmonizes national capabilities to achieve the national interest. The following recommendations classified as long-term are proffered to meet this challenge.

    1. Create effective national institutions that can meet citizens’ needs and take full part in the workings of the international community.
    2. Undertake concerted development, broadly understood as progress toward stable, accountable society.

    iii. Restructure the polity to ensure equity, justice and fairness.

     

    • Ambassador Wando, MFR, mni is a diplomat.