The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Healers or dealers? (2)

    •Bedside hostility, forced circumcision and criminal extortion at General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos

    Few Lagos tragedies fully measure to the grotesque proceedings at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos. Even as you read, the travesty of healthcare and humaneness persists like the tragic nuance in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The tragedy at the hospital is hardly the finale to the morbid serials staged across the coastal city’s General Hospitals but it unarguably represents an obscene, poignant burlesque characteristic of the incumbent administration’s health policy.

    Is the state’s Commissioner for Health, Jide Idris, aware of the organised fraud being perpetrated at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, among other state hospitals? Is he aware of the bestial treatment meted to pregnant women and other patients calling in at the public health centre? Does he know of the subtle and brazen extortion methods perpetrated by the clinic’s authorities, like ‘over-prescription’ of drugs and medical provisions? Too many husbands are often forced to purchase more than the drugs and medical provisions they need for their pregnant wives’ treatment at the hospital’s dispensary. At the end of their ordeal, clinic staff persuade husbands of newly delivered mothers and relatives of convalescing patients who are about to be discharged, to give up the excess drugs and supplies. Then they sell to new patients at prices too close or similar to the dispensary’s.

    Is Jide Idris aware of ‘Megalek,’ an agency within the state’s General Hospital, forcefully recommended by the hospital authorities to perform circumcision on newborn sons, against their mother’s wishes. For the unsolicited service, mothers are forced to pay N4, 000. And no mother’s heartfelt complaint to the hospital’s Medical Director could protect her from the insolent tentacles of the internal extortion ring.

    Does Jide Idris know that, after reading the first part of this article, the Medical Director, General Hospital, Oke Odo, summoned an emergency meeting whereby the fraudulent charges on circumcision and other deceptive fees were promptly cancelled – at least till the noise blows over?

    The Lagos health commissioner is probably aware that there aren’t enough beds for pregnant women and other patients in the hospital’s crowded wards. And he probably knows of the several travesties being perpetrated in the hospital’s wards, he is simply too busy to care. Perhaps because the victims are far removed from the elite segment of Lagos’ high society.

    In fairness to the personnel of General Hospital, Oke Odo, Agege, they, like their colleagues across the state’s General Hospitals, have to function in parlous conditions. They are forced to ration fuel for electricity power generators because the state refuses to provide adequate budget for electricity supply. The hospital, like all others, is understaffed, and plagued by boorish staff with atrocious bedside manners. The medical staff  and auxiliary teams are overrun by a flippant, disgruntled, desperate breed. Save a very few whose respect for life and human dignity is borne of good breeding from childhood, self taught or acquired under the tutelage of Nigeria’s vanishing league of true health practitioners – zealots of a golden medical era –  the General Hospital, Oke Odo and so many others would become too hellish for comfort.

    Notwithstanding, a visit to the medical facility is like a journey to hell. Besides the inadequate medical facilities, staff shortages and its tiny car park, a dark pall of fear and uncertainty settles on patients and their relatives every time they call in at the hospital. Ask Citizen Afolake who had to wait 24 hours, in painful labour, on a wooden chair, to get a bed space that she lost as soon as she was wheeled into the hospital’s labour room. Ask Citizen Mo who was almost killed by the hospital’s medical staff because her vitals were taken by hospital cleaners posing as nurses while she attended antenatal clinic. Ask those who have lost loved ones to the hospital’s dysfunctional system but whose miseries are too inconsequential for the state to care about.

    Governor Akinwumi Ambode has definitely got his work cut out for him. He should know that budgeting N46.9 billion to the health sector in the state’s 2016 budget is never enough to emphasise his commitment to the alleviation of the citizenry’s health problems and elevation of the state’s cancerous health system.

    “The Y2016 budget of N662.588bn will enable our government focus on the present challenges of security, traffic gridlock resolution including physical and social infrastructural developments which have thrown up new challenges quite different from our past experience,” said Ambode while presenting the budget at a brief but impressive ceremony at banquet hall of the Lagos House.

    He called it his administration’s article of faith with Lagosians and promised that the budget would be faithfully implemented in line with his determination to make Lagos work for all, irrespective of age, gender, tribe or status.

    It is about time Ambode made Lagos truly work for Lagosians. It is about time he heeded the birth and death cries of mothers and underprivileged Lagosians respectively, who are persistently subjected to the serrated blades of the coastal city’s dysfunctional anti-citizenry health system.

    Of course, overzealous aides and cronies would readily tell Governor Ambode to dismiss this piece as yet another rant by a journalist seeking to make a noise like thunder over the city’s calm waters, but the Lagos governor would be doing himself a lot of good by paying good mind to the issues raised by the first and second installment of this piece.

    The Lagos health sector is comatose and in great deal of financial and administrative aid. Governor Ambode should rededicate himself to the sanitation of the state’s health facilities. Given that a greater segment of the state’s citizenry fall within the bracket too poor and unable to patronise the overpriced health services of the state’s boutique specialist hospitals, Governor Ambode should endeavour to take more active interest in the state’s health sector.

    Currently, tragedy plays a desperate game across the state’s public health centres – a game invented by the government’s administrative clumsiness thus blunting the incumbent governor’s overhyped competence and devotion to the state’s vulnerable divide.

    The battle for the soul of the state’s floundering health system can only be won by a governor who is ready to march in virtual lockstep to his claims of competence and empathy without airs. Nigeria is currently afflicted by the scourge of turncoat governors and other public officers who have betrayed the trust and exhausted the hopes of the electorate whose goodwill and votes earned them their cozy seats and mansions across the country’s political landscape.

    It would be really nice and refreshing to see Governor Ambode truly rise up as a man and defender of the rights of the poor, helpless folk whose votes, goodwill and passion for real ‘Change’ got him into power.

    Let him not act like his peer who got too drunk and blinded by power soon after their ascent the seat of power. Too many of Ambode’s peers skew stewardship by their disruptive relation with power and the citizenry’s trust. These are the tragic freaks and hostages to power. They are less moral and humane than the quintessential statesman. Their will to power is naked. Their actions are mired in chthonian cloud. They are a conduit of the irrational, exposing governance to mutations of the barbarism that the All Progressives Congress (APC) swore to shut out at its birth.

    Let the case of the General Hospital, Oke Odo, Agege and other state public health centres become Governor Ambode’s vehicle for testing and purifying his mettle and much hyped competence, before it renders his government yet another tragedy that Nigeria is trying to correct.

  • Yakasai doesn’t know why Nigeria should restructure?

    Last week, in an interview, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, leader of the Northern Elders Council, came out full-blast in opposition to any restructuring of the Nigerian federation. He also came out full-blast in attack on the Yoruba nation of Southwestern Nigeria for being the foremost proponents of the idea of restructuring. In both, he left no doubt whatsoever that he was swinging as a champion of his Fulani nation, and of the Fulani nation’s agenda, in Nigeria.

    Yakasai was quoted as saying that the agitation for restructuring is an agenda of the Yoruba people of the South-west; that it was started “in the South-west…in 1959” and has gone on “from Action Group to UPN to NADECO to PRONACO”; that it is driven by envy and hate for the northern geopolitical zone”; that the intention was “to deny the North the benefit of its population and land mass”; and that “it is not driven by patriotism”, but “by hate and envy”.

    I am a member of the Yoruba nation of Southwestern Nigeria. Tanko Yakasai and I belong to the same generation, and we both served Nigeria during the Second Republic. I know that Yakasai knows the truth concerning the things he spoke about at that interview, and that he is knowingly and deliberately trying to distort the history of Nigeria – with the objective of confusing and frustrating the demands for the restructuring of the Nigerian federation.

    I am sure he knows that in the late 1940s, after the Second World War (1939-45), when the British rulers of Nigeria first began to consider how to make this multi-nation Nigeria into one country, leaders of the Yoruba nation were the first to put forth the intellectually and politically sound proposal for a rational federation, based upon a decent respect for the nationalities that make up Nigeria, and aimed at ensuring varied and vibrant socio-economic development initiatives across Nigeria. Yakasai knows that a Northern or Eastern or Western Region did not yet exist then, that there was therefore no Northern Region to envy, and that the proposals by the Yoruba elite were a very patriotic contribution to the beginning of the search for one Nigeria.

    I should add that the said Yoruba proposals originated from the fundamentals of Yoruba political philosophy – which is that a state and its government exist principally for the well-being of its people, that all individuals and nations are entitled to seek prosperity and to prosper in their own way.

    I am sure Yakasai knows that from the moment our first federation (of three Regions – East, North and West), came into operation in 1951, the minority nationalities all over Nigeria began to clamour for, at least, one separate region of their own in each of the three regions. In the Northern Region where Yakasai was born and raised, the minority nationalities demanded such separate regions. These nationalities are not Yoruba. However, after the top Yoruba political group carefully examined their demands in the light of reason, and in the light of healthy growth for Nigeria and the peoples of Nigeria, it took the decision to support their demands.

    I am sure too that Yakasai remembers that, for most of the 1950s, the leaders of his Northern Region, while opposing the demands of the minority nationalities, were the most insistent on a very loose federation for Nigeria – in order to ensure a strong measure of autonomy for the Northern Region over which they ruled. They even proposed at one point that Nigeria be broken into three separate countries related only through a customs union. And, to reinforce their demands, they threatened again and again to secede from Nigeria.

    Of course, the northern leaders of the 1950s were not doing anything wrong by demanding autonomy for their region. Every nation on earth wants, above all else, to manage its own life and control its own destiny. The strange thing is that, after the northern political leaders came to power over Nigeria at independence in 1960 (as a result of British manipulations), they began to deny autonomy for all the peoples of Nigeria – they began to promote a concentration of power and resource-control in the federal centre which they controlled.

    They took a major step in this centralization adventure in 1962, when they used the powers and influence of the federal government to engineer a crisis in the Western Region, and when they took advantage of the crisis to take over control of the Western Region.

    The adventure soon generated revolts and a Nigeria-wide crisis, and ultimately a military coup – the beginning of military coups and military dictatorships in Nigeria. From the late 1960s, a series of military dictatorships led by northern military officers relentlessly pushed forward the Fulani agenda of centralization – and of weakening of other Nigerian peoples.

    In 1999, the cumulative successes of the centralization agenda were finally enshrined by a northern military dictator in the constitution which he imposed on Nigeria – the constitution which now makes Nigeria essentially a unitary country in which an all-controlling federal government holds Nigeria in its corrupt, ignorant and incompetent grip, reduces the state and local governments into impotent attendants on federal authority – spewing corruption and shoddiness all over Nigeria, obstructing and even disrupting non-federal development initiatives, and enthroning poverty, hopelessness, desperation and moral banditry, over the lives of Nigerians. Every Nigerian knows (even the political adventurers who have created these horrible conditions know) that, in spite of decades of enormous revenues from oil, Nigeria is much poorer today, and the masses of   Nigerians are much poorer, than in 1960.

    The consequence is that most Nigerian nationalities are trenchantly demanding a restructuring of the federation today. We Yoruba are very prominent in the struggle, but we are not alone in it. Most Nigerian nationalities, representing over 70% of Nigerians, are in it. In fact, in the struggle, some Nigerian nations are already doing some things that are putting great stress on Nigeria. The number of Igbo citizens pushing for a separate country is now so large that it is impossible for the world to continue to ignore them. The peoples of the Niger Delta, whose homeland produces all the oil wealth, and whom federal policies have left in the deepest depth of underdevelopment in Nigeria, and who now belong to the most wretched of the wretched in Nigeria, have united to demand separation from Nigeria too – and they are fighting to withhold the oil wealth from the federal government.

    Obviously, Tanko Yakasai knows all these, but he and his companions are not bothered about the escalating poverty, hopelessness, desperation, and moral collapse among the masses of Nigerians. Their sole interest and ambition is that their Fulani nation must forever control a federal government that controls all power and all resources in Nigeria – even though they must know that the concern of the rest of us is not who rules Nigeria but that   Nigeria should be ruled in ways that advance the quality of life of Nigerians.

    One of their men who identified himself as Aliyu Gwarzo in a statement or article that went viral on the social media in 2014, wrote: “Allah, through the British, gave us Nigeria to rule and to do with as we please. Since 1960 we have been doing that and we intend to continue”. He added that, to hold on to that position, his Hausa-Fulani people “will kill, maim, destroy, and turn this country into Africa’s biggest war zone and refugee camp”. “The Mujaheedin are ready,” he announced, “and by Allah we shall win”.

    And who are the Mujaheedin? Masses of citizens armed, trained and indoctrinated to kill, maim and destroy those of us Nigerians who are not Hausa-Fulani. The kind of people that we are already seeing in the murderous Fulani herdsmen and their accompanying Libyan mercenary militiamen. Our country is heading towards becoming a dark, vicious, house of horrors.

    Obviously, it is all fine with the Yakasais among us. But what does it call for from the rest of us? It calls for greatly heightened resolve and action among us to preserve the treasures and values that we cherish. We don’t have to be destroyed by our being parts of Nigeria. In spite of our rivalries, and our differences of the past, today’s situation calls for a surge of cooperation and collaboration among our various nations, in order to get this federation restructured, so that each zone of Nigeria may manage much of its own affairs, and promote its own development, in its own way and at its own pace, in the context of a true Nigerian federation. The day of the promised horrors is not yet here. But, if we keep delaying, it may come. We don’t have much time.        

  • Buhari Vs Judiciary

    President Buhari desperately needs our help and support because most well-meaning Nigerians believe the failure of his government is not an option. This has become more imperative in the wake of the current stand-off between him and the Bench and the Bar. He needs protection not only from those who do not know ‘there are many ways of killing a hen other than cutting the throat’, who according to his other half, have hijacked his government, but also from the same set of self-serving social crusaders and human right activists who not too long ago advised him not to consider the hijacking of the Senate leadership by Saraki and Ekwerenmadu a threat to his government but as an act of brinkmanship healthy for the development of democracy. They are now on the prowl this time around exploiting technicalities to demonise government and DSS while ignoring the pursuit of justice, which is the end of law.

    One thing Buhari has going for him in this stand-off is his integrity. As the chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), recently reminded us, “A corrupt judiciary is an invitation to anarchy. It is a sin against humanity”.  We therefore, according to him, need a ‘judiciary with integrity and honour and the judiciary with moral authority similar to what obtained in the golden era Supreme Court  such as Eso, Oputa, Nnamani, Idigbe, Mohammed Bello, Obaseki  who freely ruled against military dictatorships’. It was also a relief to have been reminded by Prof Owasanoye of PACAC that “the National Security Act empowers DSS to arrest and to use reasonable force if the owner of the house resists. In this instance, they have followed the law.” At least one of the affected judges has so far admitted hearing continuous banging at his door but chose to retire to his bedroom and wait.

    Unlike some of our self-serving social crusaders who hide under the rule of law to protect criminals, other critics of DSS’ method and government reaction like professor Akin Oyebode, a noble lawyer and law teacher who is passionate about the role of law in society admitted in a recent lecture titled, ‘The Integrity of Law’, that ‘it seems the noxious fumes of corruption are now being smelt even within the temple of justice.’ A corrupt judge according to him “is worse than an armed robber and must be given the hemlock”. To protect the integrity of the judiciary, he has advocated substituting the ‘dysfunctional British approach to French approach’

    And as for those who claim DSS attack on alleged corrupt judges is a threat to democracy, I think they have chosen to ignore the fact that we live a lie believing we have democracy. Democracy cannot exist where one leg of the tripod that holds it in place –the legislature has been hijacked by self-serving clique. (Saraki narrated how he outwitted his 51 APC elected senators only to be adopted Senate President by the opposition while Ekweremadu publicly admitted how he and PDP stalwarts literarily ‘stole’ a position which by convention belongs to the ruling party with a majority). Add to this a judiciary without a moral authority and a press that is highly compromised, what you get is not democracy but a mirage.

    Instead of living a lie, the only option before us is to see democracy as a process that is attainable through a leader like President Buhari who is driven by good intentions. And for those who are quick to say ‘the road to hell is filled with good intentions’, I ask, show me one nation that has ever progressed without a leader who believes in miracles. Not China, not Japan, and definitely not America built on the conviction of leaders with good intentions. Besides Buhari’s commitment to fighting corruption, he has a good intention to pursue justice for the greater good of society. History has also shown the judiciary thrives more under such circumstances.

    Sobered by his prison experience and scandalized by the level of corruption his military colleagues left behind, Obasanjo probably believed he was the messiah (he had said MKO Abiola was not) destined to rid Nigeria of corruption and corrupt elements. He set up the EFCC as an anti-corruption body and started the crusade by putting an Inspector General of Police who had converted billions earmarked for the welfare of the police to personal use, in chains. Some of his ministers were imprisoned. One Senate President after the other faced corruption charges. More than two third of governors elected on his PDP platform were put on trial. He engineered the impeachment of Ayo Fayose and Dariye. With the help of his friends in the Amnesty International, Alamieyeseigha was chased from France to London where it was revealed he had ‘accumulated properties, bank accounts, investments and cash exceeding £10m in value’, portfolio of foreign assets which included accounts with five banks in the UK, accounts with banks in Cyprus, Denmark and the United States; four London properties acquired for a total of £4.8m; a Cape Town harbour penthouse acquired for almost £1m, , and almost £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties. He was eventually indicted by a Nigerian court.

    Some other governors dragged to court before leaving office in 2007 include  Danjuma Goje (Gombe), Jolly Nyame (Taraba), Joshua Dariye (Plateau), Orji Uzor Kalu (Abia), Saminu Turaki (Jigawa), the late Audu Abubakar (Kogi), Timipreye Sylva (Bayelsa), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Adebayo  Alao-Akala (Oyo), Rashidi Ladoja (Oyo), Chimaroke Nnamani (Enugu), Gbenga Daniel (Ogun), Aliyu Akwe Doma (Nasarawa), Attahiru Bafarawa (Sokoto), Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa).

    Then President Jonathan took over the reins of power with neither dreams nor good intention. He was hijacked by the same set of self serving human right lawyers and social crusaders. The cases were discontinued. The hunter became the hunted as Ribadu was chased out of the country. Ibori now serving a 13-year jail term got a reprieve from an Asaba court and installed his own preferred EFCC chairman. The result was the reversal of Obasanjo’s gains on corruption.

    If our society must move forward, we need strong leadership with good intention to checkmate criminal elements we all agree exist on the bench and the bar  which after admitting ‘the responsibility of the bar is first to the bar’,  engaged in commercialization of the old criminal act to shield thieves that have stolen the country blind.

    The reaction of NJC so far has confirmed the need for a strong leader with good intention to serve as deterrence to the judiciary that believes it is beyond reproach because of the doctrine of separation of powers. If indeed DSS resorted to self-help which is not the case in view of its powers as spelt out in the provision of the new Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, the NJC has also served as a judge in its own cases by dismissing investigated cases of corruption against judges by DSS. If anything, this position is validated by NJC’s current refusal to suspend judges in whose bedrooms huge sums of money, according to DSS, were found because it abhorred its (DSS) method.

    The effect of the absence of a strong credible leadership to serve as deterrence to the excesses of the judiciary is self-evident. Following the bizarre Supreme Court pronouncement on Fayose and its refusal to accept its infallibility as advised by the late Justice Oputa by taking advantage of evidence the military has used to sanitise itself, Fayose has come back with a vengeance, supervising thugs who beat up judges, chasing out elected lawmakers from the state and going into his state House of Assembly to approve his own budget. Last week in Port Harcourt, Wike who according to respected Itse Sagay, the election tribunal court, the Court of Appeal, except the Supreme Court, rode on the back of militants who preferred violence to the use of electronic voter card reader to power, was reported to have brought lorry load of thugs at 1 am to prevent the arrest of suspected corrupt judge.

  • Evolution of modern Nigeria and Africa – 1

    Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah the first president of Ghana and political avatar of modern African nationalism famously  prayed to God to grant us in Africa political freedom and all other things would be added unto us.  We are today much wiser than our leaders of yore because through experience we have found out that political autonomy and freedom are just the beginning of our long march to political and economic development. The optimism of those post-colonial days has now been replaced by the reality of the moment. Indeed this current reality is almost tinged with pessimism.

    What with ethnic wars in many African countries from the biggest of them Sudan which has now been divided into two and yet still plagued by the same problem of ethnic division and despair. The Federal Republic of the Congo has been virtually at war since the collapse of Belgian Congo in 1960. Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic, the inter-lacustrine  states of Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda and Mozambique at one time or the other since independence have witnessed internecine wars that almost tore them apart. Nothing is even settled in some of them up till today. Nigeria itself the African flying elephant went through three years of ferocious civil war between 1967 and 1970 leading to the loss of over a million souls. Even where there have been no wars in Africa, the various states have had to contend with the fissiparous tendencies presented by different tongues and ethnicities.

    This has been the case in places like Kenya, Zimbabwe,  Sudan and even the new state of South Sudan. The worst example of ethnic differences leading to genocide has been the case of Rwanda and Burundi where in spite of common language, people paid the supreme sacrifice for either being short like the Hutus or being tall like the Tutsis. In Nigeria, our ethnic and linguistic differences have been compounded by the religion of Islam and Christianity. The point to note is that peace which is a precondition for development is largely lacking in most African states. Where there is  some semblance of peace as in Rwanda, Uganda, Congo (Brazzaville) and Zimbabwe,  it is precariously based on the shifting sand of one-man rule and dictatorship and the worst kind of authoritarianism and corruption that by the nature of things would not last. Africans on their own and perhaps with a little prodding from outside have now realized that democracy works and makes room for stability. The journey has not always been smooth and many African countries have come to this  democratic crossroad by traversing one party rule, military dictatorship and some form of guided democracy. Times are however changing. Africa is not an island uninfluenced by happening in other parts of the world. But there is a lot of work to do.

    Nigeria is the cynosure of all eyes on the African continent and beyond:  Some Nigerians see divine hand of God in creating Nigeria.  Some Nigerians are wont to dismiss this kind of thinking. As far back as 1947, one of those aspiring to lead the country, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, borrowing a leaf from  Giuseppe Mazzini’s description of  Italy during its il Risorgimento and movement towards national unity as a geographical expression. Chief Awolowo said there were no Nigerians as there  are English, French or Germans and that Nigeria merely described an area around the Niger and the Benue rivers. He went on to argue that Nigerians primarily saw themselves as members of their ethnic groups before being Nigerians. This was probably true but the concept of Nigeria is an evolving concept just as being Hausa, Ibo or Yoruba. It is also not true that the people now called Nigerians had no contact with each other before the coming of the Europeans gingerly in the 15th century and much more forcefully in the 19th century when what is now Nigeria crystallized.

    From the north, the Hausa traded with the Kanuri of Kanem- Borno from where Islamic civilization came to Hausaland . The story of Bayejjidah coming to Daura to kill a snake called  sarki terrorising the local people after which as his prize he married the Queen of Daura is a way of explaining the significance of the ( East) in West African historiography . Bayejiddah then became the king of Daura and fathered the kings of the seven Hausa states of Kano, Rano, Zazzau, Katsina, Gobir, Zamfara and Bauchi. This same looking towards the East is seen in the Oduduwa legend in which Oduduwa is seen as the son of Nimrod king of Arabia who also took over Ile-Ife and became father to founders of the most important Yoruba kingdoms of Oyo, Ilesha, Ketu, Sabe, Otun Ijebu and Benin. In another variant of the Bayejddah legend, some states are regarded as Banza states among which Ilorin belongs. Ife and Benin relations even though couched in myth are no less significant as an indication of ties in the past between two distinct peoples –  the Edo and the Yoruba. There are stories of joking relationship between the Oyo and the Gobirawa and between Kanuri and Yoruba. The people of the Niger Delta were also heavily influenced by the Benin kingdom just as the coastal Yoruba up to present  day Lagos  witnessed some form of Benin over-lordship.

    The western Igbo,  like the people of Onitsha Asaba and all the western periphery of Igboland, were directly influenced by the Benin kingdom. The area now known as the Middle Belt of Nigeria at one time or the other came under the suzerainty of the Kwararafa Empire based in Wukari. The influence of this largely forgotten civilization extended to the Cross River and Benue valleys as well as to Zaria and  Kano. Even if the degree of contact among our different peoples in the past are buried in ancient history and mythology, this is not the case with our languages which apart from Hausa and Kanuri but including fulfude  belong to the same kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family of African languages. Migration  is a common factor in human history and people in Nigeria have been influenced and impacted by series of movements, some rapid others imperceptible. The effect of this is the fact that Nigerian people are products of ethnic miscegenation. For example many of the Ibo people are perhaps more Igalla than Igbo especially in Delta and  Anambra  states. Trade promoted inter-ethnic relations in precolonial Nigeria. For example, the Hausas  and the Kanuris traded with the Yoruba buying kola nuts in exchange for cows  and horses.  The cavalry forces on which the Oyo built their formidable empire could not have been done without the provision of horses from the north since Oyo had no indigenous horses of its own. The Nupes were apothecaries and Berbers in Yoruba land. The Alaafin Sango in the 15th century had a Nupe mother. Ife as earlier mentioned provided prince for the Benin kingdom and many parts of eastern Yorubaland were influenced by either Nupe or Benin civilization. By the time of the jihad of Usman Dan Fodiye, many parts of Nigeria came under one political and religious influence without attention paid to ethnicity.

  • 21 freed Chibok girls: What next?

    21 freed Chibok girls: What next?

    Last week, after nearly three years in captivity, 21 of the abducted Chibok school girls were freed. They regained their freedom following intense, long and complex negotiations between representatives of the federal government and their captors, the Boko Haram terrorists. The deal was brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), representatives of the Swiss government and senior officials of the federal government. Over 200 of those abducted girls still remain in the custody of the terrorists. We can only hope that further negotiations with the terrorists will soon lead to the release of the remaining and unfortunate but innocent girls. It does not matter right now whether or not any financial ransom, or an amnesty by the federal government for some of the Boko Haram terrorists in detention, led to the release of the girls. Since their violent abduction nearly three years ago, the nation has agonised over the ordeal of these innocent school girls. It shamed our country. Any price is worth paying for the freedom of these school girls, who were snatched from their dormitories at night while preparing for their final year examinations. Hopefully, in future, when the insurgency is over, those responsible for the heinous abduction of the Chibok school girls will be brought to justice.

    The federal government and all those involved in the release of the 21 girls should be commended for securing the release of these girls. We must also applaud and show some appreciation of the tireless efforts of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign, led by Oby Ezekwesili and other civil rights organisations, for not giving up on their tireless campaign that the girls be brought back. They made sure the girls were not forgotten by our country and the international community. Quite often, they were bullied, vilified, frustrated and demonised in their long campaign to bring the girls back by a petty officialdom that did not show any real concern about the plight of these innocent girls. These petty officials denied the BBOG leaders access to the President in pursuit of their laudable campaign for the freedom of the girls. But now that the 21 girls have been freed, the petty and uncaring officials want to share in the glory of bringing freedom to the girls.

    As may well be expected, news of the release of the girls was greeted with much joy and relief, not only by their parents who had waited patiently so long for their release, but by the entire nation, which should be grateful to President Buhari for not giving up hope and for tenaciously seeking the release of the girls, a concern that was not shown by Jonathan, his predecessor. Very few, including the parents of the girls, could have believed their release possible after nearly three years of their abduction. Media reports of their return to safety were carried on the front page of most newspapers, displacing, for some days, media reports on the scurrilous financial scandals of some federal judges and justices. When they were first abducted, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, the former First Lady, was even reported as expressing serious doubts that there was any abduction in the Chibok school at all. Under Jonathan the Army and security forces were neither given funds nor supplied with the weapons needed to fight the BH terrorists in the Sambisa forests, or to conduct any search and rescue mission. They were no match for the terrorists. Instead, money meant for the purchase of weapons to secure the state and free the girls was diverted by the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuku (retd.), to private pockets to fraudulently secure Jonathan’s re-election as president. Whatever we may think or say about President Buhari, publicly, or privately, the tables have been turned against the terrorists and some of the abducted girls have now been freed. There is a palpable sense of joy, relief and pride that our nation has achieved this remarkable feat. It will restore some of our lost pride, hopes and past glories as a nation that cares for its citizens, and that will go to any length to defend and protect them. That is the first and most important duty of a state. Any state that fails, or proves incapable of fulfilling this basic duty and responsibility to its citizens, is not worthy of being respected by either its citizens, or the international community. It has to be deemed a failed state.

    Now, what next after the release of the first 21 of the abducted school girls? The girls came back from their captivity after nearly three years looking haggard, ragged, deranged and emaciated. The emotional trauma and physical abuse these innocent girls had suffered in the custody of the terrorists break one’s heart. Only their parents can truly feel what their loved ones went through in the hands of the terrorists. It is an experience that neither they nor their parents will ever forget. The nation too should not forget. Time may heel some of the emotional trauma they have suffered. As a people and nation, we must help them recover as quickly as possible from their horrifying ordeal in the hands of the BH terrorists. What should we as a people and nation do now to help these innocent school girls who could not be helped when they needed our collective assistance?

    First, now that they have regained their freedom, the privacy of these girls and that of their parents must be respected by all, including the media. Until they tell their own stories whilst in captivity, their identities must be protected. They need time to recover from the emotional trauma they have been put through over a period of nearly three years. It is better for them to remain in their localities where their full emotional recovery will be made much easier. Any unprofessional intrusion into their private lives should be discouraged. After their necessary debriefing by the state intelligence agencies for security reasons, the state should provide the girls with a complement of professionals, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, to help them regain their emotional and psychological balance. There are many such international humanitarian agencies, including the ICRC that can offer this assistance to the girls at little or no cost to the state. Some of our local humanitarian and relief organisations can also offer some assistance in this regard and should be used. But they must be kept under close monitoring and observation to ensure that funds meant for the rehabilitation of the girls get directly to them. We must not allow them to be treated callously like the internally-displaced persons. Much more can be achieved in this regard with modest funds if officialdom is kept at bay. All aid offers to the girls should be channelled through the federal government. But, at a time of recession with its limited financial resources, all this cannot be done by the government alone. The religious organisations, particularly the churches and mosques, must be encouraged to make some financial donations for the rehabilitation of the rescued girls. In addition, security must be tightened in all our schools to ensure the safety and security of our children. We must make the schools safer for our children. In fact, it has become necessary now to provide special security for all the schools in our country. This will cost money, but it is well worth it. The time has also come to have a rethink about the idea of neighbourhood and state police that should enhance security in our schools.

    Secondly, those among the freed girls who wish to return to school to complete their secondary school education should be encouraged and fully supported by the state to do so. This is an essential part of their rehabilitation. It is in the interest of our country to encourage these girls to complete their secondary school education without any further interruption. Despite the trauma they have suffered, they can still make a useful contribution to the future growth and development of our country. If we fail to do this, these girls will remain alienated from the society and, through their frustration, could become radicalised and constitute a security danger to our nation. Secondary school education in the North is generally free. Their returning to school will not cost the state much money. But even if it does, it is well worth it. The federal government should designate a modest and special fund to help these girls recover from their tragic plight and continue with their education from which our country can only benefit.

    Finally, the government must begin to think more seriously about the sources and causes of the general state of insecurity in our nation, as reflected in the frequent media reports about kidnappings, abductions, assassinations and other violent crimes in our country, and how to tackle these social problems. There will always be petty crimes in any society. But in the case of our country, these are made worse by the situation of mass unemployment, mass poverty and the prevailing social and economic inequalities in our country. These social problems will not be resolved simply by hectoring, or by a resort to draconian measures, or by persuasion, or by appeal to religious sentiments. They will only be resolved when the authorities are seen as being more caring of the poor and taking practical economic measures to create jobs and end the vast income inequalities in our country. To reduce violent crimes in our country, we must strive to create a caring and more compassionate society in which all our people enjoy equal opportunities.

  • Back from hell

    Unlike their abduction over two years ago, their release last Thursday was without a bang. There was no noise, nothing whatsoever in the air to suggest that something of that magnitude was about to happen. It was done quietly and the operation was clinically executed. The lesser the noise about the operation the better those behind it might have thought. They guessed right. You do not announce the execution of such high profile operation to the world until it is over.

    They may have learnt from the killing of Osama bin Ladin by the United States (US) Seal on May 1, 2011 in a nocturnal operation which left the Pakistani authorities wondering how it happened right under their noses without them knowing.  The girls were in captivity for over two years before they regained their freedom. Over 200 of them were kidnapped in the early hours of April 14, 2014 by Boko Haram from the Chibok Girls Grammar School (CGGS) in Borno State. The incident generated uproar worldwide.

    In no time, the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement was born.  The BBOG spearheaded the campaign for the girls’ rescue. What it had going for it was not arms and ammunition with which to go after the kidnappers but the force of moral suasion.  Campaigning under #BBOG, the movement became a force to reckon with globally. United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, US First Lady Michelle Obama and other renowned figures identified with the movement to fight for the girls’ release.  The Nigerian wing led by Aisha Yusuf and Oby Ezekwesili became a thorn in the flesh of government.

    Through its daily sit-out at the Eagle Square, from where it was pushed out when the government thought it was becoming a pest,  the movement ensured that the Chibok girls never left our consciousness.  Through thick and thin, the movement stayed together despite all the Jonathan administration did to frustrate its efforts.  Can we talk about the Chibok girls without saying one or two things about former President Goodluck Jonathan? I do not think so. His administration’s handling of the case is nothing to write home about.  It felt unconcerned about the girls’ fate when news of their abduction broke.

    It sounded odd to the administration that over 200 people could be abducted at a go. “Are they goats?” Some top security officials of the administration were said to have asked while dismissing reports of the girls’ abduction.  At secret briefings with the former president, these security chiefs insisted that no girls were kidnapped in Chibok that fateful night of April 14, 2014. So,the government went on as if everything was normal whereas they were not.  It read political meaning to the whole thing. But why will a rational person play politics with such matter? Why will anyone claim that his daughter had been kidnapped when she was not? The government did not take time to think through the matter after wasting a precious two weeks before waking up from its slumber.

    For a whole two weeks after the girls’ abduction,  the government did nothing to find them. Rather than move swiftly to rescue the girls, Jonathan went to campaign for his party’s candidate in the then coming Ekiti State governorship election.  On the rostrum,  he and others danced to azonto music as they prepared to rig the election in favour of Ayo Fayose.  Elsewhere, the government would have dropped everything until the girls were found because governance is all about the people. A government that does not value the people is no government and until our government appreciates this fact it will continue to have problems with the governed. The people are not there to be wooed during elections alone, they are there for all seasons – in good and in not so good times.

    The Jonathan administration failed woefully as regards the rescue of the Chibok girls. The release of the 21 girls has shown that if it had put in some commitment, it would have achieved the same result as the Buhari administration, which in two years has given the nation something to cheer about this matter. These girls have gone through hell and back. They have seen a lot in their few years on earth. Only God knows what they went through in the hands of their captors. We are happy that some of them have returned because we had lost hope of ever seeing them again. The possibility of not finding them again was a reality too difficult to swallow but what could we have done in the face of then available facts. Our acceptance of that reality does not mean that we do not wish either the girls or their families well, it was borne out of what we know about Boko Haram, especially after its leader, Shekau, boasted that the sect would marry the girls off or kill them.

    The condition in which the 21 girls and the one earlier rescued returned shows that they are not being well kept. For all we know, Boko Haram may be using these girls as slaves. They will be slaving for the group’s leaders, who will be feeding fat on their sweat. Besides, Boko Haram may be sexually abusing and torturing the girls. Of the 219 confirmed to be with Boko Haram, we have now got back 22, leaving 197 still with the sect. 197 is a huge figure; we cannot afford to leave one, not to talk of such a large number of girls with the sect. President Muhammadu Buhari has done well in bringing back some of the girls, but his administration should not rest until it brings back all of them.

    No matter the number of sheep a shepherd has he will not rest until he gets back any that is missing. So, our president too should not sleep until he brings back the remaining girls.  Let us all hearken to the plaintive cry of Gloria Dame, one of the 21 freed girls, : “I did not know that a day like this will come that we will be dancing and giving thanks to God among people… we are praying to God to touch the heart of Boko Haram to repent and we are calling on Nigerians to pray and fast for the release of our remaining ones in captivity”. Captivity is hell, it is not a place to wish for even one’s enemy.

     

    Who killed Dele Giwa?

    His killing that fateful Sunday of October 19, 1986, shook the nation. It was 30 years yesterday that he was blown into smithereens in his Adeniyi Jones, Ikeja, Lagos home. The news spread like wildfire that Dele Giwa, the founding Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch Magazine,  had been killed by parcel bomb. Then, it was novel to kill by parcel bomb unlike these days when bombs explode everywhere.  What could Dele Giwa have done to warrant being killed like that? Nobody was ready to answer the question which agitated the mind of the public. The late Giwa was a damn good journalist who liked to live well. He was from a humble background and he strove to make it in life to free himself from the shackles of poverty. He achieved his dream, but he was not allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labour for long. Newswatch, the magazine he co-founded with Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed was about 21 months old when he was killed. Many theories have been propounded for Giwa’s death. One of these theories is that Newswatch was working on a story about Gloria Okon, who was said to be a drug courier for the wife of a former head of state. Whether true or not the public cannot say. But the magazine has since denied working on any such story as at the  time of Giwa’s death. One thing is certain though – Giwa was killed. But who did it? This is the question we have been asking in the past 30 years.

     

    Arepo calling IE

    For the past two months, Arepo, a burgeoning community in Ogun State off the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway,  has been in pitch darkness. Despite all efforts to know what is happening, the Ikeja Electric (IE), which services the community, has not been forthcoming. According to sources, we have been without light because of a fault which is yet to be traced. If it takes weeks or months to trace a fault, how long will it take to repair it? Years? This is what happens when public utilities are sold to those without the technical know-how to run them.

     

  • Healers or dealers? (1)

    •Bedside hostility, forced circumcision and criminal extortion at General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos

    The depravity of its ‘excellent’ nature is coastal Lagos’ dirty secret. Despite its haughty  claim as Nigeria’s “Centre of Excellence,” Lagos groans under the tedious weight of mediocrity and its tragic sense of life. There is no gainsaying the commercial hub of Nigeria profits by a hard-worn, romanticised imagery of brilliance, bracing industry and entertainment. At the backdrop of this fantasy and specious proceedings however, Lagos pulsates in hazardous ugliness.

    This ugliness resonates across the coastal city’s landscape; it subsists in its neglected bad roads, cratered by-passes, hostile state agencies, infinitely devious and overzealous staff. It seeps through the mediocrity and crass inhumaneness of establishments like the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos.

    At the hospital, bestiality dons a joyful sneer and saunters through its hostile wards and administrative offices, every day. The General Hospital, Oke Odo, sets itself up against the true nature and essence of the Hippocratic Oath, by descending into infamy and organised extortion. Medical and administrative staff of the hospital seem driven by bile and institutionalised aggression. Thus every patient suffers a cruel and unusual form of punishment simply by calling in sick, appearing for consultation or birthing a newborn within the cold ambience of the public health centre.

    As you read, Citizen Afolake, a teacher, is still traumatised following her nasty experience in  the hands of the hospital’s insouciant staff. On her first day in the hospital, Afolake suffered a gruesome birthing process; she was made to labour in extremity. She experienced no reprieve from pain. No medical staff came around to offer kind words to her and fellow pregnant women even as they were forced to sit through the night on a hard wooden chair while they queued for ‘bed space.’

    When the pain became unbearable at midnight, Afolake, like her peers, had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She could not leave the hospital because it was dark and she could not stand from her seat lest she loses it to another pregnant woman craving a seat while waiting for the ever elusive ‘bed space.’

    Impatiently but with calm resolve, Afolake braved through the night, praying that a ‘bed space’ became available to her by daybreak. But none would be available to her at dawn. Thus she writhed in agony from 9 am on Monday, October 10, 2016 to 9 pm on Tuesday, October 11, 2016 when she eventually found ‘bed space.’ It is instructive to note that Afolake, like her pregnant mates, waited on the hard wooden chair for 24 hours.

    After she put to bed, she had to wait on a long queue to bath herself and her baby. She also had to put up with very hostile nurses and flippant cleaners. Thus after delivery, Afolake could hardly wait to escape the hospital’s human and structural extremities. But Afolake would experience more misery by the hospital’s staff as they insisted that she let ‘Megalek,’ an agency within the hospital, perform circumcision on her newborn son, against her wish. For the unsolicited service, they forced her to pay N4, 000.

    Predictably, Afolake protested; “I told them I didn’t need them to circumcise my son. I told them we have a family doctor who does the circumcision on male children in my family but they ignored my explanation,” she lamented.

    Thus Afolake sought the hospital’s Medical Director (MD) and complained to her but to her chagrin, the MD said she (Afolake) must pay the N4, 000 even though she did not want the circumcision done on her son. “I had already paid N29, 200 as medical bill but she said I must pay an additional N4, 000 for an unsolicited circumcision which I declined,” said Afolake.

    The hospital staff made her understand that, if she failed to pay the N4,000, she would not be discharged. But Afolake was too eager to leave the hospital. Before she put to bed, she had been sleeping on a chair and immediately after delivery, she was forced to share a narrow bed with a heavily pregnant woman because she lost her ‘bed space’ immediately she was wheeled into the labour room.

    Eventually, Afolake paid N4, 000 for a circumcision that was never performed on her son. A separate receipt was issued for the unsolicited service while another was issued for her medical bill. Both receipts bore the logo and name of the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos.

    With a heavy heart, Afolake left the hospital ruing the complex yet methodical network of extortion foisted on her by the hospital. She lamented the hell she went through birthing her son at the public health centre and wondered how the hospital’s medical and administrative staff mutated into such pitiless characters.

    No doubt, Afolake is luckier than Citizen Mo. In 2011, the latter almost lost her life even after losing her child due to the negligence of the medical staff at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos. Citizen Mo, a journalist, was rushed to the clinic after her blood sugar level hit the roof. She had been attending antenatal clinic at the hospital but all along, the hospital assigned cleaners to attend to her and her pregnant peer. Unknown to her, the menial workers who had been taking her medical records, had virtually no knowledge and training about how to run an antenatal clinic, yet they attended to her and other pregnant women. Eventually, they committed serious blunder recording wrong details of Citizen Mo’s health vitals. Consequently, she didn’t get the treatment that she actually deserved.

    Citizen Mo was rushed to the hospital when her blood sugar level skyrocketed with devastating impact on her health. She was seven months pregnant. At the hospital, the doctors did not discover that she was having contractions until dusk. Even so, there was little they could do; they wheeled her into the theatre and delivered her of her child prematurely. Subsequently, discrepancies caused by wrong administration of drugs and medical aid caused Citizen Mo to slip into coma. She was in coma for two days because the doctors treated her based on wrong vitals (medical information) taken of her, by the hospital’s cleaners and other menial workers. Sadly, Citizen Mo stirred from coma to a tragic reality: her child died because there was no functional incubator in the hospital’s labour room. There was no incubator at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos.

    More severe cases abound of unpardonable acts committed by the hospital’s medical staff. But the fault is never entirely the fault of the hospital’s medical personnel. Like several other health facilities across Lagos, they are forced to function with a lean team and mean resources. Thus the hospital’s ‘bed spaces’ are never enough among other inadequacies.

    But that is no excuse for the hospital staff to mortgage patients’ health and risk their lives on a whim. For a state allegedly presided over by a ‘no-nonsense’ governor, the state of the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege is an eyesore. Governor Akinwumi Ambode projects himself as a revolutionary in the saddle. His media team works assiduously to establish him as a grassroots politician and statesman with a heart that skips for the interest of Lagos’ poor, vulnerable divide. Yeah, he is rehabilitating bad roads and building new ones but does he have the courage, and administrative will to save lives?

  • Lagos and politics of envy and revenge

    Lagos, because of her allure is the beautiful bride of Nigerian fortune-seekers and political adventurers. For the Portuguese and the British fortune-seekers and the repatriates who needed a place under the sun, Lagos was a dream fulfilled. As an endowed city where people effortlessly build up financial fortunes, she was in the service of foreign immigrants like the Greeks who started by hawking wrist-watches on Marina Street later joined by other immigrants like the Oros of Kwara and Igbos of the East who engage in similar activities. And as a symbol of our ethnic diversity, it is city politicians who want to build political empire love and hate with equal passion. The problem however is that everyone wants to take the advantage of the opportunities Lagos offers without responsibility. Even the Ijaws tolerated by Lagos with their illegal structures and pollution of Lagos’ once beautiful shorelines is now holding Lagos to ransom by substituting fishing for ‘kidnapping for ransom’. To borrow Chinua Achebe’s famous line, ‘when calamity befalls the land, Lagos fortune-seekers run away, leaving the territory to the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods”.

    That precisely explains why senators, many of whom first raised fortunes in Lagos with which they fought elections in their constituencies threw out Senator’s Oluremi Tinubu’s bill seeking “an Act to make provisions for federal grants to Lagos State in recognition of its (the state) strategic socio-economic significance and other connected purposes.” She had anchored her argument on self-evident truth that Lagos, “is home to the major ports that account for over 90 per cent of all maritime exports; that the city accounts for 86.2 per cent of companies income taxes in Nigeria and 56.7 per cent of Value Added Tax. She also reminded her colleagues that ‘the state bears the burden for the wear and tear of the federal revenue generating activities’.

    But Senator Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto North, and Hope Uzodimma (Imo West) opposed the bill. The Lagos bill also reminded Senator Bassey that Calabar was once the capital of Nigeria. For him, if Calabar is not given a federal grant, Lagos cannot ask for one. Not even Senator Olusola Adeyeye (Osun Central), the Chief whip’s reference to the injustice in a system that grants Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers 13% of our resources as oil producing states but denies Lagos 13% of VAT she generated made any impression on his fellow senators who claim ‘rich Lagos will become richer’ forgetting that the well-being of Lagos is the  well-being of many of their state indigenes who make a living in Lagos either as white-collar workers, hawkers, truck pushers and okada riders.

    But politics of envy and revenge predates the current senators. It can be traced to 1861 when British fortune-seekers obtained a treaty of the cession of Lagos from King Dosunmu under duress only to drive away Kosoko his successor in order to take possession of Lagos land in a typical act of banditry. ‘By 1871, William Macgregor and Walter Egerton had consolidated this British act of banditry by sharing Lagos’ choice plots among themselves and their protégés – the repatriated slaves’.

    Then Zik came in 1934 and soon emerged the spokesman for urban dwelling Igbos. When his attempt to represent Lagos at the legislative council failed as a result of Dr Olorunnibe’s refusal to step down for him, he and his supporters started agitating for turning of Lagos into a federal territory. Ahmadu Bello, Emirs of Katsina and Gwandu and other northern leaders had their own private reasons for embarking on politics of envy and revenge against Lagos. Following the leakage of governors and ministers’ position on Enahoro’s motion for independence in 1953 by Bode Thomas and Samuel Akintola to the press, these northern leaders were humiliated at Iddo train station by Lagos mobs who called them British stooges. Ahmadu Bello, according to Trevor Clark, Tafawa Balewa’s biographer was so irritated that ‘in a mixture of petulance and pomposity said the mistake of 1914 has come to light…next time I come. I have sword in my hand”.

    Not even the sponsorship of Kano youths riot by northern leaders led by Inuwa Wada against Akintola’s proposed political rally in Kano which resulted in the killing by castration of 40 southerners by Kano mobs was considered sufficient revenge for the humiliation of the northern leaders. They threatened to go into a federation with French speaking Niger if Lagos was not excised from the West. ‘The future of Nigeria will be imperilled by anything but a loose federation, if the north must be tied to Nigeria; the central power must be minimal and regional power must be internally unfettered while Lagos must be reduced to some form of non-political common services agency’, the north insisted.

    But Obafemi Awolowo, at the 1954 Lyttleton constitutional conference in London in reaction to politics of envy and revenge of his compatriots against Lagos and the Western Region insisted on fiscal federalism arguing that ‘railway, harbour, civil aviation, banks, shipping, electricity and broadcasting must be taken off the exclusive list. He also insisted Lagos must remain part of the west while conceding ‘an Ottawa but not extra territoriality’. And when Awo, regarded as ‘the smartest thinker on his feet’, the leader of AG and NCNC southern axis with whom Zik exchanged endless notes during the proceeding made a tactical error of staging a walkout with AG over their demand, Ahmadu Bello said the conference should go on since the representative of 25 million other Nigerians were still present. Zik caved in on the issue of boundary adjustment and with Ahmadu Bello jointly decided the mode of election to the centre and appointment of the council of ministers. A whole municipal area was also carved out of the Western Region as the federal capital following the  reassurance of Chief Kola Balogun that there would be no outbreak of violence as threatened by Awo and AG. Zik later “paid public tribute to NPC and praised the north for participating in true federation” and boasted “it was the work of statesmen to bring peace, harmony and unity to Nigeria”.

    But Awo, regarded as the ‘greatest African patriot’ by Cecil King, Head of the London Daily Mirror group and managers of the Nigerian Daily Times but regarded as ‘stubborn rude and proud’ by the departing colonial masters, has been vindicated over his principled stand on fiscal federalism and status of Lagos. Two days after our Abuja senators threw out Senator Tinubu’s bill designed to bring relief to Lagosians, the Nigeria Ports Authority announced with fanfare that it raked in revenue of N25b in one month. Yet Oshodi-Tin-Can Island Ports road remains impassable and motorists and commuters face daily traffic gridlock while proceeds from the area are used to build bridges over land in Abuja.

    It was not also an accident that Ribadu and Yar’Adua were the only people qualified to be ministers of Lagos.; that federal ministers of work  such as Mamman Kontagora, Barbabas Gemade, Abdulkarim Adisa bulldozed areas they called slums displacing the poor to pave way for the privileged elite; that  Babangida and  Clement Akpamgbo, his Attorney General and Minister of Justice, came up with  Decree 52 of 1993 backdated to January 1, 1975 to confiscate 150 choice plots at the reclaimed Osborne road as parting gifts to his ministers.

    The final evidence to show Lagos is a victim of envy and revenge is the fact that Abuja federal capital territory, sustained by taxes not from Abuja or the north, has continued to be administered only by northerners without recourse to the principle that ceded leadership of Lagos as capital of Nigeria to the north in 1954.

     

  • Forms of government

    It was Alexander Pope the British philosopher who said “for forms of government let fools contest that which is best administered is best”. How true is this today? The western world will dispute the fact that an undemocratic government can be good. They will even go further to say that a democratic government that is not parliamentary government can be good. In essence, democratic government must also embrace the idea of supremacy of the legislature. But today in many parts of the world there seems to be a trend in which parliamentary and presidential system are combined. This is the practice in China, France and Russia to mention a few. The United States maintains some form of separation of powers and the legislative branch functions independently of the executive. Ministers (Secretaries) are not members of Congress even though they could be summoned to appear before Congress, they are not compelled to do so if the President is against their appearance before Congress but as a courtesy they usually accede to Congressional call to appear. The American type presidential system seems to be the commonest system in the world today. It is the prevalent system in the entire Latin American region whereas the parliamentary system where ministers are chosen from the ranks of parliament is found in Great Britain and across most Commonwealth countries of Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the various West Indian Islands, and New Zealand. The African members of the Anglophone Commonwealth seem to have chosen the presidential system in preference to the parliamentary system. South Africa is experimenting a unique mélange of parliamentary and presidential system. The president of South Africa sits in parliament and ministers are also parliamentarians. In Nigeria, the military imposed a presidential system on the country since 1979. The Obasanjo military regime that did this in 1979 claimed that it was more in consonance with African tradition of sovereignty. It was suggested that the tradition of an official leader of opposition was not African and that once there is an Oba, emir or Obi, he remains unopposed unless he commits a sacrilegious offense for which he would stand removed. The argument was also made that African countries needed strong governments and a leader who will epitomize the yearnings of the people and who will be above petty tribal or nepotistic tendencies. This was said to be necessary to overcome petty ethnic and fissiparous tendencies in our country. In Nigeria, the military governments that ruled us had done so from a command and centralized control characteristic of the military. In the 1970s, most of us supported the military in the choice of the presidential system. Nigeria having just come out of a fratricidal conflict bought the idea of the presidential system uncritically. This was before we found out that our country is over-centralized and our presidency is the most powerful in the world with the power of appointment of hundreds of thousands of people and control over our financial resources and the Central bank.

    There is now a belief in the country that we need to review the presidential system. The reason for this is that from experience all the promises of the presidential system remain unfulfilled. Those who have held the post have unfortunately pandered to ethnic demands and this is not good in a plural society. I can say without any hesitation that only President Olusegun Obasanjo has fulfilled the demand of rising above ethnic prejudice and solidarity in the appointment of state officials and sometimes to the point of putting his own ethnic group down and last. Others have simply ignored the demands of fairness and have gone ahead to pack their administrations with their ethnic cohorts. Nigeria’s experience under Abacha who used his office to denude the Central bank of billions of the country’s dollar reserves has made people to be wary of concentrating all powers in the hands of a military or democratic Poohbah. What operates at the centre also operates at state levels where the governors have almost absolute and total control of the finances of their states leading to grand larceny and looting of states resources. A way must be found for proper parliamentary control of leaders of government business at state levels and they must be members of state assemblies where they will presumably be controlled by the assembly.

    The last national conference sponsored by Jonathan perhaps to avoid over-concentration of power in the hand of one person suggested that Nigeria should adopt the French model of a prime ministerial government under an executive president. It has not always worked in fractious France where sometimes different parties control the parliament and the presidency thus leading to what the French call “cohabitation”. This would have been occasion for chaos in many places including Nigeria. The South African model with slight modification of  a ceremonial presidency like we had in the first republic and perhaps five deputy prime ministers with each having responsibilities for Foreign Affairs, Finance, Interior, Defence and petroleum and gas  and representing the zone that did not produce the prime minister. No constitution is perfect. In most cases it depends on the integrity and commitment of those operating the constitution and their desire to make it work. Those who have been shouting about the implementation of the Jonathan constitutional conference should first read it and tell us which aspects of which they want implemented. Will it include a 54   states structure as was recommended? This government can easily devolve police powers to the states while maintaining some kind of federal policing. This kind of incremental improvement in governance can be done without going the whole way of fundamental constitutional changes.  This is not to say there is no need for a review of the present unwieldy 36 states structure. It is apparent to me that the present states structure cannot stand because they have failed the yardstick of economic viability. Therefore we should be talking about a 12 states structure as we had during the Gowon years.

    When Alexander Pope made his famous statement there was a functioning civil service on which the success of all governments depend. If we have a functioning civil service recruited on career open to talents, then it would not matter what kind of government we have. The lives of the vast majority of the people will not be affected by the vagaries of the changes about who is in or who is out or which political party has won or lost elections. The modern state depends on the efficiency of the bureaucracy. But unfortunately the civil service has been undermined by internal corruption, political and external interference. The security of jobs and tenure which were the hallmarks of the civil service is no longer there. Since self-preservation is the first law of nature, civil servants now take care of themselves before taking care of the state. Erosion of the power and security of appointment means therefore that we can no longer rely on the civil service. Furthermore, American type of presidential system believes in a revolving kind of bureaucracy with each party bringing in members of the top echelon of the administrative staff. The horde of special advisers special assistants now do what civil servants would ordinarily be expected to do. This may work to the benefit of the state in the USA, but it is doubtful if it is working in Nigeria. This may be one of the reasons why there is no development in our country because of absence of institutional memory provided by experienced civil service.

    This is a critical matter because countries like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan have done reasonably well under authoritarian leadership and with a good civil service. Totalitarian states like China and the old Soviet Union had done reasonably well in delivering services to the people and protecting the integrity of the state. Because at the end of the day, the purpose of government is to ensure the happiness of the greatest number of the people and it will not really matter to the ordinary citizen under what system of government they are living. Some of our people during difficult times have been heard to say “Na democracy I go chop?” I think this is the test which all governments must pass. It has of course been proved that human ingenuity thrives better under freedom. Freedom does not necessarily mean political freedom. What freedom does a hungry poverty-stricken man have in a democratic state? Will he not prefer comfortable life and forfeit political freedom which to him may seem esoteric? These are the issues facing governments all over the world. Ideally it will be nice to have freedom from want as well as political freedom and the fundamental freedoms of association, thought, movement, ownership of property, life and freedom from arbitrary and unusual punishment and to live in a society of laws. Some pride themselves in this kind of freedom that they have been heard to say give me liberty or death.

  • Judiciary’s worst hour

    Unless we work in synergy to ensure that only fit and proper persons remain in our midst, it will be impossibe to expect a different Bench when its origin remains the same. I hereby call on NBA leadership to expunge from its ranks such persons whose conduct may be unfit, improper, dishonest or unethical —CJN Mohammed Mahmud

    Like a bolt out of the blue, security operatives stormed the homes of some superior court judges last weekend and arrested seven of them. Among the arrested were two Supreme Court Justices – Sylvester Ngwuta and Inyang Okoro. Also arrested were Justice Mohammed Ladan Tsamiya, who presides over the Ilorin branch of the Court of Appeal,  Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court,  Abuja, Enugu State Chief Judge, Justice I.A. Umezulike, Justice Kabiru Auta of the Kano State High Court and Justice Muazu Pindiga of Gombe State High Court.  Their lordships’ arrest has opened a new front in the anti-corruption campaign and also opened a debate on the propriety or otherwise of their arrest.

    Outgoing Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Mohammed Mahmud is livid over the matter. According to him, the arrest is ‘’saddening and unfortunate’’. The CJN believes the security operatives over reached themselves in raiding the homes of the judges and arresting them. The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is raising hell too  over the matter, threatening fire and brimstone if the government does not apply the brakes in its clampdown on the judiciary. As every right thinking Nigerian knows, the judiciary is rotten and the rot did not just start today.  Sometime in the past, all eyes were on magistrates, but little did we know that  judges were a worse case.

    Many judges were dispensing justice without the fear of God. Only a few did their job conscientiously and without affection or ill will. Today, we are facing the consequences of keeping quiet in the face of large scale corruption by judges who did not mean well for the country.  It is a taboo worldwide for judges to receive gratification for job done. This is why judges are shielded from the public so that they are not tainted. But because of their love for money, some of them go out of their way to demand bribe from litigants. It will be dishonest of NJC and NBA to say they are not aware of the mess in the judiciary because it did not start today.

    To reform the judiciary in the wake of the June 12, 1993 crisis, the late Gen Sani Abacha, who seized power from the Ernest Shonekan-led Interim National Government (ING) in  November of that year, constituted the Justice Kayode Eso-led panel. The panel’s terms of reference were wide and at the end of its sitting,  it recommended the sacking of 47 judges. For eight years, the report did not see the light of day. Following a review in 2002 by the Justice Bolarinwa Babalakin-led panel, six judges were sacked. We are in this mess today because NJC and NBA have always turned a blind eye to the issue of corruption. They have always allowed those accused of corruption to go free and sin no more.

    But often, these judges return to their vomit because they do not act alone. They have allies in the lawyers, who appear before them and in the top echelon of NJC. NJC and NBA  should blame themselves for what happened to the suspected corrupt judges. If they have acted the way they should, the Department of State Service (DSS) would not have taken over their job. Since they decided not to see evil or talk evil where corruption in the judiciary is concerned they should learn to live with their choice. We were all in this country when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) accused some lawyers of encouraging corruption in the judiciary. Rather than work with EFCC to fish out the bad eggs within its circle,  NBA resorted to a campaign of calumny against the commission.

    What we are seeing now is an indictment of NJC, especially, because it is responsible for the disciplining of judges. Unfortunately, it cannot act without a formal complaint against a judge. Even where there is a complaint,  NJC can destroy the case through its biased handling. It is because NJC cannot be trusted to handle the cases against its own that the security operatives moved in. If NJC had done what it should do,  we would not have seen the dirty linen of our judges being washed in public. Nevertheless, what is happening is for the good of the judiciary and our country. A corruption free judiciary will aid national development.

    We are at that stage of life where our judges should be able to look the bad guys in the face and tell them without mincing words that they are bad. We do not want judges that will look the corrupt in the face and wink at them with a slap on the wrist. What such a judgement suggests is that the judge must have been compromised. Many of such cases abound, but the one that easily comes to mind is that of Lucky Igbinedion, who after being found guilty of corruptly enriching himself with the money of Edo State was slapped with a N3.5 million fine based on a suspicious plea bargain. Why plea bargain with corrupt public officials when mere pepper and phone thieves are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment? EFCC is as guilty for that as the judiciary.

    Nobody should tell me that our laws are to blame. It is only in our country that we have two sets of laws – one for the rich and the other for the poor. Laws that punish the poor and allow the rich, who steal the country blind to go unpunished,  are no laws. Judges hide under the guise of interpreting these laws to extort money from the rich working through their lawyers. NJC will only be pretending if it claims not to know that these  are some of the tricks adopted by corrupt judges. Over the years, the council has been receiving petitions accusing judges of using their positions to enrich themselves.  What did it do beyond recommending such judges for sack so that they can go and enjoy their loot?

    Now the blood of the poor who have been cheated all these years through misapplied justice is crying for justice. If an armed robber could be executed for stealing N5000, why then should a pen robber be allowed to live after stealing N192 billion out of which he will give the judge N5 billion to buy his freedom? Man may be at home with injustice,  but God is not a God of injustice. Today has come because He wants to right the wrongs of the past. NJC and NBA cannot be happy because the security operatives have hit close to home. Justice Mahmud hit the nail on the head when he blamed the NBA for the rot in the judiciary at the association’s seminar on June 24, last year. Indeed, as he noted,  it is impossible to expect a different Bench when its origin (Bar) remains the same.  The NBA should heal itself instead of blowing hot air over the arrest of the suspected corrupt judges.

    If it had removed from its membership those described as unfit, improper and dishonest as advised by Justice Mahmud, it may have saved the judiciary of this shame. No amount of threat can change the fact that NBA ‘s failure to put its house in order over the years contributed heavily to the corruption in the judiciary. It is sad, terribly sad that judges are today being picked up from their homes like common criminals. NBA and NJC should also be troubled by this and not the propriety or otherwise of their lordships’ arrest. Being a judge does not confer immunity on you from arrest if you are  suspected of committing a crime.