Category: Tuesday

Two pictures published on the front page of this newspaper last Friday and reproduced below capture as grimly and hauntingly as anything that has gone before the thoughtlessness, the utter lack of empathy that has become ingrained in the drive to root out “ghost workers” from the public sector payroll.

One of them shows a young man carrying in his arms what appears to be the limp body of an elderly woman.  The other shows another young man holding by the arm a woman bent with age and as she took what was obviously one difficult step after another.

The one was not ferrying his charge across a busy street, nor was the other piloting his through a treacherous patch.  Both, officials of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD),  were guiding the women to  the venue of yet another Pension Verification exercise last Thursday, in the Edo State capital, Benin City.

Those pictures could have been taken in Abuja or in any state capital or local government headquarters, or indeed at any venue where officials are gathered to match former and current employees with the payroll for the purpose of weeding out those who do not belong there, otherwise called ghost workers.

The way it is conducted is often humiliating, dehumanising even.  If you do not show up for verification, you are presumed to be a ghost worker or retiree, and your name is expunged from the payroll.  Extenuating factors hardly enter into the reckoning.

Verification was introduced in the 1980s to trim down the public payroll in keeping with the package of conditionalities stipulated by the International Monetary Fund for granting Nigeria a loan of $2.8 billion to carry out a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).  Like the programme itself, it took on a troubling aspect from the outset.

A family friend, a high school teacher who was due to put to bed any moment, had to be taken from the  labour ward of the Ikeja General Hospital to the Surulere, Lagos,  venue of verification, a profile in distress and discomfort.  She had been given to understand that if she did not show up, she would have to find        another job.  She and her husband could not take the risk.

If her name was stricken off the payroll and her condition was later determined to be extenuating, getting it restored would be no easy task.

The women in the pictures were in all likelihood similarly circumstanced.  The pension might be little more than a pittance in these recessionary times, but even it merely spelled the difference between starvation and hunger, it was something.  It was theirs by right, something they had earned through public service in their more productive years, not a handout.

Tales abound of the wanton indignities that men and women who had spent their best years in public service suffer during verification.  Men and women grappling with all kinds of infirmities are often kept standing under the open skies on long lines, at the mercy of officers who seem to be in no hurry to do what they are paid to do.

At almost every venue, there are reports of men and women collapsing, overcome by hunger, exhaustion, or by the stuffy environment.  Retirees who survive this brutal ordeal have to go through it again the next year, and the next.

Physical presence alone is no guarantee that the mission will be accomplished.  It must be backed by a formidable battery of documentation, from the original letter of appointment to the letter of retirement and everything between.  It is almost as if the public service keeps no records and it is the employee who has to fill the breach, to the point of even furnishing the File Number to be used in searching for the records. Failure to produce any of the documents or to supply the almighty File Number could spell serious trouble.

Retirees resident abroad (Full disclosure:  I never took the trouble to file claims) are also required to go through this ordeal, on pain of having their stipends stopped –stipends that will not even cover the fare for the domestic portion of their voyage, to say nothing of the cost of their sojourn in Nigeria for the one week they will spend at the minimum trying to sort matters out.

One foreign-based retiree tells me a verification official once suggested that if he sent a notarised picture showing him reading the local newspaper with its front page displayed prominently, it might with some luck be considered as an alternative to showing up in person.

An advance, to be sure.  But this is the technectronic age.  And yet, it is almost as if some officials have never heard of the Internet and its numerous applications that have reshaped and are reshaping communications at all levels.

As it is with retirees, so also it is with current public service employees, who are often required to go through verification at more frequent intervals.   It is almost as if the procedure has been institutionalised as a mechanism for avoiding paying salaries, or to put off doing so for as long as possible.

In Kogi, verification has become a permanent exercise, an end in itself more or less.  By one account, what  has been paid by way of commission to outside consultants conducting personnel verification would have been more than enough to pay the outstanding salaries of everyone on the payroll, ghosts included.   Yet, salaries for public service employees in Kogi have remained for unpaid for some six months.

It is most unfeeling, callous even, to subject public service retirees and current employees to the harsh regime of Nigeria-style personnel verification.   Even beggars deserve better.

Those who subject retirees and employees to such wanton mistreatment:  Have they no conscience? Has it ever crossed their minds that one day they might be at the receiving end if these indignities continued unchecked?

There are undoubtedly ghost workers in the system, spectral figures who perform no task whatsoever but show up dutifully on payday to collect or at the bank to take out what has been credited to their accounts.

But even the most artful scalper cannot function as a ghost worker entirely by himself or herself. The ghost worker must have at least one internal collaborator or patron, usually operating at some strategic point in the bureaucracy, most likely the personnel or finance department.

As much as N100 billion had been saved, officials claim, following the winnowing of some 45, 000 ghost workers from the personnel list of federal ministries, departments and agencies.  Still, they insist, tens of thousands of ghost workers are still lurkingo within the system.

To my knowledge, however, not a single ghost worker has been prosecuted,  if only to act as a deterrent to would-be imitators.  The way they talk about it, they make it seem like rascally rather than criminal behavior, almost like a sport.

And of course, no personnel officer, no accounting officer, no auditor has been named as a collaborator in the nefarious enterprise.  Yet, without them, the phenomenon would not have become the thriving business it is today.

The ghost worker is going to be with us until the trade is criminalised and its well-placed enablers are brought to justice.

Lately, I have been thinking of exotic things.

Please, don’t get me wrong,

My mind has not been on vacation spots in the South Pacific and South Atlantic and the Caribbean and the Adriatic, gourmet foods, costumes, pets, birds — like the ones roaming the grounds of the Presidential Villa in Abuja with majestic guilelessness — music, objets d’arts, dance, artistic performance – the whole shebang.

I have been thinking of exotic cars, but not out of a craving for one.  At home, the ten-year-old Toyota Camry still gets me there in comfort and quiet style. Abroad, the 1997 Volvo, downsized from an earlier model that was for all practical purposes a miniature armoured tank but with no loss in its storied ruggedness, does the job reassuringly in every weather condition.

I date this concern with things exotic from the time the Senate decided that locally-assembled motor cars would not do justice to the delicate anatomies of its distinguished members and chose instead to order bulletproof American-specification SUVs and limousines they consider de rigueur for the exceedingly hazardous task of making good laws for the governance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and its unruly tribes.

The media called them “exotic cars” and the term stuck, much to the annoyance of the distinguished senators.  To be fair, not much was exotic about the cars. They were just loaded models of the kind of Japanese and German automobiles you will find on the streets in the cramped, open-air, roadside stalls of emergency car dealers in Lagos and Abuja.

A good many of the senators have in their personal fleet automobiles that would make them look as if they had fallen on hard times and become déclassé if they were to be found riding in those so-called exotic cars.

Take as an example my senator.

You don’ know him?  Let’s just say that he is much better known for his pugilism, for his utter lack of refinement, than for his legislative skills.  Nevertheless, he numbers in his fleet a Lamborghini that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour (or 96.6 km per hour) in just 10 seconds.

The so-called exotic cars were, in sum, a disappointment.

When it was announced that EFCC operatives acting on a tip-off had found 17 exotic cars parked in a warehouse in Kaduna allegedly belonging to a former ranking official in the Nigeria Customs  Service (NCS), my earlier disappointment was more than slaked.  Now the attentive audience would get a chance to see what an exotic car really looks like, These Customs chaps don’t deal in half- measures; it’s the full Monty or nothing.

Some two decades ago a UNILAG contemporary whom I had not seen since we left Akoka came to see me at Rutam House.  Much to my embarrassment, some six months after that visit, his cologne still hung thick in the air. There was nothing I could do to dispel it. I called Inno for help.  He laughed, then hung up.

So, if the 17 cars truly belonged to a Customs man who must be presumed to know his onions,  it might actually be understating the matter to call them exotic.  Ultra-exotic might be the more appropriate term.  The media in particular, and the public in general, were about to get a lesson from an authoritative source on what qualifies a motor car to be designated “exotic.”

When Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi Inde, a former Comptroller General of the Customs Service credited with ownership of the fleet, I took it as an indication that we were set, finally, to see the  real thing.  That was the personage, of whom Mohammed Haruna had written in a column for this newspaper (September 10, 2014) that he reminded him of the boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who matched high bombast with stunning delivery.

In the event, there was no such lesson, only fresh disappointment.

When it was finally unveiled, there was nothing exotic about the fleet.  A striking car there, a remarkable one there, but otherwise ordinary through and through.

A 2009 Porsche Cayenne, the closest thing to an exotic vehicle; three BMWs, the highest being in the 525 series, one of them looking as if it came straight out of a salvage yard; five SUVs manufactured between 2003 and 2014; a 2013 Honda Accord; a 2013 Toyota Avensis; a 2010 Toyota Hiace, a 2009 Nissan Bus, a 2002 Peugeot 406, and a1996 Nissan Urban bus: there you have it, more or less.

Altogether a desultory assemblage and proof, were any still required, that the recession is still with us.

True, the vehicles all originated in or are characteristic of a distant foreign country, which is the meaning of “exotic” at one level.  In that sense, practically every motor vehicle in Nigeria would have to be called “exotic.” None of the cars in the warehouse is excitingly or mysteriously different or unusual, the sense in which that term is employed in this piece.

Where in the fleet is the Ferrari California? The Aston Martin?  The Bentley Continental?  The Bugatti? The Rolls-Royce Phantom?  The Toyota 2000GT?  The Lexus Nürburgring? The Maybach?    To climb down several rungs, where is the Maserati?  The E-Class Mercedes-Benz? The Cadillac Escalade?

Where, for that matter, is the sense of discrimination of those who call the desultory assemblage found in the Kaduna warehouse “exotic”?

Many of our compatriots have already jumped to the conclusion that the vehicles must have been acquired illegally, for self-enrichment or personal aggrandizement.  It is of course the province   of the courts to determine whether the acquisition followed proper procedure.  But it is gradually  emerging that the vehicles might have been acquired for overarching public purposes.

One such purpose, I gather, is to offer young Nigerians free advanced training in automotive technology and thus prepare them for the world of productive and remunerative work.

If the scheme falls through, Plan B kicks in immediately.  It calls for establishing a motor vehicle museum in Nigeria that would be the first of its kind in Africa, and a tourist attraction withal. No admission fees will be charged,

Who can quarrel with that?

In whatever case, we have not heard the last about the so-called exotic motor cars.  These days, they seem to be everywhere.  Only yesterday, the papers reported that state security operatives searching an Abuja property allegedly owned by former Governor Gabriel Susan of Benue State had seized the keys to 45 exotic cars they said they found in two exotic vehicles recovered from the scene.

It remains to locate the 45 exotic vehicles.  You hear that, Whistleblowers United?

When former President Olusegun Obasanjo took the oath of office in 1999 and vowed to protect and uphold the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, he did so by faith.

He had not seen the Constitution.  It was a closely guarded state secret.

Outside the narrow circle of those the departing regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar had enlisted to  write the Constitution, few had seen the draft in its entirety.  Among those who fashioned it, not many could have expounded it with high confidence.  After they had turned in their draft, the military vetted it to give primacy to their own agenda, manifest and latent.

The result was a document that, according to the late and much lamented legal titan Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), lacked internal consistency, was riddled with errors, chockfull of lacunae, and was, withal, not unlike a minefield.

The death in office of President Umaru Yar’Adua threw up a thorny succession problem that pointed up more poignantly than any other issue the gaps in the Constitution.  It was remedied by recourse to a deus ex machina, the so-called doctrine of necessity.

Even the 1979 Constitution, the preparation of which was much more elaborate, and was the subject  of spirited national debate, was not without its own share of problems, especially in the time of the military president, General Ibrahim Babangida.

During debate on some crucial issue, you would confidently cite some provision of the Constitution that had not been suspended to back your submission.  It would turn out that there was no such clause in the document.

Or you would depose with the utmost confidence that the Constitution categorically prohibited a certain course of action, and it would turn out that the document was completely silent on the matter.

It got to a point that a leading newspaper wondered in a major editorial whether Nigeria was not being governed with a fake Constitution.  That was no idle question, for at that time, Nigeria was awash in fakery.

I was led into these reminiscences by the on-going debate on the future of Walter Onneghen, Justice of the Supreme Court, who was recommended by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) for appointment as the nation’s chief justice, a post he has held in an acting capacity since the retirement of Justice Mahmud Mohammed.

Some people learned in the law, led by Wole Olanipekun (SAN) have argued that, on the basis of the JSC’s recommendation, President Muhammadu Buhari should have forwarded Justice Onneghen’s  name to the Senate for confirmation.  The Constitution, they submit, citing its relevant provisions,         leaves Buhari with no other course of action.

The recommendation, it should be noted, is based strictly on seniority.  The justice who has served longest on the Supreme Court gets the JSC’s imprimatur.

Other persons no less learned in the law, led by Professor Itse Sagay (SAN) contend that the Constitution cannot reduce the President to a mere rubberstamp and that he is under no obligation to send Justice Onnoghen’s name to the Senate for confirmation.  On the contrary, they assert, the President is at liberty to reject the recommendation and ask the JSC to submit another name for consideration, more so since  reputation, integrity, character, skill, and productivity hardly figure in the JSC’s deliberations.

Seniority and seniority alone, they say, is not a sufficient consideration and has led at least in two instances to the appointment of misfits as chief justice of Nigeria, and that the field should be open to qualified persons outside the judiciary.

Then there are those who, actuated by the same ethnic agenda they say lies behind the delay in confirming Justice Onnoghen, are warning, sometimes subtly and other times starkly, that there would be consequence if “their son” was not appointed to the position.

Translation:  They would cut off the oil.

At this writing, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo is reported to have forwarded Justice Onneghen’s name to the Senate for confirmation, just before the expiry of the three months the Constitution allows him to act as the nation’s chief justice. That should settle the raging debate on the matter.  But since ours is a litigious society, it is not inconceivable that some individual on a legal fishing expedition might seek a perpetual injunction restraining the Senate from deliberating on the matter.

In whatever case, debate will continue as to whether the most senior justice of the Supreme Court, barring a finding of moral turpitude or other disabling factor, should automatically succeed to the top job whenever a vacancy occurs, or whether the position should be open to outstanding practising lawyers in good standing as well.

I incline to the latter view. I support casting the judicial net much wider in search of qualified persons, persuaded that it is more likely to yield better results.  There is much to say for the continuity and stability that the principle of automatic succession is said to guarantee. But there is even much more to be said against the complacency it usually fosters, and the in-breeding that undergirds it.

Persons who enter the judiciary as magistrates and rise through the ranks to chief justice are more likely than not to have developed a tunnel vision and a bureaucratic mindset that constricts rather than expand the very concept of law.  One thinks here of the judge in W.H. Auden’s famous poem, “Law, like Love.”

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,  

Speaking clearly and most severely,

Law is as I’ve told you before,                                                                                                                    

Law is as you know I suppose,  

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

A caricature, to be sure, but the point is clear. Narrow legalism. No nuance. Law disembodied of spirit. The letter of the law is what counts. We have seen example after example of this kind of jurisprudence.

It is well documented that persons who belong in the same organisation tend to speak the same language and to think in the same way.  Those at the top tend to recruit people like themselves. These tendencies tend to limit growth and development. That is why many organisations strive for a diverse workforce..

For the same reason, if you have earned two degrees from some of the leading American universities and would like to proceed to a doctorate, you will be advised to head elsewhere, in your own best interest.  Go learn from a different set of professors with different interests and orientations and prejudices.  Go seek new insights.  Go cultivate new friends.

I commend this model, pardon my digression, to our universities, and to those preparing for academic careers.

To return to appointments to the High Bench:  It is one thing to open the door to attorneys who have distinguished themselves in private practice or in legal scholarship and can thus be expected to bring a sociological imagination to bear on the administration of justice.

Former President Shehu Shagairi, whom no one has ever accused of harbouring a progressive outlook,  took that tack when he offered the pre-eminent legal scholar Professor Ben Nwabueze an appointment  as a justice of the Supreme Court in 1979.  Nwabueze declined, for personal reasons.

Also in keeping with this thinking, the Nigeria Bar Association has recently nominated some distinguished senior attorneys and academics to be considered for appointment to the High Bench. The proposal is commendable, and I suspect that many a legal scholar will welcome an invitation to serve.

But will legal practitioners who can reap fortunes beyond their wildest dreams through litigating election disputes seek, much less accept, positions on the High Bench?