The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • What is Obanikoro up to?

    What is Obanikoro up to?

    In a series of media stunts, Musiliu Obanikoro, erstwhile Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Ghana, former senator, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant in Lagos State and presently, a ministerial nominee had expressed concern regarding governance and popular expectations in Lagos State under the leadership of Babatunde Fashola (SAN) and All Progressive Congress (APC). I consider his thoughts driven by politics, and it behoves anyone with a conscience to write in defence of a working government. I must state that I don’t belong to any political party.

    I must give kudos to Obanikoro’s for dissecting the Lagos 2014 budget in a recent interview. It is a fact that no government, be it federal or state, has all it needs to execute its projects. The most ingenious way available to every government is to shore-up its internally generated revenue (IGR), and most importantly, go borrowing. Borrowing is neither a curse nor a bad idea; however in our clime the problem we have with borrowing is misuse of borrowed funds, because for any borrowed funds, the project(s) of its application must be attached. The criticism for borrowing is stemmed from the corrupt attitudes of our government officials and the needless open display of ostentations in the midst of a debilitating poverty.

    On the issue of Lagos budget 2014, Obanikoro told us the zero deficit claim of the government is a hoax. He is economical with the truth. Again, while it is debatable, we must look at some parameters to get an answer. Firstly is the issue of recurrent expenditures, this is an issue that virtually all states of the federation and particularly the PDP-led federal government are guilty of. In fact, the federal government budget estimates for 2014 is over 70% recurrent on personnel and overhead. The onus is on governments to reduce the costs on personnel.

    My understanding of zero deficit budgeting is that all expenses captured are justified and provided for, that is, budgets are built around what is needed for the upcoming period, regardless of whether is higher or lower than the previous one. Zero based budgeting allows for top-level strategic goals to be implemented into the budget process by tying them to specific functional areas of the government where costs can be first grouped, then measured against previous results and current expectations. The proposed borrowing of N99.74 billion in the budget is to refinance existing debt. Obanikoro should know that refinancing a debt is different from interest payment for internal loans. At any point in time, more avenues may be open to government to borrow; servicing a loan is different from refinancing a loan. That the state government will access US$200m World Bank loan in 2014 does not translate to the budget being financed from this loan.

    More importantly, that Lagos State will borrow to finance some its projects does not preclude it from having a zero deficit budget. We must know that risk assessment by professionals played an important role before loans are given to any government. More so, credit-worthiness of a state determines if such a state will even be given loan or not. The debt profile of Lagos State is manageable; if not, it is unlikely the World Bank will have made available to it the recent loan. Borrowing and debt management are risks that cannot be avoided but managed.

    In the area of healthcare, I have been to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), but for purpose this writing I will say what I saw in LASUTH can compare favourably with any teaching hospital in Nigeria. Governor Fashola should not be made to bear the brunt of choices of individuals who prefer overseas hospital as a status symbol. We need to build our capacity in the health sector, and this will require the collaboration of both federal and state governments.

    On the electoral issue involving his son, there is always the aftermath of an election, and the loser with a genuine case will approach the tribunal for a redress. Obanikoro’s son won at the tribunal, but since there is a window for an appeal, it is expected that the other person will appeal. To now accuse a sitting governor because of his legal credentials and/status as Senior Advocate of Nigeria, (SAN) of impounding the legal victory of his son is cheap politics.

    One area I least expected Obanikoro’s condemnation is the Lagos residency registration campaign. To me this a laudable effort hinged on planning for the development of the state. Headcounts inform government’s template for planning, and that the present Lagos government chose to do so is commendable. Population determination is an important ingredient in governance and infrastructure development.

    In Lagos, exemplary leadership has resulted in ambitious projects that have direct bearing on the populace, notably the BRT expansion from Mile 12 to Ikorodu; the gigantic Badagry-Marina blue light railways, Adiyan water works expansion project, Ozumba Mbadiwe-Awolowo road link bridge, Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge, construction of 16 roads in Mushin local government, construction of major roads (Simbiat Abiola road, Kodesho etc) in Ikeja local government, a new modern market in Oshodi, the on-going Tejuosho modern market, new modern stalls in Agege, re-construction of major roads (Adeniran Ogunsanya, Akerele, Bode Thomas etc) in Surulere, the re-construction of 2.6km Alaba/Cemetary road in Ajeromi-Ifelodun, the remodelled Obalende and its environs. More importantly, Lagos State government must be given kudos for the environmental management of canals; the continued dredging and de-silting of these numerous canals within the state have gone a long way to save the populace from flooding issues.

    Obanikoro chose to denigrate his benefactor, APC leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the interview. I don’t think politics should be carried that far. For what it is worth, Tinubu made him a commissioner and facilitated his election into the senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. In an interview on NTA programme One-On-One sometime in 2004, Obanikoro himself said after God, the next person who had played an important role in his political career is Tinubu. As humans, we should always look beyond the present. Whatever might be Tinubu’s political school, a former political son addressing a political father with such odium hardly speaks well of our age-long known attributes of honour and respect.

    On the whole, the signature of development as embedded through responsible governance from the inception of democratic government in Lagos State is encouraging. We must guard against making negative political judgment on verifiable performance. Much of Obanikoro’s thoughts is political than sound economic management, and we will continue to do ourselves grave injustice if we give political colouration to every issues. While more work needs to be done, Fashola and his team deserve commendation.

    • Nurudeen writes from Surulere, Lagos State.

  • Echoes of 1966

    Echoes of 1966

    No, echoes of 1966 do not hint at some military adventurism, which with hindsight was — and, to those not able to think through Nigeria’s eternal political crisis, could still be — some grim deus-ex-machina.

    But for Nigeria and other countries beggared by military rule, the plague is no more than harebrained zooming to, harebrained zooming fro, and on the balance, rooted on the same spot! In Nigeria’s peculiar case, it could well be net retardation!

    So, it needs no especial acuity to realise any such suggestion is a barren desert, when what is needed is a spring of ideas to think through the problem — no matter how grim and dire it appears — and arrive at sustainable solutions.

    But echoes of 1966 could well and truly be gleaned from the latest Northern Elders Forum, NEF’s psychological war against the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, by its threat to drag Lt-Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, former chief of Army staff (COAS), to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged human rights abuses, of the Nigerian Army under him, in the Boko Haram anti-terror campaign.

    Just as well, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has decried the NEF threat, but all the elements, back in 1966, are here: ethnic grandstanding, regional confrontation, cultural chauvinism and political rascality, all pressed into service in the zero-sum power game.

    The warring camps may have changed, but the war logic — or illogic — remains constant.

    Back then, it was the North versus the West, with the East in the Northern camp, to crush a common enemy.

    But right now, the alliance is altered: it is the “North” versus the East — “East”, meaning the old Eastern Region: present South East and South-South; with the West (present day South West) enjoying its newfound entente with the traditional North, with which it fought to the death in the First Republic.

    Again, the clear motive (on both sides) is to crush a common (power) enemy; and the grand prize is the toxic Presidency — definitely more toxic than the Prime Minister’s office of the Tafawa Balewa era.

    So, it is natural that the likes of Comrade-Senator Uche Chukwumerije would, in reaction to the Ango Abdullahi challenge, rise in defence of Gen. Ihejirika, an Ndigbo son.

    Senator Chukwumerije’s riposte, that anyone thinking of heading for ICC, would do well to watch his back; for following closely might well be ghoulish tales of genocide, dating back to the pre-Civil War northern massacre of the Igbo, a pogrom that morphed into alleged Igbo genocide during the Civil War (1967-1970) itself.

    That would fall pat into the theory propagated by the late Chinua Achebe, in his swansong There Was A Country, and by the even more blood-chilling documentation by Emma Okocha, in his Blood on the Niger, a well documented tale of the Asaba massacre, by Nigerian soldiers, of Western Igbo civilians: never accepted as full Igbo by Biafra; never accepted as full Nigerians by Nigeria either!

    It was a neither-nor zone of death that, according to Okocha, turned the waters of River Niger crimson with innocent blood of defenceless civilians.

    But that claim was no less proudly negated by Brig-Gen. Alabi Isama, in his Civil War memoir, The Tragedy of Victory, in which he claimed the Third Marine Commando Division, where he was chief of staff under the mercurial Brig-Gen. Benjamin Adekunle, never massacred any Igbo, as Biafra’s propaganda claimed, to hold on to its eastern-most reaches, in the face of federal troops’ onslaught.

    But there is no contradiction in the two claims: First Division (which Okocha’s book accused of genocide) and Third Marine Division (which Alabi-Isama cleared) fought at different theatres of the war.

    But all these justifications and counter-justifications would appear not so important in Prof. Abdullahi’s NEF latest campaign. The target is not Ihejirika per se. It is rather President Jonathan, his commander-in-chief (c-in-c).

    Gen. Ihejirika was only the Army chief. Above COAS, in the command chain, is the chief of defence staff, the Defence minister, before the ultimate boss, the C-in-C. So, if Ihejirika is frog-jumped to the ICC, Jonathan too is endangered — and he might well be the ultimate catch!

    But Prof. Abdullahi’s merry riposte to Senator Chukwumerije’s grim historical reminder appears suggestive of a grander agenda. Talks of alleged genocide at Odi and Zaki-Biam, at ICC, could also suggest a dragnet for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, unrepentant C-in-C when the terrible deeds were done.

    Obasanjo is, of course, the northern friend turned fiend, regarded by many in the aggrieved northern camp as the region’s nemesis, the perceived orchestrator-in-chief of the present power cul-de-sac the “North” now finds itself.

    An ironic casualty, should Odi and Zaki-Biam get to ICC, could be Gen. Victor Malu, one of President Obasanjo’s COAS’s, who would double as victim and alleged perpetrator. As COAS, the Odi massacre was under his charge. But he only realised the evil after the pacification guns turned on his own people at Zaki-Biam! So long for selective principle!

    Not a few have, therefore, suggested that after the physical trauma of mindless Boko Haram butchery of innocent Nigerians, making the president appear incompetent and clueless, his northern traducers have upped the ante to psychological trauma of post-office ICC trouble.

    If that indeed is the case, no pity for President Jonathan from here. Sure, the Nigerian presidency is such a stressful job that about anyone on that hot seat deserves citizens’ empathy. But Jonathan is hardly anyone’s model president, a notorious fact even his most uncritical supporters would concede.

    But that is not why he is undeserving of pity. Even after being a victim of impunity from the so-called Yar’Adua cabal, during the late president’s last days, he himself has erected a devil-may-care presidency of impunity, with the brazen criminality his supporters are unleashing in Rivers State. That gravely desecrates his high office, pours odium on institutions of state and endangers democracy. The president as hideous bully, misusing lawful coercion for partisan scores, seldom earns citizens’ endearment.

    But Jonathan’s most unforgivable flaw is, as a minority president whose native region bears the brunt of Nigeria’s petroleum mismanagement, he has proved more comfy with the president’s near-imperial powers rather than work towards altering the fundamentals for the greater good.

    All too soon, he would cease to be president. Perhaps then he would develop the Malu syndrome: victim of the bestiality of the status quo, when he had, as president, a fighting chance to change it for the better.

    Ay, a national dialogue is afoot. But it is almost an open secret that it would be little more than a sop for Jonathan’s presidential re-run credentials, with nary much changing.

    But the Jonathan attitude appears no different from his opponents’. Everyone appears bent on having a go at the toxic presidency, despite its clear toxicity!

    Yet, without first fixing it, with the dysfunctional current “federalism” that gave birth to it, the future is less than assured, despite the pervasive din of democratic(?) bickering, ala 1966.

  • Retirements of the lexical kind

    Retirements of the lexical kind

    A gale of retirements originating from –where else? – Abuja has been sweeping the nation this past week. No, I take back this bureaucratic rendering. To call it by its proper name, what has been sweeping the nation is a gale of dismissals.

    To show that he is still in control even as everything around him seems to be collapsing, President Goodluck Jonathan dismissed – beg your pardon, “approved” the dismissal- of the chiefs of the armed services. If he cannot dismiss the pesky Governor of the Central Bank, he can at least give the marching orders to the top brass who think they count for much more in the political scheme.

    And as if to serve further notice that he is in office and in power, he followed up by “approving” the dismissal of the beleaguered chairman of the fractious PDP who had been taunting those demanding his ouster and has seemed immovable.

    They said the most cutting things about Bamanga Tukur; they called him all manner of names, denounced his management style and generally disparaged him in a manner that would have discomfited a hippo. But he sat tight. When he was not warning of the dire consequences of his forced exit, among which could well be another civil war, he was running around making abject supplications to anyone he thought could help save his job.

    Okay, the PDP is the biggest political party in Africa, but why would anyone submit to so much abuse to retain the post of chairman? After all it is not the case that the chairmanship of Africa’s biggest political party translates into any position of consequence in the African context. In fact, outside these shores, the chairman of the PDP might just as well be the chairman of the TDT for all that anyone cares.

    But all politics is local. And on the local scene, the chairman of the ruling party is a major player by virtue of that office and of his person.

    He has only to let a state governor know that he needs some pocket change for the weekend, and it is delivered in crisp, mint-fresh bundles amounting to – well, let us just say several million Naira. No governor who values his perch would be temerarious enough to dispatch less than N5 million for the chairman’s weekend entertainment, or to ignore the birthday of the chairman’s wife, or the birth of her latest grandchild

    The chairman may not be able to award a major contract singlehandedly, but he can influence who gets it. He receives far more patronage than he dispenses.

    When it comes to selecting the party’s candidates for elected office, the party chairman is kingmaker of king makers. The aspirant who fails to reckon with him is courting humiliation at the party’s convention.

    To dislodge a chairman — any chairman – of the PDP is therefore no mean achievement. The fact that former president Olusegun Obasanjo performed that feat six times does not render it any easier. After all, no one has ever accused him of subtlety.

    But Dr Jonathan dislodged the well-connected and tenacious Bamanga Tukur without fuss and without thrusting himself into the vortex of the controversy that had dogged Tukur almost from the day he became party chair. That is class.

    Watch out, then, those who have been carrying on in the belief that Dr Jonathan is well and truly finished. He is in charge; he knows it, and if it ever doubted it, the world will know when he takes off in his latest executive jet to confer with other global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with stopovers in Juba, in Sudan, and Bangui, in the Central African Republic. Canada can keep its dry martini.

    If there is any good thing about the gale of dismissals, it is that even in the jarring discontinuities of climate change, it is absolutely certain to be followed by a gale of appointments. Nature merely abhors a vacuum; politics forcefully repels it the way like poles of a magnet repel each other.

    This column cannot hire or fire; it cannot influence who comes and who goes; it cannot even “approve” an appointment or a dismissal. But in the gale of retirements that will soon be followed by a gale of appointments, I have been conducting a lexical excursus to identify those terms that need to be retired from the vocabulary of news reporting in Nigeria.

    After relating that Bamanga Tukur had finally handed in his resignation, the newspapers went on to add in the manner of someone imparting a profound secret that a new chairman would soon “emerge.” And the follow-up story is sure to declare that a new chairman has indeed “emerged”

    These people who are forever “emerging” on the pages of our newspapers: Where did they emerge from? It is almost as if they have been in hiding, or as if the mask has finally been yanked off their timorous faces. For all we know, they might even have been languishing in a place of involuntary confinement until they were sprung.

    It is time to retire that word, howsoever conjugated, from the vocabulary of political reporting. Don’t make the man or woman of the moment look like something that just crawled out from under a rock or from the swamps.

    Concerning the service chiefs, it was reported that President Jonathan had “approved” their “retirement,” making what is at bottom a dismissal look like an act of benevolence. Nor is that the only problem with that framing.

    By implying that the decision to defenestrate them was taken elsewhere by another person or authority, it reduces President Jonathan to a mere rubberstamp. As he was once moved to remind the public, the Constitution vests him with the powers of a leviathan, but he has chosen to act like a lamb. To cast him as a mere rubberstamp is therefore a calculated insult to his office and person.

    The insult is repeated, if not compounded, whenever it is reported that the President has “approved” an appointment to a high national office. Again the subversive implication is that the appointment was determined by another authority, and that the president merely played rubberstamp.

    As everyone knows, Dr Jonathan is an engaged, hand-on, resolute president who never shies away from taking the hard decisions called forth in the governance of a diverse, complex country , home to unquestionably the most querulous people on earth.

    The news media and his aides should accord him his due. He is no rubberstamp.

    Finally, in this centennial of the birth of Nigeria, the term “amalgamation” is in the air. They are planning a year-long bash that will be underwritten by the “private sector,” according to the coordinator of the jamboree, Chief Anyim Pius Anyim.

    I hope the “private sector” he has in mind does not include the NNPC and the Ports Authority and other parastatals that are ever so often corralled into underwriting dubious projects. Anyim should look to those business concerns that have historically made rich pickings from the colonisation of Nigeria – UAC, Lever Brothers, Cadbury, Union Bank, to name only a few among them. There are, in addition, latecomers like the enormously influential construction giant Julius Berger, and of course the oil companies forever playing by their own murky rules.

    I don’t know who first applied the term “amalgamation” to the merging of the northern and southern territories to produce Nigeria. If Anyim and company must have their bash, they should come up with another term for what they are celebrating.

    “Amalgamation” is an ugly word. It is a soulless term, evocative of the fusion of two objects. Frederick Lugard’s conjuration produced no amalgam. It was all about the resources that could be extracted from the territories. It was never about the peoples inhabiting them. This is the time to retire that term.

  • Puppet quits, puppeteer remains

    Puppet quits, puppeteer remains

    Puppet quits, puppeteer remains. Open sesame: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) problems vanish? Not by any chance!

    Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, vanquished PDP national chairman, may be the ultimate fall guy in the 2015 presidential chess game. He has been sacrificed as any pun would.

    But the game is far from over, for the puppeteer is still alive and well; and ready to tangle! So are his opponents: flush with Tukur’s unceremonious junking!

    Still, you’ve got to feel for Alhaji Bamanga, the way he seems to make a hash of things. Sure, the cards are almost always stacked against him. But his Achilles’ heel would appear his political antenna, too blunt to pick up danger, even if his nose is on fire!

    As 2nd Republic governor of defunct Gongola State (1 October – 31 December 1983), his three-month gubernatorial reign came with the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN)-confected electoral landslide, moon-slide, and space-slide, that left everybody, victor and vanquished, numb.

    Sure, his political amorality of, in months, transiting from the boss at Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) — almost always the electoral cash cow of Nigeria’s federal ruling parties — to a winning opposition candidate in Gongola (now Adamawa and Taraba states), did not help.

    Yet, perhaps only the likes of Tukur believed the house of fraud the NPN built was not about to crash. He would therefore go ahead, pretending to play “His Excellency”, on the basis of that “space-slide”. He lasted all of three comical months!

    This same costly naivety (more aptly, happy opportunism?) would drive his PDP chairmanship odyssey, for the PDP house of fraud that Olusegun Obasanjo, former president of the Federal Republic, built was cracking and creaky all over. He lasted 18 turbulent months!

    Indeed, since President Obasanjo decided the late Solomon Lar, first PDP national chairman, was no longer a Solomon the party needed; and PDP elders back then endured Obasanjo’s muscling by presidential might, the PDP national chairmanship had become one long, slippery “banana peel”.

    “Banana peel” were the picturesque words of Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo, late colourful politician and former president of the Senate, as he described the high attrition rate of Senate presidents of his era, in eternal feuding with an insufferable President Obasanjo, who made little secret of wanting to corral the National Assembly as executive sidekick and rubberstamp, despite the presidential system’s rigid separation of power.

    Indeed, since Obasanjo stonewalled the late Sunday Awoniyi, the Kogi giant, for Barnabas Gemade, the Benue not-so-known, every Tukur predecessor had come to grief: Audu Ogbe, Vincent Ogbulafor, Okwesilieze Nwodo and, of course, Tukur.

    The only exception, of course, was Ahmadu Ali, who proved a merry Obasanjo puppet just as Tukur proved a merry Jonathan one. He got away with his bully principal; but left his party dazed and stunned.

    Mr. Ogbe’s own call was holy rebellion against presidential complicity in the Chris Ngige Police-aided kidnapping in Anambra, at which the Obasanjo presidency sided with the constitutional bandits. He got tossed out all right, but with his honour intact as the party’s smothered conscience.

    In contrast, Tukur fell as wilful party collaborator in the Jonathan Presidency’s Police-aided serial subversion of the Rivers Government, issuing from partisan bile against Governor Chibuike Amaechi — unhorsed by PDP changing dynamics, which not even the manipulating hands of his principal and puppeteer could steady.

    The pair of Messrs Ogbulafor and Nwodo — with all due respect to them, for excellent citizens they are — are no more than blips on a party consumed by its own hubris. Mr. Ogbulafor once blurted his “largest party in Africa” would rule the roost for 60 years! It is ode to hubris that Mr. Ogbulafor himself lasted just over two years (March 2008-May 2010) as chairman!

    Indeed, the PDP conundrum would appear the real-politik equivalent of the Parmenides-Heraclitus philosophical see-saw. Like Heraclitus’s flux, the PDP chairmanship is a yo-yo. But again, not unlike Parmenides’ staid permanence, the constant change in PDP underscores how unchanged the party remains!

    The Obasanjo-Ali pair is therefore no different from the Jonathan-Tukur pair. But while second-term President Obasanjo had the gravitas to muscle Ali a safe landing, first-term President Jonathan lacks neither the tact nor the balls to hand Tukur one. Besides, Jonathan lacks the brawn to maintain, without blinking, the odious, in-your-face-impunity as party subversion tactics, of the Obasanjo era.

    Tukur, therefore, became an issue only because his principal was. He is gone now, but his principal is still on. So, those who suggest his exit will bring entente to the troubled party blow hot air!

    It is, therefore, in the 2015 presidential sweepstakes that the post-Tukur pitch battles would be fought. Jonathan still makes a fetish of hiding, behind a finger, his 2015 ambitions. But his intra-PDP foes have already cut the chase, and are dug in at the battle zone.

    Northern anti-Jonathan PDP elements have always regarded the president as some harbourer of “stolen good” — the presidency, on account of PDP’s aborted zoning, at the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua. And they chafe at the spectre of a Jonathan presidential encore in 2015.

    That was the genesis of the not so incredible claim that, to assuage the “North’s” hurt, Jonathan had pledged himself to a one-term presidency. So is it, the root of the pressure on the president to oust himself from 2015, the refusal of which birthed the defunct “New PDP”, and inspired the defection, into the All Progressives Congress (APC), of five of the G-7 PDP governors, aside from the Rivers impunity mess, in which Tukur also played the zestful party collaborator.

    In all of these Tukur, with his poise of a school headmaster taking no nonsense from uncouth urchins, did not help matters. Tukur was asked to jump and his uncritical question was “how high”? No surprise there, that he broke his back!

    He probably richly earned his demonization as some Judas to some “northern” cause. But much of that derring-do must have come at the promptings of a president, probably only too happy to unleash him on his northern brothers.

    But no tears for PDP. Its goose is cooked. The tears, rather, are for a fledgling democracy with a suspect party system.

    No matter how visible the ruling party’s crisis is, it is only but a symptom of the disease: the fraud of electing a president on a platform, only to declare him supreme to, and untouchable by, the party on which he rode to power!

    That is the fraudulent concept of “party leader”, that makes the PDP president some Leviathan over and above a party that made him a candidate.

    That was what Obasanjo brewed and bequeathed. That is what Jonathan has spectacularly mismanaged. And that is what even APC, on the rise now it may be, must watch, if it is not to blunder into the PDP pit.

    If this democracy must deliver development and prosperity — and not waste itself in the dissipative manoeuvres of intra-party war puppets and puppeteers — there is urgent need to fix the party system.

     

  • Let that child speak his local language

    Let that child speak his local language

    Not long ago, I read a story in the media about the effort of the Bayelsa State government to ensure Ijaw language does not die. The government has earmarked money to sponsor Nollywood films done in Ijaw language.

    The initiative brought back to the fore the sorry state of our local languages. From Yoruba to Igbo, Hausa and others, damage has been done to these languages. Line up children between the ages of five and 15, from any of our ethnic groups, and ask them to speak their language, chances are that they cannot. In fact, not a few children have been known to react to their local languages when spoken by others as ‘nonsense’.

    The foundation for the mess that our languages have become was built in schools, where natives languages were barred and regarded as vernacular. Students were even punished for speaking their mother tongues. The practice is still prevalent today. Schools still forbid mother tongues. It is even worse with the private schools, where Yoruba, Igbo and others are not even taught. Only few private schools teach these languages. English is the better for it. Some even teach French.

    As if speaking in mother tongue is a plague, many parents have stopped speaking to their children and wards in their mother tongue, thus helping to swell the number of endangered languages compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). A directive from the National Education Research Council (NERC) has further harmed indigenous languages. NERC, citing the need to reduce the number of subjects students offer, ruled that indigenous languages should be removed from the list of compulsory subjects at the secondary school level.

    UNESCO recently warned that if nothing is done, about half of the over 6,000 languages spoken in the world will disappear by the end of the 21st century. Nigerian languages are among the endangered ones.

    Already, according to UNESCO, eight Nigerian mother tongues are extinct. They are the Ajawa (Bauchi State); Auyokawa (Jigawa State); Basa-Gumna(Niger and Nasarawa states); Gamo-Ningi (Ningi Local Government, Bauchi State); Kpati, Kubi, Mawa (Bauchi State) and Teshenawa (Jigawa State) languages.

    Interestingly, the emphasis on English language has not reflected in the number of candidates who pass the language in terminal examinations, such as the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSSCE). The 2012 result shows that 771,731 candidates, representing 46.14 per cent,  obtained six credits and above; 952,156 candidates, representing 56,93 per cent, obtained five credits and above;  while 1,107,747, representing 66.24 per cent,  obtained credits in four subjects.

    But, only 649,156 candidates, representing 38.81 per cent, obtained credits in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics.

    The results of the two previous years, as regard passing English, were worse. May be the students would have done better if they understand their mother tongues better. Some experts say there is a correlation between this.

    But there is hope in the sense that outside of Nigeria, local languages, especially Yoruba are being taken seriously.

    As a result of a requirement that makes every American college undergraduate to gain proficiency in at least one international language before being certified worthy in learning and character, there is a partnership between the University of Ibadan (UI), Oyo State, and the American Council for International Education (ACIE), Washington DC, US. The agreement, which dates back to 2009, encourages American students who wish to learn Yoruba language and culture. Known as the Yoruba Language Flagship Programme (YLFP), which gave birth to the Yoruba Language Centre (YLC), the programme has helped Americans to learn Yoruba, which our people are ignorantly avoiding.

    Also, the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, through an initiative called Foreign Language Teaching Assistants, is aiding young speakers of Yoruba and Hausa languages who have educational background in English or language arts. They are recruited as teaching assistants to teach their languages and cultures to American students in the US universities and colleges. Many American universities and colleges, such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Cornel University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Massachusetts, Indiana University in Bloomington, Ohio State University, Michigan State University, Ohio University, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaig and Howard University run full-fledged degree programmes in Yoruba language, which we are running from.

    But charity must begin at home. It will not augur well for us to get to a situation where foreigners will be more proficient in our languages. That is why I applaud the initiative to promote Ijaw language. We need more of that. We should also end the era of Yoruba films, with diluted English.

    The NERC must urgently make the offering of at least one local language compulsory for students. Parents also have a role to play here. Let your children or wards learn English in school. Speak your language to them at home and let them know it is not nonsense or ‘jagajaga’ as many of them see it.

    The time for action is now.

    • Fadun, an Insurance Executive, writes this piece from Lagos.

  • Jonathan: How not to play the deaf

    Jonathan: How not to play the deaf

    Rivers State is boiling and President Goodluck Jonathan is pretending nothing is happening.

    At the risk of sounding like an old gramophone, all well-meaning Nigerians and the opposition parties have been crying out, shouting and pleading with the president to call his rampaging Commissioner of Police in Rivers State, Mbu Joseph Mbu to order before he plunges the state into anarchy and imperils this democracy. But all their pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears.

    The story of CP Mbu and his ‘atrocities’ in Rivers State under the guise of maintaining law and order is known to all, but what is baffling is why the President and Commander-In-Chief has chosen to be silent on this matter.

    When, the other day, Mbu used his policemen to block the main entrance to the Government house, Port Harcourt, the official residence of the governor of Rivers State thereby preventing Governor Rotimi Amaechi and his guests from going in until they had to use the back entrance, the Federal Government found nothing wrong with that, even when that meant denigrating and/or humiliating the office of the governor. Not a word from Abuja cautioning Mbu.

    When he sent his ’mad dogs’ to scatter thousands of newly recruited teachers by the state government who were told to gather at a stadium to sign for and collect their letters of employment, under the excuse that they were to gather there to protest against President Jonathan; not even a finger was raised against Mbu by Abuja. He got a pat on the back instead.

    And when he vowed never to obey a court order over police illegal occupation of Obio/Akpor local government council secretariat, our president who promised to uphold the law of the land did not find anything wrong with this.

    The list of Mbu’s atrocities in Rivers State is very long and getting longer, but what is baffling is why nobody among his superiors seems ready to call him to order. When he was tear-gassing and violently dispersing any gathering supposedly in support of or at the instance of Governor Amaechi, what many thought was that he would limit it to just that. But the shock was to come penultimate Sunday when his men used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse a gathering of Save Rivers Movement in Port Harcourt under the excuse that the gathering did not have his approval. A serving Senator of the Federal Republic was hit in the chest by the bullet. He is presently recuperating in a London hospital. The presidency not only kept quiet over the matter, people close to the president said he dismissed the incident with a wave of the hand.

    Surprisingly, while the police dispersed supporters of the Senator, Magnus Abe, who wanted to protest the shooting, the same police welcomed another group that gathered in solidarity with its commissioner, Mbu, to its office.

    Buoyed by the silence of the presidency and a supportive police CP, a group of pro- Jonathan thugs unleashed violence on another gathering of the Save Rivers Movement again last Sunday, this time in Bori, the traditional headquarters of Ogoni and the seat of Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State. Senator Abe is Ogoni, and he is a known supporter of Governor Amaechi. Some people were feared dead while properties worth millions of Naira were destroyed; gun shots boomed sporadically while the mayhem lasted. The police did not lift a finger to stop them, and the presidency is again keeping quiet.

    The attitude of the president in feigning deafness to all the noise coming out of Rivers State is unfortunate. He swore to protect lives and properties in all parts of the country but he is failing to do this in Rivers State just because of his political differences with the governor. But the president needs to be reminded that whatever happens in Rivers or any other state in the country for that matter would have effect on the rest of the country.

    He should also be reminded that the road to which Mbu is leading Nigeria in Rivers State with his (president’s) support was one of the reasons the second republic collapsed. In fact, the police contributed in no small measure to the demise of that republic and what Mbu is doing now is a near replay of what happened then.

    One could recall that a certain Umaru Omolowo, the then Commissioner of Police in old Oyo State was giving protection to thugs of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) to fight a cause mayhem in Oyo State and create problem for the ruling Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) government in the state then. The NPN controlled the Federal Government then and President Shehu Shagari, just like President Jonathan now, was seeking re-election and had penciled Oyo State down as a must-win state. The national Chairman of the NPN then, Adisa Akinloye, now late was from Oyo State, so also was the Attorney General and Minister of Justice Richard Akinjide. They told Shagari not to worry that Oyo was for him, and the president in turn used the police effectively to back them even when they were unpopular on the ground in the state. Election came, they rigged and won, but we all know what happened few months later.

    Now Jonathan, like Shagari is desperate to win re-election and he has identified Rivers as a must-win if his hope of returning to the presidential villa next year is to be realized. Why is Rivers so important? Simple. With two million solid votes in his pocket, Jonathan believes or is being deceived to believe that with Rivers solidly behind him he can neutralise whatever votes his opponent, expectedly from the north, could garner from that zone (north) in 2015; then he can struggle to pick few votes here and there, especially from Christians in the North/Middle Belt, and may be the south west apart from the South east and South-south.

    But with Governor Amaechi no longer in his corner, the two million votes are under threat, so everything must be done to prevent this, even if it means killing the people of Rivers, so be it.

    This is what is playing out in Rivers State today and the president has found a willing tool in Nyesom Wike, his Coordinating Minister of Education who wants to be governor in 2015; his wife, Patience Jonathan, who wants to produce the governor in 2015 and CP Mbu who wants to make as much money as possible from the crisis. Governor Amaechi expectedly, would also want to protect his legacy by wanting to produce his successor. So where does that leave the people of Rivers State and in the long run Nigeria’s democracy?

    While the people of the state should be able to and left alone to decide what is good for them, the President and Commander-in-Chief should not allow his selfish interest to override his sense of responsibility to Nigerians as a people and the Nigerian nation. He should listen to the voice of wisdom and stop his supporters in Rivers, including Mbu from plunging this nation into avoidable political crisis which end nobody can foretell. Enough of playing the deaf.

  • Time for Nigerians to speak out

    Time we stand up and speak out – about the dangers our fellow citizens face from violence and extremism; time we stand up and speak out – about the importance of religious values and the religious freedoms of our people; about the importance of peace to the future of our economy, our families and our nation.

    And it is time – here and now – for righteous men and women – whatever their individual backgrounds, whatever their personal beliefs – to stand up and shoulder the responsibility of playing our part in making Nigeria a better place to live.

    Because if we do not stand up against injustice, inequality and intolerance, who will stand up?

    If we do not speak out against terror and intimidation, violence and murder, who will speak out?

    And if we are not that still small voice of calm, crying in the wilderness, for peace and progress in our country, who will speak up for the people?

    Edmund Burke said:

    The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

    Today, in our country, that simple truth is obvious for all to see.

    We know there is a terrible price to be paid for silence in the face of violence; for apathy in the face of oppression; and for indifference in the face of injustice.

    It is precisely because we refuse to stay silent, refuse to walk by on the other side, that Northern Christian Elders Forum (NOCEF), was set up.

    NOSCEF stands up for the values of fairness, equity and justice for all Nigerians, irrespective of their tribe, religion, creed or political affiliation.

    NOSCEF speaks out for the Northern Christian community.

    NOSCEF shoulders the responsibility to be a powerful voice and a powerful vehicle for positive change.

    Most of us still share the dream of a Nigeria that is safe, just, equitable and progressive.

    I still embrace the belief of a country where our children grow up without fear, live and learn to reach their full potential, and earn a fair wage in a prospering economy.

    I still hold that hope close to my heart.

    And that’s why today, I appeal, to each and every one of you: do not allow the dream of a better Nigeria to die in our arms.

    Do not let those who wish to kill our hope, destroy our dreams or bury our beliefs triumph in that task.

    I urge you: stand up. Speak out. Irrespective of who you are or what you do, you, too, have a role to play.

    Many of us may never become actively involved in the politics of our fledgling democracy, yet it is an undeniable truth that we are all our brother’s keepers.

    There are still many things we can do individually and collectively to contribute towards building a better nation.

    My commitment through the expression of NOSCEF is to present the simplicity of a practical gospel to all Nigerians in the North regardless of tribe or religion.

    We stand as witnesses to the most horrific pre-meditated acts of violence, on an unprecedented scale.

    We can see for ourselves the number of Nigerians in dire need of food, shelter, healthcare and other basic necessities, increasing at an alarming rate.

    We can hear the cries of our fellow citizens – the mourning of mothers, the frustration of fathers, the desperation of our youth – at opportunities wasted and lives destroyed.

    And just as we all witness it, see it, hear it, we can all do something about it. Indeed, our shared humanity demands we must do something about it.

    I believe NOSCEF can provide a platform to reach out to the neediest communities and those most at risk, providing necessary assistance, and developing meaningful initiatives.

    We can become the necessary hand of help to those who appear to have become abandoned…the many Nigerians in the North who seem to have fallen through the proverbial cracks …we are here to help!

    As our Great Nation marks the Centennial anniversary of her amalgamation, there is much need for introspection.

    This generation, and the one before it, is in many ways the joint custodians of the nation’s destiny, just as the several generations preceding us have been. Although 100 years has passed, it is fair to say we should be further along the path of progress than we currently are. Whilst we cannot change the past, it is within our power to affect the future…and we must.

    We must rise to the challenge of dedicating ourselves, without compromise, to building a nation that is fit for purpose, a Nigeria where hope triumphs over fear.

    We must stand up and speak out on behalf of the Northern Christians who cannot be heard above the political clamour. It is our responsibility to speak out for them – and to speak truth to power.

    So, yes, we do need a national conference.

    While the technicalities of it being “sovereign” or otherwise continue to be debated, it is clear that policy and governance can only accurately represent the people when their needs, hopes and fears are understood, listened to and acted upon.

    We at NOSCEF are determined to be that strong voice for the Northern Christian community and to ensure it is understood, listened to and acted on, when and where it counts.

    So, let me say clearly, loudly, strongly, to all those, elected and otherwise, who claim a leadership role in our land: We will protect and defend the interests of Nigerian Christians in the North of the country.

    We will provide help when and where necessary to that constituency.

    We will promote unity and peace across denominational lines in the region.

    And we will galvanise consensus on political, social and sectarian issues in the interest of Nigerians in general and Northern Christians in particular.

    Because we, Northern Christians, are powerful by virtue of our numbers even though we remain a threatened people in our land. Our voice must and will be heard. Our interests must and will be respected.

    I am just a Nigerian who loves his country. A Christian who believes in a great and mighty God and a servant sent to serve the people of Northern Nigeria. But I profoundly believe it may fall to us to be the generation that makes the difference.

    The question is whether we are ready to stand up, to speak out, to make – to be – the difference our nation needs.

    Because Nigeria is the only country where together we can pursue justice and equity for all Nigerians; the only place where together we can rebuild our education systems to truly develop Nigeria’s human capital, and design our health services to protect Nigeria’s people; and the only country where, by ending violence in our society, bring law and order to every community and eradicating corruption across our state, we can together bequeath to the generations to come, a truly better Nigeria.

    So, let us join with those who would build a greater nation and speak out against those who would tear it down. Now is the time to stand up for our country. Now is the time to speak out for our people. Now is the time to shoulder our responsibility.

    • Phillips, chairman of the Northern Christian Elders Forum(NOCEF), delivered this at the 59th TEKAN General Assembly in Benue State

     

  • At a time like this

    At a time like this

    If any era in Nigeria’s history qualified as one of heady optimism, it was the time leading to the inauguration of the Second Republic.

    The wounds of the civil war had healed faster than most people expected. Petrodollars accrued to the national exchequer faster than the authorities could figure out what to do with the new wealth. Biafra had provided powerful intimations of what black humanity can achieve when pursuing common purpose; a re-united Nigeria, home of the largest aggregation of black humanity, was going to take its rightful place in the global community, propelled by the dynamic leadership of Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo.

    Nigerians everywhere walked tall. Those studying abroad, most of them on government scholarships, rushed back on completion of their programmes, believing not only that home was where they belonged but that it was where their future lay. The Naira was worth almost two U.S. dollars. The economy was expanding, and jobs were there for the taking.

    In short, a future that would be marked by prosperity at home and major influence abroad was splendidly visible and clearly attainable.

    The 1979 Constitution, the fundamental law of the Second Republic, reflected the big thinking of that era, the planning for and investing in future political greatness, what with the American-style presidency and other institutions of state, just as a sprawling bureaucracy had planned for and invested in the nation’s future economic greatness.

    Framed by a team boasting some of the nation’s best and brightest, the Constitution was as bold and innovative as the times demanded, and just as comprehensive. It left nothing to chance.

    One of its more notable innovations, which has been attributed in the main to the per-eminent legal scholar Ben Nwabueze, was encapsulated in a Council of State composed of the President and the Vice President, all former presidents or heads of state, all former federal chief justices, the president of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, all state governors, and the Federal Attorney-General.

    Its remit, re-stated in the 1999 Constitution, is to advise the President with respect to his duties on a wide range of subjects in general, and on issues relating to the maintenance of public order in particular “when asked to do so.”

    This latter qualification makes it clear that the Council is an advisory body, pure and simple, and that it meets at the pleasure or convenience of the nation’s President. But it does not render it otiose.

    The underlying assumption was that the ex-officio members of the Council would be men and women who, having given of their best to their country, would stay splendidly above the fray and would never again seek elective office nor descend into the pit of partisanship. Thus, their good faith would never be in doubt.

    In a proper setting, the Council would be the repository of the nation’s collective wisdom and experience, a fount of inspiration, a moral force. It would be the body to turn to when the country is buffeted by strife and uncertainty – the very kind of period Nigeria is going through now.

    The nation is paralysed on practically every front. The ruling PDP is in disarray and scheming desperately to hold on to power. The economy is reported to be growing by leaps and bounds, but the nation slips farther and farther down the international misery index. Power supply remains fitful, impervious to the magic wand of privatisation.

    Interstate highways remain dangerously cratered. Youth unemployment, already alarmingly high, is soaring. Fully one-fourth of the crude oil lifted from our shores is stolen, and record-keeping of what is not stolen is scandalously shoddy.

    The immediate future promises only more of the same.

    And at the top, diffidence reigns. Not even the most fervent chants of Transformation can drown out the din of the rank innocence, the utter bewilderment up there.

    It is precisely at a time like this that the Council of State should be deliberating and helping to chart a way forward. However, that very concept has turned out to be another instance in the nation’s life of how a beautiful theory was murdered by a gang of brutal facts.

    The higher echelon of the Council today is not composed of the kind of people the framers of the 1979 Constitution had in mind – elder statesmen whose moral force would flow from exemplary rectitude and distinguished service; persons who would stay splendidly above the fray and would never again seek elective office nor descend into the pit of partisanship.

    General Yakubu Gowon, forever radiating goodwill, would pray and pray but nothing would change. Former president Obasanjo could just take over the proceedings to deliver another blistring missive. Shehu Shagari would turn up more from habit than conviction. General Muhammadu Buhari, still chafing from the outcome of the last presidential election, will not attend a meeting called by a person he regards as a usurper.

    General Babangida says he has finally given up trying to return to power, but he is nothing if not calculating. What example or inspiration can anyone expect from Ernest Shonekan? General Abdulsalami Abubakar is preoccupied tending to the vast fortune he acquired in just one year in the saddle and shopping around for more.

    The state governors could turn the meeting into a forum for settling once and for all – by fisticuffs if necessary – the lingering puzzle of which number is bigger: 19 or 16?

    It is therefore understandable that President Goodluck Jonathan is in no hurry to convene a meeting of the Council, as some of its statutory members are urging him to do. He is not constitutionally obliged to do so. To convene the Council in the present charged atmosphere would be the closest thing to political suicide. I doubt whether a meeting would serve any useful purpose.

    But the drift cannot continue. Dr Jonathan must move quickly to arrest it by reaching out beyond his present inner circle to enlist help from disinterested men and women of undoubted goodwill and sound judgment, people who can tell him what he needs to know rather than what they think he would like to hear.

    Meanwhile, it would help enormously if he travelled less, listened more, and devoted more time to the serious reading that improves the mind and enlarges vision.

  • Fatal attractions

    Fatal attractions

    Since his “original sin”, of opportunistic suspension against Justice Isa Ayo Salami, retired president of the Court of Appeal, President Goodluck Jonathan appears continuously drawn to the fatal attraction of essaying constitutional impunity; and see if it would stick.

    It stuck with Justice Salami, though since the jurist retired with his honour intact, the president should have known his victory was pyrrhic.

    This is because perpetrators of injustice almost always fall victims of their own machinations. Take the president’s collapsing Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    Time was, when PDP would actively lure sitting governors and legislators from other parties, and declare the illicit lure the height of patriotism and political nobility, since the “biggest party in Africa” was the law, and the law was the “biggest party in Africa”.

    But the same PDP is now whining like caned dogs, after being forced to swallow its own specially brewed impunity!

    Or take the president’s estranged godfather, former President Olusegun Obasanjo. At the height of his presidential impunity, PDP was Obasanjo and Obasanjo was PDP.

    After the collapse of the third term gambit; and after the imposition, willy-nilly, of the health-challenged Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the czar got his party to purposely amend its constitution to make the chair of the PDP Board of Trustees the exclusive preserve of former presidents from the party — a euphemism for Obasanjo himself!

    But see how the old lion has now turned prolific public letter writer, just to retain a toehold on the party! Verily, verily I say unto you, to parody that famous Biblical phrasing, impunity all too soon consumes its own children!

    Still, neither PDP’s plight nor Obasanjo’s would appear to have weighed much on the president’s mind, in his tango with Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

    This Day reported President Jonathan phoning Mallam Sanusi; and literarily barked that he resigned his office forthwith, for allegedly leaking, to the former president, the letter alleging US$ 49.8 billion “missing” from the Federation Account.

    An apparently miffed Sanusi reportedly called the president’s bluff; adding that only a presidential request, backed by two-thirds majority of the Senate, could abridge his fixed five-year term.

    Again, the president had blundered into the myth that the Nigerian president was the globe’s most formidable Leviathan. He could well be. But anytime he strays outside the law, he becomes a Samson shorn of his divine locks!

    If the President-CBN Governor face-off is a short-and-sharp defeat of impunity, the recurring Rivers crisis is a chain of defeats, but with impunity, fired by “federal might”, always bouncing back.

    Is it then a case of the proverbial tortoise in the Yoruba folklore, that swore never to return from a journey until he was disgraced?

    Ironically, the Jonathan Presidency’s apparent fixation with the Rivers crises bears uncanny resemblance to Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s fatal attraction to the Western Region crisis in the First Republic.

    By precipitating anomie in Rivers, maybe to politically profit from the ensuing anarchy, might the Jonathan presidency be working towards imposing a state of emergency to get rid of Governor Chibuike Amaechi, just as the Balewa government contrived one out of nothing to politically liquidate Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the rump of his Action Group (AG)? And after emergency, what?

    Of course, President Jonathan denies everything. Even his spouse, Dame Patience Jonathan, denies all. But incontrovertible facts point to presidential complicity, by commission or by omission, in the sordid affair.

    For starters, how come Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of Police (CP) whose tenure the Rivers looming anarchy birthed with, appears untouchable? Neither the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) nor the president is willing or able to touch him, despite his politicising the police, and baiting anarchy in the state he is paid to secure.

    Then, Evans Bipi and his claim as “Speaker” — a claim so comical, if it were not so tragic! But then if in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, the president of the Federal Republic could declare 16 greater than 19, what stops Bipi from declaring six greater than 26?

    And to think the so-called “Speaker” was product of a failed legislative coup which main victim, the battered Michael Okechukwu Chinda, is still probably abroad on medical tourism! Where is Bipi getting his Dutch courage from?

    And then, the Rivers chief presidential storm trooper, Nyesom Wike, Jonathan’s minister, with his Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI), fighting for every inch of the political space, with a colluding police behind him. All three, Mbu, Bipi and Wike, are unfazed Jonathan sympathisers and votaries of his wife.

    Incidentally, Mbu just claimed his latest scalp in Senator Magnus Abe, a Save Rivers Movement (SRM) kingpin, sitting senator and Amaechi sympathiser, shot by Mbu’s police on January 12 and flown abroad for treatment. Hear Mbu crow on the senator’s felling: “If we used live bullets,” The Nation quoted him, “you know the implication. If a live bullet hits your hand, it will shatter the hand and if it hits the neck, the person is gone.”

    Abe and co should learn the grim lesson: while Wike’s GDI has an unfettered charter to prowl, SRM, in Mbu’s police state, would do so at fatal risk! And for starry-eyed Amaechi supporters, it could be worse next time round — when rubber bullets become real ones!

    That goes back to the Balewa-Jonathan parallel: how the one misused, and the other is misusing, state coercion for partisan ends.

    In Sir Abubakar’s case, the late prime minister had ethno-political motives to run Awo and his AG out of town, though the famed “golden voice” was himself regarded a gentleman. But all that nobility vanished with his Northern People’s Congress (NPC) agenda to crush Awo and his AG. But the principal federal players back then got buried under their own impunity.

    In Jonathan’s case, it would appear some strange spousal fealty, that seems to have dimmed presidential faculty on how far the impunity can go.

    Still, spousal folly has buried many. The fearsome Samson became a Philistine jelly because he ensnared himself with Delilah. The wise Solomon, in uxoriousness, ploughed the ultimate in folly. The Roman Mark Anthony, for Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, forfeited his life and share of the Roman Empire.

    And in 1936, British King Edward VIII abdicated his throne for the warm bosoms of American Wallis Simpson, a serial divorcee. He enjoyed that warmth for 35 years. But the stiff price was his and his descendants’ renunciation of the British throne.

    To be sure, the Jonathan camp are no devils any more than the Amaechi camp are saints. But to unleash state organs as political vendetta, especially on a state government constituted by law in a federation, is tantamount to treason.

    Dr. Jonathan is a learned man; a logical adult who knows the consequences of his choice. Still, the easy attraction of impunity in Rivers is dangerous. It might yet turn fatal!

    On Rivers then, Jonathan has the First Republic Western Region misadventure to profit from. He can learn from history — or be consumed by it!

  • GEJ vs. SLS!

    GEJ vs. SLS!

    By now, Nigerians must be sufficiently alarmed at latest turn in events over the ‘missing’ $49 billion. By this, I do not mean the frenetic pace of book reconciliation said to have brought the figure to $10.8 billion, or even the more shocking attempt by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to pass off the $10.8 billion as routine “expenses”. Rather, I am talking of the reported altercation between President Goodluck Jonathan and the rambunctious Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

    The story is that the President ordered – on phone – the CBN governor to hand in his letter of resignation. The latter, who had all along indicated his intention to proceed on his terminal leave effective March, had, according to the reports yet to be denied by the authorities, pointedly told the President that he would not be stampeded out of office. As if to give flesh to the story, the CBN governor would later be reported as convoking a ‘family meeting’ where he told his staff that he would now be staying put until the very last day of his term – in June!

    Understandably, opinions would remain divided over the question of whether Sanusi’s continuing stay in the office was still tenable in the aftermath of the finding by the reconciliation team that the ‘missing’ money was nowhere the $49 billion claimed in Sanusi’s September letter. Now, I have also heard that the letter was actually leaked to embarrass the President. The argument of course continues to go forth and backwards on the propriety of the government banker ‘squealing’ on the same government.

    Let me state that these are unusual times. It requires extraordinary times for the government’s top banker to write to the President alleging a whopping discrepancy of nearly $50 billion in the nation’s finances without the benefit of a formal acknowledgement of the latter for nearly the whole of three months. And more extraordinarily – we have since found out that the top banker didn’t even get his sums right before putting pen to paper on a subject that should ordinarily be within his remit!

    More intriguingly, now that the letter marked – KIV by the President– has now become the hot potato in street corners, the President appears to have resolved to kick the butt of the inveterate squealer – as against those of the outrageously inept, figure-juggling gate-keepers in the NNPC!

    No doubt, there is a tribe out there who would swear that Sanusi was disrespectful to the person and the office of the President. To this tribe, I guess it’s no use seeking to persuade them – or anyone for that matter – to be sober in their appraisal of the situation; not now after what is perceived to be Sanusi’s latest insolence against the person of the President. I guess its part of the notion of the Nigerian Presidency as the most powerful one on the face of the earth – something I describe as the Kabiyesi syndrome. It sums up to the notion of an all-knowing, unchallengeable institution, an illusion that continues to be sold and bought by many Nigerians.

    In this, I was drawn to re-read the typically illuminating piece by my brother and colleague, Segun Ayobolu with the title Transformational Power of the Nigerian presidency published December 28 last year. Although the subject was on the potentially transformative power of the office when properly deployed; he drew clear examples from the nation’s recent experience to illustrate how it has often been deployed more like a force for evil – rather than good. Today, when Nigerians talk about the power of the number one office, they hardly ever do so in the sense of the intendments of the constitution but in the context of wilting institutions or what is now the penchant by the incumbent to press state institutions in the service of ignoble causes. Yet, it is to the credit of the framers of the nation’s constitution that they actually inserted enough safeguards to guard against arbitrary use of power and to ensure that actors play by the rules.

    Much as the President’s ego may have been ruffled by the Sanusi indiscretion, he and his advisers ought to know that he cannot remove the CBN governor by executive fiat. I don’t think there is any dispute as to where the ultimate power resides. The CBN Act is explicit enough. Section 11(2)9F): “A person shall not remain a Governor, Deputy Governor or Director of the Bank if he is removed by the President – provided that the removal of the Governor shall be supported by two-thirds majority of the Senate praying that he be so removed”.

    Now, the danger of the misadventure of the past week is that the aura and authority of the office may have been damaged irreparably. More worrisome is that the two outsized egos would not give up until one side is thoroughly vanquished. And just when you begin to wonder what the whole fuss is about, you are reminded that it is not about getting people to account for the $10.8 billion which the creative fellows in the NNPC insist we pass to their imprest account, or the needed overhaul of the shambolic public finance system under which a corporation does as it pleases with the commonwealth.

    No; it’s as simple as GEJ vs. SLS!

    Where do we go from here? If you ask me, I’ll just say that the President blew the chance big time. Sanusi’s suspension – an extra-constitutional step by the way – may please the presidency’s hounds so ready to draw blood. May we also remind them there is something described as the rule of unanticipated behaviour in power relations? How about stoking a fire you can never accurately predict the extent of its conflagration?

    Have I canonised Saint Sanusi? Far from it. If you ask me, I think the whole thing smacks of disorderly conduct on his part. Why would the man not disappear after the extravagant goof if not for the mortal sin of impudence? So, he does not want to be disgraced from office? Since when did hubris become a badge of honour? And where is honour here: staying put when you are clearly unwanted? Since when did Sanusi begin to worry about his legacy of double standards? Is it now that his hypocritical posturing is being laid bare as his exit nears?