The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Questions on Abia Workers Award

    It was David Gemmell in his book Shield Of Thunder who said: “I may be stupid, as you say, to believe in honour and friendship and loyalty without price. But these are virtues to be cherished, for without them we are no more than beasts roaming the land.”

    The above aphorism is axiomatic. One cannot attract friendship, honour and loyalty with paying price for it. The price for it is personal sacrifice and selfless service to humanity at all the time. That is what attracts an honour to be cherished by all. It was this sacrifice that Governor Theodore Orji has made right from his days as a public servant and still making now as governor of Abia State. With outstanding track record in public service that spanned for over two decades, Governor Orji on assumption of office in 2007 made the reformation of the state civil service top priority. This was not only because the sector was his primary constituency, but because he had always known and believed that a strong and refined civil service is a pillar for successful and good administration.

    Appreciating Orji’s remarkable achievements in the state civil service and other sectors of the economy, the Abia civil and public service workforce under the aegis of Consolidated Abia State Public Service (CASPS) recently rolled out drums in grand style in Umuahia, the state capital to honour of Governor Orji for job well done.

    The event which was well-attended by the workers in the state took off with an interdenominational service and ended with an award of “Icon Of Public Service” to Governor Orji by the workers.

    One may ask or wonder: what has the governor done for the civil servants in the state to deserve such honour which is rare and unprecedented in government/civil servants relationship in the country?

    Having been part of the civil/public service before becoming governor in 2007, there is no doubt that Orji has deep knowledge of the sector and the problems bedevilling it.  Tackling the rot and internal squabbles orchestrated by its politicization and lack of transparency, Orji’s government brought the core values of merit, transparency and professionalism into the service.

    To start with, several workers that were due for promotion over the years, but had their promotions stunted for political reasons were expressly and meritoriously promoted and paid their entitlements without minding whose ox is gored. Those due for retirement, but have continued to manipulate their records to remain in the service illegally were properly investigated, retired and paid their entitlements without delay or victimization.

    Workers in the state started attending periodic training and workshops that were being sponsored by the state government to acquire new skills and competences to improve on service delivery. With the national minimum wage of N18,000 signed into law, some state governments across the country could not pay their workers the minimum wage till date giving flimsy excuses of lack of fund. The Abia government even though not among the richest states in the country, started paying her workers N21,000 as minimum wage as against N18,000 national minimum wage.  The state government tackled the menace of ghost workers which was an age-long tradition and a conduit pipe in the service by introducing compulsory biometric data capturing of all workers in the state civil service. Major beneficiaries of the rot in the service who wanted the status quo to be maintained tried everything to resist the reforms by inciting other workers against the innovation.

    But the state government remained undaunted, and insisted on the compulsory biometric data capture of all the workers to eradicate the ghost workers’ syndrome and leakages. It was during the process that the state government discovered that in different council areas of the state not less than 1, 727 workers were ghost workers. These were numbers of workers that did not show up or report for capturing during the verification exercise that lasted for months, whereas they have been receiving salaries and allowances for years from the state government.

    According to the Chairman of the Biometric Data Implementation Committee and Chief of Staff to the governor, Cosmos Ndukwe, Aba South Council area with 245 ghost workers topped the list, followed by Isiala Ngwa South with 153, and Osisioma Ngwa with 138 ghost workers.

    Others were Ikwuano, 117; Umuahia North, 123; Umuahia South, 101; Isiala Ngwa North, 92; Umunneochi, 65; while Ugwuanagbo Local Government Area had the least with 28 ghost workers.

    The development also tackled the problem of truancy in the civil service as most workers especially in the commercial city of Aba before now only come to collect salary at the end of the month without working. Today workers in the state receive their salaries and entitlements as at when due. The state government has also started housing scheme for workers at Amuba Housing Estate where several houses have been constructed by government to be occupied by the workers on the owner/occupier basis. Payments for the houses will span for some years to enable the workers to meet up with the payment and their other financial obligations.

    Before the coming into office of the present government, workers in the state have no befitting and functional secretariat to operate from. State ministries were scattered in different makeshift locations in the state. The old workers’ secretariat that was built many years ago was dilapidated and uninhabitable. That was pitiful working condition of an average worker in the state then.

    But immediately after Governor Orji won his second term in office, the state government embarked on the rehabilitation of the old workers secretariat and the construction of new ultra modern workers secretariat with modern facilities. Presently, rehabilitation has been completed at the old workers secretariat and is occupied, while the new one which is a five-storey building with an elevator and other modern facilities is nearing completion and would be soon commissioned. Since the present government came on board in the state, workers have not for once embarked on strike for any reason. The government has been able to create an atmosphere of mutual understanding and harmonious relationship thanks to Governor Orji’s pragmatic leadership approach and utmost concern for workers’ welfare all the time.

    So clearly the workers’ award to Gov. Orji is well deserved and befitting, because his government has done well for workers in the state.

    • Dr. Uwa, a medical practitioner wrote from Aba, Abia State

     

  • When philanthropy turns lethal

    When philanthropy turns lethal

    Philanthropy runs deep in the Saraki family.

    Its patriarch, himself the Oloye, Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki, was a legendary giver. You always knew when he was in his country home in Ilorin GRA, to take a break from his endless trips abroad in search of new deals, to nourish and consolidate old business, or to undergo medical treatment.

    Large crowds would gather on the precincts of the expansive villa – old men, old women, young men, young women, pregnant women, women carrying their babies on their backs, children, people in all sorts and conditions of distress, some of them from the crack of dawn – waiting for the man they reverentially called Oloye to emerge from the innards, hold court, and hand out gifts with his accustomed generosity.

    They would go home with all manner of gifts – cash, food parcels, painkillers, and fabrics. Those familiar with this routine said no one ever left empty-handed or sorely disappointed.

    The next day the crowds would gather again, and the next, until Oloye left town to attend to his sprawling business interests across the globe.

    This philanthropy was the root of Saraki’s phenomenal success as vote harvester and political king-maker in Kwara State. If you agreed to his terms, he endorsed you for whatever office you were seeking, even if you did not belong in the same political party. And at election time, he delivered far more votes than you needed for victory.

    The formula failed him only once, when he tried to make his daughter Senator Gbemisola Saraki governor, just as his son Bukola was completing his second term on the job and had positioned himself to succeed the sister, aforementioned, in the Senate.

    To be fair to Bukola Saraki, he had stated for the record that it would be “immoral” for his sister to succeed him as governor. Still, it would be hard to praise him for high-mindedness. For, it was immoral for his sister to succeed him as state governor, what made it moral for him to succeed her as Senator representing Kwara Central?

    In the end, it was not morality that settled the matter. Oloye Saraki’s deeply conservative base, Ilorin Emirate, was simply not ready for a woman governor, even if that woman was his daughter. Her candidature never got off the ground. The philanthropy did not flag. But this time, the votes were just not there for the harvesting.

    His failing health deteriorated, and he died without enthroning another king, and without knowing for sure whether what happened to his daughter’s governorship bid was merely a setback or the end of his hegemonic hold on Ilorin politics.

    It may well be, as some detractors have been saying in light of the collapse of the family’s Société General Bank and with regard to some other financial transactions under investigation, that much of what was fuelling Oloye Saraki’s philanthropy was OPM – Other People’s Money.

    Even if this is indeed the case, we must still give him high praise. For, how many of the tens of thousands of Nigerians living the good life on OPM ever think of giving back anything, much less giving back on such a large and sustained scale as the Oloye?

    Senator Saraki has been carrying on in the tradition of his father, handing out gifts to the less privileged, especially during Muslim festivals. But in his hands, what used to be an orderly occasion, festive even, has turned not merely riotous but positively lethal. Not once, not twice, but three times now have such occasions degenerated into primal stampedes in which dozens were trampled to death or suffered grave injuries.

    Last week, 20 persons were reported to have died in the stampede for a piece of the Sallah gifts the Senator was handing out at his residence in Ilorin. At least as many persons were injured or fainted.

    This macabre spectacle was a reprise of a similar occurrence on May 27, 2011. By one estimate, no fewer than 10 persons died in Ilorin in the stampede for rice and other items Dr Saraki was distributing at Mandate House, his campaign headquarters.

    In November 2010, at least 11 persons had lost their lives in similar circumstances. The state government had swung quickly into a damage-control mode and put the number of fatalities at four. But that is still four persons too many, for an occasion designed to provide succour to those in distress.

    Senator Saraki has rightly suspended all such events and issued a message of condolence to the relations of the dead and the injured. But that is cold comfort. He should not embark on another philanthropic outing until he has devised fail-safe measures to ensure that those who gather to receive gifts do not end up trampled to death or maimed.

    There is no doubt that he means well and cares deeply. Despite his solicitude and that of others who are ever so willing to give out of their abundance, we shall always have the distressed with us. His challenge is to find a way of dispensing his philanthropy that is safe and respectful of the dignity of the people who flock to his home from necessity or desperation.

    Ours is not yet a litigious society, the type in which a man who crashed the car he had stolen from a parking lot sought damages from for his extensive injuries from the car’s owner on the ground that if the owner had kept his car in a good working condition, the accident would not have occurred and he, the petitioner – and car thief —would still have the use of his legs.

    Or the type in which the driver of a recreational vehicle that crashed while he was away from the steering wheel sought compensation from its manufacturers on the grounds that nowhere was a warning displayed that you could not leave the steering wheel while the vehicle was in motion to make coffee in the kitchenette at the rear.

    Both petitions failed, I should add. But they go to show what can happen in a litigious society. Nothing is too frivolous, too outlandish, to bring before the courts.

    In such a setting, Senator Saraki would now be drowning in an avalanche of wrongful-death lawsuits brought by relations of the casualties seeking hefty damages on the perfectly reasonable ground that he knew or should have known from experience that a stampede was likely to occur for the gifts he was dispensing, but had failed to take measures to forestall it; in short, that the deaths and injuries resulted from his negligence.

    But ours, fortunately for him, is not that kind of society – at least, not yet.

     

  • Wages of hubris

    It is not unlikely that some Nigerians would pass off the controversies surrounding the purchase of two choice BMW cars by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) as needless storm over nothing. I must confess that few of those I shared my thoughts with on the matter in the course of the weekend couldn’t understand what the matter was let alone be bothered.

    For some, the problem was the newshounds. Supposing the purchase was captured in the NCAA budget? How are we to know that the $1.6 million (N225 million) cost was outrageous? Do we have evidence that procurement rules were not followed? And should these suffice to stoke the furore that we have seen since the news broke?

    In any case, isn’t that the way the business of governance is conducted in these parts?

    I understand why many Nigerians, long inured to malfeasances by public officials would see nothing wrong with a minister directing a parastatal under her watch to purchase her fancy auto for her exclusive use. The development, in my view, not only underlies the grave crisis of values governing public service, but is at the heart of the crisis of governance.

    I have taken good look at the rationalisation offered by Joe Obi, Stella Oduah’s Special Assistant on Media few days after the scandal broke. It provided a good window into the hubris that has become the driver of governance, a measure of the extent to which the cancer gnawing slowly at the heart of the nation’s soul has come to metastasise.

    “Yes” offered Obi, “some security vehicles were procured for the use of the office of the honourable minister in response to the clear and imminent threat to her personal security and life following the bold steps she took to reposition the sector”.

    And he would further supply the context: “When she came on board as the minister, she inherited a lot of baggage in terms of the concession and lease agreements in the sector, which were clearly not in the interest of the government and people of Nigeria. And so, she took bold steps and some of these agreements were reviewed and some were terminated, and these moves disturbed some entrenched interests in the sector, and within this period, she began to receive some imminent threats to her life; therefore, the need for the vehicles”.

    And as if to reassure Nigerians of his boss’ good faith, he asserts: “It should be noted that these vehicles are not personal vehicles and were not procured in the name of the honourable minister; they are utility vehicles and are for the office of the minister, and if she leaves the office, she will not be taking the vehicles along with her.”

    In this, Obi is at least more truthful than Yakubu Datti, the so-called coordinating spokesperson for aviation parastatals who, without thinking, simply dismissed the report as lacking in substance – something beneath his principal, who owned barges and depots before accepting the lowly job of minister of the republic!

    Do you, dear reader, detect the hubris a la Obi? Note the phrase “imminent threat to her personal security and life following the bold steps she took to reposition the sector”; add to it the claim of inherited “baggage in terms of the concession and lease agreements in the sector, which were clearly not in the interest of the government and people of Nigeria” and the picture of what is the minister’s oftentimes misguided if not entirely misdirected activism comes revealed.

    So, for personal security, a lone, reform-minded minister would be rewarded with prized toys of two bullet-proof BMW 760 Li cars worth $1.6 million drawn from the coffers of cash-starved NCAA, cars that some say should have cost no more than $40,000 apiece! That is how to run a self-help republic!

    How about the minister’s two-pronged self-help of shunting aside the justice ministry and the police in her self-consuming messianic mission to change the face of aviation for good? How about casting herself as lone star in the cabinet of dunderheads? What does it say about self-help being acceptable when public funds are involved?

    The problem here is that the minister merely acted in ways typical of public officers who have come to see parastatals as their pot of fortune. Don’t forget, this particular minister has never been known to be a fan of due process. If you recall, she it was who jettisoned all known niceties of due process and financial regulations in pursuit of her dream of airport modernisation? Does anyone now remember her tango with aviation stakeholders over unilateral expenditure of BASA funds outside the strictures of parliamentary appropriation? Is the minister not simply treading a familiar path here?

    Now the onus is on her to explain the utmost secrecy surrounding the transaction and whether or not it was it breach of the procurement law. Clearly, Nigerians are interested in knowing the approving authority considering that the amount involved ordinarily exceed ministerial approval limits. It would be interesting to know if the purchases were done with the approval of the President or the Federal Executive Council.

    None of these of course compare with the most bizarre rationalisation by Fola Akinkuotu, the Director General of NCAA at the so-called press conference in Abuja last week. Now, the NCAA-DG does not know the cost of the armoured vehicle; yet he affirms that “the cars are operational vehicles used in the various operations of the NCAA in transporting the minister and aviation related foreign dignitaries as part of its operations”.

    Armoured vehicles to transport the minister and visiting foreign dignitaries? What rules under the IATA protocol mandates NCAA to provide bullet-proof vehicles to visiting dignitaries? What else does the NCAA chief know? Has he ever heard about ministerial approval limits? By the way, how did the NCAA pull off the transaction in the absence of a functional board? Were the processes done under the sole authority of the minister?

    I think the aviation industry is in more trouble than we can even begin to imagine.

    So where do we go from here? Those expecting a tremor will be disappointed as nothing will happen; not to a member of the Amazon-triumvirate at the drivers’ seat of the Jonathan administration. As sure as daylight, the hysteria will peter out until another expensive distraction surfaces to engage us. That’s how it’s always been. That is how it would remain.

  • The Oba, his libido and the law

    On October 8, an Osun high court discharged and acquitted Oba Adebukola Alli, the Alowa of Ilowa-Ijesa, Osun State, of rape charges. But the same court lampooned the accused for sexual rascality that brought shame to himself, his family and his kingdom.

    The court said the Oba was morally culpable. But by law, he was in the clear: it had insufficient evidence to nail him for rape. If indeed the law is codified morality, then that “dual” judgment leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

    The court lamented the absence, as damning evidence, of stained bed sheets (which the accused would have gleefully surrendered?), torn underpants and medical reports confirming forced penetration – and possible bruises – to prove rape. It then heavily descended on the Police, accused to have bungled the investigation.

    So, after all said and done, much less have been said than done. The alleged rapist is in the clear. The alleged victim is far from justice, rocked by emotional trauma, even after the rigour and humiliation of trial, at a stage during which the accused camp gleefully asked her to expose (if not to the open court, then to the judge in chambers!) her private part, to prove she was bruised! How callous can a judicial system be!

    What next then: is the coast clear for the next royal rapist – or any rapist at all – on the prowl? Or is the Nigerian court system still captive to the Kabiyesi syndrome of the Yoruba feudal era?

    The Kabiyesi, in Yoruba culture, is he who cannot be questioned. Indeed, he is next only to the gods, who themselves are next only to Olodumare, the Almighty.

    But, of course, that is the problem with feudalism! How can frail humans be invested with god-like privileges without something terrible giving?

    Indeed, history is replete with many a royal “unquestionable”, whose inability to question their libido landed them and their peoples in soup.

    In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Anthony lost his half of the Roman Empire – and his life – virtually on the laps of Cleopatra, the bewitchingly beautiful queen of Egypt.

    Loose libido was also central to the destruction of ill-fated Troy. A Trojan prince, Paris, had seduced Helen (some sources suggested he actually raped her), wife of Spartan King Menelaus and most beautiful woman in antiquity; and eloped with her to his native Troy, sparking a Greek military expedition that eventually erased Troy.

    The whole of the Yoruba country quaked with Kiriji War (1877-1893) because someone exercised his libido with impunity. Ajele Oyepetun, the sitting Ibadan viceroy at Okemesi, had raped the wife of Fabunmi, an Okemesi son and intrepid warrior, who promptly beheaded the Ajele for the forced cuckoldry and its terrible stains. That baited the Ibadan imperialists to war. Though that war ended in stalemate, it put an end to Ibadan military hegemony in Yorubaland.

    Oba Alli’s alleged rape mess therefore falls squarely within the compass of royal licentiousness. But the difference between then and now is that the law tries to avail every citizen – king or commoner – justice; and avert collective catastrophe from individual recklessness. It is doubtful, however, if the Osun judgment, in this rape case, has served anyone justice.

    Oba Alli was alleged to have raped Helen Okpara, 23, a youth corps member, posted to his Ilowa-Ijesa community on National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) assignment, on 25 March 2011, at the Oba’s Osogbo residence, at Rasco Housing Estate, Osogbo.

    The young woman alleged it was rape, since the Oba had allegedly been making passes at her. Besides, when the Oba started pressuring and threatening her, prelude to alleged rape, she sent panic text messages to her NYSC employers and her pastor, who also alerted the Police. The Police, however, declared the time too late to do anything. By the time the Police jerked themselves awake, the following morning, the poor girl’s goose was cooked. The errant Oba had had his way.

    But the Oba countered it was consensual coitus, since both allegedly consenting adults were lovers. He even claimed the girl enjoyed it while it lasted!

    The court believed the Oba. But even at that, its heart quaked with moral guilt, as it railed at the Oba’s immoral and disgraceful conduct. That was enough stain; for a royal father should protect every member of his community.

    But rape or not, the Oba’s conduct is most reprehensible. Helen was a youth corps member from another part of the country, the South East. Aside from the Federal Government and the NYSC, Oba Alli, as traditional ruler, should have been her closest protector. Yet, his loose libido led him to embrace the infamy of alleged rape. How would the Oba and his community have felt if the reverse had been the case; and an Ilowa-Ijesa daughter, at the receiving end?

    Even if the Oba was sexually wayward, how does one justify his Ilowa-Ijesa community’s callousness during the trial? Newspapers reported a segment of the community mobilising pupils to demonstrate, near the court premises, in Osogbo: demonising the alleged victim, lionising the alleged rapist. How low can a community sink! And to think all that was done to intimidate the court!

    Just as well the Osun government frowned at that gross misconduct, threatening to punish the irresponsible teachers and community dealers (sorry, leaders!) behind that outrage. It should walk its talk; and do just that in full public glare.

    Oba Alli may not have been found guilty of rape. But the court proved and rebuked his sexual irresponsibility, which, to say the least, is a blight on his throne, which like Caesar’s wife, should be beyond reproach. If his community would tolerate such turpitude, then it is the bounden duty of the surrounding communities, nay, other Osun traditional rulers, to ostracise this monarch whose un-royal behaviour gives the Yoruba monarchy a bad name.

    The Osun government, on its own part, should appeal the case to secure justice for all. But even as the process is on, it should formally apologise to, and compensate Miss Okpara, on Oba Alli’s hideous behaviour. This is imperative to distance the state from this un-royal scandal.

    The NYSC authorities, on their own part, should insist on formal apology, from the Ilowa-Ijesa community; and a written commitment that no corps member would ever, in that community, suffer Miss Okpara’s trauma. Until these are done, it should not send new corps members to Ilowa-Ijesa.

    As for the law, it should shape up. A monarch with rampant libido is no roguish but fictional Baroka outwitting Lakunle for village jewel, Sidi, in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel. He is rather a real danger to himself, his throne, his people and his culture.

    Such putative rapists should be nailed and thrown into the slammer where they belong. It is not enough for the court to morally wring its hands, while a probable rapist escapes the law.

     

  • Be careful with that conference!

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s acceptance of the National Conference/Dialogue on the 53rd Independence Day may be a Greek Gift. He was adamantly against it just a few months ago and so was Senator David Mark. For them both to make such a sudden and complete U-turn, makes the whole thing suspicious. If they plan to use it to cause some confusion toward the 2015 elections, then they better make another U-turn in the best interest of stability, as well as the existence of this country. If that is not the case, and I want to believe it is not, then they should only receive and widely publish the report of the committee just formed, but suspend all other actions on the conference until well after the 2015 elections. In fact, I would want such suggestion to come from the committee themselves. No such a conference or anything about it, besides the ad-hoc committee’s work, should take place before the elections.

    Better still, this government should hands off this matter, and leave it to people to organize their conference. I say this, not only because of the negative subterranean influence the government will certainly exert, but also because of the billions of naira that will be stolen in the name of the conference. President Jonathan should please pay more attention to the educational, health and infrastructural etc problems that bedevil the nation presently.

    The way this conference is being conceived by its initiators, as a negotiation forum between the various nationalities (that is, the tribes) of this country, will be a very difficult, if not impossible, conference to organize. First, they have to define who these nationalities are, and how they would elect or nominate their representatives. They also have to define the role of the civil society in all this, who they represent and how they should be nominated. I am sure also, that state and the federal governments, youth and women organizations would need to participate, and we cannot be sure whether the criteria they will use in nominating their delegates would be the same or on equal basis. God knows who else would demand to be represented!

    And, if you deny any of these groups and go for nomination of participants by some other means using other criteria, then the conference will not be properly representative, and will be dead on arrival. And, if you gather all those people listed above by whatever means, the confusion will be endless, and may even precipitate the unthinkable.

    And how do you protect the conference from a terrorist attacks?

    Or, may be the other alternative is to elect a new Constituent Assembly to debate the constitution and make the necessary amendments in the vital areas that concern most Nigerians. But then, some will say, “That is what the National Assembly is doing right now”. Or, they will say, “The National Assembly should convert itself into a Constituent Assembly, and do the job. Some nominated members from the civil society groups may be added to it to bridge some of the gaps of representation, and to allow some advocates to participate. And, they will add that, whatever they produce should then be put to a national referendum; and the new constitution will then be a truly peoples constitution. Even these suggestions, I am sure will be objectionable to the agitators of the Sovereign National Conference, whose real agendas are unknown.

    Many people have in the past said the question to be asked is, “do we want to remain as one country? If so, under what conditions?” What if this question when asked, the resounding answer is, “No?”

    Whether this type of risky questions will be asked and negative answers be given, it has to be warned that separating this country is not going to be an easy task. Any such attempt may land us into another war, in which the country will end up completely destroyed and millions killed.

    So, the best thing to do, is for the National Assembly, and any other groups to continue debating on what is really wrong with us? How do we make the necessary adjustments, structurally and politically, that will ensure we remain one in whatever form?

    We all know of a few matters that truly disturb and distort the minds of Nigerians, about the country and it’s remaining united.

    Many people feel completely dominated in their own states, by people from “other” places. We do not like to say this, but it is now important to say it. It is natural for people to feel this and resent it, and even become violent because of it. Even in Europe, we’ve just been hearing David Cameron of UK and Angela Merkel of Germany saying openly that multi-culturalism is not working; that it is dead. This is mostly because “foreigners” are beginning to dominate them and take away their jobs and their livelihoods. In the UK, for example, the Asians, Middle Easterners and East Europeans are the new middle-class. Almost all of the corner shops -dry cleaning, news agencies, green groceries, restaurants, food halls, even the traditional fish and chip shops are being taken by foreigners. Building works, house refurbishing, repairs and decorating by East Europeans. Even the pimps and their commodities are foreigners!

    In Italy, in Russia, in Burma, even in Britain and Australia, nationalist parties are springing up to challenge immigration and beat up or even kill immigrants! The world is becoming smaller, population growing at an incredibly fast rate, and resources getting meaner! The same thing is happening to us in Nigeria, because we still regard ourselves as foreigners to one another in our own country. We senselessly say bad things against each other, without thinking of the consequences to our national unity. For example, “northerners are useless, they are parasites etc. Or, the Igbos have dominated us. Or, the Yorubas alone don’t own Lagos, we built it. Or, it is our oil, or, it is our land, get out of it and so on. Everybody is on every other body’s nerves. Every body believes that his/her problems are caused by some one else, especially if that some one else is doing much better.

    It was not this bad before, even though there were signs of worry. Poverty is a very dangerous catalyst for violence and even war, because peaceful revolutions are rare. And, one of the most obvious cause of all these is the reckless corruption, the carelessness and the impunity in our country. People who should be condemned to the gallows are applauded. It is this poverty and frustration that are the enemies, not anything else.

    The choices for us are really few and difficult, may be even unnecessary if we can do the right thing. But, one choice that is a dangerous choice to make is to divide the country. But, even if that can be done, the same problems will persist in each of the new countries created. However, let us look at the to her choices open to us.

    First, revert to our four regions structure: The North, West, East and the Mid-West, and either remain Federal or choose to be Confederal. The latter is the beginning of dissolution. And who would say that there will be no demand to further break up the regions. Wasn’t that the reason the states were created, and there are still demands for more states?

    Second, abolish the states and revert to the old provincial structure and establish a parliamentary system of government. The parliamentarians of the majority party will tear themselves apart in choosing the leader to be the Prime Minister.

    Three, abolish the states and revert to autonomous local governments structure (as in the UK) and establish a parliamentary system of government – even bigger problem in the national parliament.

    Fourth, remain just as we are, but deal head-on with issues of domination, corruption, poverty and the distribution of the wealth of the country in a manner that is acceptable to all. We either agree that whatever belongs to us belongs to us all and share it equitably, or we may just as well choose any of the above. But the issue of domination will still be contentious. So long as we are in the same country, every Nigerian must be free in whatever part of the country he/she chooses to live.

    If we continue to allow any section of this country to wallow in poverty, people will continue to ask what the use of the Union is. I heard many northerners, for example, complaining that one of the reason they are in this dire situation is because some other people from other parts of the country live in their millions in the North, eating up space and resources of the North, while at the same time saying that the North is a parasite, and should not receive equitable share from the nation’s resources! That, whatever little they receive, they share it with other Nigerians living amongst them. They also say, northerners, especially in the South-east and South-south are not as well treated.

    In the same vain, other parts of the country have similar complaints, even if for a different reason. And, that is the reality in our country.

    It is all these treatable, but deliberately ignored complaints that land us in this situation. If only, we would find a way for the right people to lead us; to treat us equally; to ensure equal justice to all; to give every Nigerian a chance and equal opportunity and to feel at home and safe wherever in Nigeria; to share what God has endowed us with in an fair and acceptable way; to make us love one another and stop calling each other nasty names.. If only…

    And for those who advocate the separation of the country, they must remember that if that happens, even peacefully, then every body must go back to his/her country. How we implement that peacefully, is what the secessionists must think about.

     

    • Tofa, is former National Republican Convention presidential candidate in the 1993, presidential election.

     

     

     

     

  • So much to talk about!

    I got a very interesting response to my Independence anniversary piece titled The giant totters at 53 from Uncle Layi Ashadele in what appears to be his discomfiture with my diagnosis of Nigeria’s crisis of governance and by extension, development.

    Here is what the distinguished thespian wrote: “your piece makes a lot of sense under normalcy and proactive leadership. Under an inept entrepreneur, nothing is achieved in production; no matter the effectiveness of other factors of production. Even in the days of our fathers, only a few of them were in real terms literate but there was a common desire by even the least educated to led his flock well enough to better their lot. As Olatunji Dare pointed out in “Still planning and polling without facts”, the true population of Nigeria was premised on fraud by Britain at 1914 amalgamation; to lure the North into Nigeria’s nationhood and the trend has been consistently maintained to date. The military came to truncate the economy with ruthless stealing…remember IBB’s Gulf War windfall saga? What we need to survive is true federalism we had before independence… growth within capacity per block Shikena!

    Now, the piece to which Mr Ashadele referred did not anticipate President Goodluck Jonathan’s October 1 Greek Gift of a National Conference. It didn’t even pretend to any grand theorem on the Nigerian situation in any structured sense although I hinted in passing on the need to tinker with Nigeria’s dysfunctional architecture if only to ensure that the locked-in energies from Nigeria’s federating entities are released for development. Needless to state that I considered it an inescapable step towards national integration. I did of course raise serious worries about the absence of abiding values across the board not just as an inhibiting factor in the current tepid efforts to crank the knocked-down Nigerian machine to life, but as the bedrock without which any notion of future orderly society stands only a dime of a chance! How could I have imagined that our outsourced presidency was actually preparing a full course menu to re-engineer itself into relevance in the midst of what is probably the most comprehensive meltdown in governance ever witnessed in the annals of the republic!

    Have I taken a position on the National Conference yet? Not at this time; we are not even there yet! I believe that Nigerians will inevitably get to talk. And to be sure, it is now past debate that this iniquitous arrangement as unsustainable as it has become, can only engender needless attrition among component units of the Nigerian federation. And then to imagine that the present course is the ultimate path to mutually assured atrophy (MAD).

    But then, should anyone be carried away by the antics, or the latter-day manoeuvres of those who have suddenly found the need to “review the foundational principles that drive our action” only because the challenges of governance have overwhelmed them?

    Here, one must give it to the hordes of the President’s speech writers. It seems finally that their lines, not the delivery of their principal, are getting better particularly the song about the Pauline conversion to the national conference idea and then, the subsequent treatise on leadership accountability to the electors under representative democracy: “we are in a democracy and in a democracy, elected leaders govern at the behest of the citizenry. As challenges emerge, season after season, leaders must respond with best available strategies to ensure that the ship of state remains undeterred in its voyage.”

    Really? Since when? The trouble is that the President is coming to this awareness several years late. Where in the PDP manifesto is the idea of a national conference? How many of the current parties are sold on the conference idea? Are there consultations going on that Nigerians are not aware? Now, I cannot even recall the President mention the word “conference” while campaigning for our votes. Worse is that the President has not – at least up till this time – bothered to give Nigerians the benefit of the outline of his thoughts on how his administration intends to marry the conference outcome with the existing constitutional order.

    Will the outcome be in the form of recommendations, hence a bill for consideration by the National Assembly? If so, why not simply continue with the current process of reworking the constitution and save everyone the trouble of a rancorous talk that would not achieve anything in the end? And why should anyone trust this administration to treat the outcome of the conference as sacrosanct? And why shouldn’t Nigerians be suspicious particularly coming in the second half of the President’s current term?

    Perhaps, only the fat cats in the Presidency live in the illusion that the President has earned our trust, or that Nigerians believe that the charade is anything but the race towards 2015. As it is, it is not yet a question of half loaf being better than nothing; after all, a poisoned loaf is worth less than nothing.

    Here are few tips that the President may wish to consider if he truly desires to address some of the more manifest distortions in the fiscal arrangement and to galvanise development across the board.

    Let’s start with the sharing of the national revenue. Today, for every N100 that flows into the federation account, his federal behemoth takes a whopping N54 under the iniquitous distributive arrangement. That way, the 36 states and the federal capital territory get to share a meagre N24 – which comes to less than one naira per state for every N100 earned. Let him initiate a bill to the National Assembly aimed at reducing the awesome fiscal powers of the federal behemoth. How about allowing the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission to do its work for once? A good beginning is to move to slice the federal pie to 20 percent; apart from stripping the patronage-spinning Abuja machine of its awesome war-chest, it would surely be one step to reduce corruption and the fiscal brigandage at that level.

    I have not yet dealt with the mater of the incredibly opaque Nigerian National Oil Corporation which not only treats the nation’s daily oil receipts as unknown, but unknowable and the pervasive culture of corruption and indolence that the corporation has spawned in the nation’s life. How about dismantling the corporation block by block to stave the nation of its putrefaction?

    Such practical steps by the President would seem by far more immediate than the journey to the unknown that he seems set to lead us. That journey, if I may say, would still have to come later!

     

  • Re-positioning our universities: A modest proposal

    Re-positioning our universities: A modest proposal

    In the routine of daily life, nothing concentrates the mind like not knowing when the next paycheck is coming.

    That may well explain why the Federal Government has decided, after 100 days of fruitless negotiations, to stop the pay of striking university lecturers. Let them concentrate their minds on how they can transform the shabby system instead of carping about it in and out of season.

    If they needed any other inducement to focus their intellect on an agenda for transforming their campuses, I hope the spectacle of Her Excellency the First Lady of Nigeria (FLON), Dame Patience Fakabelemi Goodluck, decked out and looking stunningly resplendent in the doctoral regalia of South Korea’s Hansei University and soaking in all the high praise, supplied it.

    The Hansei citation described her generally as “the defender of the poor,” and more specifically as “a humanitarian who has dedicated her life to working for the less privileged in Nigeria, especially women and children.”

    It is a reflection on her modesty that she had journeyed to South Korea accompanied only by the wives of the governors of Benue and Ebonyi, the wives of the Chief of Army Staff and the Chief of Naval Staff, among some unnamed dignitaries. A person not given to her kind of modesty would have insisted of taking along the Minister of Education, the entire membership of the National Universities Commission, and the Committee of Vice Chancellors, as well as the Committee of University Registrars, plus the national executive of the National Association of Nigerian Students.

    With her accustomed humility and in the down-home style that becomes her so well, Mrs Jonathan told the convocation that she was “just doing her own thing,” not knowing that in faraway Asia, “everything was being noted.” And deeply appreciated, she should have added, unlike in her native country.

    Little wonder, then, that the doctorate encompassed the fields of Social Welfare as well as Administration – the one in recognition of her dedication to the cause of the poor and the underprivileged, and the other in acknowledgement of her expertise in matters bureaucratic, as evidenced by her appointment as a permanent secretary in the public service of Bayelsa State

    It was of course not the first time that Dame Patience would be honoured in that manner. Before the Hansei conferment, she already had three doctorates under her belt, according to the unofficial biographers; one from the alma mater that she and her husband Dr Goodluck Jonathan have in common, the University of Port Harcourt, and one from the Delta State University, Abraka.

    The third is from a university whose identity I could not establish with confidence at this writing.

    In their citations, the University of Port Harcourt and Delta State University also gave due recognition to Mrs Jonathan’s humanitarian and philanthropic exertions. But it all seemed so perfunctory. None of them was perceptive enough to describe her as “the defender of the poor.”

    Some people may see this approach as yet another instance of the prophetess being accorded less honour in her own domain than she deserves. I see it as emblematising the trouble with our universities and as reason for their stunted growth, their failure to register on the international index of great institutions of higher learning.

    That trouble can be summed up in one phrase: a failure of imagination.

    Is it not a crying shame, and a great scandal withal, that after more than three decades of First-ladyism in Nigeria and the vast opportunities it opened up for scholarly study and research, no Nigerian University has seen it fit to revise its curriculum to confer academic recognition on the phenomenon? And yet they complain that they are under-funded when, as I will demonstrate presently, they can with a little imagination fund themselves!

    It is not too late to repair this grievous omission, but the manner of redress must be bold and imaginative. There is no room for tokenism.

    The academic recognition I have in mind is not the kind that can be satisfied by offering one or two courses in firstladyism in a Philosophy Department or Sociology Department, or by staging an annual colloquium on the subject.

    It calls for nothing less than the establishment of an autonomous, self-accounting academic unit operating at the highest level of intellection. Call it the Higher Institute of Advanced Studies in Firstladyism, to distinguish it from those centres that may be offering only primary or secondary studies in that field.

    Initially, the curriculum will emphasise the study of the Nigerian variants of firstladyism, their origin, content, mutations, operational strategies and tactics, and their impact on society. No later than in its second year, the Institute will widen its curriculum to explore the subject in the wider African context, with special emphasis on the African First Ladies Peace Mission, of which Mrs Jonathan is the distinguished chairperson.

    In its third year, the Institute will go global and take on a new name, in recognition of the fact that the world is now truly a global village. It will be called the Higher Institute of Advanced Global Studies in Firstladyism.

    Just consider the resources that will flow to the institution from every direction.

    In keeping with her famed generosity and philanthropy, Mrs Jonathan can be expected to draw on her vast personal resources to ensure that it thrives. Something tells me that her devoted husband will not stand by and watch her bear the burden alone. He will, I am confident, incorporate the Institute as a core element of his iconic Transformative Agenda.

    Mrs Jonathan’s colleagues across the continent can be expected to support the Institute with generous endowments or dragoon their husbands into doing so. And when the Institute goes global it will be assured of the unstinting support of the international community.

    With this kind of support, it will attract the best and the brightest from all over the world, attain recognition as a global centre of excellence and place Nigeria, at long last, in the front ranks of the world’s greatest centres of learning.

    In many a setting, the designated “resource person” is usually an individual who has soaked up the theory and some aspects of the relevant literature. In the Institute, the resource persons will be actual or former first ladies, individuals who have lived the part and can humanise the subject. Aspiring first ladies need not apply. And no fakes, please; only true originals.

    In discussing such recondite subjects as Financing Firstladyism, or Power and Influence in First Ladyism: The Role of Pillow-Talk, or Diplomatic Firstladyism, who but practising or former first ladies can speak with insight, authority, and confidence?

    It goes without saying that the Institute will enjoy electricity and pipe-borne water 24/7. It will be equipped with latest Big Thing in information technology. Student will be housed in the hostels of the future, study in fully computerised libraries, attend lectures in well-appointed rooms, and work in laboratories where nothing is lacking. For faculty and staff, it will be nothing but bliss; life most abundant. Strikes and lockouts and cultism will be things of the past.

    I am the first to admit that not every public university can establish the kind of institution I have sketched here. But even if only one university can seize the concept and develop it, that university has assured its own fortune for all time.

    Besides, I have other ideas that are just as fecund. I have set them down in a special memo that I am sending to the National Universities Commission and the Committee of Vice Chancellors, not forgetting the usual stakeholders.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Gambari-Akinyemi-Anyaoku: Diplomats as spectacles

    All over the world, countries are benefitting largely from the recent utilisation of the privileges of global mediascapes and digital technologies for the reinforcement of their international image, articulation of their foreign policies and a consolidation of their positions in the comity of nations, as the preferred destination for not only tourist and economic activities but also as major ideological enclaves for negotiating the world’s power structures. This is why perceptive governments have invested massively in satellite televisions and cable channels, together with the internet and other electronic spaces to affirm the robustness of their democratic experimentations, their desire for tactical alliances with other nations and their own relevance to the trajectories of world events.

    This reality has not, however, always been so, as nations have hitherto always relied on skilled legates who represent their interests and aspirations, and if need be, constantly see to the sometime urgent task of rehabilitating their image, on the world scene. Such envoys work in other countries to establish strategic collaborations and mutual cooperativeness which almost always foster reciprocated benefits and world peace for their home countries and other partner and friendly nations. This is so crucial a task that Daisaku Ikeda observes that “history is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations, the skilful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom.” Diplomats therefore become the custodian of the repertoire of wisdom for international cooperation and national well-being.

    To bring it closer home, imagine, for instance, that Nigeria had no representatives in countries abroad, and decisions regarding the nation were left at the mercy of foreign forces, impervious to its national interests and hostile to its citizens, then we are immediately faced with the full implication of the invidious absence of international secular intercessors who could have salvaged strategic advantages for the country through the deployment of refined tact. Thankfully, the country’s march towards development and a virile national growth bears the necessary signature and imprints of well-trained diplomats-intellectuals who have safely steered the nation’s vessel on the often dangerous coasts of international relations. For me, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, Professor Ibrahim Gambari and Chief Emeka Anyaoku represent an unusual trio of committed Nigerian mediators on the global stage. They are unusual because each brings to his duties a sense of responsibility obviously derived from the strict discipline of intellectual rigour. In other words, they typify how the country’s history and evolution as a state are undergirded by the deeply nuanced insights of patriotic statesmen whose transnational activities on behalf of the nation have steadied its journey to development and greater international relevance.

    When we call to mind the enormity of the task of retooling and redirecting the national project in Nigeria, we cannot but fail to see the urgency of committing to it all we have got. When human capital development becomes the first law in any blueprint for sustainable development in a country, intellectuals invariably play a pivotal role in defining its path to greatness. And, an unenviable dimension of that role concerns convincing other nations of Nigeria’s strategic significance in the world. In other words, we find in Gambari, Anyaolu and Akinyemi scholars whose voices help to give direction and purpose to Nigeria’s internal and external efforts to achieve its (inter)national goals. Rethinking the national project therefore isn’t the sole preserve of statesmen, politicians and intellectuals that we have been celebrating hitherto. There is also an external/international dimension that necessitates the insertion of patriotic legates and their diplomatic acumen as significant contributions to its direction and configuration.

    In Professor Gambari, a former Visiting Professor to John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and former Director General of the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs, we find an instance of how academic erudition conspires with pragmatic skills in foreign policy and relations to help achieve the realignment of the Nigerian dream in terms of Nigeria’s strategic alliances with other nations. A former External Affairs Minister, Professor Gambari provides much inspiration for many to seize the pluses offered by the unfettered marketplaces of ideas and critical intellections in the service of the Nigerian project. The Kwara-born academic who was appointed by the UN Secretary-General and the Chairperson of the African Union Commission as Joint African Union-United Nations Special Representative for Darfur in 2010, has also been recently appointed the pioneering Chancellor of the newly established KWASU, a university which hopes to utilise Gambari’s and other reputed scholars’ vast intellectual capital to advance education in Kwara State.

    The need to erect the development ambitions of a state on the foundation of sound intellectual ideals and an unswerving commitment to the state’s objectives and its foreign policies locks Gambari and Professor Akinyemi in the same legation mould. Akinyemi succeeded Professor Gambari as the Director General of the famed Nigerian Institute for International Affairs. What is most striking about Professor Akinyemi’s work as Nigeria’s former Minister of External Affairs is the innovative bent of his commitment. The Technical Aid Corps (TAC), his programmatic idea, was initiated to foster the spirit of volunteerism and patriotism in Nigerian professionals expected to promote national development and the country’s image abroad. In Akinyemi, therefore, we confront the axiom that ideas generate insights that propels development efforts anywhere. For instance, Nigeria’s space and nuclear programme, which has become robust and intensified recently, received one of its earliest advocacies as far back as 1987 when Prof. Akinyemi averred that the country “has a sacred responsibility to challenge the racial monopoly of nuclear weapons.” Such statements could only emanate from emissaries with uncanny insights for identifying the often hidden details in the development dynamics of a nation.

    Chief Anyaoku’s reputation as the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth remains an unrivalled colossal testament to diplomatic diligence. Anyaoku’s skills were his capacity to weave intellectual insights into national advocacy and behind-the-scene diplomatic initiatives. Having previously worked in various positions in the Commonwealth and as Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Chief Anyaoku, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Kuala Lumpur in 1989, was elected the third Commonwealth Secretary-General. He worked tirelessly to advance commonwealth agendas and initiatives, and was re-elected for a second five-year term at the 1993 CHOGM in Limassol, and after retirement, he continues to animate diplomatic circles with his robust understanding of international relations and politics. In a time when statesmen and politicians are everywhere sullied by scandals and the thirst for material advancement, Chief Anyaoku’s long years at the Commonwealth secretariat has yielded a repertoire of delegable insights and acumen Nigeria can always invest in. An emissary’s work doesn’t end outside the borders of the state or outside the ambit of the official appointment.

    For Walter Bagehot, the British economist, “an ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle;” and as such, s/he becomes the centre and cynosure of national being and development. Our own three scholar-diplomats served the nation as dependable and selfless agents who have passionately enunciated the paradigms of the Nigeria project both at home and abroad. As spectacles, they have withstood the often hostile global gaze at Nigeria’s possibilities as a developing nation while labouring assiduously to also project the nation’s contribution to world peace and cooperation.

     

    • Dr. Olaopa is Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Youth Development, Abuja.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • An ‘October Surprise’

    An ‘October Surprise’

    In America’s presidential election cycle, no month is more dreaded than the October preceding the poll, which takes place on the first Tuesday of November.

    The candidates and their camps hold their collective breaths, fearing that the rival candidate or camp will unleash some dirty secret it had been hoarding – a secret that would throw the opponent off-balance or, with some luck, damage him irreparably.

    They call it the “October Surprise.”

    President Goodluck Jonathan did not exactly cripple his would-be opponents on the 2015 presidential race, but he came close to doing that when, in his broadcast marking the 53rd anniversary of Nigeria’s independence, he announced that the time had come for a “national dialogue” to address the unresolved issues of the Nigerian experience.

    The announcement took not only his political opponents but also his most ardent supporters completely by surprise. It came literally from nowhere.

    For years, he had batted away the demand for a national conference – sovereign or not – with strained civility. Though they differed on so many other issues, he and the National Assembly were united in their emphatic rejection of calls for a National Conference

    Whenever they prefaced their quest with the term “sovereign,” the protagonists unwittingly played right into the hands of the Executive and the Legislative branches, which wasted no time in asserting that there could not be two sovereigns in a given space at one time. Translation: The twain embodied the sovereignty of the Nigerian state, and any other claim to sovereignty was not merely fanciful but impermissible.

    When the demand was for an ordinary National Conference for the purpose of writing a constitution warranted by the preface “We, the People,” the response of the twain was just as pre-emptive: the power to change the Constitution was vested categorically and unalterably in the Constitution.

    Whatever its tenor or content, the demand for a conference to sort things out was dead on arrival.

    To leave the protagonists in no doubt that their quest was doomed, the twain set in motion the process for a major revision of the 1999 Constitution. A presidential panel dredged up some 54 provisions requiring amendments, and the National Assembly staged a one-day “consultative meeting” in federal constitutions at which self-selected attendees with their eyes on the refreshments and other inducements on offer were asked to vote yes or no on a raft of questionnaire items.

    The promoters were already jubilating that they were set to enter the history books as the first set of Nigerians to bequeath to their compatriots a home-grown, authentic, Constitution of the people, by the people, for the people.

    They had not taken into account Dr Jonathan’s predilection for setting up committees at the least provocation, and sometimes with no provocation.

    And so it came to pass that the day after he announced that a National Conference was now warranted, he set up a 13-member committee comprising some of its most formidable protagonists to work out the modalities for staging it and gave the committee one month to report.

    Where all this leaves Emeka Ihedioha, the driving force behind the National Assembly’s effort to foist on Nigeria what would for all practical purposes be a new constitution is now unclear. He and his collaborators must be chafing that their effort to write themselves indelibly into the history books had so suddenly come unstuck, and from a source they least expected.

    But Dr Jonathan has always moved in mysterious ways.

    Ihedioha and his colleagues will probably find some comfort in the knowledge that they are not the only persons flummoxed.

    In whatever case, it is far from clear that what Dr Jonathan is offering is what the protagonists have been demanding. Hedging his bets, he calls it a National Dialogue/Conference. The one envisages limited outcomes; the other suggests nothing less than a deliberative assembly whose decisions can be set aside only through a national referendum: take your pick.

    One faction of the protagonists, the Biafranist MASSOB has already taken its pick. It says it will settle nothing less than a conference that will allow for secession. Now, it has the government’s assurance that the agenda will be wide-open and unrestricted. But this will only deepen fears in the usual quarters that the Conference is a prelude to the dissolution of Nigeria.

    Meanwhile, among the nationalities expected to be seated at the conference table, there is already some disputation. The Northern Consultative Forum and Ohanaeze are locked in a debate over the size of the delegations, with the one claiming that, by virtue of the size and population of the North, it should have more delegates than the other.

    What would the Northerners do or say when the Ogoni, or the Ekoi, to pick just two examples, insist on the same level of representation on the perfectly sensible ground that one nationality is as important as another, regardless of size?

    But which “Northerners” anyway, when Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido says the whole thing is superfluous and that Jigawa will have nothing to do with it? Several Northern governors will probably take the same stance in the days ahead.

    On the Southwestern front where the clamour for a National Conference has been loudest and clearest, and from which Dr Jonathan must have been expecting robust support that would undercut the mass appeal of the APC in the 2015 race, the reaction has been mixed at best. APC chieftain Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, for one, has shot the offer full of holes. Some have dismissed it as a Trojan horse, while some have welcomed it cautiously.

    Regardless of whatever name Dr Jonathan calls the proposed parley, why now, when his ruling party is in disarray, when all indications are that he will seek reelection in 2015, when the entire public university system has been shut down, and when large sections of the North are convulsed by a murderous insurrection the Administration seems unable to contain with the stick or the carrot?

    There are those who contend that such a time is precisely the best moment for staging a national conference, when the governing authorities have lost momentum and direction and their legitimacy is in contention. And they cite Benin Republic, the former Zaire (now DR Congo), and Mali, as examples of countries where national conferences were held at precisely such conjunctures.

    Nigeria has drifted dangerously close, but has not reached that point yet. But it may well be that Dr Jonathan has determined that a national conference can no longer wait. After all, despite all the official denials about the state of the treasury and other issues of a fiscal nature, he knows better than anyone else the real state of things.

    In all this, only one thing seems assured: The House of Representatives will now have to abjure the conceit that a mere review of the Constitution, however wide-ranging, is what Nigeria needs, and that the task belongs principally in its province.

    “Still writing – and pontificating — without facts”

    Rattled by the allusion in my last column to a newspaper that published “exit polls” for an election that was yet to be held and fixed dubious poll numbers to a pre-determined election outcome, Eni – B (as in Eniola Bello) has written:

    “How can President Jonathan’s impressive approval rating in the North Central be due to VP Sambo factor? Sambo is from Kaduna, a state in the North West. Has Dr. Dare stayed too long in the US that he has forgotten the geography of Nigeria? If not, can it be a case of a columnist with a “determined” view fixing his “findings to that result”? Or one still writing – and pontificating – without facts?”

    My error, and I acknowledge it with regret.

    I wish Eni-B could move the newspaper in question to acknowledge its errors in the same spirit – if indeed errors they were, and not something much darker.

     

  • SNC: Still gaming?

    Femi Macaulay, a colleague on The Nation Editorial Board, wondered if Ripples was prescient, since “SNC: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” (last week’s offering, October 1), hit the column space the same day President Goodluck Jonathan announced a presidential advisory committee on national dialogue/conference, headed by Senator Femi Okurounmu.

    Femi even literally growled about “fixation with SNC”, to which Ripples promptly riposted he should, if he had any, offer a superior suggestion on fixing Nigeria’s peculiar mess! Such has been the reaction to the prospect – or spectre – of a national political dialogue.

    Sule Lamido, Jigawa governor and rumoured presidential hopeful (in the putative ticket putting Rivers Rotimi Ameachi in Jonathan’s presidential okro soup!) has dismissed it as “illegal”. Reuben Abati, presidential spokesman, has added his own sop: the envisaged dialogue will have no “no go” areas. Both however, would appear grandstanding!

    Though Governor Lamido could be rightfully riled if he detected, in the crafty move, a Jonathan manoeuvre against his native North, he cannot afford to cut his nose to spite his face, the way he threatened that his state would not attend such an “illegal” confab.

    Indeed, Lamido’s stance ironically echoes the jeer at the Yoruba, of the late Abubakar Rimi, Lamido’s political mentor, on the eve of Sani Abacha’s National Constitutional Conference “with full constituent powers”, that the train was zooming off and would leave the Yoruba stranded, if they did not jump on board! Would it now be the turn of the North: jump on board Jonathan’s train or get stranded? Allah Akbar!

    If clear thinking were to hold sway however, Lamido should know that his native North is both chief beneficiary and most worsted, by this parasitic structure. It is in everybody’s strategic interest, therefore, to fix it, once and for all. But that is if Jonathan is not playing games!

    Dr. Abati’s counter name-calling is neither here nor there. If he calls those opposed to his principal’s national dialogue “selfish”, the same tar applies to his boss – for many have, not unjustifiably, questioned the president’s sudden volte-face. As to the fib that the confab would have no “no-go” areas, Abati can tell that to the marines.

    To start with, such sure-footedness is not his prevaricating and dissembling principal’s forte. Besides, Abati had before told the country one thing – for example, Dame Patience Jonathan’s illness – only for his boss, and the dame herself, to counter his claims. And that matter of personal health was in no way as weighty as this matter of corporate, national health.

    Can President Jonathan be trusted on this one? Hardly, from past conducts; though change is always a possibility.

    As he did in 2010, the president has a penchant, at crucial junctures, to throw up ostensibly popular issues; which nevertheless would peter out to mere boondoggle, just to position him for electoral sweepstakes.

    In 2010, the president went to the United States, never telling anyone he would run or not in 2011. When pressed to commit, he went into a rambling story: he could run as vice president, he could run as president, he could decide not to run – in fact, he was too busy on his new job then bother about running or not!

    Just last month, at the same United States, he went into a lecture binge on the constitutional right to two terms by the president and governors. Yet, mum was the word on his 2015 plan!

    When he came back home in 2010, the president orchestrated the drama of firing Maurice Iwu and appointing Attahiru Jega as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman. He made such fetish of conducting clean elections, while positioning himself as the chief beneficiary, that Ripples, in a 29 June 2010 piece headlined “Jonathan’s metamorphosis”, wondered at the president’s motives.

    “What is not all right,” that piece insisted, “is the president’s current charm offensive, using the imperative for clean and transparent polls as shaft, exploiting the revulsion over the rotten 2007 elections and the urgent need to make amends, but at the same time positioning himself to be the prime beneficiary of the so-called clean polls to come.”

    If you think the 2011 election was without blemish as orchestrated, then read Nasir El-Rufai’s The Accidental Public Servant. He claimed, in that book, that a PDP apparatchik from Kaduna State confessed to him that his party, in the state, added a whopping 800, 000 votes to Jonathan’s tally, just to make the 25 per cent mark!

    That sparked off the post-poll violence, for which Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, on account of his pre-poll outburst, became the ready and convenient scapegoat!

    By that parallel, is a national dialogue, sovereign or no, the new shaft of Jonathan’s electoral scheming? Maybe; maybe not. But it is an interesting and legitimate parallel to probe.

    As it was in 2010, it is now: general elections are due in 2015, while gubernatorial elections are due in Ekiti and Osun in 2014. Like clean elections, the long discussed but long repressed national conference is becoming some open sesame to make or mar Nigeria – and that from Jonathan’s official quarters!

    A national conference, particularly the sovereign national conference (SNC), is a solid idea this column has always pushed. But Jonathan’s move is open to grave suspicions, least of which is positioning himself for a second term, just as the INEC boondoggle of 2010 earned him a first term. But if an SNC is done well, the restructuring would be so far-reaching anyone would think twice to be president, because it would entail a lot of hard work, but far less lollies.

    The traditional North would feel especially hard done by. Just as Jonathan’s clever clean poll campaign of 2010 portrayed his cheated pro-zoning opponents as some backward ethnic, power-greedy retards, Jonathan’s dialogue would portray this same lobby as ancients trapped in their ethnic laager, while a modernist president canters away to give his country a new lease.

    Besides, the Jonathan move would appear a clever but direct jab at the heart of the putative South West-North West entente, on which the new opposition seems to have laid much store. While South West’s default setting embraces SNC, North West’s default setting repels it! Talk of throwing a cat among pigeons!

    Yet, all sides must come to some accommodation to save Lugard’s troubled amalgam from violently unravelling – o, for a tinge of trust!

    Still, those focused on short-term political goals will do well to see the big picture. But the buck stops with President Jonathan to demonstrate good motive. On this indeed, he has no choice.

    Gen. Abacha had the conspiracy of treacherous power elite, not unhappy with MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate annulment. Gen. Obasanjo had the benefit of a wearied country, after the wasted years of the military, while both were gaming over their versions of national talks.

    President Jonathan has no such luxury. He could either be Nigeria’s undertaker (as he is appearing, for his splitting party right now), or the hand to push his country from the brink.

    His choice is stark. It’s no time for gaming now!