The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Something for Abubakar boys?

    Something for Abubakar boys?

    Last week, the directive by the Inspector General of Police, M.D Abubakar on the use of vehicles with tinted glasses claimed its first casualty. A magistrate Hajiya Rabi Bashir, sitting in Gusau, Zamfara State, reportedly sentenced one Aliyu Abubakar, 30, of Talata Mafara town for driving a car with tinted glass without permit. The accused, arrested on April 11 was said to have pleaded guilty to the charge of driving his tinted Golf salon car along Sani Abacha Way, Gusau.

    He was however given the option of either spending one month in jail or a fine of N1, 000.

    The Punch which reported the summary trial unfortunately did not provide any details of the circumstance of the particular arrest – a case of summary trial and sentencing from all accounts.

    Be that as it may, there is enough to suggest that the last is yet to be heard on the Motor Vehicles (Prohibition of Tinted Glass) Act, CAP M21 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (formerly Decree No. 6 of 1991). While it seems trite to state that millions of Nigerians are already caught in its web, the indications are that the law would be in for some hard testing in the months ahead.

    To be clear, the issue isn’t so much about the validity of the law. It is whether in our peculiar circumstances, the law can be said to be a realistic piece of legislation. I say this mindful of the fact that there are just as many good laws as there are bad ones. To start with, I do not see how anyone will argue that a law which purports to render almost every nthvehicle owner a potential lawbreaker can be anything but an incurably bad law. Moreover, the fact is that the law makes no pretence about providing the law-abiding citizen a leeway – rendering him a victim of circumstances far beyond his control while predisposing him to other lesser crimes.

    Clearly, the best argument that the Police High Command has made for resurrecting the dead law is that the security situation in the country has made it so. According to the Force Public Relation Officer, CSP Frank Mba, “statistics at our disposal show that 90 per cent of these crimes were committed with the aid of vehicles with tinted glasses. We must stop this in the interest of the nation.”

    Surely, Mba must know that his inference of relationship between tinted glasses and terrorism, is not only specious but bizarre.

    Of course, he argues rather persuasively that “Nigerians using vehicles with tinted glasses must look beyond the inconvenience of obeying and removing such glasses and act for the good of all”.

    In the first place, we know how bad the security situation in the country is without the additional scare-mongering about some tinted-glass-induced crimes. I suspect that most owners of cars with tinted glasses would readily surrender their prized toys given iron-cast assurances that it would end the menace of terrorism and kidnapping.

    It seems to me as yet another case of a government in pursuit of symptoms instead of treating the disease. Indeed, tinted glasses are merely the symptoms of the free for all environment under which vehicle importation trade is conducted. Of course, a better job would have been to outlaw the importation of cars with tinted glasses instead of the present course which amounts to chasing the violators on the highways.

    At this point in time, the more pertinent question is what to do with the millions of cars with tinted-glasses already in the country. Our man, Mba has an interesting answer. He cites the so-called Section 3 of the law which states that “a buyer, a donee or an importer of a vehicle with tinted glasses has a grace period of 14 days to either get a permit or remove the tint”.

    Simple isn’t it? Not so fast. To start with, the law is explicit on the exercise of discretion as to the conditions under which the permission to use tinted glasses could be granted. My last check shows that the twin conditions prescribed are “health” and “security” both of which in our peculiar circumstances would seem ordinarily lax or permissive enough. Even at that, it still leaves the question of how the millions of cars on our roads with tinted glasses could justifiably claim exemptions on the two grounds. I say this because the exemptions mean no more than a trip to Force Headquarters, in Abuja for a permit at the payment of between N25- N30,000 or in the alternative, risk the daily ordeal of extortion in the hands of Abubakar’s men.

    And, we do know those who qualify under the security and health considerations; these are our masters in Abuja!

    I agree in toto with Mba that it is not the business of the police to abrogate the Motor Vehicles (Prohibition of Tinted Glass) Act, CAP M21 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria); the job belongs to the National Assembly. It needs be stated also that the police has no business resurrecting a law that is as good as interred. To leave the law on our statute books is to supply the police with a sword of Damocles to be dangled at will over the heads of the citizens.

    Now, I must make the point that M.D. Abubakar as IGP has done such a good job of dismantling the infrastructure of extortion – the ubiquitous check-points on the highways. Sure, he still has a long way to go to build an effective, people-friendly crime fighting institution. Superintending over the erection of another infrastructure of sleaze comes nowhere near the job at hand; clearly, that is not the way to go.

    For the many Nigerians caught in the web, the easiest solution is to ask them to proceed to Abuja to obtain Abubakar’s permit. That would obviously boost the coffers of the Nigeria Police. But then, that itself throws up the question of the legality of the act – particularly as the institution is not known to be a revenue collecting agency.

     

  • Forget amnesty, try amnesia

    Forget amnesty, try amnesia

    Whatever spurts from Goodluck Jonathan’s blood-soaked power canvas is due to crass opportunism.

    He latched on to a “soft” presidency; blissfully forgetting the high folly of plunging your knife into a hippo someone else had hunted down. It is bound to cause life-threatening, if not life-claiming, diarrhoea!

    But the man of suspect luck is not the only culprit. No less guilty are his godfathers who conspired to vault him beyond his competence.

    Guiltier still, than these opportunistic political godfathers, are the giddy executors of Jonathan’s much-vaunted pan-Nigeria mandate of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt. In the ultra-reckless electoral ardour of the moment, they blithely proclaimed: we vote Goodluck, not PDP!

    Now, Goodluck is bad dream; and PDP no less a nightmare. There is no waking up from both!

    It is endgame, indeed, in self-induced political perdition! Welcome, poor souls, to the desert of slaughter, where Boko Haram is evil lord and master!

    In the rising appeasement hubbub, Boko Haram has declared it needed no one’s amnesty because it did no wrong! On the contrary, it was Its Murderous Majesty that must be begged to pardon the Nigerian state which, it claimed, had been wronging Muslims! Talk of the tail wagging the dog!

    But perhaps that would chasten the vocal minority, which stamps its often insensible holler with high wisdom; and dubs the dignified silence of the quiet majority as quintessential folly.

    But wait a minute! Where is Malam Adamu Ciroma? While everyone was betide themselves to make Jonathan president at all costs – let the heavens fall! – Malam Ciroma it was that maintained that dire warning: there would be consequences!

    Now before your fecund imaginations start linking the good malam with political Boko Haram, which Goodluck Jonathan has claimed is his major traducer, think hard and straight. Boko Haram might be the most explosive of President Jonathan’s many disasters. But it is not the worst.

    With absolutely no idea what to do with power, but straining every sinew to keep himself in the presidential saddle, the man of good luck brings with him multi-layered bad luck that would continue to haunt the country, even after he, and his nemesis, Boko Haram, would have become bad history.

    That Boko Haram may well score the double of being Nigeria’s nemesis as well should open the eyes of those who can’t see beyond a present power racketeering: that the House of Lugard is crumbling; and that, if care is not taken, there might soon be no territory over which to grab power and loot resources!

    Chronic, programmed and systemic underdevelopment is the wages of presidential incompetence. And Jonathan, with all due respect to his person and due reverence to his high office, is gold standard of that incompetence.

    Sure, Jonathan is not the first of these presidential incompetents. But when a presidential undertaker acts as though he had the latitude of the very first of those whose cumulative misdeeds have brought this country to this sorry pass, then the alarm bells must start clanging!

    That lack of rigour defines Jonathan’s flip-flops on Boko Haram; and allowing himself to be muscled into granting amnesty to a deranged and blood-thirsty band.

    Boko Haram is too deranged to recognise its all-too-obvious lunacy, talk less of showing penance and atoning for its high crime against millions of innocent Nigerians: in lost lives, hacked limbs and permanently shattered psyche!

    Indeed, what President Jonathan needs right now is amnesia, not amnesty. Amnesia would completely blot out all past crimes, no matter how wilful or heinous; and prepare the state for even more heinous future crimes, assured that future amnesties would wipe out future crimes, until the sick joke collapses in a heap!

    To start with, amnesia helps the president to forget, with bliss, that the impunity of his own rigged emergence, against his party’s zoning policy, may have birthed the so-called political Boko Haram.

    If indeed there is political Boko Haram, and it and its religious evil-twin had not been clobbered to seek a soft landing, why should they, for “amnesty”, hand over their ace to their writhing victims; taking a part when then could take the whole? And then what: cohabitate with Jonathan as they erect their beloved Islamic republic? Please!

    Whichever way you look at it, amnesty for now is a no-brainer. But the impasse that has forced it thunders a dire warning to future players in power and impunity: powerless is power acquired by dodge!

    Still, not even amnesia can excuse the shallow linkage between amnesty for Niger Delta militants and the one being proposed for Boko Haram.

    Turai Yar’adua has proffered a simplistic, exchange-is-no-robbery theory: her late maigida had granted amnesty to Jonathan’s creek anarchists. Why couldn’t Jonathan, court to court, just return the favour, to the militants’ Sahel cousins-in-terror? Jonathan, Hajia Turai seems to cry, bring this feudal transaction to closure!

    Gen. Muhammadu Buhari has also chipped in his own bit: amnesty for Boko Haram, as anything that can promote peace, should be encouraged. What of justice, the first condition for sustainable peace?

    Still, the Niger Delta case was different from Boko Haram, aside from the fact that the militants basically targeted oil-pipelines in the creeks, while Boko Haram killed with venom a defenceless urban population, even if there is clear criminality in both campaigns.

    But the most important difference: at amnesty time, the Niger Delta militants had been clobbered enough that the terror party seemed over; and the creek boys badly needed some soft landing; which their political leaders secured, in exchange for the free flow of crude.

    Boko Haram is different: a murderous, cocky, boastful and implacable foe, still flexing muscles and daring the state. What does anyone gain by granting such dogma-stoned anarchists amnesty – to turn the crumbled House of Lugard into the Taliban theocratic republic of their sick dreams?

    Jonathan and his traducers had better wake up. Nigeria, as structurally constituted, is close to end times. Restructuring for development is therefore the key. It is a stark reality: restructure or perish!

    After six years of blood and gore, Jonathan should take a bow, and quit his eternal scheming for power, even when it is clear he cannot add any value. He should therefore perish any thought of running in 2015.

    But his recommended exit does not obviate Nigeria’s structural debacle; which has made the country a developmental grave. So, whoever takes over from him, who blissfully forgets about this structural challenge, only plays with fire.

    That is why Jonathan must table concrete proposals on political and economic restructuring to give this polity a rebirth; and also propose a Nigerian Marshall Plan for the impoverished North East, which basically produces the wretched of the earth that sign up for Boko Haram and its evil campaign.

    Restructuring, along productive federal lines, would stop future Jonathans from seizing poisoned chalices coated with power; and condemning the rest of Nigerians to bloody trouble.

    That’s what the country needs – not some amnesty powered by amnesia!

  • Thatcher unreconstructed: A view from 1990

    Thatcher unreconstructed: A view from 1990

    What do you do with a lady who heads a cabinet supposedly run on the collegial principle, but who ain’t for stirring, much less for turning?

    Members of the ruling Conservative Party in the British House of Commons answered that question a fortnight ago.

    Their answer was: If the lady ain’t for turning, then she must be for dumping.

    And they dumped Dame Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to head the Conservative Party, the first to serve as prime minister, and in this century the person who has held that office longest.

    When she attained this last distinction, she seemed set to continue to rule, not merely to the end of the century but well into the next, if not forever. She had crushed the labour unions. She had won a resounding victory over Argentina in the Malvinas. She had cut Africans, Asians and Caribbean leaders of the Commonwealth to size and made it plain to them that they possessed no wealth in common with Britain. She had humiliated, and then dismissed from her cabinet, all those who helped plot her way to the leadership of the Conservative Party and sustained her during her first term.

    She had changed the face of Britain forever, and made socialism come across as something more frightful than bubonic plague – or so she claimed. Unemployment was up, but inflation was down, and so was productivity. Too bad for the millions thrown out of work; the important thing was that the economy was improving.

    Bereft of a sociological imagination, she brought to bear on the governance of the British Isles a book-keeper’s imagination and sought to reduce the human person to a slave of the market. The worth of everything was to be measured in terms of profit and loss. Forget about equity and justice. The only thing that counts is the bottom line – a phrase which, by the way, the British consider an unfortunate vulgarism.

    For her, greed was the motive force in human affairs, and to encourage it in every conceivable way was the highest principle of statecraft. Compassion was an unpardonable weakness. Where others had waged a war on poverty, Thatcher waged a war against the poor, ripping apart the social safety net that had insured the disadvantaged against the worst manifestations of poverty.

    She privatised everything in sight, and when she could not find anything else to put under the grinding wheels of market forces, she turned to water. Were it possible for her to privatise the air we breathe, she would have done so without a moment’s thought.

    Race relations in Britain steadily grew worse in the Thatcher years. She tightened the rules of eligibility for British passports in a bid to repudiate the obligation arising from centuries of British imperial conquest and pillage. Asian women seeking to join their husbands in Britain were subjected to degrading virginity tests.

    When Britons finally saw through the phantom prosperity that her policies had wrought, they blamed all their woes on the foreigners in their midst, especially those of Black descent. Race riots, unheard of in recent British history, erupted in several parts of the country on a scale and with a fury that was almost beyond belief.

    An Englishman’s word, it is said, is his bond – and an English woman’s too. With a few notorious exceptions in public life, this is still largely true. But one remembers how, at last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thatcher put her signature on a communiqué advocating tougher sanctions against apartheid South Africa, only to renounce the agreement well before the ink had dried on it.

    It would be hard to improve on President Robert Mugabe’s comment on Thatcher’s conduct on that occasion: “Despicable.”

    In no sphere of Britain’s foreign relations were her chicanery and duplicity more evident than in the question of sanctions against South Africa. No, the sanctions she had supported so enthusiastically against Poland would never work in South Africa.

    Poland’s crime was that it had suppressed the trade union Solidarity. As far as Thatcher was concerned, that was a far greater crime than apartheid, which the United Nations had in resolution after resolution denounced as a crime against humanity. But then, the only humanity she recognises is white humanity.

    From claiming that sanctions would not work in South Africa, she went on to proclaim, without recognising her own absurd logic, that sanctions would hurt only the Black majority that needed protection most.

    Suddenly, this woman who as education minister had not scrupled to snatch milk away from British school children to save costs was brimming with the milk of human kindness for Black people in far-away South Africa.

    She even resorted to blaming the victim, employing the language of the oppressor. The ANC was a terroristic organisation. But for the dirty tricks of the non-white Commonwealth nations, South Africa would have remained within the family.

    When the pressure for sanctions reached a crescendo at the 1985 Commonwealth Summit in Nassau, Bahamas, and threatened to disrupt the organisation, she hit upon a ploy to sidestep the issue: the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group (EPG). Well before the EPG’s report was published, Thatcher launched a campaign of denigration against its members severally and collectively. She would allow no person and no principle to stand in the way of her giving aid and comfort to apartheid.

    That is now why she fell, of course. Her fall was rooted in her domestic and European policy. And she crashed with the same gracelessness that had animated her for 11 years, a stunning lesson in the instability of human greatness.

    Some self-hating Blacks may continue to adore her as the greatest person that ever drew breath. In this corner, the most charitable thing that can be said about the ghastly woman is: Good riddance.

    *This article, originally titled “And so, the lady was for dumping,” is republished from the December 10, 1990, issue of the newsweekly, The African Guardian, now defunct. The writer was a contributing editor for the magazine.

     

  • Before the amnesty

    Before the amnesty

    December 1991 was historic in the life of Algeria as the north African Arab country held her first free parliamentary election and was on course to becoming a real democracy after decades of military-styled dictatorship. Against the sitting government’s expectation, the Islamic Salvation Front known by its French acronyms FIS, won the polls. Trouble.

    Both the government and its western backers, particularly France never saw this coming. An Islamist government in a North African country, just on the other side of the Mediterranean, over looking Western Europe? No,no,no, this is unacceptable, the government in Algiers and its allies seemed to be saying and before the Islamists could even savor the joy of their victory, the Algerian military moved in and cancelled the election. Another trouble.

    The Islamists would have none of this. How can you deny us the fruit of our labour? They were asking the military and when the soldiers refused to change course, the leaders of FIS felt they had no option but to claim their mandate, albeit forcefully. With most of their leaders now in jail or detained by the military, FIS took up arms against the state and Algeria effectively plunged into a civil war in January 1992, a year and few months before the then Nigerian military government annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which consequences threw the country into a political crisis that even the advent of democracy in 1999 has not been able to fully resolve.

    For over a decade Algeria knew no peace as the civil war which reached its height between 1997 and 1998, when innocent civilians, especially whole villagers were massacred by Islamic extremists who had initially focused their attacks on government and its agencies and sympathizers including intellectuals and journalists, but abandoned political course and changed tactics to attack ordinary people and other soft targets, claimed no fewer than 100, 000 lives in a population of just 35 million.

    The arrival of democracy or a semblance of it in April 1999, with the election of President Abdulaziz Boutlefilka brought no immediate relief as the Islamists now buoyed by an emerging global terrorist organisation called Al- Qaeda were getting stronger even in the face of relentless military onslaught by the Algerian government.

    But with a combination of carrot and stick approach and a dodgy amnesty programme packaged in a Charter on Peace and National Reconciliation approved in a October 2005 referendum, the government granted pardon to both the Islamists and soldiers that participated in the civil war and killings on both sides thus setting the stage for the relative peace being enjoyed by Algeria today. Relative peace if you close your eyes to the activities of Al -Qaeda in the Maghreb, the terrorist organisation that masterminded the January 2013 hostage taking and attacks on a BP run gas field in eastern Algeria.

    Today, the Algerian government can claim to be on top of the security/terrorism situation in the country in spite of its flawed amnesty programme which has been dubbed amnesia in some circles. Can Nigeria say the same?

    Although the Federal Government amnesty programme for Boko Haram is still on the drawing board, I’ve gone this far to draw the Algerian inference because of the Nigerian government’s decision or readiness to draw inspiration and learn from such countries as Algeria that have had to combat terrorism such as we are witnessing today with Boko Haram.

    As the Foreign Affairs editor at Concord Press then, I could recollect that though the two key leaders of FIS, the spiritual leader and the political head were in jail but were still in firm control of the organization such that when the Algerian government decided to talk peace, the two were involved. In Nigeria nobody is sure who the real leaders of Boko Haram are and where they are. So, who do you discuss peace with?

    Again as the example of Algeria shows, FIS had a grouse against the Algerian government which it felt could only be resolved by resort to arms. What is the grouse of Boko Haram against Nigeria and what have the rest of us done to the group as a people to deserve all these killings and terror being inflicted on us?

    If we know what wrong we have done to Boko Haram then may be we can begin to appreciate where they are coming from and begin to talk. Flowing from such talks could be amnesty for the terrorist group as part of the solution to the problem. But offer of amnesty before talks is putting the cart before the horse.

    Amnesty is supposed to be forgiveness for wrongs done or crime committed. So, what wrong or crime has Boko Haram committed? Of course we all know it but government has to put such in black and white for all, including the terrorists leaders to see, so that when the peace talk that all seem to be clamouring for begins, both sides would be talking on points. Boko Haram, it is expected, would also put Nigeria’s crime against it on the table.

    When both sides agree to pursue peace then the terms would be set and responsibilities assigned. We can then begin to talk of ceasefire and amnesty. It is the absence of this kind of behind the scene talk that I think was responsible for Boko Haram’s rejection of the Federal Government’s offer of amnesty. If truth must be told, the terrorist group had by that action ridiculed the Federal government and exposed the whole idea of amnesty as an afterthought. Don’t forget that President Goodluck Jonathan was initially opposed to the idea when it was first suggested by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar. Those who twisted the president’s arms to accept the idea of amnesty do not appear to have done their home work well on Boko Haram leadership. If they had done that the embarrassment caused by this rejection by the terrorists’ leader Abubakar Shekau would have been avoided.

    This failure notwithstanding, the Federal Government should not go back on the offer of amnesty, if anything, it should move swiftly to reach out to the leaders of Boko Haram, if not directly initially, but through their proxies and sympathizers of which there are many in the north. The northern leaders who have been calling for the amnesty should also move out to ensure that the core Boko Haram leadership buy in to the amnesty programme. And their hands can be strengthened in this regard if government comes out as soon as possible with the terms of the amnesty programme which I think should be holistic, both for Boko Haram and the victims of their crime. It should not just be about forgetting and wiping out the crime, but also compensating the victims and preventing the circumstances that led to the insurgency in the first place.

    It is clear that the divide and rule tactic employed by the security agencies to factionalise Boko Haram has not worked as the escalation of attacks by the group in spite of a faction declaring a ceasefire not too long ago, has shown, hence the need to bring the Shekau’s faction into the picture.

    If the amnesty must work, all the necessary hands must be involved then we must talk and agree to forgive and forget and move forward as one. There should be no distraction as being currently exhibited by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). Jonathan should call his people to order.

     

  • Religion and politics in Osun

    Religion and politics in Osun

    Earlier in the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in the State of Osun, the state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, felt decidedly miffed to proceed to court in defense of the governor. It was alleged that the administration planned to Islamize the state. CAN, at that point, was a friend of the administration.

    Now, flip the pages. In March 2013, the religious body has sauntered into public space with tones of generally incredible and particularly mundane allegations of islamization against the governor it earlier poignantly defended. In Osun, it is barely a year to gubernatorial election in which the governor would be seeking re-election. In our clime where elections are nothing else but a make or mar affair, old bonds of friendship are often too tenuous to stand the slightest exertions. It is time for friend to abandon friend.

    In reality, the Aregbesola administration is not a stranger in the dingy surgical theatre of spin doctors. This latest onslaught against the administration presents the imprimatur of an earlier lurid one about secession of the state allegedly plotted by the governor single-handedly without other states in the South -west in the picture. Several months after, how the masterminds or this ill-fated idle engagement expected anyone to believe them still beats logic. In quick succession came opposition PDP-backed campaign about non-constitution of the cabinet culminating in the patently devilish question mark on the state of health of the governor in which the Osun helmsman was alleged to have collapsed at every public function extending beyond two hours. Bristling with misapplied ingenuity, they manufactured the now famous but fake cancer tale against Ogbeni.

    It is, however, instructive to know that these baseless allegations came after a bigger grand plot to impeach the governor fell flat on its face. Less than a month in office of Ogbeni in 2010, the trio of Vice President Namadi Sambo, Senate President David Mark and Senator Iyiola Omisore sponsored PDP state assembly members to Abuja where the incendiary plot was hatched.

    By its sheer antecedent, ascribed and enunciated objectives, the issues put forward by a religious body of the status of CAN ought to provoke interest and sympathy. This one, however, is a little off- side. Every issue raised by the Osun CAN – from allegation of fixing state events for Sunday morning to the visit of the Sultan of Sokoto – oozes so much partisanship that the official opposition to the ACN government of the State of Osun could not have done a better job.

    Among others, CAN allege that the governor changed “the state official brand point from “the state of living spring” to the state of the virtuous” to spite the Christians who refer to Jesus Christ as living spring. By simple extension of the underpinning logic, this assertion by CAN presupposes that the state, despite its secularity in the face of its multi – religious character, has officially been packaged as a Christian enclave all along. Besides, is Omoluabi – to which “the virtuous” translates – not more elegant and edifying to a people who are outstandingly moralistic?

    The visit of the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar ,to the state was also lampooned by CAN. The nationally respected traditional ruler was accused of being in the state, of course at the instance of Ogbeni, to prepare the ground for a Jihad “following the Sultan’s request for amnesty for Boko Haram members. It will utterly be difficult for any sensible mind to ascribe to Osun CAN any iota of nationalism with this lousy claim.

    The derelict state of most infrastructures in public schools, whether in the state of Osun or elsewhere, is well known to everyone. The obvious transformative agenda of the governor in demolishing and replacing these archaic relics is the butt of vitriolic attack by CAN in the state. In the self-righteous view of the religious group, this government gesture is a prelude to changing the schools into madrasas or fortress of Islamic evangelism. Instead, the collapsing buildings – complete with all their health hazards and aesthetic debasement – should have been left in memory of the lofty legacies of alien missionaries of yesteryears.

    The plot of this drama of the absurd in Osun similarly incorporated other scenes including allegation of imposition of hijab dress code on female students in the state as well as declaration of a strange holiday which the government termed Hijra holiday to mark the commencement of Islamic calendar. It does not matter to this set of CAN leadership in the state of Osun that the now globally accepted Gregorian calendar is Christianity – based without anyone raising a divisive hell in a country that is populated by Christians, Muslims and traditionalists in almost equal proportion.

    The prodigious reality of the hijab brouhaha must have breathtakingly been lost on CAN. Otherwise the organization should have come to terms with the presumptuousness of its endeavor considering the fact that it is the Muslims themselves in the state who, incidentally, dragged Ogbeni administration to court, seeking enforcement of their fundamental human rights to wear hijab .The case is still pending in the state high court of justice. A particularly interesting aspect of CAN’s problem with Ogbeni consists in the allegation that he, in the heat of the campaign for the 2007 election in Iwo, distributed hijab to students in the town. What really is the worth of a serious politician who, confronted with the grim task of soliciting for vote in a catholic enclave, fails to seize the moment to distributed rosaries and images of Virgin Mary! Indeed, fathoming partisanship in all these is not rocket science. For one, the inglorious exercise is nothing more than an attempt to put the whammy on the salient life – changing strides being wrought by Ogbeni administration.

    Landmark economic and infrastructural transformation is alien to the state until Aregbesola came along. In one fell swoop 20, 000 youths got employed. Close to 400 roads spread across the state are getting face-lift. The elderly, the young and the invalid have never had it so good. Educational rebirth, espoused through capacity building of teachers, infrastructural renewal and reclassification of educational segments sits pretty well with the people of the state.

    As the Christian religious body in the state launched its attack on the governor over alleged islamization on one hand, it, on the other, accused the Ogbeni administration of promoting traditional religion “bothering on idolatry and sorcery “. In the account of CAN, the state government refused to officially inaugurate the state chapter of National Inter Religious Council (NIREC) because of the refusal of both Muslims and Christian’s leaders to incorporate traditional religionists into the membership of the body.

    Pray what manner of Islamization would promote traditional religion? Not a few people would attest to the fact that Osun of the Aregbesola era is about the only state in the country where traditional religionists are officially recognized at public functions where they have their prayer slot like the Muslims and the Christians. It is imperative therefore to implore CAN to take steps to promote the subsisting religious harmony in the state rather than stoke embers of faith-based conflagration. The nation already has its hands full.

    • Lawal is Publicity Secretary, Action Congress of Nigeria, Ogun State.

  • Bayelsa’s rumour epidemic: A propagandist at work

    Bayelsa’s rumour epidemic: A propagandist at work

    Following my column for this newspaper (“Beware, rumour monger,” March 26, 2013) on the firm resolve of the authorities to break the stranglehold of rumour on the governance of Bayelsa State once and for all, I expected a full-court rejoinder, couched in the reader-unfriendly lingo of bureaucracy and bearing the intimidating signature of a senior official of Governor Seriake Dickson’s administration, possibly the Secretary to the Government.

    It must be that I have been gone too long and have lost touch with the way such things used to be done, for I least expected that the rejoinder would issue from someone who identifies himself not merely as a journalist, but as chair of the Bayelsa State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.

    Even in this era of unsophisticated careerism, many Nigerians must still find it unsettling that a journalist – the chair of the Bayelsa State chapter of the NUJ, who could one day become its national president – would enter a robust defence for a law designed ostensibly to curb the transmission of rumour – or “dem say, dem say” communication in Dickson’s felicitous coinage, but is sure in operation to constrict freedom of speech and of the press.

    My analysis of the subject, says Torinyo Akono (“Understanding Bayelsa’s anti-rumor law,” The NATION, April 1, 2013) is “fundamentally misplaced in conception” and “an outright oversimplification.” Nor, he adds, is there any “draconian tendency” to the proposed law.

    “We disagree with his position,” Akono wrote with reference to my column.

    I have it on the authority of my editor, by the way, that despite the publication date of April 1, Akono’s piece was no April Fools caper.

    Notice the collective pronoun he employs, which can with justice be deconstructed as the royal pronoun as well, given the hauteur, the overweening presumption that perfuses his rejoinder. It is not clear whether he is employing that inflated mode of speech by virtue of his being NUJ chair in Bayelsa, or because he is a member of the state’s anti-rumour squad that bears the Orwellian title of “State Public Information Management Committee.”

    One thing is clear however: Akono is not an official of the Bayelsa State Government and has no mandate to speak for it.

    But hear him:

    “The intention of the state government is to have in place functional structures where information can be easily accessed by members of the public as well as quickly disseminating information on current issues of public concern to the people, detailing what is true or false, thereby nipping in the bud such dangerous information capable of causing disaffection and indeed reducing the incidence of blatant misinformation among the people.”

    This is the language of bureaucracy, not journalism. But Akono is not done yet.

    “The idea,” he submits in the same vein, “is to avoid the bureaucracy in the ministries but have many centres so localised that you can easily find out the truth about anything relating to the government and the public. Here, people can contact or meet officials for quick response to whatever may be their concern or interest on the flow of information, including any rumour that may also affect the interest of an individual or organisation in the state. This is important because of the pervasive nature of rumour-mongering among the people with inherent social crisis if not curtailed or addressed so frontally.”

    And then, with the smug condescension of the all-knowing insider, he adds:

    “What Dare failed to note is the peculiar nature of the society where such falsehood is politically motivated to create pure mischief and blackmail which could be dangerous to proper functioning of the government and socio-economic activities in the state.”

    In the face of such clear and imminent dangers, Akono declares, “Government must respond by spelling out what constitutes a decent citizenship and why it is not a right to engage in conscious actions to create social crisis and looking at the strategic position of Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta, then taking legal means to have stability is a legitimate action of any serious government.”

    That is precisely what the state government has done, Akono states. For the benefit of those who might think that the anti-rumour project is another ill-considered scheme that will soon run out of steam, he makes it clear that the state government “will continue to impress it on the people to be law-abiding and responsible stakeholders in the current mission of restoring Bayesla to its deserved glory in leadership and development.”

    When the law comes into force, he hints darkly, people will find it “unprofitable” to wake up one day and begin spreading the rumour that the state government had been sacked by a court in Port Harcourt, in the process causing panic and among the teeming population “lamenting the future” of the restoration of the programme of the Dickson administration.”

    This is boosterism of the most unsubtle kind

    And thus has Akono sought to imbue Bayelsa’s proposed anti-rumour law with the context and nuance he said my analysis lacked. Neither the chief press secretary to Governor Dickson, nor for that matter the secretary to the Bayelsa State Government, could have entered a more robust justification of the proposed law.

    No one should make light of the pervasiveness and perversity of the rumour industry in Bayelsa. It was something Dickson’s predecessor, the defenestrated Timipre Sylva, had to contend with all the time, to the point that he actually appointed to the senior ranks of his administration a Special Assistant or Senior Special Assistant on Rumour-mongering.

    It is not clear whether that official’s remit was to squelch the “rumours” the authorities did not like or to plant the government’s own “rumours” in the public sphere. In whatever case,the epidemic refused to lift

    That is why a high-powered committee comprising, according to Akono, “eminent journalists chosen for their integrity and credibility not only in their individual and professional lives but also to give credence to the good intentions of the state government” has now been set up to perform a task previously assigned to an aide of the former governor — a governor whose tenure he calls “the locust years, in contradistinction, it must be supposed, to the present era of super-abundance in Bayelsa.

    All this has been done, says Akono, in keeping with the time-tested wisdom that “peculiar circumstances in any political or social formation will invariably demand some clear-headed answers but to the extent that such ameliorating mechanisms conform to the basic ethics of leadership and constitutionalism.”

    There you have it.

    On one issue, namely, the content of the “rumours” that had driven Bayelsa to contemplate such drastic measures, Akono has been less forthcoming.

    “We can boldly say,” he asserts, “that not only are the contents of such rumours spurious and ill-informed, they constitute nuisance to the sanity of the society. They are inimical to peace and progress and must be checked forthwith.”

    Deconstruction: “Those rumours are too vile to be repeated. Take my word for it.”

    I am gratefully the wiser and more enlightened for Akono’s pellucid clarification of the real purpose of Bayelsa’s anti-rumour law in the making. I believe the public is, too.

    With a state chairman of the NUJ like Akono, the Bayelsa State Government needs no official propagandist.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Good riddance to NECO?

    Good riddance to NECO?

    If feelers from Abuja last week are to be believed then the National Examination Council (NECO) the rival examination body to the West African Examination Council (WAEC) could be scrapped soon by the Federal Government paving the way for WAEC to reclaim it monopoly of Senior Secondary School Certificate examination in the country.

    The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) being conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) for students seeking admission into tertiary institutions in the country is also to be scrapped, leaving the institutions free to conduct their entrance examinations, but with JAMB serving as the clearing house.

    The decisions as contained in the white paper on the Steve Oransanye committee on the streamlining of government agencies, if eventually implemented would not only profoundly affect the face of secondary and higher education in Nigeria in the foreseeable future, but also the quality of the trained and educated workforce that would come out of our universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

    Prior to the setting up of NECO, WAEC was largely solely in charge of the organisation and conduct of secondary school final examination in English West Africa, leading to the award of the then West African School Certificate (WASC) ordinary and advance levels. It was also in charge of he General Certificate of Education (GCE) ordinary and advance levels for external students.

    But like all monopolies, WAEC became too powerful and sadly inefficient leading to wide spread criticism of its performance, one of which was alleged frustration of the higher education ambition of hundreds of thousand of students who sat for its examination and who either failed even after so many ‘retakes’ or had their results withheld permanently.

    Even those who passed with six credits or more at either one or two sittings waited for years before they got their certificates ( for the few lucky ones), while many others had no school certificate to show (apart from notification of result) even up till now, more than two/three decades after they sat for and passed WAEC. Meanwhile several fake results were in circulation bearing the logo and ‘signature’ of WAEC. Many had secured university/polytechnic/college of education admission or even employment using these fake results at the expense of the truly qualified ones and to the detriment of the system. These and many other problems posed to our educational system must have prompted the then Federal Government to consider setting up a truly Nigerian secondary school examination body to not only rival WAEC but also meet the yearnings of out teeming youths for access to higher education, but operating in accordance to international standard.

    But can we say in truth and fairness that NECO has been living up to expectation since it was formed? Regrettably,the answer is neither yes or no. And that sums up what is called NECO today.

    From the outset the body was inadvertently made to look inferior to WAEC in the minds of both parents and students, admission authorities at the various higher institutions of learning and even employers of labour. This could be attributed to the initial seeming alarming rate of success recorded by students in contrast to WAEC’s examination. And with confidence in NECO waning, even students were not attaching much value to NECO’s certificate and that has dodged the examination body up till now.

    But as another window of opportunity to students NECO can be said to have lived up to expectation and has in a way made WAEC to sit up and improve its service delivery to it customers. But should that be the only thing about NECO? Certainly not. Couldn’t something be done to improve it and make it live up to expectation instead of scrapping it? I think so.

    If one considers the problems and shortcomings of NECO since inception, one would be tempted to say scrap it, but then would a return to WAEC’s monopoly solve the problem it was created to solve? I don’t think so.

    Compelling or encouraging WAEC to increase the frequency of its examinations to create more windows of opportunity for student is good, but that is not enough to think there is no need for NECO again. I thought so initially, but considering the fact that WAEC is a West African body, who would Nigeria convince other countries in the project to also buy-in to this new thinking? How much of influence does Nigeria have in WAEC to think she can sway others in the examination body to refocus to suit our own needs? Would that not be better done with NECO?

    Instead of scrapping NECO, government should investigate why it is not performing as designed and device a way of improving it. Apart from the job losses that a scrapping or absorption by WAEC would cause, there is no guarantee that WAEC could be relied upon, after all it has failed us before. NECO could still be made to do the same thing we want WAEC to do and be compelled to even do it better. This will in turn also improve WAEC and ultimately to the advantage of the students and the betterment of our education system and delivery. The more examination bodies and window of opportunities for the students the better. After all, even in spite of WAEC and NECO, Nigerians still write Cambridge and other foreign secondary school certificate (O&A levels) examinations here at home for admissions into foreign universities. Let the choice be many, but government must set and maintain the standards comparable with what obtains elsewhere in the world where we have top rate education standard.

    This brings to mind the UTME which is also set for the axe. There is not much to say about that joint entrance examination other than its a failure. JAMB started very well with its exams but as the population of university admission seekers expanded the ability to cope dwindled such that instead of the body serving as a facilitator for the attainment/ fulfillment of the higher education yearnings of the students, it became more of an impediment. With fewer university places available to the hundreds of thousands of secondary school graduates every year, JAMB began compounding the problem with its arbitrary cut off and educationally disadvantaged states policy in which for instance a student with a lower score gains admission to the same university at the expense of somebody with a higher score just because the former comes from an ‘educationally disadvantaged’ state. How do you sustain merit and encourage hard work in this kind of a setting? And to compound JAMB’s problem, polytechnics and colleges of education entrance examinations were added, and that’s one of the reasons we found ourselves where we are today.

    As with most public examinations in Nigeria, the higher institutions have lost faith in JAMB and have gone ahead to conduct heir own post-JAMB screening exams to determine the suitability and capabilities of those who passed JAMB and offered admission by the body. Many who passed JAMB have been found to have failed the universities’ post-JAMB exams even where the questions were similar. So, the question is, how did they pass JAMB in the first place? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

    So, a return to the past when each university was conducting its own separate admission examination for prospective students will be a welcome development. It will not only engender competition, but also ensure that only the best from our secondary schools proceed to university, polytechnic or college of education. This will ultimately raise standard in our higher institutions and make their product to be once again competitive in the international arena. It is no longer secret that our graduates find it difficult to secure post graduate admission into foreign universities again due to the low regard the international community have for our university graduates. It wasn’t like this in the past. What a shame.

    I am not saying this is the main or only reason for this low recognition of our graduates and their certificates, the problems are numerous, but hey are not insurmountable, scrapping the UTME could be one of the solutions.

     

  • Groping along the long, dark tunnel

    Groping along the long, dark tunnel

    Thanks to Vanguard newspaper’s April 2 edition for reminding us, yet again, of the confounding arithmetic of the power sector. According to the newspaper, Nigeria from 1999 till date poured some N5 trillion ($31.45 billion) into the sector. Hopefully, by December when the new power plants under the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) come on stream, output in power generation is expected to hit 10,000mw – barring unforeseen developments.

    For the power-starved citizens, it remains a matter of watching and praying to see whether this dream would materialize. Just like 2005 when the nation first caught the bug of power sector activism, a lot of action is supposedly going on in the sector to stoke excitement. Never mind that the activism of the last 14 years and which has gulped $31.45 billion now promises to deliver a mere 5,500mw net addition to the grid.

    By comparison, South Africa’s $37 billion expenditure spread over a 10-year period is programmed to treble its current 45,000mw capacity. Now, if that is supposed to be a measure of how confounding the nation’s power econometrics is, that comparison merely seeks to temper citizen’s expectations as the magical date of abundant-power-for-all draws close.

    If I may repeat the familiar cliché, it is certainly not yet uhuru. The signs of bad faith and incompetence are more than evident. Call it the Nigerian nightmare; we have seen lots of talks but very little progress in terms of things that count. If it is not failed contractors stalling the projects, it is gas pricing and investment issues bogging down the process. While these go on, the turbines cannot be put into action. Most recently, we have had personnel issues – issues of severance package to be paid to disengaging PHCN staff thrown into the mix. If anything, they merely remind that the Nigerian jinx is alive and well.

    I have looked at the Power Sector Reform Act 2005. Honestly, I find nothing that can be described as unworkable in the instrument. I have also taken time to look at the roadmap for the sector’s reforms – a beautiful document by any standard. Those two instruments are no doubt milestones at least as far as laying the foundations for the much touted liberalization of the sector goes. Unfortunately, this is Nigeria where achievements are better delivered – on paper.

    In other words, real progress is a different matter. True, the structural reforms have gone fairly well. One can safely say at this time that the reforms have turned the corner – irreversible. Save for the lingering personnel issues, the sale of the unbundled distribution entities are as good as sealed. And, after months of dithering, the transmission company has also been handed over to the new managers – Manitoba Hydro Electric of Canada. For once, it seems that the regulator can claim to be on top of its game. Taken together with the frenzied pace to deliver the NIPP plants on their target date, and the various initiatives to deliver gas to fire them, the nation can claim to be closer to the dream of steady electric power supply.

    The issue unfortunately is hardly whether progress has, or is being, made. The debate has gone beyond the need for structural changes. They have in fact been accepted as inevitable. The real problem is the attempt to see the changes as an end as against being a means to an end. For instance, the process that led to the sale of PHCN entities cannot by any stretch of imagination substitute for the truly liberalised power sector that the nation craves. Sure, parceling the behemoth among different operators is a far cry from the picture of post reform power sector once bandied. I mean the picture of foreign investors falling over themselves to have a piece of the action in the deregulated power environment.

    The issue, in summary, is about doubling, trebling or even quadrupling investment and output of electricity in the years to come. Isn’t that the whole idea behind the institutional redesign?

    This is where I consider the entire process somewhat disappointing.

    With due respect to the new owners of the distribution companies, what comes as striking is the absence of players of substance – global leaders – among them. Of course, in some established cases, some of the power plants were sold on non-competitive basis. Taken together, these issues raise the question of whether something isn’t fundamentally missing in the post-reform legislative and institutional architecture.

    I wish I could state that the prognosis in the near term is anything but bad. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see the inefficiencies which hobbled the operations of the PHCN disappear because it carries a new name; as for competition; there will be none.

    Of course, no one needs to worry about the long term because by then, we’ll all be dead!

     

    Feedback

     

     

    Re-Oteh/Reps duel

    Your write up on the Oteh/Reps duel is very informative. The Reps vengeance has blinded them to the extent that they denied SEC workers 2013 appropriation. It is tyrannical overreach and unconstitutional. Chuma Mbaise, Imo State

    The two chambers reps/senate is one of the calamities that befell Nigeria. Their salaries/benefits are never and will never be known. Their next target will be the judiciary. Were they that articulate, they would have issued a query, asking the Senate to explain why Oteh was confirmed. They always have exaggerated impression of themselves/limitations. They are a disaster. Akinlayo A, Osun

    I am fascinated by your write up on Oteh/Reps duel. It is indeed sad that the so-called representatives of the people have decided to play to the gallery on this Oteh saga. What these honourable members should tell Nigerians is: what was the state of our stock market before Arunma Oteh took over as DG and the present state since her leadership of the market. I believe the powerful “thieves” who ran the stock market aground during the tenure of the Prof Ndidi Okereke-led stock market with the active collaboration of the CBN then, are hell bent on frustrating this woman who has worked tirelessly to reposition the market. She sure stepped on toes when she revealed the rot in NSE/SEC perpetrated by her predecessors with the active connivance of the Board. It is pathetic that those who are sincerely ready to work for the benefit of all Nigerians are usually frustrated. What a pity! +234 8158836388

    Sanya, I didn’t know we still have knowledgeable and bold Nigerians in the country’s enduring hopelessness and rudderlessnes. Thanks for your piece on Oteh/Reps duel. When will those reps stop behaving like street urchins in legislative quarters? Sincerely, we must find a way to end the madness. Rev Dr A Ezimah.

     

     

     

  • The regime denuded

    The regime denuded

    Perhaps the only accident about Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai’s The Accidental Public Servant is the author developing a Samson complex; that seemed to care less if the tinselled edifice crashed on him –and the rest of the establishment. So brutally candid was the exposé!

    Such is the angst of a court revolutionary!

    No surprise there – that the gadfly denuded Olusegun Obasanjo and his “democratic regime” (crazy oxymoron, to be sure; but all-too-grim reality of the Nigerian polity). At the end of it all, Holy Sege, the pope of the Lugard establishment of his era, did not appear so pious after all!

    In contrast, Holy Sege’s No. 2, ab initio no hero of the gadfly, did not (at least in El-Rufai’s fierce opinion) levitate above his presumed moral universe; where scandals and rumours of scandals are allegedly fair fare. Still, both President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar have made their stands, for good or for ill; and await the verdict of history.

    But for this polity, for the umpteenth time, a single personage has succeeded in turning a putative democratic republic into a monstrous regime. A single man has moulded a country in his own image; and all the rest could do is gawk at the monstrosity!

    Now, is it just déjà vu, or an outright jinx – 1960, 1966, 1983 and 1999: important junctures that threw up inadequate personages, and changed for the worse the course of Nigerian history?

    1960: under Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, it took less than three years for Nigeria, putative model of African democracy, to abort into fascism, anomie and eventual anarchy.

    1966: Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi inherited a coup he knew nothing about, and was consumed by its violent contradictions, leaving behind the northern anti-Igbo pogroms and Civil War (1967-1970).

    1983: lieutenants of Shehu Usman Shagari, trophy of the Obasanjo junta’s manipulation, rigged out the Second Republic only after four years and three months.

    1999: Obasanjo, another trophy of Army Arrangement (apologies to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) has turned this democracy into a burlesque, with dire consequences of its high-stake tragi-comedies.

    El-Rufai might come across to many, after reading his book and its comments on his fellow- establishment men and women, as rather too clinical, too antiseptic, too spick-and-span; as he galloped from victory to victory; solving one problem after another with near-divine aplomb and moral panache.

    Doesn’t blood flow in his veins, many are wont to ask? Was he living in Jupiter before he swooped in, like some super-human UFO, to salvage the Nigerian establishment, teeming with moral savages?

    These, to be sure, are tough questions to chew for Malam El-Rufai and his friends; even as his foes – and of those he has quite a myriad, who dismiss him as a maverick – as the debate on how Pentascope killed Nitel, and who was and was not responsible for it rages on.

    Still, in his book, El-Rufai, despite the cockiness of one cantering away on a moral high horse, trailed by a dust of self-praise, came across as a witness of truth: named names of his benefactors, his traducers and those in-between; and provided, in the appendices, letters, memos, facts and figures to back his claims.

    That leads to his take on his fellow “reformists”.

    Nuhu Ribadu: a fierce and volcanic anti-corruption crusader who nevertheless was no less fierce and volcanic in court politics and intrigue.

    Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: the Breton Woods expat expert (apologies to Wole Soyinka’s biting sarcasm in The Interpreters) who, next to spreading the gospel of IMF and World Bank, logs fierce political ambition, far beyond the narrow prism of finance, debt forgiveness and allied affairs.

    Chukwuma Soludo: adept orator, dashing power dresser and dazzling intellectual showman who nevertheless was not averse to executive kowtowing to claim a coveted Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor trophy, when Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, head of Obasanjo’s Economic Management Team, would not share her glory with anybody!

    The words above were not exactly Mallam El-Rufai’s. But they pretty much summarised his portraiture of his co-technocrats and flower of the Obasanjo administration. So, why would El-Rufai want to paint his friends in such not-too-flattering though apparently honest and candid view?

    He wanted to knock off everyone and, like his sweet-sour benefactor, Obasanjo, become the last man standing? Or because, even with the best of brains, Nigeria still had not found the right mixture of brilliance and character to become a model country?

    Only El-Rufai can pronounce on El-Rufai’s motives. But from the malice-less portraiture of these “reformists”, among whom El-Rufai was a prime member, the second supposition would appear more probable.

    It, of course, shows the futility of pushing personal daring to correct a systemic problem, as this column has always held. It was always going to end up in fiasco.

    Obasanjo came with a messianic air, built on nothing but personal daring, hung on personal rectitude and piety. But all too soon, it became clear that perhaps both traits were, for their Baba, a bridge too far!

    That seems to have bred the dissonance that made El-Rufai dismiss, with flat contempt, Obasanjo’s collapsed third term project and other presidential malfeasance like the presidential library moral swindle.

    But then, the harm is done. As it was in the Bible, Saul had killed his thousands and David, his ten thousands. Obasanjo, piety and all, got away with his presidential library extortion. So, why shouldn’t Goodluck Jonathan, following Obasanjo’s pious profanity, get away with his own presidential extortion in the name of God?

    The harm is done – and permanently perhaps: and not even El-Rufai’s moral outrage in his book could change that. But by trying to push himself as the exemplar of what Nigeria needs to succeed – intelligent, competent, fearless and daring – without addressing the systemic flaws that aided Obasanjo’s fiasco, El-Rufai appears fated to the same mistake.

    Nigeria needs competent and brilliant and resourceful and fearless and upright leaders to save her. But even more, Nigeria needs a structure that would build on Nigeria’s multi-national reality; and somehow weave, from this salad, a strong national fibre that proclaims a Rainbow Nigeria but does not decry the different colours that make up that brilliant rainbow.

    That is the point El-Rufai’s brilliant book missed as it went in quixotic search of the “de-tribalised Nigerian” – whatever that means.

    It is restructuring, stupid!

     

  • Oteh/Reps duel

    Oteh/Reps duel

    Last week, the House of Representatives renewed their bid to oust Arunma Oteh, Director General of the Security and Exchange Commision (SEC) with a third resolution calling on President Goodluck Jonathan to sack her. It followed it with a letter dated March 27 to the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala drawing atttention to the 2013 Appropriation Act, Item 9, Part E, Clause 10 which expressely stated that “All revenue however described including all fees received, fines, grants, budgetary provisions and all internally and externally generated revenue shall not be spent by the Security and Exchange Commission for recurrent or capital purposes or for any other matters, nor liabilities thereon incurred except with prior appropriation and approval by the National Assembly”.

    It advised SEC “ to refrain from making any expenditure until a budget has been approved by the National Assembly for that purpose.’’ It also warned: “You may also not source and spend any monies whatsoever as this will be a clear infringement of the constitution of the a federal Republic of Nigeria and shall be viewed as such.”

    Nigerians must wonder at how a probe meant to unearth the shady practices that led to the collapse of the capital market in 2009 became not just an inquisition for an individual appointed in 2010 to salvage the situation, but has since transmuted into an instrument for the decapitation of the capital market institution itself.

    Nigerians will recall that the Oteh saga began March 13, 2012 when the House of Representatives Committee on Capital Markets and other Institutions commenced a public hearing “to identify the manifest causes of the markets’s near collapse with a view to finding lasting solutions.”

    A bit of the background seems necesary at this point if only to illustrate the extent of the legislative overeach that threatens to undermine the basis of separation of powers between the executive and the legislature.

    The capital market had plunged from an all time high of N13.5 trillion in capitalisation in March 2008 to less than N4.6 trillion by the second week of January 2009. Same for the All-Share Index which also plummeted from about 66000 basis points to less than 22000 points during the same period. In the atmosphere of wide-ranging allegations of infractions against operators and regulators at the time, an inevitable consequence was the forced exit of the Director General under whose watch the market ran into storm. Hence the exit of Musa Al Faki in April 2009. In January 2010 – some eight months after, Arunma Oteh was drafted by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua to spearhead the capital market restoration. Barely two years after, the historic probe by the House to “to identify the manifest causes of the markets’ near collapse” (which predated Oteh’s appointment) became an exercise in wild chase after the wind.

    This background is necessarily for principally two reasons. First, the facts of the issue appears to have either been lost or deliberately muddled up in the controversies that have generated much heat but very little light. The second reason is to remove any pretensions that the House is driven by altruism and to underline what is clearly its vengeful mission to cut Oteh to size.

    No doubt, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since the March 2012 public hearing when Oteh accused the chair of the House Committee on Capital Market, Herman Hembe of demanding a N39 million bribe from SEC for the hearing. She had equally accused Hembe of demanding N5million from the commission to enable him travel to the Dominican Republic to attend an emerging market conference without embarking on the journey. That was after the committee accused her of mismanaging the affairs of the commission in her barely two years in office.

    Of course, her accusers had in turn alleged that she spent N61.1 million to rent an official apartment after blowing N30 million in hotel accommodation at Transcorp Hilton in eight months (seven months more than she was entitled). Another N850,000 was said to have been spent on meals for a team of experts in one day (a figure hotly disputed with proof to show that only N84,300 was spent). Yet another N42.5 million was said to have been spent to procure three Toyota vehicles without a tender’s board meeting in breach of the Public Procurement Act 2007. And then, there was the matter of two consultants brought in by Oteh from Access Bank. It is noteworthy that none of the charges relate to the committee’s terms of reference.

    Coincidentally, by June 2012, Oteh’s House of SEC was literally on fire. This time, the issue centred on an alleged misappropriation of N3 billion on SEC Project 50 put up to commemorate the golden jubilee of the capital market. She was slammed with a compulsory leave by the Board of SEC to pave the way for unfettered investigation by an independent audit body. A month after, that is on July 17, 2012, the federal government, on the strength of the auditors’ findings, gave her a clean bill of health on the corruption allegations although the report found her wanting for administrative lapses. She was thereafter recalled her to her desk.

    Thereafter, the Hon. Ibrahim El Sudi ad hoc committee which took over from the Hembe-led committee took over proceedings. Miffed that the Presidency recalled the embattled SEC DG without the committee’s clearance, it insisted that the federal government ought to have waited for it to conclude investigations.

    From then on, the two sides simply dug in. Whereas the executive opted to carry on, the committee went for broke: it found that the appointment of Oteh violated sections of the Investment and Security Act 2007. In its opinion, the embattled DG did not have 15 years experience in the Nigerian capital market hence the recommendation of her ouster. The House didn’t bother to explain how her appointment scaled through the eagle eye of the confirming authority – the Senate. That is a matter for another day!

    The danger of legislative overreach is real; more troubling however is that it is becoming the rule rather than exception. We saw it in the case of NCAA boss Harold Demuren. It also played out in the case of Abdulrasheed Maina, the erstwhile boss of the presidential task force on police pensions. In both cases, the lawmakers literally held the gun to the head of the executive as it dared it to risk not carrying out its orders! In Oteh’s case, the lawmakers have long resolved that it is either she goes or they will bring down the roof on everyone’s head!

    And where does it lead? Nowhere but the highway of tyranny. Withholding the appropriation of SEC is worse than abuse, it is tyrannical. And who says legislative arbitrariness is more tolerable than executive? It is doubtful that the House has endeared itself to Nigerians on the matter. The opposite seems more likely. And that is sad.