The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • AGF and Supreme Court

    AGF and Supreme Court

    The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, has one more case deserving of the immediate attention of the Supreme Court even as Nigerians celebrate the recent judgment on the inviolability of democracy as the only acceptable system of governance at the local government level. Last week, the Supreme Court in a unanimous judgment by the full complement of seven justices, gave an unequivocal endorsement of Section 7 of the 1999 constitution (as amended).  

    Section 7 provides that “the system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is under this constitution guaranteed, and accordingly, the government of every state shall subject to section 8 of this constitution, ensure their existence under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils.” Section 8 deals with creation of states and local government councils, and the consequential matters, including boundary adjustments. So, without equivocation, the constitution provides for the sanctity of democracy at the local government councils.

    Sadly, since the end of the tenure of the first set of democratically elected local government officials in 2003, majority of the state governments employing extra-constitutionally means abrogated democracy at that level. Against the express provision of section 7, some state governors by subterfuge, introduced what they ingeniously refer to as caretaker committees to run the affairs of the local government councils. Even where chairmen and councillors of local government are democratically elected, some governors assuming powers which the constitution did not confer on them, capriciously dissolve local council administrations, and impose caretaker administrations, with the connivance of the state legislators.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s economic team assures Nigerians of quick economic recovery

    By resorting to caretaker administrations, a system of government not recognized by the 1999 constitution, the concerned governors, do grave violation to the provisions of section 1(2) of the constitution. The Justices of the Supreme Court were unequivocal in condemning such conducts and referred to them as gross misconduct, which is a ground for impeachment proceedings, under section 188(2)(b) of the constitution. Section 1(2) provides that “the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any persons or group of persons take control of the government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this constitution.”

    As if the coup de grace against the administrative organ of the local councils were not enough harm, the governors relying on the provision of section 162(5) and (6) of the constitution, appropriated their financial independence, by unlawful capture of the sums due to the local government councils, from the federal account. While agreeably subsections (7) and (8) are contradictory, the clear intentions of section 162, with respect to the allocations due to the local government councils, from the federation account, are reiterated by a combined reading of the provisions of subsections 3, 5, 6, and 7 of the section.

    The clear intended meaning is what the Supreme Court affirmed in its landmark judgment, last week. That intention is that monies due to the local government councils from the federation account shall be paid over to the councils, without any pilfering, whether “on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly” as per subsection 7; or “on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the House of Assembly of the state” as per subsection 8, both of section 162 of the constitution.

    It is noteworthy that the Supreme Court perhaps relying on the Golden and the Purpose rules of interpretation creatively helped the lawmakers to make sense of the conflicting provisions in section 162 of the constitution. There are four major rules of interpretation, namely the literal rule, golden rule, mischief rule, and the purpose rule. The golden rule is resorted to where the words used in the statute would create absurdity, and so a secondary interpretation is resorted to, as the lawmakers do not make statutes that are absurd.

    On the other hand, the purpose rule of interpretation, allows the judge to take into account the purpose and intention of the legislation, in its judgment, and not to be restricted to the strict and narrow interpretation of the words in the statute. The Supreme Court, as the apex court, is not just an adjudicatory institution, but also a quasi-law making authority, which can use the golden and/or purpose rules of interpretation to correct the absurdity in a statute like in section 162, which some state governors have used to unlawfully make the local government councils, worse than a department in their government house, as well as an avenue for corrupt enrichment.

    As some have argued, the far reaching judgment of the Supreme Court may not conclusively cure the ailment in the local government administration, but this writer believes that it should have far reaching impact on the administration of local government funds, which had become an object of freewheeling bazar. The judgment effectively restricts the federal government from funding caretaker administrations, being an aberration to the constitution. It also, provided for direct payments to the local government councils, from the federation account.

    While the judgment is not a cure-all medicament, it should impact positively on the administration of local government councils in Nigeria. The state governors who have commented on the judgment so far, have expressed willingness to abide by the judgment of the court, and the National Assembly, expectedly would enact the necessary general legislation to guide the administration of local government councils in the country. The AGF and the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) deserve commendation for reining in state governments that are perennial abusers of the local government council administrations.

    The next challenge I throw to the AGF and the Tinubu administration is to approach the apex court to interpret the provisions of the constitution on powers and control over public funds. Sections 80-84 and 120-123 of the 1999 constitution provides that all monies to be spent, either by federal or state executives, must be in accordance with provisions of an appropriation act, or otherwise authorized by the legislators. For this writer, it is an aberration that the executive expends huge chunk of either the federal or state resources without appropriation, under any guise.

    As I have argued in the past, the so-called security vote, which the executive arm of government, at federal or state levels, and which many heads of departments of federal and state agencies have copied, remain an aberration to the provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended). It is absurd, that elected officials, or appointed executives, in a democracy, would have at their disposal, humongous resources of the state, which they are entitled to spend at their whims and caprices, without oversight by another authority. I hope the AGF would accept this challenge in the interest of further deepening our democracy.

  • Beyond muddling through

    Beyond muddling through

    I have been reading Babatunde Raji Fashola’s monograph, “Nigerian Public Discourse:  The Interplay of Empirical Evidence and Hyperbole,” a copy of which he couriered to me at my request.

    Fashola, a Senior Advocate, needs no introduction.  He is the high-achieving former governor of Lagos State, who had the unenviable task of sustaining and building on the solid legacy of his predecessor, Asiwaju, now President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    At the end of his second and final gubernatorial term, Fashola was only in his late 40s.  I recall telling him at a private meeting that retirement from public service should be the last thing on his mind.  I was sure that he would be drafted to take charge of some overarching scheme of our national life, or headhunted to make his services and expertise available in a larger, international context.

    It came as no surprise when President Muhammadu Buhari, who must have been impressed by Fashola’s conduct of the affairs of Lagos State, and by his conduct and poise at their encounters, tapped Fashola to serve as Minister of Work, Housing, and Energy.

    The Energy portfolio has been the graveyard of many a political career.  To insert it as just one element in Fashola’s near-omnivorous remit reminded me of the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.”  The reward for uncommon achievement is an even more formidable assignment.

    But even for a person of his great energy and commitment to the task at hand, and especially for a person with a predilection for a hands-on approach, the remit proved too large.  The Energy portfolio was excised, and he handled what remained, to the best of his great ability.

    Read Also: Rich men are always right in Nigeria, Caroline Danjuma tells ladies

    The insights and the nuggets of wisdom in Nigerian Public Discourse are distilled from his sojourn in the public as executive governor of Lagos State and Minister Plenipotentiary in Buhari’s Administration.  But some of  reminiscences informing the volume are rooted in the Lagos of his childhood.

    Then, it was widely believed that the Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean had to be hermetically sealed, one from the other, because any contact, would result in an explosion of nuclear proportions.  In reality, the barrier separating them was erected for ecological reasons.

    It was also widely believed, not just in Lagos that Indian athletes were banned from international competitions because of their extraordinary feats, such as beating the Nigerian team 100 -0 in a soccer match.  No record exists of the encounter.

    Legend also credited the great soccer star Teslimi “Thunder” Balogun with a shot so powerful that it went through the torso of the doomed goalkeeper and exited at the other side. Following this horrific development, according to one version we heard far, far away in the interior, Balogun was barred from taking any shot at goal with his left foot and compensated with a large sum.

    There are of course pronouncements and assertions of a higher order “made with such unwavering conviction that it becomes a formidable task to summon the courage to challenge them without appearing naïve or contrarian.

    Consequently, he adds, mere conjecture or personal opinions expressed with authority on a national platform assume the guise of an empirical fact that cannot be disputed.  With re-telling, they take on a life of their own, and it is only a matter of time before they become invested with the authority of indisputable facts.

    The goal of the volume, Fashola writes, is “to challenge some of our collective assumptions” on various aspects of our national life and “to inaugurate a new cohort of intellectuals, driven by forensic facts that are “credible and reliable.”

    That is the lawyer and jurist, the Senior Advocate, in Fashola.

    “Collective assumptions” impinging on governance and public policy abound.

    Examples:  Nigeria mired in a housing deficit of 17 million.  Nigerians subsist on one pre-Emefiele American dollar a day, and on probably one-third of that amount today.  Nigeria as the world’s “poverty capital.”  Nigeria’s national population situated between 200 and 220 million.  Fourteen million school-age children roaming the streets.  Nigeria generating no more than 4,000 KW of electricity.

    Is there any empirical evidence for them?  How did they develop?  What has kept them alive, despite their manifest wrongheadedness?  How were the metrics obtained?

    Fashola traced the categorical assertion about Nigeria facing a housing deficit of 20 million that subsequently ballooned to 22 million to the preface to the 2012 National Housing Policy signed by the serving Minister of Housing some three years before Fashola took office.  The Minister in question could furnish no firm basis for the assertion. 

    Subsequent iterations and reiterations, figures had been based on extrapolations, and no amount of housing delivery then seems to have made a dent in the deficit, which seems not to take into account a large number of unoccupied houses in the rural areas and even in many large cities, which in itself raises a question as to whether the problem is simply a housing deficit, or a deficit that must include as a solution the optimum usage of existing houses.

    What precisely is the problem at hand?   Without an accurate definition of the problem, we cannot be sure that we are indeed measuring what needs to be measured.  Without measuring what needs to be measured, we cannot be sure that we are proposing the appropriate solutions.

    The same problem arises with the assertion that Nigerians subsist on one U.S. dollar or less per day.  It fails to reckon with the informal support system that undergirds most African societies.  The average Nigerian, at home or abroad, is the keeper of his parents and kinsfolk, providing for their daily sustenance, shelter, school fees, medical expenses, etc., etc.

    Fashola does not mention this problem, but it is the same failure, the failure of precise definition, that has constrained attempts to ensure a regular supply of petroleum products at affordable prices in a country whose economy is driven largely by the oil industry.

    Are we dealing with subsidies that must be removed to reflect the true cost and generate larger revenues? Are we dealing with “correct pricing”?  What, at any rate, are the benchmark prices? Are we dealing with wastage of the precious commodity occasioned by mindless consumption? Are we dealing with petty smuggling, or with smuggling on an industrial scale?  Are we bogged down by a refining infrastructure that belongs in the pre-industrial age?

    These elements are intertwined, but the authorities sent an inordinate amount of time and resources casting unproven “subsidies” as the bogey of the industry.  More than three decades,  later, the problem is still very much with us.

    As Fashola defines it, “a minister’s task is to solve problems.”

    This definition flows from a clear, uncluttered mind.  No grandstanding; no contrived magniloquence.  Based on this perception of his task, he travelled as a city or municipal manager when he was governor of Lagos State, out to learn and apply the lessons learned to make Nigeria  a better place. The same outlook informed his travels as a minister plenipotentiary: to learn how problems he is grappling with have been tackled in other settings and to apply some of those lessons back home.

    In Nigeria, Fashola says, only the government is enjoined to rectitude and to eschew corruption in its various guises and disguises. The citizen, he submits, has the corollary duty of obeying and refraining from conduct that could compromise officials.  But the citizens hardly keep their own end of the bargain.

    I winced when I read the following, but do you know that you are supping at the high table of corruption whenever you invite a public official or politically exposed person to a fundraising or award ceremony in expectation of a financial benefit or patronage, confer chieftainly or other titles thus blurring the lines between merit and crude preferment?

    Or whenever you recruit young women to trawl the city soliciting deposits for banks and other financial institutions, and whenever you seek to influence contract awards and public appointments using underhanded tactics?

    If some of this has a familiar ring, it is because the text draws on some of Fashola’s public speeches.  The language is for the most part crisp. Unfortunately, some of the pages are misaligned, so that page p7 faces page 67.  This renders jarring here and there what is otherwise a pleasurable reading experience,  a summons to thoughtful, critical and evidence-based, procedure in the analysis of matters large and small.

  • Kanu: much din, little sense

    Kanu: much din, little sense

    What really do the boisterous Free Nnamdi Kanu South East ensemble want? 

    Are they begging for the freedom of that uncouth fellow?  Or pressing arid bluff that has kept Kanu firmly yoked to DSS chains, since his dramatic re-capture from Kenya?

    Some clarity on that front.  Begging for mercy is one thing.  Bluffing, with the double jeopardy of Kanu in the can; and the South East under IPOB anarchy, is another.

    Again, which is which — for both are diametric opposites.

    For context, Kanu’s direct legal tactics hit you smack as romantically confusing.  In one breath, his lawyers are triggering a negotiation clause in our laws.  In another, Kanu is instituting a fundamental human rights cause in another court which, by its summary dismissal, would appear hare-brained, hollow and shallow.

    Again, why all these cross-purpose signals?  If they are to muddy the waters, to confuse and confound, just to slip in a “political solution” — whatever that means — be sure not everyone is (or will ever be) confused or confounded!

    Actions have consequences.  If you must beg, then have the humility — natural or forced — to show contrition and penance. 

    If you must justify your actions, then let your attorneys vigorously argue your case and prove your innocence in court.  You don’t mix mercy with desert, without something terrible giving at the end.

    Besides, on a strictly legal front.  Alleged crime is alleged crime.  Treason is treason; and it doesn’t wear the toga of Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Edo, Efik, Angas, Tapa or Kanuri.

    Read Also: We’ve done well, Nigerians will soon jubilate – APC Govs

    So, why are these blokes, who sat near-quiet all through the Kanu years of lunatic boasts and manic taunts of other ethnics, act as though such anarchical conduct is acceptable, just because Kanu is their kinsman, prodigal or worthy?

    Wouldn’t they have prevented his present bind, had they promptly warned him to gird his tongue and abandon his perilous ways?

    Since the renewed “release Kanu” campaign, a lot of toxin has blighted the air: half-truths, brazen lies and outright fantasy, suggesting the fellow is more sinned against than sinning. 

    That’s absolute crap — except if the yarn spinners lived in Mars, not here, during Kanu’s halcyon days of fierce, equal-opportunity anarchy.

    One of those old wives’ tales is that Kanu’s is “unlawful and illegal detention”.  That’s a white lie.  Many times, Kanu has challenged his detention in court.  Many times his bid has failed.  Even the Court of Appeal verdict, which found for his release, has been erased by the Supreme Court.

    So, who determines legality — sedate courts that deal with cold facts?   Or a loud propaganda ensemble that hustles to scam the unwary with hot, wild emotions?

    Still, this is democracy; and it is within the rights of crusaders for Kanu’s freedom to push their cause with as much vigour and trenchancy as they can command.

    You must admit some stoicism in Enyinnaya Abaribe, the Abia senator, over the Kanu cause.  But for the calm of the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency, Abaribe — and others that stood surety for Kanu — would have been thrown into the can, in lieu of the vanished suspect.  Why Abaribe wants an encore of that quagmire is left to him.

    The garrulous Kanu not only jumped bail, he belched reckless fire, from his safe redoubt abroad, goading his goons to a spree of destruction, inside what he dubbed a “zoo” — just as Kanu-wannabe, Simon Ekpa, the self-declared Biafra Prime Minister, does now, lobbing at the South East a cocktail of ruin, from his safe haven in Finland. 

    When he too is dragooned home to answer for his crime, let no one start shedding crocodile tears, and bawling political solutions!

    Still, by writing a Free Kanu letter to President Bola Tinubu, the Ikenga Ugochinyere-spurred federal lawmakers (Labour Party: 23; PDP: 10; APC: 9; All Progressives Grand Alliance: 3; and New Nigerian People’s Party: 1, according to a Premium Times survey) have committed no crime. 

    That the mostly Igbo lawmakers hinge their campaign on the “mere anarchy now loosed upon the East” is hardly illegitimate.  Anything that can stem the bloodbath in Igboland, which puts millions of law-abiding Igbo common folks at risk, is welcome.

    Yet, the campaign must be founded on basic honesty — not infernal lies: condemnable grist for cheap propaganda.  That brings to the fore the MASSOB take.

    In its tango with the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF), which took exception to the clamour to release Kanu, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) — the Ralph Uwazurike nest that spawned the Kanu gargoyle — claimed President Tinubu should “ … release Nnamdi Kanu as he did for Sunday Igboho in Benin Republic prison” — a lie, immaculate white!

    Old man and Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark, has woven own facetious verbal tapestry, suggesting that Kanu and Sunday Igboho are the same.  No, they are not.

    Still, you’d pardon both MASSOB and Clark for their selective amnesia, deliberate or inadvertent.  Both were in the great southern anti-Fulani orchestra, putting a Fulani president in the boisterous dock of the great southern media; and handing down summary guilt for the crime of some Fulani felons, swearing such “Fulani conquest” was the fundamental principle of the PMB government.

    Why Buhari would set his own government on fire, to please a few Fulani criminals (as illogical as that sounded) was unclear. But that preening, ringing unreason did not faze the all-thumping southern media, just because they could bark so and get away with it.

    Even then, that Kanu and Igboho drank from the same anti-Fulani pond, wild and visceral, was the only similarity. 

    While the Igbo elite hee-hawed over Kanu’s outlandish behaviour, some critical Yoruba voices condemned Igboho’s excesses — including Asiwaju Tinubu himself, who cautioned his Yoruba folks to be less sweeping in their “Fulani herdsmen” accusations. 

    Ripples also constantly warned against gangling Yoruba nationalism, as it unfolded live and hot. Readers of this column are living witnesses.

    But if you still doubt that the Yoruba would ever allow a Kanu-induced self-consuming tragedy, the latest evidence is the sorry Yoruba Nation “take-over” at Ibadan — and how everyone disowned the comics, forcing Igboho and co to multiple disavowals.

    Besides, the Igboho case, with his “Yoruba Nesan” cup overflowing; and he fleeing to Benin Republic, where his hoped-for cover became a grand and sobering delusion, was strictly between him and the PMB government.  He came back to Nigeria after the Benin justice system had run its course.  Tinubu had absolutely nothing to do with it.

    Honestly, right from the Chinua Achebe release of There Was A Country, which visceral accounts inflamed neo-Biafra agitations, this tragic Kanu gambit would have been averted, had Igbo elders dutifully cautioned their youthful hotheads.  But no!

    Kanu may well stew in his juice. Still, if the Tinubu order settles for mercy, so be it.  But the terms of that mercy must be rigorous and clear, preceded by clear penance.

    Kanu’s conduct is too heinous to be glossed over by some “political solution”, without creating an ultra-dangerous precedent, that would come back to blight the polity.

  • The economy: A promise made!

    The economy: A promise made!

    If there was still any doubts about the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration’s understanding of the fierce urgency of the times, last week’s inauguration of the 31-member Presidential Economic Coordination Council (PECC)  should ordinarily be proof of how it views what is unarguably, a concerning situation. A body composed of the president himself, vice president, the senate president, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 13 ministers, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Yemi Cardoso, the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, and chieftains of manufacturing and finance among others, its inauguration cannot but herald a new momentum in the arduous task of giving the economy the long expected fillip.

    Understandably, there will be hordes of critics who would argue whether the recycling of familiar faces and their well-worn orthodoxies are what is needed. They cite the plethora of committees sworn to the same basic task of not only identifying the problems but giving directions on what is needed to get the economy running as proof. Many more wonder what the latest body would do that others before it could not do. And given that the roots of the problem are largely historical, some others, still, have equally wondered whether there is anything new that is not already known, in which case the administration only needed to take practical measures to get the job done as against on-boarding a motley assembly of disparate cooks thus potentially messing up the broth!

    These positions are persuasive no doubt.  What is also incontestable is that every administration is entitled to its understanding of the problem and the strategy to get things done.

    Read Also: Zedcrest acquires RMB Nigeria Stockbrokers

    In the immediate past administration for instance, we saw an administration that was not only ‘brain dead’ but thought little of outsourcing the management of critical sectors of the economy to a coterie of players with limited understanding, if not entirely poor judgment, about the critical choices that the country had to make at a difficult moment. From a the fiscal side of governance that was effectively AWOL – to use a popular military lingo – to a monetary management team that went rogue, dishing out as many ‘intervention funds’ for all manners of activities that catches their fancies under the sun, Nigerians only needed to recall the crisis of monumental abdication and institutional indifference of that particular era to appreciate the current tragedy that has befallen us.

    The same could be said of the private sector players of that era. So hopelessly detached were their chieftains from the ordinary day realities facing the people that a well-conceived initiative to mitigate the ravaging impact of Covid-19 pandemic was botched by them in such a manner that raised questions about their social conscience if not relevance.

    How many now remember that era of palliatives when many of our governors, while behaving like Ali Baba, opted to treat the so-called palliatives as something of a freebie, which they disbursed as they deemed fit?

    Clearly, if there are lessons to learn, it certainly would not be about the number of panels or even hands needed to be on the decks but whether the ship’s captain is not just in charge in a figurative sense but is seen to be truly hands-on. The other would be whether or not the leader had a keen awareness and understanding of the issues at stake and with it his actionable plans.

    I guess this is where the former president, Muhammadu Buhari, as indeed the administration that he led, fell miserably short. With the leader providing neither clarity of thought nor the benefit of a coherent working document to guide his team, governance was run in silos with each actor doing as their whims dictated. From a finance and national planning ministry that was a little more than a cash office to the apex bank playing the Robbin Hood to all comers, the seed of today’s decay was effectively sown and with it the mess that the country is currently engulfed in.

    With the current hands-on presidency, things are already turning out to be different. Which begs the question of what his PECC team will do differently?

    True, President Bola Tinubu has since set the ball rolling with an ambitious N2 trillion package to stimulate the economy. The package, whose operations straddles such ministries as health and social welfare (N350 billion), agriculture and food security (N500 billion), energy and power sector (N500 billion) and general business support (N650 billion) is expected to create 4.7 million direct and indirect jobs, improve access to finance, and enhance economic growth.

    More specifically, it envisages the redeployment of 20,000 healthcare workers to provide services to 10-12 million patients in areas where they are most urgently needed, increasing on-grid electricity to homes and businesses from about 4.5 to six gigawatts in six months; making essential medicines available at lower cost for 80-90 million Nigerians and a facility that will support the construction of additional 25,000 housing units, among others.

    However, setting out the lofty goals would seem the easier part. The harder part is putting the PECC team to work and on such a pace that matches the president’s, as indeed, Nigerians’ expectations. Again, I look at the similar high-powered bodies in the past and wonder whether any expectations of performance would not be misplaced. For even as a purely advisory body, nothing in the profiles of the 31-odd member PECC give away anything that is not already known of their orientation or anything for that matter that could be described as not commonplace – a case of more of the same! 

    The other source of worry is the bureaucracy, that ill-fitted contraption with neither the appetite for performance let alone efficiency. Can it be trusted to change its old ways of doing business? Currently, if Nigerians are less exultant on the fresh promises of exaggerated performance by their government and its institutions, they only need recall how long they have dwelt on this Ease of Doing Business thing of which progress – meaningful progress that is – has remained marginal if not entirely abysmal. 

    These are the odds that President Bola Tinubu and his PECC are up against.

    So much for the administration’s pre-occupation with the macro-economy and with it the quest to win big. Will it be too big to add railways rehabilitation to the bucket list – as task without which the nation’s dream of wholesome logistical and supply chain would remain a mere illusion?

    Wouldn’t that be a good strategy to rev up the economies of those once thriving railway towns along the rail corridors east and west? How about that as an effective strategy to bring down the cost of transportation, particularly agricultural produce from one part of the country to another?

    By the way, I read somewhere that Lord Frederick Lugard actually built principal lines from Lagos to Kano in a record time of 15 years. With the current state of technology and know-how, it shouldn’t require an eternity to get those old contraptions moving on their tracks, again.

    For an extraordinary body that PECC is, Nigerians expect that no stone would be left unturned in the quest to make life more bearable for them in the shortest possible time. After all, is it not said that a promised made is a promise kept?

  • Alternative court judgments

    Alternative court judgments

    Dissimilar interpretations of recent judgments of the Court of Appeal on the dispute in the Rivers State House of Assembly, and the Federal High Court, on the Peoples Democratic Party’s gubernatorial party primary election, in Edo State, may have resurrected the ‘alternative facts’ theory, that gained prominence during the first term of former President Donald Trump, of the United States of America. The theory of ‘alternative facts’ is attributable to the beguiling Kellyanne Conway, counsel to that infamous former USA president, when she tried to justify the barefaced lie of Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary. 

    The former press secretary had claimed in his first press conference that the crowd that attended Donald Trump’s inauguration was the largest in history, and when his interviewers accosted him with facts that the claim was false, instead of apologizing for the error, he dug in, insisting that he is right. When his boss, Conway, was pressed by an NBC News interviewer on why the press secretary made the false claims, she called the falsehood ‘alternative facts’. She refused to accept that the press secretary just lied.

    The two recent judgments seem to resurrect that line of thinking, as the parties in the disputes are clearly pushing forward alternative interpretations of the judgments. In the Rivers State case, Hon. Oko Jumbo, who is laying claim to the speakership of the minority three-man assembly, has promised to appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court which is the right thing to do. Jumbo had approached the State High Court, which through a motion ex parte, granted an interlocutory order restraining the other 25 members from parading themselves as members of the state House of Assembly, having defected from the PDP, under which they were elected, to the APC party.

    Read Also: Dangote Refinery capable of solving Nigeria’s forex problems, says S&P Global 

    The court restrained the speaker Hon. Martins Amaewhule from parading himself as the speaker of the assembly, and further forbade the state governor, Sim Fubara, from dealing with that group as members of the state assembly. Following the interlocutory injunction, Jumbo and other two members presented a façade of a legislative assembly in action. Amaewhule and the other 24 members appealed the ruling. In its judgment, the Court of Appeal held that the High Court of Rivers State lacked jurisdiction by virtue of section 272 (3) of the 1999 constitution (as amended) to determine whether the tenure of a member of the House of Assembly has ended.

    Section 272(3), I thought is clear and unequivocal, until there were several alternative interpretations, in a manner akin to alternative judgments, by lawyers, legislators and laymen alike. The section provides: “Subject to the provisions of section 251 and other provisions of the constitution, the Federal High Court shall have jurisdiction to hear and determine the question as to whether the term of office of a member of the House of Assembly of a state, a governor or deputy governor has ceased or become vacant.”

    The Court of Appeal thereby set aside the orders of the lower court, and further averred that the lower court acted hastily, by relying on an ex parte motion, to make the far reaching decision, when there was no clear urgency that could necessitate that. The ordinary interpretation of that clear, unambiguous and succinct finding of the appeal court was that Amaewhule and his companions are free to parade themselves as legislators. And that the speakership position of Amaewhule was restored, and that the governor is bound to continue to treat them as state lawmakers.

    But many, including Oko-Jumbo, who has appealed the judgment, also proffered alternative interpretation of the judgment, or if one may, offered several alternative judgments, by insisting that the setting aside of the interlocutory injunction, does not mean the parties have returned to status quo ante bellum. Hon. Ikenga Ugochinyere, representing Ideato Federal Constituency practically pranced on the judgment and declared his alternative interpretation of the judgment, and dared any opinion to the contrary. He encouraged Governor Fubara, to take necessary steps to uphold his alternative interpretation of the judgment.

    Despite the restoration of the status quo by the Court of Appeal, the three-man faction of the state assembly, is proceeding with her so-called legislative duties, by inviting the governor’s nominees for confirmation as commissioners, after all, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Dagogo Iboroma, SAN, whom they ‘earlier confirmed’, is still the chief law officer of the state. Governor Fubara also made a short shrift of the judgment, declaring that there is no cause for alarm as he continues to deal with the three legislators as the duly constituted House of Assembly.

    In neighboring Edo State, the Federal High Court’s judgment has elicited another road of alternative interpretations, by different interest groups. Three ad hoc delegates, elected to participate in the PDP governorship primary, feeling the threat of being excluded approached the court, seeking an order of mandatory injunction, restraining the party from excluding them from the primary. The court found in their favour, and held that they are authentic delegates for the primary election and further restrained the party from excluding them from the primary.

    Having held the primary, with the parties excluded, some of self-appointed interpreters of the judgment are claiming that the judgment has no effect whatsoever on the PDP candidacy of Asue Ighodalo. In their alternative interpretation, they claim that the court did not issue any order nullifying Ighodalo’s primary, as the PDP candidate, even when the consequential order of the judgment is that the primary that produced him has been declared invalid. Luckily, those with clear heads, have said the party will approach the appeal court, to set aside the judgment.

    Of course, while not delving into the merits of the case, it is ridiculous that some have argued that Asue Ighodalo is not affected by the judgment of Hon. Justice Iyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court. In Vaswani vs Savalak, 1 ACLC, at 449, Coker JSC, held: “when the order or judgment of a lower court is not manifestly illegal or wrong, it is right for a court of appeal to presume that the order or judgment appealed against is correct or rightly made until, the contrary be proved or established and for this reason the court of appeal and indeed any court, will not make a practice of depriving a successful litigant of the fruits of his success unless under very special circumstances.”

    There are several other cases, across the country, where lay persons by themselves or through their counsels, seek to preside over the judgements of the courts, especially political cases, like an appellate court. At other times, outright lies are peddled to obfuscate a clear judgment of the court. Since the courts cannot engage in propaganda, to square up with those pushing out the alternative facts, the ordinary public is left in quandary.

  • Tinubu’s economic strategy

    Tinubu’s economic strategy

    Those who invest hope in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidency, may eventually have the last laugh. I say so because despite the crunching economic hardship afflicting majority of the citizens, the administration is engaged in fundamental economic restructuring, that all things being equal, will reflate the economy and start the trajectory towards a structured economic rejuvenation and growth.

    Some key economic plans that can change the dynamics include, the N180 trillion consumer credit scheme, the N15.36 trillion naira Calabar-Lagos Highway, the Sokoto-Lagos Highway, the Enugu-Ogoja-Ikom Highway, and the Port Harcourt to Maiduguri railway line. Also the massive housing schemes that have kicked off in some states. If these projects are vigorously pursued, one does not need to be an economic expert to know that they will reflate the economy and provide massive job opportunities.

    The 700 kilometre Lagos-Calabar coastal highway will connect Lagos to Cross River, passing through the coastal states of Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Akwa Ibom, and end up in Cross River. On its part, the 1000 kilometre spur from Sokoto to Lagos will start from Sokoto, going through Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun, and end in Lagos State. Another spur will go from Enugu-Abakaliki-Ogoja going to Cameroon, and through Otukpo to Benue to Nassarawa and end up at Apo in Abuja.

    The ambitious road projects if fully operational can suck several thousands of unskilled and unemployable idle youths, who are engaged or are tempted to join the criminal gangs engaged across various parts of the country. Between joining the gangs of bandits, cattle rustlers, kidnappers, separatist agitators and sundry criminal groups, on one hand, or the highway labour gangs, gaining useful skills on the job and meaningful income, with peace of mind, on the other hand; I have no doubt, that majority of the youths will opt for the latter.

    In addition to the gigantic road infrastructure plans, there is also the railway component, particularly the completion of the Port-Harcourt to Maiduguri rail line, started by the previous administration. That again is another labour intensive infrastructural project which will take care of a lot of idle hands. The housing projects of the administration with a plan for 50,000 housing units under the first phase, will also provide several job opportunities for skilled and nonskilled workers.

    The housing scheme will have direct massive impact on the disappearing middle class, should the N180 trillion Consumer Credit Scheme, enable them to buy some of the houses. While housing projects is not novel, the challenge in the past is that, usually the politicians with stolen wealth, and other wealthy individuals, buy off the houses, and the cycle of continuous dependency of the middle class, as tenants continue. But with the credit scheme in place, those cadre of Nigerians would be able to buy some of the houses.

    The credit scheme would also make monies available for other consumer goods, which in turn would keep the factories busy. That will in turn keep the workers engaged and better remunerated. And with the companies and their workers busy, tax returns for the states and federal government would also improve. The major challenge of the national economy is the abysmally low level of disposable income, within the middle and low income earners, who are in the majority. Such a scheme could change the dynamics, with less impact on inflation.

    Read Also: Tinubu, APC salute National Secretary Basiru

    Small scale enterprises would also sprout from the increase in disposable income, as many of the big manufacturers rely on them for supplies and services. Luckily, there is the N125 billion fund for micro and small businesses, and the N75 billion to fund 75 enterprises, which the Tinubu administration announced last year. So, if the entrepreneurs have the resources to produce goods and the people also have access to finance to buy the products, the economy may likely rebound from the present crisis, in the nearest future.   

    The consumer credit may also have revolutionary impacts on corruption, amongst the working class, as the desperation to amass the necessary resources to buy a house, car, house hold items and other essential needs, for a comfortable living would reduce. Without a credit scheme, it will remain impossible for most middle income earners and definitely low income earners, to buy the basic household items they need, not to talk of assets like housing, without stealing.

    Credit scheme also imposes financial discipline on the people, as the debts incurred must be paid, as and when due, in other to keep enjoying the items already purchased. So, the people will learn how to spend their resources on what they truly need, and not on frivolities. The financial discipline also imposes economic planning, both for the producers and consumers, to the benefit of the national economy. If consumers are sure of the source of the resources to buy what they need, and the producers are sure that the goods would go off the shelf, both can plan.

    Apart from the government housing projects, the consumer credit scheme will encourage private investment in housing sector, just as in other enterprises. Investors, knowing that they can secure credit to build housing estates, and that they will be willing buyers who can access credits to pay under a mortgage scheme, the boom may be dramatic. The same will be applicable with other medium and small scale producers and their consumers, who can tap into the two ends of the credit scheme, respectively.

    However, for the projects to achieve the desired goals, the national credit register must be efficient, so that borrowers are easily traceable. Also, there should be better deterrent measures for those who will fail to repay monies borrowed. The legislators must be ready to enact legislations that would make it easier for creditors to get their monies or trade on the pledged assets. Once the debtor falters in paying back, there should be statutory administrative processes to gain recompense, instead of the prolonged litigation, which benefits the debtor.

    There is also the need to strengthen the bureaucracies in charge of the innovations, so that they would not be overwhelmed by the cankerworm of corruption that had made a mess of many laudable projects in the past. So, the credit scheme register must be well secured to ensure that it cannot be hacked into, to make recovery of credits impossible. Should the inter-related economic programs take off and copulate, the economic benefits may be enormous, in the nearest future.

    The challenge facing the Tinubu administration is how to ensure that the future they project comes into fruition, and more importantly, that the people see into the projected future, to be assuaged of the hunger and want ravaging them, presently. As I like to say, it would be unimaginable what will be the lot of Nigerians and Nigeria, should the Tinubu administration falter, irredeemably.

  • Osun dramatics

    Osun dramatics

    Abuse of forum?  Fulsome apologies!  But be sure it’s both a logical and legitimate grist to tell the Osun tale: of development — or lack of it.

    But first a blast into the past.

    “Ogbe ‘A’ s’aya, Ogbe ‘B’ s’aya, Ogbe ‘D’ s’aya, Ogbe ‘E’ s’aya!…”

    That was how we, kids in the Lafiaji area of Lagos Island, hollered and learned, by rote, the Yoruba alphabets — shouting at vivid pictures of humans bearing these alphabets on their chest, and bawling louder than the child next to you, to impress the teacher!

    The school, St. David’s School, Okesuna, Lafiaji, Lagos, still stands till this day.

    The school, in concert with the many neighbourhood lessons, with teachers and their scary canes, drilled the first bit of formal learning, into the minds of the bawling kids.

    You needed the Yoruba alphabet drills to start the all-Yoruba preparatory classes 1 and 2.  The English alphabets waited till you made Standard 1, in those days when Lagos, as Federal Capital Territory, did eight years of primary school, before it was later pared down to six; and the class nomenclature changed from Standard to Primary.

    That screaming kid of yore — among many others — is now the Ripples of today who, many confess, has a rather good grasp of English style, lexis and structure.  Yet, the beginning was so humble!

    Of course, the first eight — later six — years of formal schooling was free, thanks to the iconic Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  Education couldn’t have been free in the West, while kids in its Yoruba outpost of Lagos (though then federal capital) would pay?

    Much later, the federal authorities — under Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Lagos State Military Governor, Col. (later Brigadier) Mobolaji Johnson — would add a boon: heavily subsidized high-quality mid-day meals, that saved the kids, mainly from poor homes, from the vendor shylocks, that dished low-quality food at outrageous prices!

    Boy!  Didn’t many of us taste those exotic meals, complete with fruits and chilled milk, for the first time in school — even taking home little rations for our younger siblings?

    Why this flashback, though?  Simple: The motivation to write Ogbeni: The Osun Renaisance Years, stemmed from sharing childhood kin with thousands of Osun kids, from humble homes, basking in warmth of their government’s policy sun. 

    Safari Books, Ltd, Ibadan, released the work in May.

    Ogbeni is ode to a government that placed the poor as the central plank of its policies — and politics. 

    But in Rauf Aregbesola’s Osun, it wasn’t school feeding alone, in the first four years of schooling.  It was the total transformation of the school and study environment. 

    Why, a visit to the sedate classrooms, at Osogbo’s Anthony Udofia Elementary School, felt like becoming a child again, and being taught in such comely classes, with their sweet libraries; and for mid-day sports, romping into the enchanting play grounds!

    Whither those glittering facilities today, less than eight years later, though the school still stands?  The answer is up in the wind!  That appears the retrogressive streak of Osun politics and dramatics!  The poor, more than anyone, are the ultimate victims.

    But the enchanting windows of Udofia — and the contiguous Government High School, Oke-Fia (now Osogbo Grammar School): the Osun model mega high school that in 2020 produced Abdullahi Akintade as Nigeria’s best student scientist, barely four years after the new school opened in 2016 — were a loud metaphor for youth education, training and empowerment.

    Read Also: UK varsity, UNIOSUN train 22

    The youngest were fed — and the feeding itself was structured to put money in the pockets of these children’s farmer and caterer-parents.  The kids were also put in transformed schools, from the hitherto shambolic, nay collapsed, public school system, in the most radical transformative intervention in Osun history.

    The most senior — the senior secondary (SS) 3 classes — were equipped with “Opon Imo”, units of computer tablets that warehoused, quoting from Ogbeni,  “54 e-textbooks covering 17 subjects,  54 (video) tutorials covering 17 subjects, over 40, 000 practice questions-and-answers, and seven extra-curricular books”, which included the Bible, the Qur’an and the Ifa Corpus, covering the varying faiths.

    Even the common uniform project — as controversial as that was — was wrought to standardize tailoring and design skills, to feed orders to thousands of Osun artisan tailors, via the intervention of the Omoluabi Garment Company, now defunct.

    Again, where is Opon Imo today?  Indeed, where’s that Garment company, which the Aregbesola order then promoted as the biggest garment business in West Africa? 

    Gone with the wind!  For context, Kwara, under Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq, has appropriated a similar idea; and is running with own factory, with promise of jobs for its youth and tax for its purse.

    For youth jobs: the same government framed OYES: the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme.  OYES volunteers not only out-numbered the Osun Civil Service, OYES also triggered N-Power, the graduate scheme, after its image, on the national front, under President Muhammadu Buhari — just as Osun’s school feeding did inspire a national home-grown school-feeding programme, as safety net for the poor.

    More critically, OYES triggered the World Bank version of YESSO: the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation.  YESSO gathered data to compile a National Social Register (NSR) for conditional cash transfer to the very poor, complete with opportunities to train in skills to make ends meet.  The NSR came handy during the terrible months of COVID-19.

    Yet, where is OYES today?

    Osun 2010-2018 was total human development: from youth to the seniors’ welfare and empowerment dubbed “Agba Osun”,  and public health, using aggressive road and sundry infrastructure as spur, but making the common man the crux of policy. 

    Indeed, since the Awolowo Western Region government (1952-1959) — which by the way had bouncing cocoa wealth — no sub-national government in Nigeria has essayed audacious development as Osun did, under Aregbesola, though with puny resources.

    Ogbeni: The Osun Renaissance Years, soon to be publicly presented, captures these momentous strides, with its many crises and controversies.

    All through that epoch, the media slept and snored, though a good section of it would jerk awake to dish out explosive ignorance from arch-bias — wanton abuse that gave the Fourth Estate a bad name. 

    Ogbeni pushes a more balanced account for posterity, say, some 100 years from now.  But before then, what if it gets to 100, 000 young African leaders as primer for how to put the poor as the core of government policies?  Exciting?

  • Whither, America?

    Whither, America?

    As Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, more significantly the 258th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence; as they mark this evocative milestone of their history in the febrile run-up to the 2024 presidential election, there is no better time than this to reflect on where the Union has come from and where it is headed.

    The Declaration furnishes the template for carrying out the former task; the pronouncements of the Republican nominee and putative runner Donald Trump, in what the best authorities are calling the most consequential American election in more than a century, as well as his record as the 46th president of the United States provide a tapestry for the latter.

    From the outset, practice fell far short of theory, what with the enslavement of hundreds of thousands in the populace and its codification.  Gradually, some of its most horrid aspects were rendered untenable or unprofitable by revolt, social pressure, and technology, among other factors.  Its structured manifestations remained and were enforced by the system of laws and order.

    Even at the most brutal, the resonant clauses of the Declaration, its magniloquent phrasing, signified aspiration, and inspired hope.  The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., envisioned in his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech, that one day, even “down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interpretation” and “nullification” —  that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers . . .”

    That is already happening, even in Alabama.

    Today, 51 years later and 258 years after the Declaration of Independence, a key goal of which was to free the American colonies from the yoke of the English sovereign, there comes along a demagogue who would roll back the gains of the ensuing years and institute a renewed system of tyranny over them – with the consent and approval of a clamorous section of the population.

    There comes along a smooth-talking fellow who is all calculation and no introspection, a cult figure whose sole desire is to replace the rule of the Constitution with the tyranny of the Donald and to turn the Land of the Free into the Home of the Captive.

    In the ringing words of that storied Founding document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. .  .”

    Read Also: Copa America: Argentina may rest Messi against  Peru

    Here are the particulars of the crimes and misdemeanors with which the colonies charged the British sovereign:

    He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.

    He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone

    He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people,

    For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

    He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

    He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

    A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    Therefore, having regard to the foregoing and other stated grievances, the people of the Colonies solemnly declared themselves “absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown. . .”

    “A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant,” they declared “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,”

    Now, these are precisely aspects of the Trump agenda, the policies, plans and he says he is seeking office to implement. Yet they are hailing him in many parts of the United States as a champion of the people and a liberator.

    If the adoring crowds and the approving polls and the bourgeoning financial support are any indication, every passing day heralds the possibility that Donald Trump might well be elected 48th president of the United States.  Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance in last week’s televised debate with Trump only enhanced that grim possibility.

    But Trump, not President Biden, is the reason America is heartily disliked and disrespected in those parts of the world where reason has not been supplanted by panic, and where human solidarity has not been overtaken by fear and loathing.

    Trump’s campaign is rooted in intimidation and grievance. He intimidates the courts.  He intimidates judges.   He intimidates law enforcement.  He intimidates immigrants and citizens.  He intimidates jurists and jurors.  He intimidates election officials.  He intimidates voters.  He intimidates lawmakers.  He intimates the armed forces.  He intimidates civil servants.  He has no respect for the classification system that undergirds National Security.  He intimidates the armed forces.

    He intimidates other countries and their leaders.  He intimidates regulatory agencies and their officials.  He disdains science and intimidates scientists.  He disdains due process and the rule of law.   He disdains the poor and the underclass.  He disdains those who look different, think differently and worship differently. 

    He disdains women and has nothing but contempt for their struggle to control their bodies.

    He built a financial empire on fraud, tax evasion, and breach of promise and law.  He never saw a covenant that he did not seek to break or disavow.  He is a sworn enemy of stability and coherence.

    His quest for another term as president, he has made clear, is fueled by a desire to exact revenge and retribution on those who frustrated his carefully-laid plans to steal the election.  He and his confederates failed in more than 60 court challenges to substantiate their claim that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden.

    With the declaration that he cannot lose the coming race unless it was rigged for his opponent, Trump has laid the groundwork for a repeat of the January 6 2024 insurrection in which a mob he cultivated, nurtured and inspired, invaded the U.S. Capitol with murder on their minds, trashed it, and left in its wake blood and mangled flesh and broken bones and tears and thick layers of excrement.  Trump call them “patriots.”

    There was a time in America, and not long ago, when a person so uniquely unqualified would not have had a ghost of a chance of being elected president.  In the first instance, he would not even have entertained the thought, however fleetingly.  And if he was vain or temerarious enough to do so, he would have been checkmated at the threshold by the system of checks and balances.  Such a person could not hope to be elected to the local school board.  Today, they are cheering him on and serenading him with song and dance.

    Four years ago, he was sufficiently mindful of public opinion and morality that he had his media enablers “capture and kill” the so-called Access Hollywood tape, on which he was heard boasting that his wealth and celebrity licensed him to grab and drag women along by an unmentionable portion of their anatomy and that, in any case, they never objected.

    After last Thursday’s televised debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, one admirer declared that Trump was welcome to grab her by any portion of her anatomy anytime, any day, anywhere.

    That is a sign of the times.

    But the lady had better cool her ardour.  Trump’s people probably took notes.  And one of these days, their boss will call to collect or invite her to come deliver.

    • This piece was submitted before yesterday’s United States Supreme Court ruling that the President is entitled to substantial immunity from prosecution.
  • Two governors, two elders

    Two governors, two elders

    Two governors, two elders.  As the two governors gut own houses, the two elders haul back-up buckets of petrol into the blaze.  Some governors!  Some elders! 

    In Fela-speak, “wahala sleep, yanga go wake am, na palaver e de find.”

    That street pidgin best captures Kano Governor, Abba Yusuf, and his Kano double-trouble: the inchoate sack of Emir Aminu Ado Bayero as 15th Emir; and the inchoate return of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, as 16th Emir, after his earlier sack as 14th Emir. 

    That has set Kano on tenterhooks, and left a muscle-flexing Abba red-faced!  Under his nose, two Emirs contest the throne; and there’s little the governor can do about it!

    “Wahala sleep, yanga go wake am!”

    But even as the first set of court verdicts worsted Governor Yusuf — that Kano should pay Emir Ado Bayero N10 million for breaching his human rights; and that the second coming of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II was null and void, because the Kano Emirate Council (Repeal) Law, 2024, was badly applied — Yusuf has thrust own comic verdict interpretation: clear delusion that executive baulking would turn a court loss into a win.

    As first, he barked at the police to arrest Ado Bayero, for landing in Kano to press his rights.  Now, after the verdict, he growls that the police evict the 15th Emir from the Gidan Nasarawa mini-palace, and after, demolition. Neither has happened.

    Read Also: Insecurity: Army holds media chat in Kano, pledges loyalty to Tinubu

    When will Governor Yusuf and aides get it that you cannot under democracy, even with awesome gubernatorial powers, criminalize a citizen with mere whims? Imagine state Police under such an intemperate governor!  Wouldn’t Kano have been in flames by now? 

    Still, few follies and foibles can’t cancel an idea — state Police — whose time has come!  We just must make the enabling law rigorous enough to withstand abuse.

    In Rivers, in his brash Nyesom Wike face-off, Governor Siminilayi — Sim — Fubara has made belligerence the fundamental principle of his day-to-day governance.

    With his much-touted Ijaw “youth” street army, and uncritical Ijaw “elders”, it’s one-day, one-threat; one-day, one-roar, from the boisterous Sim camp, while the governor probably gyrates — and merrily too! — to his political doom. 

    If the governor is not showing off as some scary Leviathan, taking one last sinister look before demolishing a newly inaugurated legislative quarters complex, he’s publicly wailing over how some local potentates disrespected him by leaving out his picture — and his deputy’s — out of their official almanacs: an uncouth, reckless act, to be sure.

    If he doesn’t wail directly, not a few proxies moan for him — as battle-tested Ijaw rights activist, Ann-Kio Briggs, decrying the blatant rudeness of a local council boss who, in public, seized Sim’s phone and stamped on it — gubernatorial mystique be damned! Ah!

    Of course, Madam Briggs’ Ijaw radicalism is well storied.  She, in 2012, pushed that the Ijaw pull out their oil from Nigeria, if Goodluck Jonathan was no longer good enough as president — and that bang on the virtual anniversary of the abortive Isaac Adaka Boro 12-Day Revolution (from 23 February 1966, when Boro’s Niger Delta Volunteer Force declared a Niger Delta Republic) — just because then President Jonathan couldn’t have his way in removing fuel subsidy.

    But as Sim and Bellicose Orchestra drone on and on, they have failed to notice that the no-less belligerent Wike has suddenly ceased space! 

    For a five or six-day cluster around May 29, Wike, Abuja minister, had grabbed national attention, cementing his reputation of “Mr. Do It” in penetrating infrastructure.

    If Wike is, 24-7, in Fubara’s head, how would Fubara maintain, talk less of improve, upon Wike’s Rivers rich infrastructural legacy, which by the way, romped Sim in as governor, before his rabid, newfound Ijaw kith-and-kin? 

    Was Briggs even there, though a Rivers Ijaw native, when Wike was shutting down everyone and slamming down everything to, willy-nilly, make Fubara governor?

    Still, as Ripples always maintains, no tears for Wike.  Whatever Fubara does to or with him, he himself did to Rotimi Amaechi, both his predecessor and benefactor. 

    So, let him bake in the crucible of ingratitude!  The snag though, is that Fubara is nurturing his own future kiln of Karma, with his present devil-may-care bellicosity! 

    But Madam Briggs is not among the “elders” this piece announced in its headline.  Old man Edwin Clark is.

    Since the Rivers crisis broke, Chief Clark, though from Delta, has jumped into the fray with uncritical support for Fubara, his Ijaw kin.

    Then, he wrote a long and ringing treatise to condemn the presidential compromise wrought early to contain the crisis.  Unlike Dr. Peter Odili that Wike’s lack of tact has unfortunately boxed into the Fubara corner, Clark from day one always saw a treaty stacked against Fubara.

    And now that Fubara acts as one possessed, Clark is tracking Rivers succession history, from his sweet, one-track prism!  Does he even have the facts?

    Meanwhile, Fubara blunders from one desperate error to another: passing the 2024 budget, vetting his Attorney-General and commissioner for Justice, and passing his nominees for caretaker council chairs — all through a three-man state legislature! 

    By the way, that last action — caretaker council chairs — is a double-whammy in open and transparent constitutional crimes: while unelected caretaker council chairs are unknown to law, it’s doubtful if a three-man legislature (from 32 members) can pass the muster of both law and common sense. 

    These are low-hanging fruits of Fubara impeachment which neither his Ijaw “youth” street army; nor his thunderous “elders” can prevail against, when the chips are down.

    Yet, these were exactly the basic stumbles the Abuja accord tried to avert by asking Fubara to re-present his 2024 budget to the Rivers parliament though, in fairness, it’s unclear how fairly the Wike-backed majority would have dealt with that.

    This parting shot on Rivers: let Fubara, galloping from crisis to crisis, know that this same Clark, as famed presidential godfather with unbridled Ijaw nationalism, pushed Jonathan to losing a second term.  But when he did, Clark left Jonathan to rue his loss.

    But the saving grace: though Jonathan is far younger, he has, in his post-president days, proved far more seasoned in state matters, than his self-named presidential godfather!  If you doubt, compare and contrast the duo’s Rivers interventions!

    Back to Kano; Governor Yusuf and aides often behave more like gangs to pounce and crack down on anyone, democratic rights be damned.

    When Yusuf lit the small fires — railroading the new Emirate law, shunning a clear court order — his godfather, Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso, played dumb: he had no idea. Yes, their campaign promised to revisit the Kano Emirate matter, but it’s specific form was Abba’s sole decision.

    Now, with the Kano government’s judicial hara-kiri cropping adverse court rulings, Dr. Kwakwanso now blames the federal authorities for “importing” crisis into Kano!  Yet, that comes from a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives (December 1992 – November 1993), two-term Kano governor, a former senator and minister of the Federal Republic, and a former presidential candidate!

    Two governors!  Two elders!  Where did Nigeria miss the road on the leadership map?

  • LG autonomy: A lost quest

    LG autonomy: A lost quest

    Nigerians have quite interestingly been locked in debates ever since the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN dragged the 36 state governors and the FCT minister to the Supreme Court over what should ordinarily, be a non-contentious issue of the operation of the local government system. Merely by the way the debates have been going forth and back, it does get tempting to imagine the matter as one borne out of a constitutional lacuna when it is in fact yet another manifestation of elite pathology.

    Some have argued that the contentions merely extend the frontiers of what they consider to be our anomalous three-tier federalism in the expectation that the country will somehow take in the lessons and so return to ‘pure federalism’, in which the states as the legitimate second tier in the federation would determine the fate of local governments.

    My colleague on this page, Republican Ripples’ Olakunle Abimbola apparently couldn’t make the point hard enough on this when he stopped short of dubbing the quest for local government autonomy as bunkum. 

    “Autonomy from who?  States, of which councils are integral parts? How can you seek autonomy from yourself?” he had asked in his last Tuesday piece with the same title.

    He thinks the matter of local councils – in logic and creation – was flawed from the beginning and so the federal government had better back off – as if that would make the gubernatorial indulgences – from the mindless interference in the day to day operations of the councils to the expropriation of their funds – somewhat tolerable!

    Read Also: AKK pipeline project employed 2,599 Nigerians, says Chinese contractor

    Not surprisingly, countless others have chosen to see things differently. Using the constitution as the point of departure, they say that the very letters of the document, not only recognises the local councils as separate, governance entities, it prescribes that their structures and operations must be in alignment with its express provisions. And because the functionaries in the states are sworn to that constitution, theirs, in the circumstance, isn’t much one of a choice but a duty to give effect to its operations at that level of government.

    My other colleague and Saturday columnist, Segun Ayobolu actually introduced a new dimension to the debate when he argued that there is no such a thing as pure federalism or even unitarism and that each country would somehow have to adapt to them to their different circumstances.

    Said he: “It is not enough to assert that local government councils must mandatorily be subordinated to states as an inevitable logic of the federalist ethos perhaps as handed over to us by some constitutional deity whose word is law and must be obeyed. The same argument that makes this case for states’ autonomy can also be made for local governments and may even be considered to be a deepening of the federalist logic”.

    And if I may add – in which other jurisdictions – save Nigeria – do federating entities embark, on monthly pilgrimages to their national capitals to share rents?  Is it a case of one ‘federalist’ anomaly being more tolerable than another? By the way, if the governors couldn’t spend a dime of their revenue without appropriation by their legislatures, where on earth do some (not all) of them derive the power to impound the allocations meant for the running of their councils which they spend as they pleased? And what is it that makes the demand that elected officials at that level be accountable for funds in their care a repudiation of the federalist principles?  By appropriating what does not belong to them, have the offending governors advanced the course of federalism?

    The other day, we saw a governor hand over to local council chairmen, motorcycles and Dane guns for onward distribution to local vigilantes – all in the name of security! Don’t ask me if it was part of the state budget or charged direct to the councils accounts!

    Years before – in the same state, the governor thought it was his duty to purchase prized SUV toys for the use of his council chairmen at a time local government workers were several months in arrears of salaries!

    So much about the federalist argument about the states better placed to know what their people want; in this instance, it would seem the governors know far better than what the democratically elected leaders know of the needs of their people!

    I do understand the federal government’s dilemma as indeed what the suit filed by the AGF sought to achieve. My take however is that the suit in its entirety is somewhat superfluous.  The issues at stake on the local councils autonomy question are such that require no extra doses of avant-garde jurisprudence beyond what the nation’s organic law has already provided and settled in simple English. 

    One imagines that the express provisions of Section 7 (1) of the constitution which provides that “the system of local government by democratically elected local government councils is guaranteed under this constitution” and further that “Accordingly, the Government of every State shall…ensure their existence under a Law which provides for the establishment, structure, composition, finance and functions of such councils” being self-explanatory, yields little or no room for obfuscation.

    So much for the unhelpful hair-splitting legalese, the suit certainly speaks to nothing new outside of what Nigerians do not already know – which is that the failure to observe those provisions not only smacks of a heinous delinquency, but borders on brazen outlawry; what that knowledge means, and the question of whether the governors, in their wilful violation could plead justification in baleful ignorance are however different matters on which Nigerians are entitled to their impotent opinions! Trust me; Nigerians can do all the fancy talk; the all-powerful state governors would still have their way; they will in the end still retain those powers neither donated by the constitution nor the courts of the land, to perfect their will.

    After all, what is sacking local government structures compared to the sacking of a parliament or even judges as we have seen happen in the past? Have we not seen some governors take down the roofs of parliament buildings and appointing the place where only favoured members could sit and heavens did not fall? Two members of the governors club went as far as to appoint minority lawmakers to pass laws to allow them govern as they please(d). In the first instance, 14 members in a 24-member house were shut out throughout their entire tenure with the remaining 10 allowed to carry on and no whimper was heard. Now we have a three-man gang shutting out 27 others while pretending to make laws for their beloved governor. And this, while they are yet to get their own separate police service!  That is what you get in a clime when actions do not carry consequences!

    To our esteemed attorney general and minister of justice, I will say – you have done well. Unfortunately, I wish you are dealing with a club most of whose members could be described as gentlemen!