The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Normalising banditry and other aberrations

    Normalising banditry and other aberrations

    By Olatunji Dare

    The downing last week of a Nigeria Air Force (NAF) Alpha jet on a combat mission in the ungoverned and increasingly ungovernable space in the Zamfara/Kaduna area of northern Nigeria by disparate armed groups battling the Nigerian state and traditional institutions has introduced a new, frightening element into the conflict that has overwhelmed that zone and is threatening to spill over.

    Many military planes have crashed there in the recent past, but this is the first to be attributed to what the NAF’s director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Edward Gabkwet, in a statement giving details of the incident, called ‘enemy fire.’

    Not for him the fashionable dignification of those who downed the combat plane and their allies as ‘bandits.’  They are waging a war of attrition and the armed forces will by their orientation regard them   as enemies and engage them as such.

    Nigerians are increasingly unsafe in their homes, at work, at leisure, in the streets, and at worship.  And this situation is largely accepted as normal.  The New Normal.   Now, pilots are not safe in their combat planes.  The recent downing is one development that must not be normalized.

    Chibok was a national outrage when it occurred, despite former President Goodluck Jonathan’s best efforts, ably complemented by his wife, Patience, to downplay the horror when they could no longer deny that it happened.  It made the headlines and front pages for months on end, and then its salience diminished in accordance with the perverse calculus of journalism, where the accent is on recency and immediate impact.

    Since then, countless Chiboks have occurred in substance if not in scale.  Hardly a fortnight passes without reports of multitudes of students abducted from their schools and marched to forests where they are held under brutal conditions for huge ransoms.  Now such abductions are more likely to draw a yawn than a howl of outrage.  They have become normalised in the public consciousness.

    That was how ‘armed robbery’ was normalised.  People were killed in their homes or on the streets in broad daylight or in the dead of night.  In many instances, nothing was taken from the home or the body of the victim.  The police routinely record each incident as a case of ‘armed robbery’ and thereafter make only the most perfunctory investigations, if any.

    It is as if armed robbery is not a crime and the victim and indeed society does not deserve to have the perpetrator identified and brought to justice.

    Herders carry out their barbarous escapades on such a scale and with such frequency that their outings have become more or less normalised in our workaday life.  Outside the communities that bear the brunt of the rampage, they have come to be regarded as facts of life.

    But combat planes being shot down by rogue elements cannot be accepted as a fact of life.  If it is, what  stops the rogue elements from setting their sights on bigger trophies — passenger planes, with all their vulnerabilities, for example?  Might these be their next target?

    The public needs to be reassured that the so-called bandits will never be allowed to constitute a clear and present danger to civil aviation.

    It would be the height of perversity to state that the national leadership is not seized by a sense of urgency regarding the daily bulletins of kidnapping, laying entire communities to waste, rapine, brutal killings, unsolved murders, and many more pathologies of a society mired in insecurity on virtually every front.

    President Muhammadu Buhari told visiting 12 governors and federal lawmakers who paid him a visit at his home in Daura, Katsina State, during the Sallah holidays that he found in the situation in the Northwest “most disturbing and a source of concern.”

    “The lingering development in the Northwest,” he told them with reference to the marauders, “is the most amazing because of the fact that they are the same people, the same religion, but they keep on killing and stealing each others’ cattle and burning their own villages.”

    They may well belong in the same ethnic group and practise the same faith, but do they also have the same interests — interests that transcend kinship and religion and unite them in grievance against the existing order?

    Rejigging the security apparatus and deploying soldiers out there to restore peace and order, as the Buhari Administration has done, is unexceptionable.  Force has to be met with force – overwhelming force if necessary.  But force alone cannot restore lasting peace and amity.

    It must be grounded on a clear understanding of the forces at work and a willingness to address them forthrightly – the interests at play, the deep-seated grievances, the fears, as well as the aspirations.  Suppressing them can only drive them inward, there to fester.

    Such an understanding is lacking right now, and so is a commitment to multi-dimensional engagement.

    Nor can an end to the armed uprising in the Northwest be decreed.  When Buhari “directed” the Northwest governors to end the banditry in the zone, he must have known that the order was futile.       If the governors could end the bloodletting and the carnage, they would have done so long ago, unbidden.

    Better to provide the military muscle that would enable the beleaguered governors stand up to the bandits, and to provide a forum for negotiation and reconciliation in the zone.

    A broad sociological approach will also have to be followed in addressing the issues subsumed under the National Question.  The issues are real; so are the passions they generate.  You may refuse to recognize them, and you may even deny their existence or their legitimacy, but they will not go away.  Rather, they will grow in intensity.  The stakes get higher and higher, and a lasting resolution becomes less and less attainable.

    The circus atmosphere of the National Assembly and its snail-speed approach to doing business render it less than a proper forum for addressing the National Question.  Given the rate at which the 9th National Assembly is proceeding with its misbegotten task of reviewing the Constitution to address issues relating only peripherally at best to the National Question, it is clear it is labouring under a misapprehension.

    It is a case of an institution being misdirected or misdirecting itself to pursue a quest all parties to the transaction know to be unattainable.  The charade has gone too far.

     

  • Fashionable bias

    Fashionable bias

    By Olakunle Abimbola

     

    The Igboho debacle: fugitive from Nigeria to detainee — or worse — in Benin Republic, just echoes the oft-quoted Karl Marx quip that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

    Sunday Igboho recalls the much more refined Anthony Enahoro, who bolted from Nigeria, to the United Kingdom, to escape the celebrated treasonable felony trials, that involved the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his political disciples in 1962.

    But Her Majesty’s government repatriated Chief Enahoro to Nigeria to face trial.  The late Ishan chief, and fine Nigerian nationalist and patriot, captured this high-octane drama in his political odyssey, Fugitive Offender.

    Well, we have another fugitive offender in Igboho, who evaded DSS arrest in Nigeria, only to land in gendarme cells in neighbouring Benin.

    But unlike the original, who faced no wrap of UK passport forgery or racketeering, Igboho, the neo-fugitive offender, was arraigned in a Cotonou, Benin, court for alleged immigration offences, though his lawyers claim that reportage is incorrect.  Talk of history repeating itself, as tragedy and farce!

    Still, since it is crass to kick a man who is down, let the Igboho supporters avail him of the best legal representation.  The case, after all, is before a Benin court.

    But fashionable bias, which spurred the Igboho debacle, from the heroics of Igangan, to impassioned Yoruba nation activism, and now to a Benin Republic gaol, merits fair and legitimate discourse, however the Igboho matter is resolved.

    Fashionable bias!  That bug bites not a few and brings out the worst in most!

    The other day, the Blessed Father Kukah, Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, stacked his cards, in a virtual discourse, with the US Congress.

    As part of his explosive offer, he claimed bandits and terrorists solely target and kill Christians — a clear untruth that has sent the federal authorities howling.

    To be clear, these free-wheeling criminals make absolutely no discrimination: not on faith, not on creed, not on tribe.  Indeed, if their bulk are northern Muslims, so are their victims, particularly in the killing fields of the North West and some parts of North Central — and the earlier the security agencies wipe out these brutes, the better for everyone.

    But to the holy ranks on the Archbishop’s side, even if he told a lie, it would be the sacred lies of Father Kukah!  The HURRIWAs of this polity, and a lobby that calls itself the Catholic Bishops of Ibadan Ecclesiastic Province, have already received that bishopric untruth with full rapture, even if the truth is badly ruptured!

    It’s the spiritual — and temporal — strain of fashionable bias!

    Still, in Kukah: between the fiery archbishop playing the immaculate arbiter on the national turf and the southern Kaduna boy oozing the bitterness of ancestral feud and politics, it’s clear, to the acute mind, who is trumping who!  The poet is right: the child indeed, is the father of the man!

    The other day too, a pro-Igboho Yoruba monarch from Kwara, reportedly swore Buhari — favourite demon, in the coven of the biased — was oppressing and persecuting the Yoruba.  So, the Benin authorities shouldn’t extradite Igboho to Nigeria.

    Well, anything goes in propaganda, except that this royal(?) fib is concrete mirage that can’t be sustained with facts or logic — except, of course, the monarch now blames PMB for the Ilorin Yoruba-Fulani ancestral feud, which dates back to the 19th century Afonja-Alimi saga.

    But let’s even interrogate this “persecution”.  A Yoruba man is No. 2 in the government; and the dominant alliance, that birthed it, is South West-North West.

    But leave politics and offices aside.  The Lagos-Ibadan corridor now boasts modernized rail, linked to the Apapa, Lagos Ports complex, that could spur movement of passenger and cargo, thus giving the economy a healthy jab in the arm.  Also, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is receiving due attention.  At the Berger, Lagos end, just after the long bridge, still stands spicy deceit from the past: an Obasanjo-era signboard “threatening” to fix that expressway, but never did!  No Buhari billboard in that vicinity right now, but the roads are getting fixed anyway.

    Obasanjo never crowed about his “Yoruba-ness”, it’s true.  But he bears a Yoruba name; and he wasn’t shy about dismissing Lagos as a “jungle”, to sate the regnant partisan temper of his day.

    Yet, a Fulani “oppressor” is fixing decrepit, long-abandoned roads all over Obasanjo’s “jungle” — not only in Yorubaland but all over, using Babatunde Fashola, another Yoruba son, as his workaholic foot soldier-in-chief — but all folks warm up to is some Buhari-driven, Fulani hate theories!  Talk of a vicious strain of fashionable bias!

    For the first time in Nigerian history, this same government is planting core progressive policies at the centre — pro-poor policies and programmes that could have warmed Chief Awolowo’s heart: feeding poor kids in schools nationwide to boost school enrolment, conditional cash transfers to the most vulnerable, credit to the lowest and humblest of micro-trades, giving farmers a fairer deal.

    Indeed, as the hate campaign deafens, Atiku Abubakar, Obasanjo’s Vice President, has quietly purloined Buhari’s conditional cash transfer policy — he must have seen its great impact on the helpless and the nameless — rebranded it “Atiku Youth Empowerment Funds”, and called on would-be beneficiaries to access N10, 000 weekly — a scheme his roller coaster presidency, with Obasanjo, never dreamed of!

    But lo!  In this high season of fashionable bias, you must be blind to all that, as fevered optics must trump cold facts!  Still, it’s a costly mirage that would come back, in due course, to haunt its pushers, misleading the unwary and excitable millions.

    Yes, dire insecurity hobbles Buhari: for the killing spree, by some herder criminals, continues to push a theory of a Fulani militia, sworn to gobbling up the rest of Nigeria.

    And yes: there are some Fulani hegemonic extremists, mouthing lunatic screeches.  But if this ethnic cleansing theory is regnant — or even true — how come most of the killed, maimed and sacked are in the North West, bastion of the Fulani themselves?

    Not from the South East?  Not from the South West?  Or even from the North Central, where you have a long history of no-love-lost, between Fulani herders, and native communities; and of Christian/Muslim tension?

    Could it then be a case of out-and-out criminals?  If so, why not de-link wherever they come from, and tackle crime as crime?

    But no matter!  The president must be the fall guy-in-chief, simply because of his Fulani stock.  That must also automatically translate into the president as criminal-in-chief; and, to elite job hustlers, nepotist-in-chief, who must be demonized to no end!

    Such fevered optics goaded Igboho into becoming a zesty battling ram — his elite backers cheering from the safety of their homes — until he batted himself into trouble.

    Those who traduce a Fulani president, for the crime of a Fulani few, had better brace themselves for what to come.  What goes around, after all, comes around.

    Soon an Igbo or Yoruba president would birth — and  those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind!

  • Third-term blues: An encore

    Third-term blues: An encore

    By Olatunji Dare

     

    Half-way into President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term marked by a great deal of motion but far less movement than the public had a right to expect, they are already laying the groundwork for a third term.

    Buhari does not appear to have any part, direct or indirect, in the incipient campaign.  Indeed, there are those who would swear that he is already counting the days when, happily freed from the gilded cage that is Aso Rock and the relentless contumely of the press, he would of an evening drive from his home in Daura across the border to commune with pals and close relations in Maradi, Niger Republic, over a bowl of fura da nono or trays of sizzling spicy suya.

    He might even, as a demonstration of his abiding faith in the ECOWAS project, decide to ride into Maradi in an executive wagon on the Kano-Katsina-Maradi Express Train which, given Abuja’s enthusiasm, might be completed well before the end of his second term in 2022.  The stunning vista of the Sahel as the train glides along cannot but gratify him and confirm his wisdom in seeing the rail link through.

    Personally, I believe that all the talk of a third term flows from the calculations of political speculators with their eyes permanently trained on the main chance, or from the frenzied hallucinations of those who mistake the foam for the real stuff.

    But who knows?

    Who would have thought that the author of the benighted Decree Four – an enactment that placed him in the same league with General Zia of Pakistan and Idi Amin of Uganda and such beacons of brutality would, on return to power as a penitent leader committed to democracy and the rule of law seek to fustigate the media anew?

    Has it not been said that old habits die hard?

    Besides, speaking metaphorically, a “third term,” has become one of the more durable fascinations in Nigeria’s political sociology, dating back to the First Republic.  Back then, it was enunciated in one form or another across the political spectrum.

    I would put down the premier of Western Nigeria, Chief SL Akintola, his deputy Chief RA Fani-Kayode (Fani Power) and the ruling Nigeria National Democratic Party general secretary, Chief ROA Akinjide, as its chief apostles.  They constituted the leadership of the Demo Party which, on the eve of the regional elections of 1964, seized every moment and every instrument at its disposal to assure the people that whether they voted or nor, the NNDP had already won the poll.

    The NNDP claimed a “landslide” all right, but it was a victory it could not celebrate. Its leaders went into hiding, scared of the very people who had given them the kind of victory that obtained in countries where there was only one political party and voting was compulsory.  From there, it was but a short step to declaring that Demo would win, and had in fact won the next poll scheduled for four years later.  And the next.

    In the general election of that year, the NPC, well-tutored by its NNDP partners in the Nigeria National Alliance, executed its own self-succession plan as a first step to securing a third term, with subsequent terms to be obtained in the same manner assured.

    The military coup of January 15, 1966, put a bloody end to the travesty.

    After the ruling NPN’s controversial win in the 1983 general election, the first since a return of sorts to representative rule in 1979, its chairman, the wily Chief Adisa Akinloye, declared that there were only two political parties in Nigeria:  the NPN, and the Nigerian Army, all other political parties having become terminally irrelevant.

    The army took note, stripped the NPN of all pretence to being a co-equal fount of power and, for the next nine years, functioned as the sole governing authority, effectively pre-empting the NPN’s drive for a second term, and a third term, all the way to an nth term.

    “June 12” ended military president Ibrahim Babangida’s dream of what would have been a third term for an elected president and sent him into a ragged, lachrymose retreat from Abuja to Minna.  For eight years, he exercised power without restraint and almost without challenge.

    If General Sani Abacha had not expired in an orgy of concupiscence and had succeeded in installing himself as an elected president on the platform of the five official political parties that Uncle Bola Ige, in a phrase for the ages compared to the five leprous fingers on a diseased hand, he would most surely have held power for as long as he drew breath.  Thereafter his wife Mariam, or his son “Ibrahim can do it” Abacha would have taken over, to ensure continuity.

    To the clan, the whole thing had become a family business.

    General Abdulsalam Abubakar was too preoccupied recovering lost opportunities during the years he was kept on the fringes that the place on his mind was how to get out of the whole thing with enough assets to last his progeny till the end of time.

    It is, however, with President Olusegun Obasanjo that the “third term” is most widely associated in the public mind.  Half-way through his second term, it was bruited that he would somehow contrive a third term.  He and his major supporters, among them the embattled Osun State Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and the erratic Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose, framed the matter as a package of constitutional amendments, of which the abolition of term limits was just a minor aspect.

    “Third term,” the public chanted in indignation.  Despite the hefty sums reportedly handed out to federal lawmakers to support the scheme, the National Assembly filibustered, and the proposal died on a procedural technicality.

    As his first full term was drawing to a close, President Goodluck Jonathan, though dogged by widespread charges of cluelessness, made a bid for what would really have been a second term in office.  But his vocal opponents and a hostile press said the two years he had served to complete what remained of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s term following Yar’Adua’s death counted for a first term, and that Jonathan’s expiring term counted for a second.  His re-election bid, they said, was for a third term.

    A hastily-convened Constitutional Conference designed to clear his path failed.

    Even so, most of the third-term zealots were exceedingly modest in their projections compared to PDP stalwart Vincent Ogbulafor, who declared that the party would hold power for at least 60 unbroken years – or 15 terms.  It was kicked out some four years later and has been in the political wilderness since then.

    But the third-term syndrome is nothing if not contagious

    Innocent of its dirty history, or believing that they are smarter and more resourceful than those who waged the earlier failed campaigns, Buhari’s acolytes are reportedly now pressing him to declare for a third term and urging the public to assent for its own good.

    As they see it, their case is unassailable.  Even with Boko Haram more than technically degraded, the country is in the throes of convulsions on multiple fronts.  The clamour for restructuring grows louder and more insistent with every passing day.  So are the voices of separatism and of religious intolerance.  The economy is near collapse and shows few signs of rebounding.

    The good news, they are saying, is that without Buhari at the helm, the situation would have been infinitely worse. The patriotic thing, it goes without saying, is to prevail on him to serve a third term.

    They will be consoled by the thought that even if Buhari declines to seek reelection, his third term can still be achieved by voting in Kogi’s Governor Yahaya Bello (GYB) as Nigeria’s next president, a title he has already awarded himself in his campaign blitz across the country.

    Bello has vowed to think Buhari’s thoughts, dream Buhari’s dreams and implement Buhari’s plans and programmes and vision with the youthful energy he has been touting as his principal qualification for the high office of President of the Republic.

    God help us all.

     

  • Police parade irresistible

    Police parade irresistible

    By Gabriel Amalu

     

    Despite the passage of a bill prohibiting the parade of suspects, by the Lagos State House of Assembly, the front page of The Punch Newspaper last Thursday, featured a glimpse of the 1,320 suspects, arrested across the metropolis and paraded by the police. Agreed that the governor was yet to assent to the bill, the point is that the police seems to be so enamoured with the parade of suspects, and see it as a low hanging fruit.

    No doubt when suspects are paraded, the impression is created that crime is being vigorously fought by the police. And both political and police leaders give themselves some pat on the back that they are working hard, and the people should be happy. Those directly in charge, such as the state commissioners of police, also use police parade of suspects to give the impression they are working hard to reduce crime within their jurisdiction.

    So, there is the need for federal and other states governments to join Lagos State to pass similar laws to make the parade of suspects unlawful nationwide. In the bill passed the Lagos State assembly, section 9(a) of the Administration of Criminal Justice (amendment law) provides: “As from the commencement of this law, the police shall refrain from parading any suspect before the media.”

    While the Lagos State assembly deserves commendation for passing the bill, it should be noted that the practice is repugnant to the 1999 constitution (as amended).

    Regrettably, it is usually mere suspects, not even those who have been charged to court, after police investigations that are paraded by the police. And most times, after the parade, some of those paraded are never charged to court because there is no evidence to prosecute them. Indeed, sometimes, the only reason for such arrest is that the suspects are apprehended at odd hours or are persons who have no homes and live in unauthorised places.

    But when they are paraded, the impression is given that they are criminals. And of course, the integrity of the suspects is shredded, especially in this era of internet, when pictorial news easily travels far and wide. This practice is against the 1999 constitution (as amended) and other extant human rights laws, which provides that every person must be treated with dignity, and even when someone is charged with a criminal offence, he is deemed innocent until the contrary is proved.

    Section 34(1)(a) of the constitution provides that “every individual is entitled to respect for the dignity of his person, and accordingly – no person shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment.” Without doubt, to parade a person as a criminal, for that is what the society believes of the paraded suspects, amount to severe mental torture, an inhuman and degrading treatment, especially when the accused is not liable for the alleged crime, as in most cases.

    Again, section 36(5) of the constitution provides that “every person who is charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty.” In stating what many may consider the obvious, the constitution is circumspect about the grave consequences of presumption of guilt, knowing that it could destroy the reputation and the integrity of the suspect, who may after a trial be declared not guilty of the charges.

    So, how did the culture of parading suspects by the police, arise and perpetuate, even when the constitution prohibits such act? Such that to stop the unconstitutional conduct, a legislation has to be passed as done by the Lagos State assembly. This column believes, it will be to the credit of the attorney general of the federation and that of other states in the federation, if they can engineer their respect legislative assemblies to emulate the Lagos State assembly, and expressly prohibit that unconstitutional conduct.

    To show that the police knows that those parades are unconstitutional, and could be a subject of tortious claim, the police wisely avoid parading the rich and mighty, for they can sue them and claim humongous damages. Perhaps, it is the courts that would eventually stave-off that abuse of power by the police when they impose damages for the unlawful practice. Again, civil liberty organisations and public-spirited lawyers should take on the challenge of using class actions and individual cases to force a change of style by the police.

    On their own part, the police need to re-orientate themselves from the top to the bottom, to encourage themselves to frown at the culture of parading suspects. Luckily, the Lagos State legislature has set the pace by reinforcing what the constitution envisages by a clear and unequivocal ban on the parade of suspects. When the governor signs the bill into law, it is envisaged that the state will not run into a brick wall, set up by a recalcitrant police, being a federal agency.

    As we have seen in the matter of crime prevention, many state governors are hamstrung in using the federal police optimally to fight certain types of criminals, who seems to have some form of immunity in the eyes of the presidency. So, this writer hopes that the police being under the directive of the federal executive machinery, would not frustrate the effort of the Lagos State government, to rein in the debilitating police culture of humiliating fellow Nigerians in the name of fighting crime.

    In other climes, where the rule of law is paramount, the identity of a suspect is never disclosed until the person is charged to court, and the charge to court by itself becomes a public information, which the press can use in the course of the dissemination of news. But in our country, the police joyously invite the press, to share in their morbid joy of publicly parading arrested persons, even before they decipher the offence allegedly committed by the arrested persons.

    And by such unfair practice, the nation breeds a gang of unhappy people, who feel angry against the system, and are willing to attack it at the slightest opportunity. As unfortunately exhibited during the tragic #EndSARS campaign, many Nigerian youths, who may have been victims or witnesses to such unlawful police parade, vented their anger on the public infrastructure. Again, a culture of impunity is nurtured by such unlawful acts, and the vent may be the ruthless criminality that has become the order of the day in our country.

    While it is not possible to establish a perfect nation, we should not encourage a nation of callous indignity, in the way we treat the less privileged in our society. To do otherwise, is to create an angry majority, since the poor are usually more in number.

  • Cry the beloved country

    Cry the beloved country

    By Sanya Oni

     

    I know a tribe out there who continue to interpret the events of the past week in South Africa strictly in the context of the usual stereotypes about Africa and Africans, and how democracy is supposed to be alien in a continent where feudalism, the Big Man syndrome and other variants of the Kabiyesi syndrome are supposed to be the natural order.

    With some 200-plus dead and countless scores wounded, not to talk of the mindless destruction that could cost some tidy billions to fix as the smoke clears, there is a lot to be said of the senseless rage as being tragically extravagant; considering that the same people will in the end, have to live with the pains of the destruction they have wrought.

    Reminds me of Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country.

    Good thing, that the institutions in the Rainbow Country held when it mattered most; the country’s apex court – the constitutional court, faced with the most unprecedented defiance – or better still, assault – by a former number one citizen of the republic, Jacob Zuma, did what it had to do. Then of course, the South African police, swift and resolute didn’t even have to roll out the battle gears before the Big Man was marched into the correctional facility at Estcourt, KwaZulu Natal. In the end, constitutionalism and the rule of law, prevailed.

    I know a throng still out there who couldn’t find that connection between the January 6 Capitol insurrection in the United States a la Donald J, Trump, and its milder variant that bred the nearly week-long conflagration in Gauteng and Kwazulu Natal. It is sufficient to crow, not just about what is supposed to be failure of democracy in these parts but also of the strain of lethal virus that makes democracy such a bad business on the continent. An instance of the African leadership flu being more lethal than the more hemorrhagic Western variant!

    By the way, I just finished reading a piece by Helen Zille, the renowned anti-apartheid activist and former leader of the country’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. The piece is titled The Jacob Zuma I came to know was unfailingly warm and humane. Call it a beautiful – or rather a generous attempt to humanize the embattled former president in the way only those with perhaps intimate knowledge of the man could have done. Coming from an individual with a solid pedigree in activism particularly in those days of anti-apartheid struggle, it was perhaps very much unlike her to have lapsed into inferences that could only have flowed from a familiar ethnocentric mindset simply because a certain Zuma could not live up to the expected bar in leadership!

    Here’s how she summed up the Zuma episode: “At the heart of it, this tragedy is rooted in the enormous complexity of our collective decision to impose a modern constitutional democracy on what is largely a traditional, African feudal society….

    “President Zuma is a traditionalist, totally unfamiliar with the concepts of constitutionalism, thrust into the role of President – whose primary duty is to serve and defend the Constitution.  A total misalignment…”

    Take note of how she elegantly framed the Zuma paradox – as something more emblematic of societal anomie as against an individual’s moral failure – in the well guided jibe at the ANC as indeed the majority Black Africans:

    “The idea that people are born with inalienable rights that no-one can take away from them, and that elected leaders are there to protect and defend these rights, is indeed a “Western thing”.  In traditional societies, the notion that the Chief grants you favours if you seek his favour, is far more prevalent –  and it is easy to see how this easily morphs into “corruption”.  The leader looks after his own, making the idea of “nepotism” a very “Western thing” as well…

    Really?

    She probably forgot that two gentlemen, Thabo Mbeki as indeed Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, before Zuma, also took residence in Mahlamba Ndlopfu – the equivalent of Nigeria’s Aso Villa!  So much for the generalisation; were the twain also caught up in the ‘Zuma paradox”?

    Agreed, it is so easy to count a score-plus instances of pure basket cases that the curse of leadership has foisted on the continent; the terrible blight that they constitute in humanity’s quest to advance the frontiers of freedom and human development; fact is, until Trump happened on the world, many could have sworn that political delinquency was, exclusively, an African malaise.

    Of course, the world now knows better than permit such baseless generalisations. For while Jacob Zuma may have been a corrupt, loathsome politician. Indeed, he and the Guptas may have sired and nurtured the phenomenon of ‘state capture’ in the Rainbow Country – systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state’s decision-making processes to their own advantage. He is probably no less a sinner than Trump, who, thanks to America’s complex legal system has been able to keep all enquiries on his business dealings at bay and later capped it all by granting his comrade-in-infamy, Roger Stone aka “dirty trickster” pardon after the latter was convicted of the federal crimes “of making false statements, witness tampering, and obstruction”.

    Talk of the ultimate un-leader unleashed on the world by the Grand Old Party and its alt-right allies; can anyone truly say of Zuma’s ‘crime’ or delinquency as infernally more venal than the attempt by Trump to torpedo an election which he lost by undemocratic means? Truly, if the Americans as indeed the West are any indebted to their institutions for their resilience, so it must be for the South Africans in the face of intimidation by a wayward one-time president.

    Which takes me to the final point. The world, as it is, may have been too obsessed with traditional notions of leadership – the concept of one big man leader – as against paying close attention to building strong and resilient institutions. What the lessons of the United States and South Africa teaches is that such efforts are best reserved for institution-building.

    To come back home – to Nigeria. Today, the raging argument is on the not just the suitability of the current constitution but also its legitimacy. However, it seems to me, that no constitution, no matter how perfect, can work in an environment where civil society institutions are virtually prostrate. Imagine – only in the environment of prostrate institutions would a parliament- supposedly representing the people, would dare to be seen as working at cross purposes with the aspirations of the people on something as sensitive as the integrity of the electoral process as Messrs. Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila appears to be doing at the National Assembly!

     

    Barka de Sallah, to you dear readers!

  • To SA with loot

    To SA with loot

    By Olakunle Abimbola

     

    To South Africa with loot, sorry love!

    That is grim but fair; for anytime there is some excitement in that polity, industrial-scale looting and arson appear part of the mix.

    So it is, with the current looting and riots, that greeted the latest station, in Jacob Zuma’s bumpy public career: freedom fighter, to president, to jail bird — to borrow the unflattering projection of a BBC report.

    It could have been a gripping grist for Shakespearean or Greek and Roman classical tragedy, except that Mr. Zuma had, peak or trough, exhibited the character (or none of it) of a low man — to echo the tragedy of Willy Loman, the tragic hero and failed travelling salesman, in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s contemporary tragedy.

    But while Willy Loman’s tragic flaw was being untrue to himself, though a decent bloke, Jacob Zuma’s is being wilfully true to himself, though an indecent fellow.

    That would appear a fair take, from the scandalous controversies that always swirl round him: from jailed liberation stalwart under the Apartheid regime (a heavy cross he admirably lugged from the tender age of 17), his stormy (un)presidential years (2009-2018) and the looming tragedy of a jailed former president — even outside his current jam: a 15-month jail term, for contempt of court — the first in South African history!

    Unlike the fictional Loman that got milled by a cold, cruel and soulless capitalist grind, real-life Zuma seems the much lampooned “African Big Man” (with fulsome apologies to The Economist of London), full of illicit power and glory, and sworn to bending — nay crushing — everyone: state, people and all, to his own will!

    A Farouk Chothia BBC report, of July 8, paints Jacob Zuma’s unsavoury long tiff with the law (2005 to 2021), dating back to his pre-presidential days — a profile hardly presidential!:

    — 2005: Charged with raping a family friend — acquitted in 2006.

    — 2005: Charged with corruption over multi-billion dollar 1999 arms deal — charges dropped before he becomes president in 2009.

    —  2016:  Court orders he should be charged with 18 counts of corruption over the deal — he appealed, but in 2017 lost a bid to overturn them.

    —  2016:  Court rules he breached his oath of office by using government money to upgrade private home — he has repaid the money.

    — 2017:  Public protector said he should appoint judge-led inquiry into allegations he profiteered from relationship with wealthy Gupta family — he denies allegations, as have Guptas.

    — 2018:  Zuma approves inquiry into claims of state looting.

    — 2018:  The National Prosecuting Authority confirms Mr. Zuma will face prosecution for 12 charges of fraud, one of racketeering, two of corruption, and one of money laundering, relating to the arms deal, which he denies.

    — 2021:  Begins a 15-month jail sentence after the Constitutional Court orders his arrest for refusing to testify at the commission into state looting.

    All of us are rogues, goes that cynical Nigerian street quip, but whoever is caught is the barawo!  That might just be the unpleasant reality among the ANC cadre, 27 years after triumph over White Apartheid.

    This BBC portraiture of Zuma is anything but beatific.  But the former president, rocking monumental disgrace because of personal recklessness, may just be a sick metaphor for ranking ANC apparatchiks.

    Those have been accused of cornering South African resources under Black re-empowerment, just as the White racist red necks did under Apartheid.  Brutally, it is dubbed “state capture” — and Zuma is now in hot soup, simply because he shunned the Raymond Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

    That appears the point of Brian Pottinger, a former editor/publisher of the  South African Sunday Times, in his July 15 analysis for The Post.

    In that piece, Pottinger blamed the KwaZulu Natal rioting and looting, by the comrade-masses, protesting the Zuma jailing, as direct tutorials from the grab-and-grab of the itchy and golden fingers of ANC comrade-aristocrats in power.

    He slammed Zuma as an irredeemable ruffian — which he may well be — and gored President Cyril Ramaphosa as a pussy-footing incompetent, who hates to rock the boat, when he should be the fiery Daniel come to judgment, over his decadent comrades.

    Why, he even struck a familiar, if excitable note, to local Muhammadu Buhari critics here, dismissing Ramaphosa as taciturn, remote and sepulchral; instead of fierce, dashing and assertive — traits he needed to have, to summarily chop off the Zuma and allied sore, before decay into the current cancer.

    But read more closely: Pottinger was pushing a rollback on post-Apartheid policies of Black empowerment, as ode to the White privilege days of yore, though without being outwardly racist!

    For Ramaphosa in Pottinger’s court — just as PMB in critics’ court here — it’s damn you do, damn you don’t: the politics — or is it, cynicism? — of public criticism!

    In the garb of sacred criticism, you unleash the most profane of closet yearnings, which though may not edify the public space, is sure to titillate not a few.

    Still, whatever is Pottinger’s closet motive, South Africa and ANC, the country and party of Madiba, the great Nelson Mandela, are in a mess and need urgent help.

    Pottinger is bang on the money: what was designed as Black radical economic transformation, in response to decades of cruel apartheid and mass economic strangulation, has petered down to serious socio-economic deformation.  Holding the short end of the stick is the Black majority, just as they did during White racist rule.

    That structural breakdown explains the South African penchant to resort to looting and arson, at the proverbial drop of a hat.  With tact and wisdom, but never by rashness, President Ramaphosa must do whatever it takes to stamp out that rot.

    Failure to do that would amount to an epochal failure, that would question the very basis of ANC intervention: from its early day as Black pressure group against White domination, to its colourful history as a liberationist movement, to its democratic triumph of 1994.  All would be undone!

    But a good start, to get that right, is calling the Zuma bluff.  Zuma, the virulent strongman mightier than his country’s institutions, is a nightmare for any country — and Donald Trump, even after 245 years of American statehood and democracy, is living and ugly proof.

    Let Zuma stay in the can.  Draft whoever were accessories to the mayhem that greeted his jailing to meet him in there.  Let him also face fair trial, for whatever allegations of sleaze hanging on his neck.

    A fitting denouement, to the wilful tragedy of Zuma, is the shock therapy South Africa needs to get its life back.  It’s good that is coming in early days — 27 years after Apartheid.

  • Zamfara killings

    Zamfara killings

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Last week, Nigerians where assailed by the gruesome killing of 39 persons in Zamfara State by persons who have been given the pseudo-name of bandits and marauders. Similar killings have been taking place in the state intermittently in the past few years. Perhaps, because of the state of anarchy in many parts of the country resulting in similar mass killings, the nation has not taken notice of the peculiar nature of the Zamfara killings.

    Of course, no life is worth more than another, but anytime a crime is committed, one of the ways to find out the culprits, is to investigate those who have the motive to commit such a crime. Working from such premise, investigators sometimes solve the crime. In essence, motive is usually key to solving a crime, as well as resolving the root cause of the particular criminality. While the killings in other parts of the country are excruciating the psyche of Nigerians, it is benumbing when as seems the case in the Zamfara killings, the motive is unknown.

    In the theatres of conflict in other parts of the country, one can haphazard the motive of the protagonists however misconceived and petulant. Take the war in the northeast, by Boko Haram, ISWA and their affiliates. Their motive for the mass killings, mendacious propaganda, kidnappings and sundry criminality is to overawe government in that part of the country, so that they can establish their preferred type of caliphate.

    Across the north-central, especially in the Benue-Plateau axis, the major motive for the killings is the desire by violent herders to forcefully appropriate fertile lands, pasture and water for cattle; and the occasional retaliation by the rural farmers. Again, as cruel and as callous as the tactics of the herders may be, the motive for the killings can be guessed. In other parts of the north, there is also the escalation of mass abductions and cattle rustling, with attendant killings that sometimes accompany it.

    For that too, the motive seems clear. For many of the criminals engaged in the nefarious activity of kidnapping and cattle rustling, the motive is economic, whether in the demand of ransom or the appropriation of the rustled cattle. Going further down south, the major security challenge is the killings by herders and kidnappings for ransom. Again in both instances, the motive as misbegotten as there are, is clear. While the herders want to forcefully gain control of pasture, including farm crops for their cattle, the kidnappers’ motive is to extract ransom from victims and their families.

    But in Zamfara, we are told that marauders just go into a rural community and massacre people, which is strange. While some reports contend that the crisis is between Hausas whose farm crops have been eaten up by herders’ cattle and Fulani herders whose cattle have been rustled by Hausa boys, it has metamorphosed into a cycle of mass killings.  Indeed, in one instance, it was contended that the mantra by one of the groups is to kill any person of the opposing ethnic group they see.

    Of course, there may be other instances of mass killings in other parts of the country, without any clear motive. But the objective of this catalogue of woes is to encourage the government to study the motives for any repetitive mass killings in other to find solutions to at least some of them. So, while levying war against those who have made life miserable for other Nigerians is justified, it is also necessary to seek intellectual solutions to some of the challenges.

    By that this column suggests that the federal government, while waging war on one hand, should seek help from international and local organisations which have the capacity to engage in intellectual analysis of conflicts, its management and potential solutions. This column believes that some of the conflicts could be resolved through dialogue and political concessions, instead of waging war that may rather escalate such conflicts.

    Perhaps, it is in that regard that instead of war-war, as solution to all the conflicts afflicting the country, the Buhari presidency may consider the option of jaw-jaw, at least for some of them. Taking the suggestion a notch higher, the federal government should commission specialised United Nations organs to study the causes of the multiple conflicts tearing our nation apart. They can also employ the services of reputable international non-governmental organisations, which have the technical know-how on conflict management, to study and proffer suggestions to government, on possible solutions to the conflicts.

    So, when President Muhammadu Buhari chastises those seeking national dialogue as the way forward for our dear country, this column believes he misses the point, when all he sees is a secessionist agenda. The same misconception about the grave challenges he faces, is the bane of the governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, who instead of seeking solutions to the problems facing his state, is rather engaged in sabre-rattling against imaginary enemies of the north.

    To help the north, and by extension Nigeria get out of the political quagmire, the northern intelligentsia must put on their thinking cap. It is not enough to be contended with merely seeking power as an end in itself. They should worry why despite holding the reigns of federal power in our country, for more than three-quarters of the life of the country since independence, the northern region has retarded instead of growing. And that is despite the socio-economic and political advantages, which the region gains from dominating central power.

    So, when misguided elites like the governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, concentrate energy on the north keeping power in 2023, regardless of the acrimony that it will entail, the northern intelligentsia must adroitly redirect the mind of the northern public to a better agenda than political brinkmanship. No doubt, experience has shown that the challenges faced by the northern region cannot be resolved by the unfair appropriation of political power by all means possible. For only a few political elites gain from it.

    Of course, many would argue that the Buhari presidency has not shown the predilection to intellectual stock, judging by their actions in the past six years it has been in power. But with brawn failing to achieve the desired goal of national peace, despite millions of dollars so far expended; perhaps it is time to task the brain, to proffer alternative solutions to the myriad of security problems facing the country. To do otherwise, is to keep doing the same thing over and over, and yet expecting a different result.

    The peculiar security challenge facing Zamfara State is a pointer that some of the security crisis needs to be examined through a different prism, and perhaps resolved, using a different method.

  • Past poison, future poison

    Past poison, future poison

    By Olakunle Abimbola

    It’s amusing to watch PDP gripe over old poison it brewed for others.  But it’s equally heart-rending to see APC set itself up for that same poison.

    So, it was rather comic, the other day, to hear Kola Ologbondiyan, the goodly PDP national publicity secretary, whine the ruling party was snatching its governors and other elected members.

    “Governor [Bello] Matawale did not defect to APC because the party has any democratic credentials, as erroneously claimed by the APC national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu,” went the apologia, after Ologbondiyan had dismissed the Zamfara governor’s defection as an ‘unpardonable act of betrayal’, “but [he]only surrendered to intimidation and cowardly joined those behind the killings and acts of violence in Nigeria.”

    Then, a furious Ologbondiyan threw everything — the proverbial kitchen sink, vulgar abuse and all — at his party’s oppressors-in-chief: “Of course, the APC, as a party of political bandits, does not have any democratic credentials to attract well-meaning and patriotic Nigerians.”

    Phew!  That grape must be sour!  The griping, so gripping and painful! But pray, what does Ologbondiyan expect, given that PDP itself was a soulless partisan predator, at own high noon of power?

    Just match Dayo Adeyeye’s old cry — against Ologbondiyan’s new screech — back then at the PDP poach-and-swallow glory days!

    “The Vice President is not in a position to teach anyone lessons on principle or ideology,” Adeyeye blazed at VP Atiku Abubakar, who had waxed triumphant in Ibadan, at the defection of an AD senator to PDP, in June 2002; and asked his ruling party to repeat, in 2003, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) electoral magic that collapsed the 2nd Republic (1978-1983).  ”His party is populated by politicians without principle — the Abacha apologists of yesterday.”

    Adeyeye was spokesman for Afenifere/AD, then at the receiving end of PDP slaughter!

    But AD wasn’t the only PDP quarry.  There was also the All People’s Party (APP),  rechristened All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP).

    For the APP, it was clinical, political guillotining — lob off the head, and the body would shudder, stagger, lumber and surrender!

    President Olusegun Obasanjo simply appointed Senator Mahmud Waziri, the APP national chairman, his special adviser, on “inter-party relations”; and watched, with intense pleasure, APP lull into slow death; with his PDP hailing that rare master stroke!

    With its present gale of defections, therefore, PDP only chokes on own noxious fumes. But that would sure be APC’s future fate, the way it too celebrates its current swallow-and-fatten tactics, under interim national chairman, Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State.

    Indeed, the celebrants have been well and truly shocking: President Muhammadu Buhari, as coy of realpolitik as former President Obasanjo gloried by it.  Adams Oshiomhole, former national chairman, whose tenure struck hard blows for progressive policies, ideology and discipline in APC ranks.

    But both have celebrated the Matawale “capture”, to ape that triumphant lingo of the PDP power years!

    You really must ponder that old poser, from the English Godfrey Chaucer, of the famous Canterbury Tales: if gold rusts, what will iron do?

    Now, there is a lot of talk about APC and PDP being virtually the same.  That is not entirely true — at least, not from the policy front.

    Since 1999, there have been some PDP governors, pushing progressive principles and developmental tactics, a temper so rare with PDP central power, from Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo to Goodluck Jonathan (1999-2015).

    Cross River, under Donald Duke (more or less continued under Liyel Imoke) was one.  Rivers, under Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, was another.  By the way, what happened to those beautiful public primary and secondary schools, Amaechi built?

    But the most spectacular, it would appear, was the Ebonyi case: David Umahi, within a four-year gubernatorial term, transformed Abakaliki — once upon a time, “as dusty as Abakaliki” — into a glittering model capital, gleaming with smooth roads and sturdy flyovers, alluring fountains, and even airport runway-like side lighting, which aids night driving, outside the conventional street lights.

    But even forget the capital’s near-magical transformation: you still see solid concrete roads piercing the state’s hinterland, gifting the rural folks good roads all-season; and less hassled evacuation of crops to urban markets. Sadly, Umahi too quit PDP!

    But flip the coin.  Unfortunately, there can’t be PDP vs specific parties’ contrast, way back to 1999 — no thanks to ruling PDP’s active subversion of opposition parties.  But even from those ruins, a consistent story springs.

    Since 1999, under AD, or Action Congress (AC), or Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) or now under APC, Lagos, from Governors Bola Tinubu to Babatunde Fashola to Akinwunmi Ambode, and now, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has been a national reference: in fights for states’ rights in a flawed federation, fiscal federalism, judicial reforms, not to talk of upgrading critical infrastructure, to cope with its galloping population.

    In Oyo and Osun, benchmarking progressive tenures against PDP regimes tell definitive policy — and developmental — tales.  The late Abiola Ajimobi epitomized what a brilliant policy mind could do to spruce up a state and gift it a new sparkle.

    Chief Bisi Akande and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, sandwiching PDP’s Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, tell the difference, for Osun, in pro-people policies and developmental thinking.

    Outside the South West, Borno’s Prof. Babagana Zulum, as Kashim Shettima before him, is pushing new developmental frontiers, despite the Boko Haram challenge, while many of his northern and southern peers, with less challenges, mouth excuses.

    Zulum and co are APC governors; or belonged to pre-APC legacy parties.

    Now, leave the states and, one-on-one, compare and contrast PDP and APC governments at the federal level.  Even with much diminished revenue, the present Federal Government is posting more verifiable achievements, in physical and social infrastructure; aside from strong showings in food security — and in much less time, and in a far harsher season too!

    That means it is funneling more funds to the care of the Nigerian majority, than the PDP federal governments of yore, which seeming credo appeared just stuffing its crony elite-parasites, with gravy that belonged to all!

    Still, is APC then the ultimate?  No.  The much diffused insecurity is a blight; a possible election-time albatross — if insecurity doesn’t roll back most of its gains much earlier.

    On the policy front, however, it boasts enough developmental appeal to drive its politics.

    That’s why APC should do less of the Buni gobble-and-expand gambit (that was what bloated and “killed” the PDP); and play more to its pro-poor and developmental strength.

  • In pursuit of public purpose

    In pursuit of public purpose

    By Sanya Oni

    Thanks to Louis Odion – the man I prefer to call Gburugburu but who many call Mr. Capacity, a copy of the book – In Pursuit of the Public Purpose – a compilation of essays in tribute to Tunji Bello which he co-edited with Kayode Komolafe, was delivered to my office Monday last week. To begin with, if the word classy qualifies as a most fitting description of the print quality, a lot more could certainly be said of the galaxy of contributors drawn from the diverse spectrum of the nation’s public life all united in their attestation to the exemplary private and public life of the remarkable individual called Tunji Bello. Sincerely, only those who did not know Tunji could have expected anything less! Talk of being truly deserving – or even more – for a man who has touched and continues to touch, lives positively.

    Talking of the book, although I had read snippets of the tributes in one or two newspapers, it was for me a refreshing odyssey of sorts as I poured through the pages of a book laid out in celebration of a brother and a true friend of whom I had the good fortune of meeting for the very first time some 35 years ago on the Features Desk of the National Concord then led by Ola Amupitan and his two deputies – Ayodeji Ajayi and Betty Irabor, which also had Wale Sokunbi, Tunji Bello and yours truly on board.

    A book of nine sections, the chapters run through such themes as Character, Family, World View, Activism/Unionism, Friendship, Journalism, Public Service and Mentees. Expectedly, there is a section – Taste of Tunji Bello’s New Republic – a collection of few of his writings at Thisday newspapers.

    Like the story of the blind men and an elephant, each of the contributors obviously did a good job of describing the subject based on their different experiences of the man and their perception of his impact both in their lives and in the cause of public service,

    From Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu under whom he first served as commissioner in the environment, we read of his profile in diligence and loyalty; from my dear egbon, Segun Babatope, it was an account of his heroism particularly in those heady days of military brigandage. From Lanre Arogundade, Sanni Zoro, and from the irrepressible lawyer cum activist Richard Akinnola, the reader is offered a glimpse into his activism. And then of course the home front, from the pens of the wife, Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello and the children.

    Sam Omatseye, this newspaper’s editorial board chairman would pen a chapter on friendship fittingly titled – Such a long trek together – as in tribute to that endurance trek called journalism and activism; media leader and icon, Dapo Olorunyomi would offer a candid reflection on life at 60 but on what he called ‘social connection’ as touching Tunji’s journalism, politics cum activism.

    Of course, other industry leaders like Victor Ifijeh, this newspaper’s managing director and editor in chief would have a thing or two to say about his team work; the same with labour veteran and popular columnist Owei Lakemfa on how Tunji fought ‘fake news. For Eniola Bello, Thisday’s managing director, it is on the subject’s ‘simplicity’ while Gbenga Adefaye has something to say about the footprints of this great newspaperman. Between Femi Adesina’s account of how he, alongside Tunji Bello struggled to keep the Concord afloat and the inimitable Azu’s portrayal of the unlikely journalist, the analogy of the blind men and an elephant would appear to have come truly alive.

    Those interested in Tunji’s foray into environmentalism would have a ready reference in the contribution of Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN, former Lagos State governor, by whom he was described as a ‘goal getter’; Dr Titilayo Anibaba who tells us why Tunji is called ‘Mr. Clean’ and then of course Joe Igbokwe with whom he’s currently tending the environment and water resources charge in the Centre of Excellence.

    My best section of course is the one penned by his legion of mentees. From Olusegun Adeniyi’s My Editor, my brother, Simon Kolawole’s His grasp of issues Inspires me, Ose Oyamedan’s He see younger people as project, Abdul Warees Solanke’s He pushed me to think on my toes… to Louis Odion’s The man who clasped me in his wings…, Tunji’s profile as a leader, benefactor and inspiration to the generation behind him comes shining through. From his legendary generosity to his acclaimed selflessness, there is always a readiness to offer a helping hand to anyone that came his way and even more so to those privileged to come under his wings.

    Let me by way of closing offer one testimony out of many as my personal tribute to Tunji but to exemplify his sacrifice and depth of friendship over the course of the years.

    This happened in the late 80s. My younger, now a medical practitioner, had been admitted initially, to study Medicine at the University of Ilorin for the 6-year programme. Soon after, his Advanced Level result was released wherein he came out in flying colours. In line with the rules of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board at the time, he promptly applied for an upgrade to the 5-year Direct Entry programme – a request that was, according to him, flatly turned down by an official who told him he should consider himself lucky that he already has a place.

    My brother came down to Concord to share this strange twist in the tale with me. Of course, I was angry, and I told Tunji about it. Not only would he have none of it, he offered to follow me to Ilorin to sort things out! Getting there, he sought out Dapo Olorunyomi whom he also dragged along. The matter was promptly resolved with the official not only apologising to the team but offering a somewhat plausible defence about the outburst being released under pressure!

    That was vintage Tunji! Talk of a friend indeed; a friend not only ready to sacrifice but when necessary, fight phoney officialdom to ensure that justice is delivered no matter who was involved.

    I close with a line of prayer from one of the contributors to Tunji: the best chapter of your life is yet to be written!

  • A road much travelled

    A road much travelled

    By Olatunji Dare

    Every government that has held power in Nigeria since independence has sought overtly or covertly to stifle freedom of speech and of expression even while solemnly vowing to uphold it, the lonely exception being General Muhammadu Buhari who, on taking power in 1984, declared that he was going to “tamper” with press freedom.

    He was as good as his word.  Barely three months after that blunt declaration, he promulgated Decree Four, under which The Guardian’s journalists Tunde Thomson and Nduka Irabor were jailed and the newspaper was made to pay a heavy fine for a publication that was not accurate “in every material particular.”

    Intimations of the fortunes awaiting the media in a post-colonial Nigeria were already discernible on the eve of independence.  The Eastern Nigeria Newspaper Law of 1959, shoehorned through the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly by the region’s Premier, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the pre-eminent newspaperman of his era before he entered politics, made it an offence to publish in any newspaper a statement, rumour, or report, knowing or having reason to believe that the statement at issue was false unless the reporter proved that he or she took reasonable steps to verify the statement before publication.

    The enactment was the template for the controversial Newspapers (Amendment) Act of 1964 of Tafawa Balewa’s Government.  Though it was never directly enforced, the 1964 law had a chilling effect on newspapering.

    In the period between the 1964 General Elections and the military coup of January 1966, a number of local governments passed laws banning designated newspapers from their areas of jurisdiction because of their perceived partisanship.  Ironically, one of the first acts of the military following the coup was to invalidate these restrictions.

    It must be accounted one of the most poignant paradoxes of Nigeria’s recent history that a regime that had on seizing power won popular support by abolishing Decree Four of 1984 and promised  to uphold fundamental human rights ended its tenure with Decree 43 of 1993, an enactment straight out of Tudor England.

    In that year, in the heat of the debacle precipitated by the annulment of the presidential election, the culmination of a political transition programme that had been eight years in the making, the regime of military president Ibrahim Babangida issued a decree setting up a Media Council, the remit of which was at once unexceptionable and disquieting.  It sought in one and the same breath to “promote high professional standards,” and “to deal with complaints emanating from the public about the journalists and in their professional capacity.”

    It sought to balance the latter mandate by also empowering the Media Council “to investigate complaints emanating from the media about the conduct of persons or organisations toward the media.

    But the real intendment of the decree was never in doubt.

    At the heart of the scheme was a Registration Board appointed by the government and vested with sweeping powers to licence newspapers.  Government-sponsored newspapers were exempted.

    The Board was not obliged to explain its decisions, nor could it be challenged at law.  One of the conditions for registration was that an applicant must be of “good character.”  Since the government vested itself with the power to appoint a majority of the Council’s members, it could in effect determine what constituted “good character” and also identify those who possess it or lack it.

    The requirement that all journalists hold diplomas from institutions approved by the Council stood to eliminate one-half of the journalism workforce, but no matter.

    Registration was to be secured every year, and could be withdrawn at any time.   The entire premises of any newspaper that continued to do business after being denied registration would be shut down.  It was of no consequence that other businesses unrelated to journalism were conducted there.

    For contraventions of any provision of the decree, everyone involved in the business from the publisher right down to the janitor would be held to strict liability as if he or she had personally published the material at issue.  For good measure, the decree stipulated a 10-year jail term for publication of “false news.”

    Nor was that all.  Decree 43 was a fresh assault on the Federal Principle.  Previously, newspaper registration was vested exclusively in the regions, and later the states.  It was usually granted as a matter of course, and for only a modest fee.  Now it was to be the means by which newspapers that had not been arbitrarily shut down by the military authorities during the election annulment crisis could be banned through the back door as it were, without courting adverse reactions at home and abroad.

    In these and other ways did a regime that had set out promising a reprieve from the policies of its predecessor ended its tenure actually tightening the screws of repression.

    The saving grace was that no newspaper applied for registration.  The Guardian successfully moved the courts to void the decree.  The verdict hung on a technicality. At the time Babangida issued the decree, the Lagos High Court held, that by a previous decree, he had divested himself of law-making powers.

    From the foregoing, it can be seen that Nigeria’s media history consists by and large in attempt after attempt by the political authorities emasculate the news media, regardless of whether the military or elected officials held the levers of power.  The route was familiar and much travelled.

    Even those we call the political class have not stood up to be counted as allies in the struggle for freedom of speech and of press.  They see the media not as an indispensable vehicle for the promotion and sustenance of democracy and as a bulwark against arbitrary rule, but as an irritant, a menace that must             be kept on a tight leash

    Thus, in 1976 and 1998, they voted down spirited attempts to entrench a press-freedom clause in the new constitutions being discussed on the ground that to guarantee freedom the press was to confer a special privilege on an occupational group, namely journalists.  The elementary truth is that freedom of the press belongs to the public, to the entire society; those who make and those who consume the news, no less than to those who report and comment upon it.

    We come, finally, to the present conjuncture, where the National Assembly charged with making “good laws” for the governance of Nigeria has gone through a second reading of a draft enactment with this seductive and beguiling title: “A Bill for an Act to Amend the Nigeria Press Council to Remove Bottlenecks Affecting the Press and its Performance and to Make the Council in Tune with the Current Realities in Regulating the Press and for Related Matters.”

    This Bill is the latest in a long line of legislation aimed at emasculating the news media.  It reinforces some of the most objectionable aspects of the 1992 law it seeks to amend, combines them with the most repugnant aspects of Decree 43, and gives the product additional teeth.

    The Council is mandated to ensure, among other things, “truthful, genuine and quality services” by media houses and practitioners.  The penalty for publishing without the Board’s approval is a fine of N5 million, or a jail term of three years, or both, plus a fine of N20,000 for each day the offence subsists.

    It may direct the media to publish an apology or correction.  Failure to comply will attract a fine of N250,000 and suspension from journalistic work for six months.  In “extreme cases,” the Council can strike a reporter’s name off the register it is mandated to maintain.  Vendors of publications not licensed by the Council stand to pay a fine of N250,000 or to be sentenced to a jail term of one year, or both.

    Publication of “fake news” is punishable with a fine of N5 million or a two-year jail term or both, plus payment of monetary compensation to injured individuals or groups.  The issuing house stands to pay a fine of N10 million and to be shut down for a year. In addition, it would be required to pay a compensation of N20 million to an injured party.

    That, in essence, is the thrust of a Bill that seeks to “remove obstacles affecting the media and its performance” and has a chance of passing, admittedly now slender in the wake of the national uproar it has generated. The uproar has been so resonant that all the officials without whose initiative, encouragement or support the proposal could not have gone this far in the legislative process have disavowed any part in its making, leaving it standing in the name of its sponsor, Olusegun Odebunmi (APC, Iresaadu  Surulere, Oyo State).

    Odebunmi has no journalism background of any kind, nor has he suffered any injury from the media. One is therefore led to ask:  What is his locus standi in the matter?  For whom is he fronting? Are the laws of defamation no longer operative?

    Who stands to profit from this proposed law?

    Certainly not a society aspiring to belong in the community of democratic states, a society in which the media are enjoined by the Constitution to hold the government accountable to the public.

    It is tragic indeed that Odebunmi’s Bill advanced this far in the legislative process.  It should have been dead on arrival.