The Nation Newspaper

Category: Festus Eriye

  • Atiku’s Southeast quandary

    Northern Nigeria is Muhammadu Buhari country – a point he has proved over the last two election cycles. In 2011, running on the platform of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), he garnered the bulk of his 12 million votes there.

    But that was not enough to get him elected president of Nigeria because the CPC was essentially a sectional party without roots down South.

    To be elected president, a candidate – no matter how popular he is in his home region – must take at least one of the zones in the other region. Buhari rectified that in 2015 when by the instrumentality of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he was propelled to power by winning up north and in the Southwest.

    The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, understand that the route to power is to trim Buhari’s margins drastically in the north while taking two of the southern zones. Alternatively, they could clear the three zones in the south and win in the North-Central zone to capture power.

    The opposition have relative strength in the South-south zone, so the most natural fishing ground is the East. For one thing, the Southwest has a bird in hand: a sitting vice president. By offering the VP role to the Southeast Atiku made the right move to fire up what has always been a historical stronghold for parties like PDP which are either centrist or right of centre.

    In a zone where separatist sentiment has been quite fevered in recent times, Atiku’s restructuring rhetoric has equally played well with a section of the region’s political elite. But, what ordinarily should have been a match made in heaven, has turned into an awkward embrace because of the complex dynamics of the region’s politics.

    It is hard to understand why this is so, given that the Igbos have been locked out of the nation’s top two offices since 1983 when the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme was Vice President. In a country where the presidency is so powerful, thirty five years outside the corridors of power has only heightened the sense of alienation. So, you would expect that the region would grasp the opportunity with enthusiasm.

    The first sign of trouble was the lukewarm – even cold reception – by some Igbo leaders to the announcement that Atiku had chosen the former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, as running mate. While many observers felt this was a good pick, a meeting of the zone’s PDP governors and other leaders declared they were ‘unaware’ of the selection.

    On the surface it looked like petty nit-picking over procedural missteps. But the sulking was signal of something that ran deeper. Their action was the ultimate dampener which deflated whatever bounce Atiku had enjoyed coming out of the party’s Port Harcourt convention.

    It didn’t help that the candidate had disappeared to Dubai to recharge his batteries – leaving the firefighting to surrogates. Even after his return you still got the feeling that some in the PDP Igbo leadership remained less than enthused about having Obi on the ticket for different reasons.

    Some have said that the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, had been promised the running mate slot by Atiku as a carrot for rallying the zone’s support. That is yet to be denied by the candidate. In any case, as the most senior political office holder from the zone he would have felt he deserved to be considered for the position.

    Now that Atiku has explained the rationale for choosing Obi, it is clear that there would be no substitution of the ex-governor on the ticket. He must now run with him all the way hoping his presence would not be a drag on the platform.

    But even more worrying for the PDP and its candidate are lingering questions as to whether he intends to stay just one term in office if he wins in February 2019, or take full advantage of his constitutional right to serve two terms.

    It has been suggested that pre-convention, Atiku committed himself to serving for just four years – clearing the way for the Igbo to actualise their presidential ambitions as early as 2013. But once the PDP ticket was secured with the help of the block votes of the Southeast, the former VP suddenly shunted aside any talk of one-term.

    The ambitious among the zone’s political elite have been keen to get him to make a firm commitment to that idea. He has studiously refused to do so.

    This is a headache that has dogged a succession of presidents from Olusegun Obasanjo to Goodluck Jonathan. Walking back a careless commitment made in the heat of horse-trading always has grave consequences. Obasanjo got away with it lightly. But it was part of the fuel that fired anti-Jonathan sentiment in 2015 in parts of the north where it was felt he went back on a similar pledge made in 2011.

    All of this is recent history and if the Southeast cannot get that commitment from Atiku and he wins in 2019, they may very well be shut of power till 2027. By that time a whole swathe of politicians from the zone with presidential ambitions may have become either too old or irrelevant.

    What complicates matters for the PDP is the fact the one-term offer its candidate is unwilling to make, is an unspoken offering from the APC. Buhari’s second tenure – assuming he prevails in 2019 – would end in 2013, clearing the way for the presidency to rotate down south.

    Although, it is now clear that when that happens, all three southern zones would fight for the prize, the Igbos must certainly fancy their chances. Outside of the short military interregnum overseen by the late Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the last person from the zone to be president was Nnamdi Azikiwe, and he was a ceremonial one at that.

    The bind for the zone is whether it makes more sense to back a horse that makes you wait eight more years, or the one guaranteed by law to exit in four years.

    The last bone that Atiku has thrown to the Southeast is restructuring. He has not said how far he’s willing to go with this. But I strongly suspect that coming from a zone where restructuring has been painted as dismemberment of the country by other means, what the PDP candidate may eventually offer, if ever he gets to power, may prove a devastating disappointment in IPOB country.

    Atiku has a tough task on his hands. His most plausible route to power is to win in the North-Central and do reasonably well in the other two northern zones and South-south, while winning the Southeast convincingly.

    However, for that to happen there must be momentum. The 2019 polls are shaping to be a tight affair. In such close elections, the margins are very important. Whoever does a better job of mobilising their base and bringing out the voters on Election Day would prevail.

    The bad news for Atiku is that if Buhari gets a plurality in the three northern zones and retains the Southwest, he wins. In the Northwest, his numbers are threatened in Sokoto and Kano with the recent defections and upheavals in the party.

    In Benue, the herdsmen killings and defection of Governor Samuel Ortom could have a negative impact. The same thing is likely in Kwara State where the battle line has been drawn with Senate President, Bukola Saraki. But elsewhere up north the ruling party’s support is holding up as recent bye-elections show.

    In 2015, the north versus south sentiment helped tip the contest in Buhari’s favour. In the current race that sectional edge is absent and that plays to the incumbent’s advantage. Head or tail a northerner would be president and that confers no special advantage to Atiku.

    Without emotional factors like ethnicity and religion driving things, we might be headed for low turnout – and this inevitable favours incumbents. It simply means the opposition hasn’t been able to excite its base.

    In the Southwest, Buhari and the APC are in better shape today than in 2015. Back then Ekiti and Ondo States were in the hands of the PDP. Today, they are back in ruling party control along with Osun. Even in the troubled Ogun APC, the embittered Governor Ibikunle Amosun has vowed to work for Buhari’s re-election.

    At the inauguration of the PDP’s Presidential Campaign Council, Atiku claimed to have momentum that would usher him into office. But I don’t see it in the Southeast where he desperately needs a superlative performance.

    In 2015, the Southeast embraced Jonathan with even more gusto than his native South-south zone – and the only link he had with the region was the middle name Azikiwe. Such was the enthusiasm that even the arch secessionist Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) forgot its raison d’etre to actively campaign for the re-election of a Nigerian president.

    That same passion that charged up the Jonathan campaign nearly four years ago, has so far been missing in the PDP’s efforts in East. Perhaps, things may change in coming weeks, but clearly this is one campaign badly in need of energy.

  • Why Jonathan lost the presidency

    Any Nigerian alive between 2010 and 2015 was a witness to history who doesn’t need Goodluck Jonathan’s new tome to understand how the former president oversaw the unravelling of the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) seeming vice grip on power.

    People used to sneer at the then ruling party’s boast that it would remain in power for 60 years. But such was its spread and strength across the country that it was not a scenario that was too outlandish to contemplate.

    Examples abound around the world showing it was possible for a political party to hold power for decades. Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held uninterrupted power for 71 years from 1929 to 2000. Paraguay’s right wing Colorado Party ruled for 61 years non-stop until it was defeated at the polls in 2008. Equally notable in the longevity stakes is India’s Congress Party which governed without break for 49 long years.

    Coming into the pre-election year of 2014, the PDP had already chalked up 15 years in power and, despite the upheavals within its ranks, still looked the most likely to be returned at the polls the next year.

    At that point, the All Progressives Congress (APC) just looked like the gathering pool of the disaffected from the ruling party and veteran opposition politicians. It was an unlikely aggregation of strange bedfellows whose chances of seizing power from the PDP behemoth was akin to that of a mad scientists sending a rocket successfully to the sun.

    Speaking with a well-known leader of the then fledgling opposition party a few months before its stunning electoral triumph in March 2015, he confessed that although he wasn’t too religious, he was willing to class the transformation of the APC as nothing short of a miracle. A party that was barely two years old was on the verge of toppling one that had held the reins for almost 16 years.

    Only a potent mix of complacency, insensitivity, arrogance and blindness could have produced this situation. Each of these items was in abundance in the Jonathan presidency and ruling party circa 2014. Unfortunately, the former president has a different take on why he was ousted from Aso Rock.

    His new book ‘My Transition Hours’ talks about some of the then ruling party governors working against him in the North. Religion and his handling of the Boko Haram, the Chibok schoolgirls’ saga, were said to have been deployed to undo him. He equally claims there was a vendetta against his family.

    I don’t doubt that there’s a bit of truth in some of these claims, but the problem is with the presentation. He would rather apportion blame to others than take responsibility.

    Jonathan chose not to believe the image staring back at him in the mirror. He claims he used to laugh when critics called him ‘clueless’: but the tag stuck because there was so much coming out of his administration that suggested the label was a perfect fit.

    He is, once again, playing the victim. But rather than being the target of any imaginary vendetta, the former president must admit that a combination of his weakness and poor political skills in the latter days of his presidency, prepared the ground for his swift slide from power.

    Only a wrecking ball of a president and party leader could have blithely watched as five governors and sundry heavyweights exited the PDP to join forces with the nascent APC. I recall that after the departure of the G-5, Jonathan said dismissively that the ruling party would become more cohesive and peaceful with exit of the ‘troublemakers’. It didn’t play out that way.

    Indeed, the entry of the PDP governors into APC marked the turning point for the burgeoning opposition movement – triggering a momentum that would propel it to a stunning electoral victory several months down the line. Before the coming of the governors the new party, despite its promise, was still limited in its spread and vulnerable to accusations of being sectional as opposed to the broad-based ruling party. Had those who left remained in the PDP, I dare say the election outcome in 2015 could have mirrored what happened in 2011.

    So Jonathan, then PDP chairman Bamanga Tukur and party hardliners who lacked the political savvy to negotiate compromises with the aggrieved governors, actually opened the crack for Muhammadu Buhari and the opposition hordes to get their feet in the door.

    Yes, the opposition used Boko Haram and the Chibok girls kidnap to devastating effect in defining the former president as incompetent. But what did he expect? These were problems on the ground which the floundering government could not deal with. His critics were within their rights to play the issues for what they were worth in the contest for power.

    Jonathan could have denied them the ammunition but instead stockpiled them by a series of inexplicable and wrongheaded moves. Mid-way into his administration he had a chance to decapitate the growing Boko Haram serpent with firm military action, but kept mouthing the apologetic nonsense about not going to war with ‘our own countrymen.’ The question he didn’t address was when the insurgents IEDs blew innocent Nigerians to smithereens, were they playing video games?

    I still recall that at a point when the United States government at the instigation of then Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, sought to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organisation, the Federal Government sent a lobbying team to the State Department to counter the move. The rationale? Designating the sect a terror organisation cause innocent Nigerians to be subjected to travel delays at airports around the globe!

    I recall that a delegation of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) – fed up with Boko Haram’s slaughter of Christians in the North – was in Washington DC at that same time, to press the Americans for sterner action against the sect. Imagine their shock when they met a high-powered lobby team pushing an opposite objective.

    One of the things the US designation of Boko Haram as a terror group would have done was to engage closer international tracking of the sect’s finances and cut off the flow. Thanks to the efforts of the Jonathan administration, the Americans backed off and the Islamists grew by leaps and bounds.

    The ex-president must have naively thought he could sweet-talk suicide bombers into changing their way of thinking. They replied with bombings in the heart of Abuja, Kano and Kaduna. By then the insurgency had become an albatross that would pull him down.

    The reasons why Jonathan fell would fill an even bigger volume than that which he has written. But let’s address another of his interesting laments: that his family was a target for vendetta. Again, if some members of his family became lighting rods for public criticism it was because he let them become major performers in the political circus.

    Take the erstwhile First Lady for instance. In recent Nigerian history no president’s wife has been so deeply immersed in the murky waters of politics as Patience Jonathan. As a political wife she was as much an asset as a mobiliser, as she was a liability as a loose cannon who didn’t know when to stop.

    She was an unrelenting source of negative publicity for Jonathan and damaged public perceptions about him. His seeming inability to rein her in despite the havoc she was causing at different points, solidified the image of the ex-president as weak.

    Who can forget her infamous run-in with former Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, during which she gave the governor a very public tongue-lashing? Who can forget her theatrical interventions in the heat of the Chibok girls kidnap saga – an incident that presented the First Couple as unfeeling and seeking to make political capital out of a tragic situation. In the end, her cries of ‘There’s God o!’ became fodder for a thousand comic skits. Vendetta against his family? What vendetta!

    There’s no doubt that Jonathan is yet to come terms with his 2015 electoral defeat. The wounds may still be fresh, but so also are our memories of why he went down. He was truly the architect of his fall from power. Instead of blaming others, he should ask himself how he managed to transform a massive electoral advantage in 2011 into a deficit in 2015.

    In 2011, Jonathan polled 22,495,187 votes to Buhari’s 12,214,853 votes. But in 2015, the tables were turned with the incumbent receiving 15,424,921 votes as against his rival’s 12,853,162. How did the former president manage to blow the support of 10 million voters in the space of four years? That is why he should be researching rather than trying to spin unsuccessfully events that happened before our very eyes.

  • Buhari versus Atiku: The dirty war begins

    Today, what might go down as Nigeria’s dirtiest electoral campaigns ever, kick off. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has realised his long term dream of running as presidential flagbearer of a major political party. It is a 25-year-old quest that has brought him within touching distance of the prize. It is something he would fight for with his life.

    For President Muhammadu Buhari, it was third time lucky in 2015. It is his testimony that he met a mess. He would argue that the demolition job executed over 16 years by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) requires at least four more years to sort out. He and his backers would regard a return to power by the erstwhile ruling party – after just four years – as a calamity.

    Thus the stage is set for what promises to be a bruising war of attrition. Already, signs of what to expect are out there. We’ve heard that Buhari actually died several months ago and that an imposter – some mythical character called ‘Jubril’ from Sudan – is the one governing Nigeria!

    The status of the president’s education and certificates has been trending. The opposition swears he never went near the four walls of a school. Not even the attestation helpfully provided by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has doused the conspiracy theories. If anything, the action has fuelled the fire. So we might be dealing with forensic examination of certificates and even legal challenges over the issue come Election Day.

    Strategists for the two main contenders clearly think they have the right formula to undo the aspiration of their rivals. For the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Buhari, the goal would be to keep hammering away at the perception of Atiku as corrupt, while projecting Buhari as the paragon of virtue.

    Surprisingly, the PDP don’t want to leave the corruption card to the APC alone to exploit. So their strategy appears to be one of lobbing sundry graft allegations against key figures in the administration, and exhuming celebrated cases like those that led to the ouster of erstwhile Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal and others. In the end, they can say to the Nigerian public – ‘see, they are not better than us.’

    But their main fire would be reserved for the president himself. They would try to define him as inept and ineffective, old, sickly and, above all, out of touch with modern realities and lacking the intellectual wherewithal to steer the economy out of its dire straits.

    While these things could provide a rich lode of attack materials, they ultimately would not define this electoral contest for a number of reasons. For one thing, the bitterness that trailed the loss of the PDP incumbent three years ago has not been totally purged. Forget the few office holders switching camps, those who hated Buhari in 2015 still despise him today, while those who reviled PDP and Goodluck Jonathan back then are not more enamoured of them today.

    It is those feelings you see being expressed by those who insist that in 2019, it would be anybody but Buhari. So saying the president is old and has health challenges is simply stating the obvious: it makes no difference to his admirers who love him warts and all.

    Of course, there are those who expected more and are disappointed with Buhari’s performance. He may not count on their support come February. But that doesn’t translate into them joining up with his rival, as they would have to decide if the PDP candidate is an upgrade on the man they once considered a messiah.

    It is the same story with Atiku. Calling him names is not going to change much for those who have had it with the incumbent. Indeed, I saw a funny meme on social media posted by some of the ex-VP’s fans which suggested that even if he and his running mate were nabbed robbing the Central Bank, they would still vote for him.

    So for hard-core partisans, the matter in settled. But this election would not be determined by them alone. This would be a very close contest – even tighter than 2015. Like most incumbents, Buhari would shed support because his actions and inactions would have offended a few. If the opposition are sufficiently energised, it could make for very interesting outcomes. Still, it would come down to the mass of undecided voters out there who are waiting for answers to the hard questions.

    This election would be a referendum on Buhari’s stewardship. It would not just be about the character of the man who wants his job. It would be an assessment of what he has delivered on the issues of the economy, corruption and insecurity which defined the APC platform in 2015.

    Back then, all he had to offer was charisma and the promise of a better tomorrow. Today, he has record to be assessed on the economy, insecurity and corruption, over which voters would make the determination whether enough progress has been made for him to carry on.

    For Atiku and PDP, a campaign that rests only on name-calling and wild allegations would not be enough. They need to present a compelling case for an electorate that judged them so harshly just three years ago to trust them again.

    So, perhaps after all the fun and games with abuse and accusations on both sides, we may just yet see a campaign where the candidates make the argument as to why they should be entrusted with power – instead of painting over and again the same old caricatures we are so familiar with.

  • ‘Operation Reinforce Insanity’

    Afew ago, the Lagos State Police Commissioner, Edgal Imohimi, and heads of several security agencies in the state, launched with much media fanfare a so-called ‘Operation Restore Sanity.’

    This was ostensibly an effort to bring a measure of control to the city’s notoriously unruly roads. As often happens at such events, there was the usual tough talk, spiced with a few threats about what would befall those caught violating the state’s traffic rules. For instance, those caught driving against traffic stood the risk of having their vehicles impounded.

    As a longsuffering resident of Lagos, I welcomed any effort that would curtail the madness on the roads. Today, driving against traffic by commercial motorcycles, tricycles and all manner of vehicles is standard practice in a city with pretensions to being a modern megalopolis.

    A few days ago, somewhere in the city, I witnessed two policemen – one male and another female – actually facilitating a long line of cars driving against traffic. For their shameful action they were tipped openly by the offending drivers and they brazenly pocketed their filthy lucre. It was a clear case of reinforcement of traffic insanity.

    On the first work day of the so-called ‘operation’ to restore sanity, I watched a few policemen at Oshodi going about their task with body language that suggested they would rather be doing something else. Little wonder that after Imohimi’s grand press conference, it’s been business as usual with a vengeance.

    What is happening on Lagos roads should worry all of us. Unless firm action is taken quickly one incident of road rage could result in fatalities that would shock the nation.

    But the traffic conundrum is not just about what security agencies do or don’t do. Three factors are fuelling the chaos. First is the massive construction going on in different parts of the city. While in the long term we might see some benefits from these developments, in the short term we have not seen the same scale of efforts devoted to managing the traffic disruptions caused by the ongoing work.

    Related to the construction is the fact that there is virtually no road artery in the city that is not pockmarked with potholes or mini craters. In the past, these would be filled up during the rainy season and patched up at the first sign of dryness, to ease traffic flow. But for some reason the failed roads have been left in this awful condition as though they were bombed by some enemy air force.

    To these first two reasons, we can then add lawlessness and impatience of the typical Lagos road user. This can only be managed by proper and continuous education of the citizenry on traffic laws and road etiquette. This is then backed up by strict enforcement of the law.

    In recent times, it is only former Governor Babatunde Fashola that exhibited the willingness to take the fight to the outlaws who have made Lagos roads some of the most dangerous on the continent.

    Unfortunately, it appears as if the government has surrendered where law enforcement is concerned. It is possible to sanitise the roads where there is the will. I fear, though, that with the campaign season upon us we might not see the type of tough action that is required. After all, which office-seeking politician wants to offend a PVC-wielding okada rider who wants to be allowed to do as he pleases?

    That leaves us with the scary prospect that as outgoing Governor Akinwumi Ambode speeds up the process of completion of his legacy projects, and law enforcement turns the blind eye to traffic offenders, a perfect storm of chaos is about to be unleashed. God help us all!

  • Allison Akene Ayida: Profile of a super administrator

    The administrative history of the Nigerian public service will definitely not be complete without the mention of Mr. Allison Ayida. Indeed, just a mention will be a serious disservice to the historic role that this astute administrator played in the attempt to reconfigure the public service system, as well as put the Nigerian project right back on track administratively. Like the legendary Simeon Adebo and Jerome Udoji, Ayida belonged in what we affectionately, and with a bit of nostalgia, refer to as the golden years of public administration in Nigeria. And even more so, he was one of the “notorious” super permanent secretaries whose roles in the prosecution of the Nigerian Civil War have been the subject of positive and negative analyses. Together with Ahmed Joda, Ime Ebong, Ahmed Joda, S. O. Wey, Phillip Asiodu, and so on, Allison Ayida played a significant and crucial administrative part that had a lot to do with their vision of the Nigerian project, as well as the professional credentials they had acquired as public administrators.

    Allison Ayida had just left us for the beyond. He was 88 years old. This is not a lamentable fact because he not only lived to a good age, and lived well also, but he played his part in the Nigerian national drama. He was a patriot, by all accounts of that term. He was there right at the beginning, and in the very engine room of the Nigerian state as one of the British-trained bureaucrats who had the unenviable task of steering the Nigerian state through the murky waters of the postcolonial realities which the British colonialists themselves had engineered. Paradoxically, Allison Ayida, like Simeon Adebo, Jerome Udoji and the rest of the first-generation pioneers, was invested the best that the British administrative training could muster. The crop of first-generation administrators were the best. They were professionals who were properly inducted into the ethos and values of what it means to be public servants.

    Unlike Adebo and Udoji who came to the public service, largely self-educated with English and law degrees respectively, Ayida was very prepared intellectually. In the early 1950s after a stint at the King’s College, Lagos, he proceeded to the equally prestigious Queen’s College, Oxford where he got a Bachelor’s degree in the most prestigious Politics, Philosophy and Economic (PPE). A quick word about this course. The PPE was established specifically as a multidisciplinary course that was targeted at preparing students for the public service. And this explains why the course turned out to be a very great hit for those with the objectives of making a mark with their country’s administrative machinery. Over the years, the PPE has had such notable figures like the late former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, three former prime ministers of Britain (Harold Wilson, David Cameron and Edward Heath), three former prime ministers of Australia, and so many others from around the world. An incredible combination of a sound intellectual background as well as a solid practical professional orientation produced Allison Ayida as who he turned out to be. And those were the days of brimming patriotism on behalf of a country that was fought for with an immense arsenal of hope and optimism that defeated the colonialists’ reluctance.

    By the time he returned to Nigeria, after his father’s death which cut short his search for another degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Nigeria was already well into the postcolonial trajectory that was to shoot him into the very centre of the unfolding drama. He made the tight list of permanent secretaries that General Aguiyi Ironsi collected as part of the Federal Executive Council. He was in charge of a very critical ministry—Economic Development. That was exactly where the focus of post-independence development was. It was the ministry where the military had to receive the best education about how to take Nigeria forward. And Ayida had the benefit not only of a reputable background, but also of a crop of colleagues—Alhaji Musa Daggash, Phillip Asiodu, Abdul Aziz Attah, S. O. Williams, Sule Katagum, M. A. Tokunbo, H. A. Ejeyuitchie, and so many more—who had a grasp of their various posts and departments, and who were equally dedicated to the service of putting Nigeria on a sound postcolonial administrative footing.

    Working for Ironsi already means that optimism had been eclipsed for Nigeria. The hope of a smooth transition was already endangered. But not for these technocrats. They saw beyond the military to a Nigeria that could still realize her objectives as a nation. Then, as if the sudden desperation enabled by the 1966 coup was not enough, Allison Ayida and the rest of the bureaucrats watched with mounting horror as the country was thrown into the tension of an approaching war. While Gowon and Ojukwu sparred and traded words and political altercations, Ayida and the rest of the technocratic teams calculated the costs of impending war on a nascent state that had barely got its administrative credentials and development planning together. The war eventually happened, and Ayida found himself in the cabinet of General Gowon right from the commencement of hostilities. There were a lot to be done administratively, first, to prevent the war from being fought; and second, to reconstruct the Nigerian state after the war ended.

    Becoming a super permanent secretary was a necessity. Allison Ayida and the other super permanent secretaries were circumscribed by enormous historical conditions defined, on the one hand, by military dictatorship and its monolithic command structure. On the other hand, they were pressed on every side to restore a nation that had fought a civil war and required rehabilitation and reconstruction on a large scale. They became “super” because they lived in an interesting but unpalatable time which tasked their patriotic sensibilities and their professional capabilities to the limit. Nigeria was about to go to war and these public servants were confronted with the unenviable task of fashioning a policy framework for war time and post-war Nigeria. For instance, there was a pending issue of drafting the second national development plan which was ongoing with the crucial assistance of the renowned economist, Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade. The impending civil war therefore provided a severe cloud of limitation around which these professionals needed to work.

    But like the gold that becomes refined when taken through the furnace, Allison Ayida and the other super permanent secretaries turned their well-honed professional capacity and patriotic fervor came to the rescue. And there was no dithering. Several political commentaries have been written about the supposedly notorious roles played by Ayida and his colleagues in advising Gowon about the war. There is, I think, a simple explanation for whatever course of action they advised Gowon to take. Ayida and his other technocrats had a vision of one Nigeria whose unity must be preserved. Their professionalism as public servants demanded it. Ayida must certainly have debated nation building, development dynamics and postcolonial realities with his tutors at Queen’s College and at the London School of Economics. With the war, he faced the stark realities of the discourse of his education and the most critical challenge any public administrator could ever face.

    A fundamental question my reform mindedness imposes upon me is: What was the state of the public service system during the war period? In other words, how did the public administration dynamics up to the point of the commencement of the war facilitated a capability readiness that enabled the super permanent secretaries like Ayida to adequately prosecute the administrative dimensions of the civil war and the challenges of reconstruction that followed? An answer to this question requires deep historical reflections and serious empirical analysis. Yet, we can hazard an answer from historical trajectory. The public service system had been under protracted reconstruction ever since it was inaugurated in 1954. The reform dynamics picked up before independence and immediately after because the system had to be made ready for the postcolonial realities which the colonialists did not design the public service to engage. Indeed, we can even hypothesize that the public service system itself was complicit in the ensemble of events that led to the war. For instance, there is a relationship between the failed development planning and the incapacity of the public service to implement development policies.

    Ayida, as an astute technocrat, could not have been blind to this internal dysfunction of the very system he had dedicated his life to. Not all technocrats or bureaucrats have the keen sensibility to detach themselves from a system in which they are insider in order to be able to distinctly analyse its fault-line and shortcomings. Ayida’s professionalism and deep sense of service did not permit that. For instance, like Adebo, Udoji and the rest of the pioneers, he must have seen the encroaching and steady decline of the system. When the 1975 public service purge happened, a wrongheaded move to downsize the system, Ayida must have equally felt the urge to downsize his integrity credentials in order not to me rubbished by a system that threw so many into the unemployment market without any post-employment package to smoothen their retrenchment. However, these breeds of professionals were trained too well not to substitute their integrity and spirituality for filthy lucre or even the existential challenges of making ends meet.

    Thus, after the war ended, and the Nigerian state resumed its engagement with the issue of development and other postcolonial challenges, it became obvious that the public service had not yet arrived at any optimal capacity that could anticipate and deal with any present and unforeseen challenges. What precisely were Ayida’s thoughts about the 1971 Adebo Commission’s recommendations and the 1974 Udoji Report? Now this is a very interesting seminal question because it pinpoints the crucial nexus between an objective intervention in the administrative dynamics of past reforms and a subjective analysis of their merits and demerits. The 1994 Ayida Review Panel probably furnishes us with an adroit combination of both. It seems logical that a technocrat who was a core part of the glorious years of the public service in Nigeria would recommend a wide-ranging reversal of the 1998 Dotun Phillips Report. But then, even a system that was optimally functional required constant reforms to bring it up to date with the challenges of democratic service delivery. Ayida and his panel failed the test of re-form or reinvention. Rejecting the laudable recommendations of the 1988 reform, especially with regards to professionalism, efficiency and accountability was like throwing away the baby with the bathwater. The failure of the 1988 reform does not mean the ethos its recommended were not crucial to the reinvention of lost glory, inspite of the conception-reality gap in its idea of professionalism and the politicization of the office of the permanent secretary, which were of the mark.  Indeed, I am still amazed when I engage senior colleagues who saw the glorious days of the civil service in Nigeria and the optimism they have that if only we could reinvent the bureaucratic model of the era, then that would be all Nigeria needs. That optimism goes against the grain of contemporary reality, public administration research and the immense complexities that underpin change management in the knowledge and information age 21st century; as well as what the Adebo Second and Final Wages report of 1971 saw in the inadequacies of that bureaucratic model even at the height of is success. Without the national values system that propelled the Adebos and his ilks and given what public administration demands in this new age, we cannot be so simplistic and presumptuous about the immense changes that public service profession and management system have witnessed and the devils in the details of its reengineering. We need knowledge, creativity and continuous learning to get public service in Nigeria out of the woods.

    Yet, Allison Akene Ayida was operating with the sensibility of a patriot. He wanted to contribute the best that his profession allowed him to add to the untangling of the complexities of nation building in Nigeria. He also had to suffer the indignities that those who stuck to integrity and professionalism as the most important credentials they could read into the priestly vocation of the public service. For Ayida, and the other true professionals of the lost era, serving the people is much more honorable than serving their pockets. We remember Allison Akene Ayida today for that singularity of purpose in pursuing the national project and the eventual glory of the Nigerian state.

    • Olaopa is a former

    Federal Permanent Secretary

     & Professor of Public Administration

    tolaopa2003@gmail.com

    tolaopa@isgpp.com.ng

  • 1974: How reformed is the Civil Service?

    The fundamental question I want to address in this essay is simple: Has the Nigerian civil service system significantly reformed since 1974? Any administrative scholar and professional will immediately see why this is a very difficult question to answer either way. This is because it is not just that easy to present an unqualified affirmative or negative answer to a nation’s entire administrative system. There is no nation that will ever remain the same if it does not pay any attention, no matter how minute the reform attention is, to the health of its public service. This is because it is the public service that serves as the fulcrum on which any government will ever make the state run efficiently. And this is even all the more so for any state that aims toward democratic governance and development. Indeed, the notion of a developmental state that is cogent for third world developing countries is founded on the idea of a functional and constantly reforming public service.

    Nigeria falls squarely into this category. The Nigerian civil service system has been in the reform business since 1954 when it was inaugurated before Nigeria got her independence. This is because the founding fathers were immediately confronted with the challenge of making the Nigerian state meaningful for the teeming populace who were motivated to join the fight for independence on the premise that it will signal the beginning of a good life for them. The story of Nigeria’s existence since independence has belied that promise. From a terribly managed civilian rule to the long night of military rule, Nigeria has gone from one bad governance programme to another which has given Nigerians a very bad deal with regard to the kind of governance that would empower and transform their existence. Yet the civil service system has been injected with some of the best reform ideas and paradigm that could ever be infused into any administrative system anywhere in the world.

    In Nigeria’s administrative history, the pre-1954 and pre-independence reform efforts are cogent because they constitute the proper foundational refection on how the civil service system could be made relevant for a newly independent developing countries that is already challenged by the reason of its plural nature as a multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious and multilinguistic society. Within this context, it became immediately obvious what role the public service was constituted to play in ameliorating the expected fractional conflicts that would no doubt engulf the emerging nation. From 1934 to 1954, seven commissions were put in place: Hunt Committee (1934), the Bridges Committee (1942), the Tudor-Davies Commission (1945), the Harragin Commission (1946), the Smaller Commission (1946), the Foot Commission (1948), and the Phillipson-Adebo Commission (1953). As is to be expected, these commissions were burdened with the administrative issues that any colonial and soon-to-be-postcolonial civil service system would face—cadre, promotion, compensation and remuneration, as well as the fundamental issue of the nature of the civil service. Between 1954 and 1960, there were altogether four reform commissions: Lidbury Commission (1954), the Gorsuch Commission (1955), the Mbanefo Commission (1959), and the Newns Commission (1959). Cadre and remuneration still remained major issues for the emerging civil service to contend with. However, one significant issue that spilled into independence was the “generalists” and “professionals” distinction that remained the bane of the public service efficiency unfortunately up until today.

    However, it is one thing to inject a system with fundamental reforming ideas, but an entirely different thing to follow up on the optimal implementation of these ideas and insights in a way that transform the system into a democratic service delivering mechanism. Nigeria has had the best of reform commissions and committees but their recommendations and their possible effectiveness have been swallowed up within the political context that pays lip service to reform but lacks the ultimate will to see it through. The administrative system has thus been progressing in fits and starts, but it has not achieved the reform optimality that would have made the Nigerian civil service a transformed professionalized institution with the capacity readiness for democratic service delivery to Nigerians.

    1974 is a fundamental administrative year in the history of the Nigerian civil service. It was the year that Nigeria got its first major opportunity to fundamentally rethink the civil service system and lay its foundation on groundwork of productivity and optimal performance. The Udoji Commission came into existence as a result of the recommendations of the 1971 Adebo Commission that was set up basically to iron out the thorny wage and salary issue that kept recurring since 1954. However, this Commission got caught up in the deeper managerial challenges raised by the 1968 Fulton Report set up in the UK to reassess the efficiency problem of the British Civil Service. The Fulton Report is regarded as the “high watermark of managerialism”, as well as the theoretical foundation for the New Public Management (NPM) revolution. The Report was set up to reflect on the possibilities of the Weberian administrative system within the context of the imperatives market system. The Adebo Commission was therefore compelled to confront the issues of an appropriate organisation and structure that would energize the efficiency profile of the civil service in Nigeria. In other words, wage and salary are just symptoms of a deeper administrative malady Nigeria needed to engage with. However, because it had its specific objective, the Commission recommended the establishment of another commission to focus on organisational and structural matters.

    The Udoji Commission tackled its terms of reference head on. As at the time it was set up, the Fulton Report was already six years old, and thus Chief Jerome Udoji had the full complement of the debates and discourses as well as the administrative responses to the Fulton Report. The Udoji Commission saw the fundamental problem of the civil service in Nigeria as that of an administrative inflexibility that finds it hard to respond to positive changes. Its Main Report therefore advocated the need for a total reassessment of the Nigerian Civil Service and its capacity to internalise and adapt global best practices. The Commission was also bold enough to tackle the generalist-professional issue when it recommended a new style public service infused with “new blood” working under a result-oriented management system operated by professionals and specialists in particular fields. There was also the need, according to the Report, for standardization of conditions of service, increase in public sector wages, a unified and integrated administrative structure, the elimination of waste and the removal of deadwood/inefficient departments, but with the caveat, that the wage component, in terms of phasing, should follow the managerial and systemic changes recommended.

    Like the Fulton Report before it, these cogent recommendations never saw the light of the day! Any time I write about the Udoji Commission and the ill that befell it, I usually take a pause because I am always consumed by a deep sadness at the great opportunity for renewal and rebirth that Nigeria missed. We had an opportunity to transform a colonial heritage into a truly postcolonial administrative machinery that could have been sufficiently empowered to take on the development challenges of a developing Nigeria. The military administration that received it preferred and implemented the wage component of the Udoji Report rather than its deeper recommendations for managerial transformation of the system. The reform reputation that ought to have dignified Chief Udoji’s name was damaged by a superficial wage issue.

    This administrative tragedy was compounded in 1975, the year of the infamous purge of the Nigerian civil service when the Murtala-Obasanjo administration retrenched thousands of public servants unceremoniously. Let us attempt to put this purge in perspective. The most damning issue with the purge was its political undercurrent and the caliber of highly revered administrative mentors that were affected. In another breath and as a result of the Nigerianisation Policy and the choice of representativeness over merit as the operating criterion of the system as well as state creation and its attendant institutional multiplication, there was a massive recruitment exercise that ultimately bloated the public sector and deprived it of an efficiency capacity. It therefore became possible to have too many people doing too little work. Efficiency went overboard, and development suffered. It is therefore sound administrative thinking to work within the demands of downsizing the system at the lower level if it ever hopes to retrieve an efficient optimality. However, downsizing is not cheap, as it requires a post-retirement package that should be factored into the downsizing process itself. This translates into giving those to be eased out a soft landing after they have left service. The military regime at the time was oblivious to all this administrative necessity.

    Unfortunately, the ripple effects of the administrative insensitivity that attended the 1975 purge has remained with the civil service ethos since then. Those humiliated out of office took with them the true concept of selfless service and the culture of deferred gratification. And those left behind immediately became pragmatic in their understanding of the logic of the system—since the system does not reward honest service and productivity, it is better to reward oneself at the expense of the system itself. The culture of immediacy therefore became the central source of the dysfunction that crept into the public service post-1975 and by extension, took with it long-term thinking. The ghost of Udoji and his Report have come to haunt the Nigerian public service! And we have been trying since the return of democracy in 1999 to exorcise this ghost. All the other post-1974 reforms—Phillips (1988), Ayida (1995), Obasanjo (1999), Yar’Adua (2010) and Jonathan (2011)—have had to pay the price of not only the missed opportunity of reforming the productivity dynamics of the civil service system, but also of a system that keeps scrambling to reform itself.

    It is clear to me that the system has still not got right the productivity/performance/output-driven framework within which most performing public service in the world now operates. And so, for the public service to pick up a reforming rhythm that is truly in sync with Nigeria’s democratic experiment, then the starting point would be to commence a reflection on the administrative ideology that undergirds the public service as is right now. All our administrative reforms have been carried out within the Weberian administrative structure. But then, the world has moved on to the neo-Weberian! It is time to get Nigeria’s reform right. Reform is not just about tweaking the system for optimality. On the contrary, it is more about reflecting on what the underlying ideological and administrative framework of the system ought to be and in what direction one wants its objectives to be directed. The Weberian administrative philosophy has served its purpose but is not yet exhausted. But contrary to expectations, the New Public Management has failed as a replacement. Neo-Weberianism is a testament to the creative association between the traditional system and managerialism. It is high time Nigeria enters into this era of administrative experimentation and creativity.

    • Olaopa (PhD) is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, tolaopa2003@gmail.com

  • 2019 and the Buhari imperative

    In the next few months, Nigerians will face the challenge of another round of elections, following the expiration of the four years of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Though this is a four years ritual, the next general election is instructive as it has implications for our future.

    This is in view of where we were before the Buhari presidency and where we intend to be from 2019.

    As usual, the political field has been alive with different political gladiators promising to fix one thing or the other to make Nigeria better.

    In a democracy, this is surely a good idea as it offers the electorate the benefit of choice because democracy is a market place of ideas. And luckily too, some of those offering themselves to lead the nation are people we all know their antecedents. This no doubt offers an idea of their pedigree even before they are given the privilege of leading Nigeria in 2019.

    We must however not fail to remember the need to ‘shine our eyes’ before we are fooled by some of these political gladiators, using their actions and inactions in the offices they occupy as parameters.

    Just before the PDP presidential primary, some suddenly became emergency marketers of restructuring, all in a bid to pull wool over our eyes.

    These were the same characters who played significant roles either as vice president, speakers, governors, senators etc., during the 16 years that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was at the helm of affairs of the nation.

    That period was undoubtedly an era where Nigeria made stupendous wealth from oil as oil was sold in the international marker for over 100 dollars for years and our resources were looted like never before.

    Take your mind back to this era, and ask yourself what impact these people made with the resources at their disposal at their levels in government. In contrast, though Nigeria is making far less than the PDP era in revenue, Nigeria has made far much progress under the Buhari presidency in the last three years than PDP’s 16 years. All over the nation, life transforming projects are being executed like never before.

    Though those who made life difficult for Nigerians have feigned ignorance, the results are there for all to see. That was why one was very happy when Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, laid it bare when he was challenged to name some of the hundreds of projects government claimed to have done and is doing in the Southeast. Not only did he name the projects, he equally listed their locations, cost and completion dates.

    This was the same zone where President Buhari got the least number of votes in the 2015 Presidential Election, the same Southeast that cried marginalisation throughout the 16 years of the PDP misrule.

    Today, even the world knows that there is a new sheriff in town and this has shored up our profile positively on the global arena.

    World leaders are now saying that Nigeria has a president that they are proud to associate with. This in turn has rubbed off on Nigerians, as we are now treated with respect when we travel abroad.

    In addition, there is no hiding the fact that the present administration has drummed it into the consciousness of Nigerians that it will no longer be business as usual in government business.

    Gone are those days when public official dipped their hands into the cookie jar without being challenged because the times have changed.

    Though it is not yet all Uhuru in the fight against corruption, the fact that Nigerians know that they will face the music, if they fail the integrity test, is a plus for this administration.

    We must also not forget that if past administrations had diversified our economy, Nigeria would have fared better today. Because of the sweet aroma of Petro dollars, the PDP lived like the prodigal son up till the end of the Jonathan administration in 2015.

    That was why it did not take long for Nigeria to slide into a recession, which thankfully the Buhari administration has taken us out of by putting on its thinking cap.

    Today, this administration is doing a lot in the area of diversification through agriculture, mineral resources, tourism and more.

    The gains recorded in agriculture and mineral resources are unprecedented in our national history, as these sectors are now money spinners for our country.

    Across all sectors, the success stories keep increasing by the day, to the admiration of Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora.

    Will Nigerians forget in a hurry how Boko Haram and other acts of terrorism almost killed the Nigerian project?  Though this administration may not have met all our expectations, the good news is that President Buhari, whose candidature has been ratified by APC for 2019, has left no one in doubt that he has the capacity to deliver. That is key.  We must not allow anyone or anything to reverse the gains we all laboured to achieve by voting for another four years of Buhari administration in 2019. The process starts now.

    -Umohinyang, a lawyer and political analyst, wrote in from Lagos.

  • Bichi, DSS and Nigeria’s evolving security challenges

    In this piece, Jide Babalola takes a look at the appointment of the new DSS chief and the challenges before him.

    Beyond doubt, various recent developments have turned many Nigerians into either active or passive monitors, following whatever spills into the public domain about the leadership and operations of the nation’s apex domestic secret service.

    Constitutionally created as the SSS but also known as the DSS, Nigeria’s premier domestic intelligence-gathering agency derives its mandate from the National Security Agencies Act of 1986 (Decree 19) and the Presidential Proclamation; SSS Instrument I of 1999. Under Decree 19, the now-defunct National Security Organisation (NSO) was split into three by the Ibrahim Babangida administration, with the DSS being made responsible for domestic intelligence. The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) handles external intelligence and counterintelligence while the third, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) became responsible for military-related intelligence within and outside the country.

    Since its creation thirty-two years ago, the personality of each successive head of Nigeria’s secret service has tended to reflect upon the public image of the organization but its core professional focus subsists and this largely covers the security of the state and the protection of senior government officials, particularly the President and state governors.

    Much has been said by critics of Bichi’s appointment as DSS DG and the big question mark being posed to the issue of ethnic and geographical balancing in critical public appointments. Much too, has been expressed by others who emphasize that only core issues of professionalism and loyalty to both state and President should matter when it comes to the issue of the headship of an organization like the DSS.

    Before the appointment of Yusuf Magaji Bichi as Director-General of the DSS on September 14, this year, his predecessors under the current democratic dispensation were: Colonel Kayode Are (Rtd) who was DG from 1999 – August, 2007; Afakriya Gadzama (August, 2007- September, 2010; Ita Ekpeyong (September, 2010 to July, 2015); Lawal Musa Daura (July, 2015 – August, 2018; and, Matthew Seiyefa (August, 7, 2018 – September 13, 2018).

    The new spymaster

    When Yusuf Magaji Bichi, the 62-year- old spy chief from Kano State who was formerly a Director at the DSS Academy was announced as the new Director General, the groundswell of opposition wasn’t unexpected. Nigeria, a country known for large divisions along, ethnic and religious lines and where it has almost become a norm to sacrifice competence on the altar of regional and religious bias witnessed reactions.

    According to the statement from presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, the appointee is a core Secret Service operative who began his career in the security division of the Cabinet Office in Kano, from where he joined the defunct Nigerian Security Organization (NSO), the precursor of the DSS.  “Mr. Bichi has undergone training in intelligence processing analysis, agent handling recruitment and intelligence processing in the UK, as well as strategic training at the National Defence College.

    “The new DSS boss comes to the job with skills in intelligence gathering, research analysis, conflict management, general investigation, risk and vulnerability operations, counter- intelligence and protective operation and human resources management. In the course of his career, Mr. Bichi has worked as the State Director of Security in Jigawa, Niger, Sokoto and Abia States and he was at various times, the Director, National Assembly Liaison, (National War College), Director at National Headquarters in the Directorate of Security Enforcement, Directorate of Operations, Directorate of Intelligence, Directorate of Inspection and Directorate of Administration and Finance.”

    Such laudable professional track record was not adequate to stop ensuing criticisms. The Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum attributed it to mere nepotism, with Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, Reno Omokri, Donald Duke, Femi Fani-Kayode expressing similar sentiments.

    The Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO) entered the fray with a condemnation of the barrage of criticisms over the appointment of Bichi by President Muhammadu Buhari, saying that the president made a perfect· choice. According to its Director of Communications and Strategic Planning, Mallam Gidado Ibrahim, the appointment was in order. “Before those who specialise in finding faults continue· to wag their tongues, they should realize that Yusuf Magaji Bichi is a consummate· professional who has been a big· asset· to the Nigerian intelligence· community.  What one would have· expected from the arm· chair critics is to ask· if he is qualified. Instead, they have· once again chosen to play· the regional card. If someone· is qualified for a job· why not allow· him do· it, no matter· the region· he is from?”

    Speaking with The Nation on Sunday, Dr. Evaristus (other names withheld on request), an expert in Military Intelligence who also works as a security consultant in the Middle East expressed disappointment with those on either sides of the argument for trifling with important issues of national interest with their preoccupation over more or less political considerations. According to the ex-military officer, professional competence, loyalty to Nigeria and the President should be the criteria of assessment towards getting a performer who can motivate his subordinates towards confronting evolving national security challenges.

    Emphasizing the need for Bichi to ensure professionalism par excellence, he also noted that in Nigeria’s recent past as well as in other parts of the globe, the President’s personal considerations of loyalty seriously influences whom to pick among a host of qualified personnel for headship of the national intelligence outfits.

    “There are very pressing priorities and the country must move its security architecture forward through complex restructuring against existing security challenges. Having a competent head of the security service who also enjoys the loyalty of the President eases the task for the organization and its personnel,” he stated.

    Security challenges

    According to the Chairman of American Society for Industrial Security Mr. Ubong King, who is also the CEO of Protection Plus Services Limited, insecurity is defined as “the state· of fear· or anxiety, stemming from a concrete or alleged lack· of protection.” It refers to lack or inadequate freedom from danger. This definition reflects physical insecurity which is the most visible form of insecurity, and it feeds into many other forms of insecurity such as economic security and social security.

    Security and development are deeply interconnected as insecurity deeply impacts the economy, education, health and other areas where adverse consequences are felt. Aside from draining resources meant for development infrastructure and the populace’ welfare, insecurity causes displacement, mass anxiety and other negative effects on the peoples’ well-being.

    Afore and beyond Boko Haram terrorism, domestic intelligence experts and foreign observers have identified a host of security challenges over the years and these are broadly caused by internal factors within the country such as ethno-religious tensions, pervasive material inequalities and unfairness, lack of adequate institutional capacity/infrastructures, conflict of perceptions between the public and government, loss of socio-cultural and communal value system, porous borders, intense rural/urban drift, poverty/unemployment and so on.

    Insecurity has been a huge blockade to business investment and progress. In a study on the investment climate in nine African countries, the World Bank found that 29 % of business operators in Africa and 36 % in Nigeria perceived insecurity as a major constraint on investment.

    Overcoming insecurity necessitates optimized intelligence-gathering and surveillance so that law enforcement agents could be proactive and reasonably predict potential crime with near perfect accuracy rather than being reactive by doing post-damage responses. Thus, government and the entire Nigerian society must not only continue to engage the security personnel; government also needs to devote more attention to security intelligence, capacity- building to meet the global best practice standard and acquisition of modern technology that enables much to be done digitally instead of manual procedures.

    There is also the need to modernize the security agencies with training, intelligence-sharing, advanced technology, logistics, motivation and change of orientation. This effort will enhance the operational capabilities of the Nigeria security agencies by identifying avenues that would enable them respond appropriately to internal security challenges and other threats. Nigeria deserves such rapid and deep evolution that can further draw its intelligence-gathering and security agencies towards global best practices and the need for competent, professional leadership of such agencies should override other considerations.

    Criminology experts easily acknowledge that there is no mono-causal explanation for crime or insecurity as the cause tends to be interwoven or contributory to one another.

    Moving forward

    Nigeria’s unique characteristics make it imperative to observe all the elements of balance but there are few issues that deserve to be beyond the dictates of narrow politics and sentiments – security is one of such.

    With complex security threats posed by terrorists in the Northeast, kidnappers, armed robbers and other sundry criminals continuously creeping out of the woodworks across Nigeria during a critical period of preparations for national elections, the DSS has its hands full already and the need for the organization to consistently prove itself before a sceptical public only adds a bit to its statutory burden.

    Suffices to say that, successive presidents have only appointed those they know would be loyal to their cause.

    With the latest appointment of Bichi as the new Director-General of Department of State Service, President Buhari is been alleged to be sectional, appointing mainly northerners to man the security apparatus of the nation. However, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, says it should not be perceived that way, stressing that critics should stop focusing only on the security sector in their assessment. “Those talking about balancing and federal character should stop focusing on one aspect. Let us see how many Permanent Secretaries, Director-Generals and Executive Directors and Heads of Parastatals we have in Nigeria today and where they come from. This will give us a more insight to the fact that this administration is not lopsided in appointments. We should stop looking at only one side to make our judgment and anywhere we notice any lopsidedness, government will correct it,” he said.

    Nonetheless, the priority before the new head of DSS should be how to make a success of his new task. The task before the new spy chief is clear-cut – fix the depreciating reputation of the agency, among other things. Mr. Bichi appears to be aware of the task ahead and has upon assumption of office, restated in unambiguous terms his desire to take the service to a new height.

    In his first address to DSS management cadre at the DSS headquarters in Abuja, Bichi called for members’ support, while also calling for stronger ties among the staff.  More encouraging was his pledge to work with every member of staff towards building a formidable team. In his words, “my vision is to build a well-disciplined, professional and highly motivated DSS with particular reference to staff welfare.” He also restated his commitment towards supporting the government’s agenda on rebuilding the economy, stamping out insecurity and fighting corruption. He further implored the staff to refocus their intelligence collection efforts in this direction.

    His words were reassuring, especially as the country goes into the 2019 general elections and the usual challenges that an election year brings with it in our peculiar environment.

    Nigeria can and must overcome its evolving security challenges; it is the duty of the DSS to lead in making a success of this aspiration towards giving Nigerians an atmosphere that can engender genuine development and progress.

    As it continues the usual processes of adapting to various roles necessitated by evolving security threats in Nigeria, including counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts, the DSS has a duty to live up to citizens’ expectations as well as its statutory mission of protecting and defending the Federal Republic of Nigeria against domestic threats, upholding and enforcing the criminal· laws of Nigeria under a democratic ethos.

  • Buhari, Bichi and the politics of appointments

    The replacement of Lawal Daura as Director-General of the State Security Service (SSS) aka Department of State Services (DSS), offered President Muhammadu Buhari a unique window to shock critics who have defined him as an ethnic champion on the basis of his political appointments. It was an opportunity he blithely spurned.

    We concede to the president his power to hire and fire. So there were three options open to him. He could have recalled Daura if he was satisfied that he had been unfairly treated.

    He could have retained the Bayelsa-born Acting Director-General, Matthew Seiyefa, appointed by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo. He was not obliged to do so and there is plenty of precedence to show that past heads of state chose to overlook many who were in similar situation.

    Lastly, he could choose to appoint someone entirely new – the option he has now embraced.

    By naming Yusuf Magaji Bichi to the position, the president has – in some ways – plumped for a like for like replacement. The new DSS boss is from the Northwest geo-political zone as his predecessor Daura: the former hails from Kano State while the latter shares the same hometown with Buhari.

    Both men, interestingly, were plucked out of retirement to head such a strategic security agency. To overlook the entire cadre of serving directors and fish among retirees makes a very pregnant statement and creates room for conspiracy theories.

    We may never get an explanation as to the parameters used in making the Bichi appointment, but the choice suggests that the president didn’t consider those still in service up to the job. Or it could be simply down to politics or considerations like personal chemistry.

    Perhaps in anticipation of questions as to why those still in service were overlooked, the statement announcing Bichi’s appointment described the new man as a “core secret service operative.” This has led to many sarcastic observations as whether those who have been passed over were mere traffic policemen.

    It is unfortunate that Bichi who may be a fine gentleman and eminently qualified for the position, finds himself the object of such contention and scrutiny. Most times we are reduced to assessing suitability for public office on the basis of our ethnic origin or religious beliefs.

    It is our reality as citizens of a country with many ethnic groups roped together in a shotgun marriage by outside matchmakers. It is a fact acknowledged by our constitution which requires that merit takes a backseat to ‘federal character’ and national spread.

    It is for similar reasons that no party would put two northerners or two southerners on their election ticket. So when presidential aides dismiss those who raise these issues it simply becomes a case of playing the ostrich.

    The problem is not Bichi’s qualification for the role. But it is equally not just about the fact that the new DG is a northerner. It is certainly not about counting and balancing those across our regional divide who have headed the DSS. The agitation and debate is not about whether more southerners or northerners have led the service. The focus is not on this agency.

    This point needs to be made because in his rush to respond to the backlash that the appointment has triggered, Buhari’s Special Assistant on New Media, Bashir Ahmad, tweeted a historical list of Directors-General who had led the DSS between 1990 and 2018. Of the seven, three were from the south while four are northerners. That slight statistical edge is supposed to silence those accusing the president of regional bias.

    But the zealous aide missed the point. Criticism of imbalance in the president’s appointments is a feature that has dogged his tenure from its earlydays. It is mainly about the context and backdrop against which these appointments have been made.

    For instance, when those southerners and northerners were heads of the DSS, who were the other service chiefs and what parts of the country did they hail from? Former President Goodluck Jonathan had many failings, but he like former President Olusegun Obasanjo always tried to appoint the heads of the security agencies in a manner that it was rarely a matter for contention.

    Towards the end of Jonathan’s tenure, the following were heads of the security agencies. National Security Adviser (NSA) was Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) – Northwest; Chief of Army Staff was Lt. General Kenneth Minimah – South-South; Chief of Defence Staff was Air Vice-Marshall Alex Badeh – Northeast; Chief of Naval Staff was Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin – North- Central; Chief of Air Staff was Air Vice Marshall Adesola Amosu – Southwest; Director-General of SSS was Ita Ekpenyong – South-South and Inspector-General of Police was Suleiman Abba – Northwest.

    Obasanjo, for his part, had a unique trick of appointing the core service chiefs from northern and southern minority ethnic groups, while picking the heads of intelligence agencies from the three biggest ethnic groups. So, for instance, when Lt. General Martin Luther Agwai – a minority Christian from Kaduna State was Chief of Army Staff, the Director-General of the SSS was Col. Kayode Are – a Yoruba.

    By contrast, the bulk of the service chiefs and heads of intelligence agencies under this dispensation are from the north – save Chief of Defence Staff and Chief of Naval Staff.

    The argument has been that Buhari has not deliberately favoured the north, but has simply ensured that all zones are catered for in making these appointments. On paper, that sounds reasonable but it actually jars against our reality.

    In making political appointments, it is almost impossible to reflect Nigeria’s federal character as required by the constitution if you are only focusing on the six zones. What happens when there are less than six positions to be distributed? You must then apply another factor to create a sense of balance.

    The truth is Nigerians see themselves more in terms of north and south and that reality has been accepted by our political elite who have now adopted the convention of rotating power between north and south.

    It is this political reality which the president and his advisers don’t appear to take too seriously – and it smacks of gross political insensitivity with the country on the cusp of elections. It, sadly, reinforces all the negative narratives about him.

    Early in the year, it appeared as if Buhari was beginning to understand the point being made when he pledged to review his appointments to address the perceived imbalances.

    What happened next was a return to the barricades as the administration rolled out a list of ‘appointments’ to justify the president’s position. But it was a poor and unconvincing statistical defence that sought in some places to make an equivalence of, say, the position of the chief of a major security service with that of a special assistant or executive director in a parastatal.

    Security appointments are strategic, sensitive and powerful. We saw how influential the position of National Security Adviser was under Sambo Dasuki. Such offices would always attract attention and need to be shared equitably.

    Some who have come to Buhari’s defence, argue that in appointing Bichi he had done nothing wrong – given that some of his predecessors like Jonathan and Obasanjo equally named their kinsmen as heads of the DSS.

    My response would be: whatever happened to ‘change begins with me’? Change should not just begin and end with catching and jailing looters. It should extend to the way government is run; it should include uniting a country historically divided along lines of ethnicity. If his predecessors were content to be locked in their ethnic prisons, does Buhari have to execute the same routine?

    By repeating the old and redundant practice of appointing key security chiefs from one’s ethnic redoubt, Buhari cannot claim to be different from his predecessors.

    One of the enduring lines from his inaugural speech in 2015 was where he famously declared: ‘I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody.’ In naming the new DSS, it would have been an excellent affirmation of that early position for people in the deep southern state of Bayelsa to be able to feel that, by retaining their son, a president from the far northern state of Katsina truly belongs to them.

  • Buhari and the N45 million question

    Last week, Nigerians were given a foretaste of the role cash would play as the nation hurtles towards the 2019 general elections. It began with the unveiling of what the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were imposing on all aspiring for public office on their platforms.

    Those dreaming of becoming the APC presidential candidate are required to part with a princely N45 million, while the PDP – surprisingly – fixed its rate at a ‘pauperly’ ¦ 12m million naira for the expression of interest and nomination forms for its presidential aspirants.

    Surprising, because the PDP while in power developed a reputation for playing fast and loose with official cash. The reverberation of that carefree policy is still keeping EFCC sleuths awake at night.

    For the governorship contest, APC wants its aspirants to shell out N22.5 million for expression of interest and nomination forms. By sharp contrast PDP says its own governorship nomination forms cost N6 million.

    The PDP may be posturing about its fees being more affordable but, in my view, both parties’ rates are unduly high and constitute a hindrance to wider participation in the electoral process. So why are the ruling party’s forms so expensive?

    Officially, the APC has offered an explanation which serves both as rationale and put-down. Its Acting National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena, told reporters in Abuja that unlike the PDP, the Muhammadu Buhari administration would never betray public trust because it wanted to contest in an election.

    He said: “Everybody knows that this administration will never put its hands into the public treasury to take money for elections.

    “Unlike the PDP which went to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and got public money from Diezani Allison- Madueke and the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, we will not do that.

    “We have decided to use what we get from the sale of forms to run our elections.”

    Truth be told, cash is the oxygen that fuels politics – especially in the presidential system that we practise. In the US a brilliant candidate can be undermined by his inability to raise cash. But even in America efforts are being made to curb the untrammelled influence of cash.

    It is curious that the managers our parties would make the case that sale of these outrageously expensive forms is the only to raise funds for electioneering. Let’s not forget that in the past, parties like the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) and others never imposed this heavy burden on their aspirants. Yet they ran vigorous campaigns that took them to the distant parts of Nigeria.

    Our acknowledgement of the unfair advantage cash confers on the wealthy in society, gave rise to amendments of the Electoral Act to limit how much individuals or groups can contribute to campaigns. The result was the grossly unrealistic cap of N1 million which has become something of joke.

    That is at the root of the flap over the purchase by some group of the APC’s N45 million forms for Buhari. The president has repeatedly made it clear that he was not a man of means, so his supporters were falling over themselves to help out.

    He was not the only one at the receiving end of such generousity. His rival in the PDP, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, was so overwhelmed with emotion when he discovered that a band of his supporters had equally taxed themselves to gift him the N22.5 million forms, he broke down and wept.

    Atiku wept probably because the rich rarely ever receive gifts from people. Although he could buy a thousand of the nomination forms without breaking a sweat, he quietly accepted his gift and carried on with the business of running for president. Very few raised any issues about the legality or morality of the transaction. Those who bothered to react were more engaged with examining the genuineness of the Turaki of Adamawa’s tears.

    That was until news broke that another bunch of enthusiastic camp followers had signed off N45 million to take care of Buhari’s form. The development drew furious condemnation from the media and politicians – with many asking him not accept.

    It is not difficult to see why the same ‘sin’ committed by Atiku and Buhari, would attract so much flak for the latter and hardly a harsh comment towards the former. The president’s unique selling point is supposedly his integrity and reputation as an honest man. He, too, never ceases to point to those qualities in his political duels. So it is natural that his foes would cry murder whenever his actions or the actions of those around him give any hint of hypocrisy.

    Although the president is yet to acknowledge the do-gooders or accept their gift, it would be interesting to see how he handles the matter. Already, we have something of a hint from the intervention by his party’s spokesman.

    Section 91 (9) of the Electoral Act 2010 (As Amended) clearly provides that: “No individual or other entity shall donate more than one million naira (N1, 000, 000.00) to any candidate.”

    Responding to the criticisms of a national newspaper, Nabena chose the path of legal acrobatics by pointing out that the Electoral Act refers to donations to a ‘candidate’ as opposed to an ‘aspirant’ that Buhari remains until he is formally crowned flagbearer.

    Interesting argument! But the question that should be asked is if it is wrong for the ‘candidate’ to receive more than N1 million from a source, what makes it morally right for the ‘aspirant’ to accept more than that prescribed amount?

    Clever lawyers may be able to dance round the provisions of the Act using technicalities. What should worry us is the spirit and not just the letter of the law. What was the intention of the framers of the act when they inserted that clause? It was clearly to limit the influence of money on our politics and reduce the degree to which one individual, or groups of individuals, could hijack the process using their wealth.

    Buhari’s calling card is his moral authority. It is part of what got him elected in 2015. He would not be able to offer that stark differentiation to voters next year if he starts to come across as just another politician who is only too glad to subvert the rules and game the system for personal advantage.

    That is why his supporters need to do better than the ‘Atiku also did it’ argument in explaining away the N45million form gift.

    More importantly, the two major parties need to explain how these ultra-expensive nomination forms help in reducing corruption within the system. It would be expecting too much to imagine that those who stake a fortune to seek public office would not find ‘creative’ ways of recouping their investment.

    At the risk of sounding cynical, it is also not out of place to think that those who are buying multi-million naira forms for others are not doing so out of altruism. They, too, would be expecting some blowback to their ‘group’ when those they supported get into office.

    There is also the damage done to vulnerable groups like women and youths. All sides of the political divide celebrated the passage of the Not-Too-Young-To-Run law. Where would our youth with political ambitions find these millions to purchase nomination forms in the two major parties?

    In one breath we make the grand gesture of lowering the age of participation, but without thinking through the implications we halt them in their stride by erecting these huge financial barricades.