Niyi Akinnaso

THE obsessive attention given to kidnapping and robbery has led to a focus on violent deaths by physical killings to the neglect of non-violent or soft deaths happening daily across the country. Soft deaths are caused by various groups of profiteers, including (a) raw and cooked food sellers, who use poisonous chemicals to preserve or cook food; (b) marketers of fake or adulterated drugs and wines; and (c) those who exhume used syringes and other hospital wastes from dumpsites and sell them to middlemen, who in turn clean and repackage them and sell them to unknowing consumers.

These killers, operating largely outside public gaze, send their unknowing victims to the hospital, pastor, imam, or herbalist, seeking treatment for an illness that may escape diagnosis. The lucky ones may survive, while others wither away over time. Those who are seriously affected die within days, some even within hours. It all depends on the quantity and toxicity of the poison they have ingested.

Food vendors poison their customers in a variety of ways, some out of ignorance but all in a bid to maximize profit. Among them are fruit sellers, who use dangerous chemicals, particularly carbide, to force-ripen their fruits, especially plantain, banana and orange. Yet, carbide contains a number of harmful chemicals, including arsenic, lead, and phosphorous. When fruits are ripened with carbide, these chemicals are released into the fruits. Consuming such fruits may cause cancer and heart, kidney and liver failure. The end result may be death.

Another dangerous chemical used in cooking is Paracetamol or Panadol to tenderize meat, chicken or beans. Although ordinarily used as a painkiller, Paracetamol contains chemicals which become very toxic when they break down in cooked food. Like carbide-ripened fruits, food cooked with Paracetamol can damage internal organs and cause death.

Equally dangerous to health is the use by food vendors of detergent (yes, detergent used in washing clothes) to ferment fufu. The idea is to make the fufu blow up in size so they could make more profit!

There are other chemicals used by food sellers that are equally damaging to the body. They include the use of various insecticides in food preservation. These are chemicals ordinarily used in de-infesting homes, livestock, and tree crops of pests and insects. Some use them to preserve kola nut, while others use them to preserve beans and other pest-infested food products.

There are other ways by which food sellers seek profit, by knowingly selling unsafe products to the public. A good example is the importation from Turkey, Lebanon, and elsewhere of animal hides previously processed for industrial use, such as making shoes and upholstery leather, which is then sold to consumers in Nigeria as the delicacy known as ponmo.

Ordinarily, ponmo is made from fresh cow hide in Nigeria and cooked in stew after boiling it to a soft texture. It is served in homes, restaurants and parties along with meat, chicken or fish. However, the imported fake ponmo contains dangerous chemicals, which, again, could lead to organ failure and eventual death. Only recently, upon a tip, a syndicate was arrested in Lagos, where fake ponmo was found in large quantities.

Unfortunately, the use of Paracetamol in cooking and insecticides in food preservation is not limited to food vendors. Many housewives also indulge in the dangerous habit. This is particularly so among illiterate, poor, and poorly educated housewives, especially in the rural areas and urban slums.

Scavengers of medical waste dumpsites are also agents of soft death. They have been found to exhume used syringes, bottles, and other medical wastes from dump sites. They sell them to middlemen who clean them and recycle them back to the market. Unknowing patients or their caregivers buy them and take them back to the hospital for use. In a country where patients are required to purchase medical supplies, poor patients who want “cheap market” go for these recycled products because they are often priced less than new ones.

Other major sources of soft deaths in Nigeria are fake alcoholic drinks, especially wines, and fake drugs making their rounds on market shelves and drug stores throughout the country. winehousenigeria.com names at least six places in Lagos alone where fake wines and other drinks are produced and sold.

Some of these manufacturers have been arrested over the years. Only last week, one of them was arrested, manufacturing fake wines under the trade name “Stock”. Hear what he says: “Government is supposed to assist me because I can become an employer of labour. My product is not harmful! If it was, it would have killed me. I used to test it during production”. Yet, he was arrested by the police on a tipoff by concerned citizens, who found his products to be harmful to consumers, mainly street urchins, cultists, and a variety of artisans.

Manufacturers and sellers of fake drugs are also soft killers. According to the World Health Organization, at least ten percent of drugs sold in Africa is fake or substandard. This figure is much higher in Nigeria, otherwise known as the headquarters of fake products.

To be sure, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, especially under Professor Mojisola Adeyeye as Director General, has been working round the clock to nab various agents of soft deaths in the country, her effort could be too little too late unless it is seriously augmented with nation-wide public education. NAFDAC should partner with states and Local Government Areas in spreading the campaign. States and LGAs should in turn partner with their educational institutions in broadcasting the campaign.

Public education is especially necessary in a country where values and ethical standards have been seriously eroded by corruption. Besides, high rates of poverty and illiteracy accentuate the need to carry the campaign to rural areas and urban slums, where dangerous cooking habits and patronage of fake products abound.

It is instructive to note that Ghana is nearly two decades ahead of Nigeria in its public education on food safety. For example, there was an outcry way back in 2002 against the use of Paracetamol in cooking (The Ghanaian Times, May 3, 2002). Thanks to NAFDAC for beginning the process in Nigeria. However, there is much more to do.

By Niyi Akinnaso

The “them” in the title refers primarily to three groups within the Nigerian political elite, namely, (a) the political parties; (b) the elected representatives and political appointees; and (c) pseudo-politicians, that is, those who hold no elective or appointive position but are nevertheless close to power as contractors, consultants, or friends of government.

However, four additional groups also have a role to play. These are (d) the elite, especially the professional class—doctors, engineers, architects, accountants, university professors, and so on; (e) traditional rulers; (f) religious leaders; and (g) the press.

True, the electorate and civil society have a role to play as well, but the life and death of our democracy is more in the hands of the above-named groups, more so in the hands of groups (a)-(c), because they operate within the political theatre. Groups (d)-(g) only have a supportive role, because their ability to influence political developments is often defined or at least influenced largely by the elected representatives. Even more importantly, as we have witnessed in this democracy, they are subject to manipulation by the political leaders, particularly the President and Governors. Moreover, for various reasons, many of them don’t even vote. Clearly, the stakes are now much too high for electoral indifference to prevail.

Also subject to manipulation is the Independent National Electoral Commission, which is in a class of its own, although it is answerable to the presidency. Its supervision of elections, in collaboration with security agencies, should guarantee free and fair elections. However, the Commission has hardly had a clean record of service due to corruption and collusion with particular candidates.

However, I focus here on the role of political parties in the light of Pastor Bakare’s call on President Muhammadu Buhari to work on a succession plan for the 2023 presidential election. True, as the leader of the All Progressives Congress, which brought him to power, Buhari has a major role to play in the election of his successor.

Nevertheless, the leading players in the succession game are the political parties. I shall return to this later.

But, first, it is necessary to clarify Bakare’s call to Buhari on succession. Contrary to insinuations on social media and even in the mainstream media, Bakare did not ask Buhari to choose, name, anoint, or impose a successor.

Nor did he require Buhari to have a particular candidate in mind. Rather, Bakare’s charge is for Buhari to build a strong legacy, facilitated by what he termed “accurate succession”. By this he means that Buhari should “institutionalize systems of accurate succession” in which “looters” will not highjack the nomination of the party and eventual election.

In this regard, Femi Adesina, Presidential Special Adviser on Media, got it right in his discussion on Channels TV Politics Today, hosted by Seun Okinbaloye on Monday, January 6, 2020. By suggesting that the President will not “manipulate” the system or “pick” a successor, Adesina provided an oblique commentary on a former President who did just that. It was President Olusegun Obasanjo, who inserted himself so prominently into the selection process in 2007 by imposing a successor in ailing Umar Yar’Adua on his political party. The danger in Adesina raising the issue of manipulation and picking a successor is the impression he inadvertently gave that Bakare wanted Buhari to do just that. Far from it.

However, Adesina was right in emphasizing that Buhari should be interested in his successor by ensuring that “there will be a free, fair and credible process and nobody will come to use money and resources to bamboozle his way to the leadership of the country”. This precisely is the import of Bakare’s charge on succession.

Specifically, he wants an electoral system that would filter out those he categorized as “looters”, to whom he devoted a substantial part of his State of the Nation sermon.

The fact of the matter is that the President’s hands in the election of a successor should be tied by the Constitution and democratic norms. The Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act make it clear that the power to nominate candidates for election rests with the political parties and “No association, other than a political party, shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election” (Section 221 of the 1999 Constitution).

Presidents in virile democracies do not impose themselves on the electoral process. This is particularly so in a presidential system. Nevertheless, they should be interested in ensuring a fair process. Just recall President Barrack Obama’s role in the presidential primaries in the United States in 2016. True, it was highly speculated that he wanted Senator Hillary Clinton to succeed him, but he did not make it known.

However, he invited Hillary’s closest rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, only when it was clear that Hillary was close to victory. His goal was to prevent the bitterness of the rivalry from affecting the general election. Similarly, he remains aloof to the buildup to the 2020 presidential primaries with over 20 candidates vying for the Democratic ticket. He only came in briefly to implore the candidates to focus their campaign on President Donald Trump rather than engage in destroying one another.

Therefore, it was an aberration, if not a violation, of democracy for President Olusegun Obasanjo to have inserted himself so prominently in the process the way he did in 2007, and we blame him for it till today. That’s why Bakare’s charge should have been to the political parties and the party bosses.

It is at the level of party primaries that the role of political parties is paramount. Their duty is to screen the candidates to ensure that only those who are qualified and fit for office are presented to the electorate during the primaries. It is at this stage that political leaders seek to manipulate the process the most to the advantage of their chosen candidates.

President Buhari’s role as the leader of his party is to ensure that this process is free and fair. That’s why he should fulfill his promise of reforming the electoral process. He is also under the people’s watch as to his role regarding the direction in which the pendulum of nomination will swing in his party between the North and the South in 2023. His legacy as a leader may well hang as much on this issue as it does on his performance in office.

By Niyi Akinnaso

In its present form, Nigeria’s democracy is now in its twenty-first year. Translated to human life, this should be a year of special celebration just as many adolescent boys and girls pay special attention to their twenty-first birthday anniversary. The question is whether there is anything worthy of celebration in our democracy just yet. The answer is both Yes and No.

We have done well with the appearance of democracy. We have a constitution. There are three branches of government—executive, legislature, and judiciary. The democracy is renewed every four years through elections. We even have an electoral umpire that has the word “independent” in its name. Above all, we are represented on international fora as a democracy. In outward appearance, ours is a presidential democracy like the United State’s.

The lack of interruption to 21 years of democracy, the longest in Nigeria’s post-independence history, would appear to seal this appearance of democracy. Of particular significance in this regard was the celebrated transition of power from one political party (the Peoples Democratic Party) to another (the All Progressives Congress) in 2015. As the first such transition without much rancour in history, this particular transition was set in sharp relief by the destructive protests which accompanied the immediately preceding presidential election of 2011.

Another veneer of democracy in Nigeria is the existence of various electronic and print media outlets for the publication of political information that are not under the control of the government or a single group. This is augmented by a Freedom of Information Act, which has the appearance of facilitating access to information, that is, information that the government is willing to release.

By contrast, however, we have failed woefully with the substance of democracy. The pillars on which successful democracies rest are shaky at best. The pillars include virile political parties; a credible system for democratic renewal through free and fair elections; informed citizen participation and control of the agenda; fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression and association; and a rule of law in which all citizens are guaranteed equality before the law.

What this means is that we have all the necessary institutions for democracy to thrive but our democracy has been wobbly. There are far too many reasons for this situation. Only a few of them could be reviewed here and in no particular order.

Our political parties are particularly weak. They focus mainly on gaining power by concocting a manifesto and a slogan along the way. True, Nigerian political parties have found ways of performing the primary role putting up candidates for election and selecting others for political offices, this role has never been performed without major hitches.

This is evident during party primaries, which are typified by thuggery, various types of disruptive behaviour, and “money bags”, that is, the purchase of the outcome by those who can afford it. Worse still, these practices are usually carried over into general elections, where the stakes are even hire.

To further complicate matters, the competition for position within and between political parties is often subject to geographical, ethnic, and religious considerations. The result is the clamour for zoning during every election cycle. The goal of ensuring power rotation through zoning obscures, if not eliminates, competence and leadership qualifications, especially for executive positions, such as President or Governor.

Given the relative correspondence between geographical location, on the one hand, and ethnicity, language, and religion, on the other hand, zoning and power rotation will continue to perpetuate the place of these cleavages in the selection of candidates for elective and appointive offices by political parties.

With all these cleavages in the background, the competition for power has become more and more competitive over the last 20 years. Besides, political corruption has turned politics into a money-making business. This explains why elections became a “do or die” affair in the land.

An unpleasant consequence of this cut-throat competition for power is the loss of mutual tolerance between competing political parties, which has turned friends and relatives into enemies. Yet, mutual tolerance between the party in power and the opposition is among the requirements for nurturing a democracy.

At the end of the day, politicians tend to prioritise self over the electorate, vested interest over national interest, and personal gain over common or public good. The result is endemic corruption, which leads to drastic shortages in the provision and distribution of political rewards, commonly regarded in Nigeria as the dividends of democracy. Whoever is interested in the relationship between democracy and development may be surprised at the negative outcome in Nigeria, given the nation’s oil resources, the high number of universities, and a highly developed professional class.

Another major drag on Nigerian democracy is the poverty in the land, which makes the electorate an easy target for bribery, leading to practices, such as vote buying, and recruitment into thuggery for a fee. Not even the assortment of security agencies, often drafted as electoral monitors are able to escape the lure of bribes. These practices further corrupt the electoral system and make efficient monitoring of the system extremely difficult for the electoral umpire.

Poverty is complicated by low or no literacy in the rural areas, which makes electoral manipulation even easier to accomplish. These problems will persist so long as poverty persists on the present large scale and so long as literacy education continues to be devalued by federal and many state governments.

In recent years, the focus has been on security, which is supposed to be one of the primary functions of government. People have been dying on the streets, on their farms, and in their homes in the hands of insurgents, herdsmen, kidnappers, robbers, policemen, and other unknown assailants. The present administration has been particularly criticized for acting too late, too slowly, or not at all.

At the same time, the administration has been roundly criticized for acting too fast, to suppress protests and groups calling for self actualisation on their own terms. The recent case of Omoyele Sowore drew international outcry over prolonged incarceration and shameful rearrest in open court hours after he was released. It was a face-saving act by the government to have released him on bail on Christmas eve. The government’s full redemption will follow Sowore’s unconditional release and the dismissal of charges against him.

The way forward will be charted next week, when recommendations will be suggested for improvement. Happy New Year everyone.

THE perception that Nigerian state governors are corrupt is so deep that doubts persist if there are exceptions among them. To be sure, some of them mean well and put in their best effort to improve the lives of their people within available means. Nevertheless, it is generally believed that if transparency, accountability, and the rule of law were truly observed, most Nigerian governors would end up in jail for one kind of fraudulent activity or the other.

Over the years, newspaper reports and various formal and informal conversations indicate that when governors are not lavishing state funds on themselves, their family members, their relatives, their friends, and their cronies, they are busy awarding contracts, often in violation of due process, to companies belonging to their close associates or selected party loyalists. At other times, they are busy transferring public funds into their own accounts, often opened in the name of a do-nothing company, relative, or trusted friend or they are taking physical cash from the state treasury, often in the name of security vote, which even the American President does not have.

This explains how a number of ex-governors came to own property in Nigeria and/or abroad, including luxury homes, porch hotels, and even schools. The more greedy ones among them even own luxury private jets.

It is not surprising, therefore, that at least seven former Governors have been jailed for corruption, namely, late Diepreye Alamieyesegha; James Ibori; Lucky Igbinedion; James Bala Ngilari; Jolly Nyame; Joshua Dariye; and, lately, Orji Uzor Kalu. Moreover, a recent disclosure by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), indicates that “22 ex-governors are either under probe or on trial”.

Not done, some Governors go on to become Senators or Federal Ministers, which allows them to engage in double dipping: They enjoy all the entitlements of their new position, while continuing to earn state pension, loaded with fat cash, security aides, drivers, cook, and other staffers! Economists have rightly warned that if this trend persists, a substantial proportion of inadequate state funds will go to former governors and their deputies.

While the payment of pension to governors and their deputies may look odd, there is nothing illegal about it, provided it is backed up by state law. What is really objectionable about it is threefold. One, the amount being paid is outrageous and has no bearing with their salary. In the American system that we copied, governors’ annual salaries are relatively low, ranging from $70,000 (Maine) to $201,680 (California); and their pension is only a percentage of their annual salary. It is also pro-rated for their years of service. Even the American President’s pension is fixed at about 50 percent of their annual salary, plus an office, a staff, and secret service protection.

Two, Nigerian states’ economies cannot sustain the amount of pension being paid. Recent data from the Debt Management Office indicate that the 26 states that have pension laws for their ex-governors and deputies owe nearly N4 trillion as of June 30, 2019. Moreover, the states paying the highest pensions are the most indebted.

Three, it is considered double jeopardy to pay huge pensions to governors on top of their perceived loot. Besides, don’t Nigerian governors live completely (food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc.) on the state, while also celebrating their birthdays, marrying off their daughters, and burying their parents, mostly on the state?!

By contrast, American political executives get a bill every month for feeding themselves and their dependents. Accordingly, the celebrations of President Barack Obama’s birthday and his wife’s in the White House were regarded as private events and were paid for with the family’s personal funds.

The critical questions are: Why are Nigerian governors so corrupt or perceived to be so and how can the practice be curbed?

Governors are especially corrupt because they are corrupted by the system, which offers them irresistible temptation, including immunity from prosecution and security vote for which no accounting is required. On top of this twin temptation is a corruption-based political culture. The result is a corrupted democracy from party nomination through election to governance practices.

The substratum of the Nigerian political culture is a tripod of monarchical, emirate, and big-man traditions, which valorize deference to “Oga at the top”. Submission, subservience, and acquiescence are the hallmarks of these traditions. Accordingly, governors operate like absolute monarchs. Nothing could be done, and nothing gets done, without their approval. Workers can, therefore, relax when the Governor is “not around”.

The absolutism of the governor’s power is enhanced by the subservience of political appointees, civil servants, and state legislators. Viewing their position as an extension of grace by the governor, political appointees hardly resist the governor’ exercise of power for fear of being misconstrued as disrespectful, if not disloyal.

Similarly, with their eyes on promotion, civil servants curry the governor’s favour with “Yes, sir” responses, even when some financial crime is being committed. On their part, legislators often acquiesce to the governor’s requests, often after tweaking the budget to their favour and twisting Oga’s hands for their own cut on specific appropriations.

It remains a million Naira question as to how to curb corruption at the state level, while also preserving the states’ relative autonomy in a federation. At least three steps could be taken right now.

First, it is important to educate political office holders, civil servants, legislators, and the general public about the evil effects of corruption. Its endemic status has severely eroded the fundamental bases of social, political, economic, and moral practices in private and public institutions throughout the country.

Second, it is necessary to set up a joint branch office in each state for the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commissions. Both institutions should work together in investigating reported cases of corruption, take full advantage of the Whistle-blowing Policy, and ensure that funds recovered are returned to the state treasury.

Third, a change of attitude is necessary in order to reverse the present trend. Unfortunately, this is often the most difficult to achieve, because it can neither be legislated nor coerced. However, changes in regulations, official practices, and official posture can initiate gradual change. Otherwise, a revolution is coming that may be difficult to control.