Category: Opinion

Let me begin this piece with some form of syllogistic administrative argument. It has become axiomatic in the diagnosis of Nigeria’s post-independence predicament to point at the leadership lacuna in governance and policymaking. The need for a visionary and strategic leadership that will drive the whole development process cannot be overemphasized. In the whole of Nigeria, the example of Lagos State stands out firmly as the most exemplary in terms of the leadership succession that has impacted the culture of good governance. From Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to Babatunde Fashola. And from Akinwunmi Ambode to the incumbent Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagosian have been blessed with a leadership trajectory that has kept building good policies on good policies in a continuity loop that as kept Lagos State on top of the democratic governance game, and has made the state the best example of good governance so far.

However, leadership needs a strong institutional and structural basis around which its vision could become concretized. It is around these structures and institutions that the weight of governance and service delivery is laid. This is where we arrive at the crucial point that leadership is bare without an accompanying complement of structural and institutional frameworks around which the vision and strategy of leadership can be articulated in concrete terms. With this point, we critically undermine the agency-structure argument in the social sciences. We also undermine the strong man/strong institution dichotomy. This is because there is no point to that dichotomy. One is incomplete without the other. The further point of the institutional argument is that the public service is the institution par excellence that carries the weight of democratic performance and productivity. Indeed, the public service is the necessary complement to a democratic government. In the literature on developmental states, there is a strong axiomatic consensus that we cannot even begin to think of such a state outside of the administrative coherence provided by the structural framework of the public service and its capability readiness to deliver on intelligent policymaking made possible by the state and its functionaries and politicians.

And the strength of the public service must derive from a measure of public-spiritedness and professionalism of the public servants that the state has recruited and had committed to working with. Public service is a vocation that is more of a calling than a mere profession. A proper understanding of the spirituality involved in the public service is derived from likening it to the Levitical Order of the Jewish priesthood. A public servant is called to a deep and spiritual service of the public to which she is expected to dedicate all her capabilities and focus to the exclusion of every contrary emotions and desires that might undermine that commitment. As an administrative virtue, public-spiritedness places the responsibility of the professional within the context of a personal and public accountability that motivates the professional to personally hold him/herself responsible for the discharge of his/her duties to the public. It is this public spirit or civil virtue that instigates the public servants to an efficient, effective and equitable management of the civil service system.

And of course, the quality of any public service at all, cannot be divorced from the professionalism and resilience of the Civil Service Commission (CSC). Given the spiritual significance of the professionalism and public-spiritedness of the public service, it becomes dangerous to leave the gateway into the profession unmanned. The danger of an over-bloated workforce is not only the lowering of the performance and productivity profile but much more the compromising of the professional remit of the public servants. The experience of Nigeria is telling. With independence, there was a dilemma with regard to the basis of recruitment into the public service. Representativeness was chosen over meritocracy due to Nigeria’s delicate multi-ethnic status. By the Second Republic, the public service was already so over-bloated as to be unable to achieve the capacity readiness to carry the weight of Nigeria’s development planning. In 1975, the hammer of brutal downsizing fell on the public service, and it crushed the system not just to size but with the professional confidence and esprit de corps which made it tick also lost.

Thus, the locus of the modernizing imperative and professionalism of the public service has remained the CSC. This is crucial because the CSC is the interface that mediate between the government and the public service system itself in ways that facilitate a synergy of performance and productivity the state can work with for democratic governance that positively affect citizens. In this sense, the CSC needs to keep reforming its gatekeeping dynamics to be able to also properly gatekeep the professional requirement for repositioning the public service as a profession. In 1954, the Nigerian Public Service Commission was established, and the 1979 Constitution enshrined and changed the name as the Federal Civil Service Commission. The FCSC has the vision to “To build a core of highly focused, disciplined, committed and patriotic Civil Service totally dedicated to supporting the Government in the development of a strong, united and virile Nigeria.”

Its objective is four-fold: (a) To appoint qualified candidates to man the different Ministries/Extra-Ministerial Departments in the Federal Civil Service; (b) To ensure that such appointments maintain/represent the Federal character of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; (c) To make recommendations to the Federal Government on Personnel policies aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the Federal Civil Service; and (d) To ensure that Personnel decisions are taken objectively, promptly and competently in accordance with the policies and interest of the Federal Government. However, about six decades after its creation, we can legitimately worry whether the FCSC has put in place the necessary institutional mechanism to attract, retain and effectively utilize administrative skills and competencies on behalf of the Nigerian civil service? To what extent has the FCSC been able to protect the principle of merit in recruitment without buckling under political pressure, especially for representativeness? This is a good question to ask for one fundamental reason. There is a massive skill and competency flight away from the public service to the private sector or to other countries. The flight of Nigerian doctors to Saudi Arabia is a most recent and public instance.

Every CSC is confronted with the necessity of modernizing its structural, institutional, procedural and ethical frameworks. Reforming the civil service itself entails the reform of the CSC and its managerial dynamics and regulations. This derives from strategizing its own performance management system in ways that allows it to perform better at its gatekeeping responsibility. This is one of the imperatives of the managerial revolution that requires not only a technology-based public service, but also an efficient and effective workforce that is able to achieve a performance trajectory that services good governance. To grasp the importance of professionalism that undergirds the gatekeeping responsibility of the CSC, there is a need to situate that professionalism within the larger context of workforce dynamics and HR function in the twenty-first century.

Such a reform at a general level entails the following critical issues. First, there is policy advice and analysis. New technologies demand that the CSC must be on the lookout for global best practices on the relationship between these technologies and policy analysis and intelligence, and their relationship in informing policy research. The second issue is service delivery and citizen engagement. The CSC needs to monitor what new skills and competence are demanded in transiting the civil service into the period of open government that leads to the co-creating of better services and engagements with citizens as customers. The third issue has to do with commissioning and contracting. The CSC must also be on top of the contracting of non-core functions of the public service, and the commissioning of third parties who have the requisite competences that complement the core functions and efficiency of the public services. The fourth issue concerns managing networks. The CSC must be aware of the urgent needs for collaborative need that brings the public service into communication and strategic relationship with governmental and nongovernmental organisations in ways that generate trust and commitment that leads to efficiency. It is therefore the responsibility of the CSC to regulate skills that lead to mutual understanding.

The fifth critical issue is workforce and HR. The advancement in artificial intelligence and robotics speaks to the necessity of reconstructing our understanding of what work entails. Most fundamentally, the fourth industrial revolution makes it imperative that work would be attended by the urgency of changing skills and competences that have to keep pace with the changing dynamics of work itself and the administrative context within which work must take place. Once technological innovations have taken over the workplace work dynamics, then employers and employees have to come to terms with how the existing skills and competence framework address the new challenges that technology introduces. The last significant issue to address is the urgency of a change management strategy and model. This is required by the mandate and challenges of professionalization and re-professionalization. The first issue here is for the FCSC to reflect on what change management model to adopt that will enable it adequately engage with the urgency of re-professionalizing the civil service system. This is not an easy issue as the Commission must adopt and adapt a model that best suits the peculiar administrative environment and dynamics of the administrative context. Indeed, a best option, rather than reaching out to some pre-existing models, is for the FCSC to generate its own model that best suits its administrative realities.

At the specific levels, the FCSC of the future cannot overemphasize the significance of performance management in the determination of the staff appraisal and professional development of the public servants through the proactive activation of those dormant components of the APER, by deploying training- and activity-based assessment metrics. This would be determined around not just the idea of a performance-induced interviews like assessment center, but also the initiation of a performance-based contracting system backstopped by a commensurate pay and compensation incentive system that will ensure the attraction and retention of the brightest and the best into the public service. This will force the FCSC to begin to creatively juggle with some out-the-box leadership pipelining and talent management frameworks with strict guidelines that, first, enables the identification of star-performers within the system who, second, can be rewarded through special promotion that signals the system’s willingness to streamline creativity and innovation that push the public service into the dynamics of a state already moving into the technological and administrative frameworks of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is important as a way of undermining the naturally occurring urge for institutional inbreeding.

The FCSC, finally, must also not foreclose the possibility of staff exchange with industries and even the diaspora. This also involves the possibility of staff sabbatical leave that allows staff to strengthen their professional horizons through sharing and learning from other professional spaces. A proper recruitment framework must enable the effective involvement of the MDA line and personnel managers so as to be able to achieve a fit between skill and competency gaps and recruitment into the public service. This is one irreducible imperative of the Decree No. 43 of 1988 which failed in its professionalization remit, but provided a significantly understanding of a decentralized understanding of HR function for efficiency. Within the Nigerian public service system, these skills are mostly missing in the constitution of the senior executive service. This means that the office of the head of service would be required to revise the skills domains required to constituting the SES, while also collaborating with management development institutes (MDIs) and government training/tertiary institutions to mounting courses and designing curricula that speaks to this skill sets. In all of this, CSCs will never be able to make significant impact unless the Chairmen and Commissioners are professionals and knowledge workers who could deploy the strategic advantage of the multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary to harness the strength of a professionalized high end specialists’ strategic HR expertise of service commissions’ secretariat to change-manage the public service into a capability-enabled track, towards desired world-class status

(Excerpt from Lecture Delivered by Prof. Tunji Olaopa, Retired Federal Permanent Secretary and professor of public administration/Directing Staff, NIPSS, Kuru, Plateau State, as Guest Speaker at the Lagos State Civil Service Commission 2021 Annual Retreat on the theme ‘Changing the Narrative: The Civil Service Commission’s Role in Repositioning the Public Service’ held on 15-16 October, 2021 in Ikeja. Lagos State)

Professor Olaopa is a Retired Federal Permanent Secretary & Professor of Public Administration,  National Institute For Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos – tolaopa2003@gmail.com.

The cloud of uncertainty has not fizzled out. The electoral umpire is ready. Political parties and their standard bearers are expectant. Voters are dusting up their voter’s cards. Security agencies are giving assurances.

But the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is not on the same page with other stakeholders. There is a widening gulf of dissension.

Is the separatist group going to hold Anambra State to ransom on November 6?

The proscribed organisation has advised the people of the five Southeast states to observe a week of sit-at-home or face the consequences for disobedience. The week coincides with the governorship poll in Anambra State, where Governor Willy Obiano’s tenure will soon expire.

The people have cause to worry about the fate of the election and, indeed, the state. Insecurity has disturbed the electioneering. Campaigns have been disrupted. Every Monday, in the past one month, Anambra has become a state of strife, rancour and blood. Victims have bitter tales to tell. The fear of the non-state actor has become the beginning of wisdom.

The worsening insecurity in the Southeast in general has made the masses in the region poorer. The trading enclave with prosperous businesses has slid into huge loss of income. The enduring commercial link between Igbo land and other regions is fast diminishing. It is life first and business later. Although IPOB claims to be fighting the Federal Government, the victims are obviously the people.

In the kingless society of the Southeast, IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu is king. Although he is in detention, he still calls the shots. The Federal Government claimed that the group has been outlawed, but people obey its command and ignore the directive of the five governors.

It is an indictment on the chief executives. It is said that the gap between the governors and the rampaging youths is wide. Their perception is that the governors are not for the people. Is that not legitimacy crisis? But it is debatable.

During the week, the Igbo umbrella organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, begged IPOB to sheathe its sword. It appeared the ethnic mouthpiece urged the group not to cease hostility permanently, but to rescind its decision on the lockdown so that election can take place peacefully in Anambra State.

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The pan-Igbo organisation is conscious of the implication of a scenario where election is put on hold. It means that the transition will be crippled. There will be no orderly transfer of power. Once there is a succession crisis, the solution lies with the 1999 Constitution. The Speaker of the House of Assembly can only hold forte briefly. The warning by the Federal Attorney-General about a state of emergency is instructive.

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had raised the alarm that danger was looming. He doubted if a credible election can take place in the absence of an atmosphere conducive for such an important civic duty.

It was not without justification. INEC local offices have been attacked by “unknown gunmen”. Vehicles were damaged. Two giant generating sets in two local government offices of the commission were vandalised. The safety of sensitive materials for the election was in doubt. Parents of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members are apprehensive. Many prospective ad hoc workers are rejecting the offer for electoral jobs.

On Thursday, INEC Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, cried out that the Anambra poll is costlier than the previous Edo and Ondo elections.

Anambra is enveloped in anxiety. But the fear has not deterred the electoral agency from proceeding with the preparations.

INEC has now concluded the deployment of non-sensitive materials and training of personnel for the election. Yakubu said the commission has successfully accomplished 12 of the 14 activities listed in the Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the election released in January. The two outstanding activities are the last day of campaign, which is at midnight on Thursday November 4, 2021, and Election Day, which is Saturday November 6.

While INEC is determined to proceed with the election as scheduled, it has not failed to emphasise that the safety and protection of voters, its personnel, accredited observers, the media and materials are cardinal considerations in the election.

It is important to note that while the commission is mandated to conduct a free and fair election, it is not in control of all the factors that will make the goal attainable. The commission is only taking solace in the assurance by the police that it will maintain law and order on Election Day.

Accordingly, Yakubu said the commission is forging ahead because of the assurance from security agencies that they would secure the environment for the exercise. He said the motivation is the professional conduct they displayed during the governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states.

But many stakeholders have reservations. It is not without basis. The police in Anambra have promised to provide security, which they cannot provide for citizens on Mondays to go about their normal businesses.

Some security experts have suggested maximum deployment of police, and even soldiers. This has pros and cons. The deployment may bring a sort of relief to INEC workers. But the large presence of police and military may convey an impression of a war situation. It may scare voters away.

How many wards, constituencies and polling units can security agencies police effectively? What if the agitators unleash mayhem in the neighbourhood that will trigger apathy?

Some stakeholders have suggested that Kanu’s release will douse tension and make the enforcers to desist from fomenting trouble. The possibility is remote.

What then is the way out? Ohanaeze has advised that the five Southeast governors should meet with the relevant groups in the region, particularly the youth, to brainstorm on the collective problem that has gone out of hand.

There is need for dialogue. IPOB should refocus its struggle. The bloodletting by “unknown gunmen” is worrisome. Southeasterners went through a lot of hardship during the 30-month civil war between July 6, 1967 and January 15, 1970. Many families have not recovered from the tragedy. They are passing through another challenging moment now.

IPOB’s violent battle has is a wide departure from a superb intellectual engagement. The threats have made the Federal Government uncomfortable, no doubt. But, the negative impact is still restricted to the region where kinsmen kill themselves in the name of enforcement.

If election does not hold in Anambra,  a dangerous precedent would have been set. IPOB will be more emboldened. The disaster will be projected by the fans of the group as a feat if sorts. The group will spoil for more wars.

Yet, the end of any war cannot be predicted. Any attempt to rapidly march the bewildered region into a greater political doom should be avoided.

If the goal of IPOB is the welfare of Ndigbo, the group should review its approach to the self-imposed struggle in a way that will not further compromise the peace and happiness of the zone.

For now, the fate of the November 6 poll in Anambra State hangs in the balance. Only an effective dialogue among the major stakeholders before the Election Day will restore confidence in the state and restore peace in the entire Southeast.

I have known Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo since my early days as a youth. As chief adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo on  economic matters, Soludo cut the image of a desperate academic wanting to please his paymasters. True to my observations, numerous accounts from a number of notable Nigerians reaffirmed my initial suspicions, as Soludo brooked no scruples about the real role and functions of the academic to society and in government. In El Rufai’s book the Accidental Public Servant, the present day Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El Rufai  described Soludo as one who would much grovel even before imps just to please the latter. We were on hand to see this when sometime in was it February 2017, the same Soludo with all his knowledge and experience from working with and in revered institutions like Brookings, the World Bank, Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, Swarthmore etc could not categorically call a spade a spade and passed unto us a poisoned chalice when he told the world that “in Anambra and under Willie Obiano’s watch, it wasn’t broken, so why fix it”  This was at a point where savings made by the past administration had been squandered without any meaningful projects to point to. This was at a point when the state’s debt had risen from a nadir point to almost N17bn. This was at a point when all known donor agencies had which had been attracted to the state had in quiet protest deserted the state, a point where respected agencies such as BudGIT had  scored Anambra low on a number of sectors and yet the same Soludo speaking in his deep baritone voice crowed to our disbelief that it wasn’t broken yet.

This was how Soludo put it: “So, why mend it if it is not broken? This is a time of crisis and you don’t change the General in the middle of a war, especially the General that has led you through successes in battles. We have learnt useful lessons from the past and must now forge new elite cohesion and consensus.”

Today, Soludo wants to become governor and perhaps lead Anambra for the next four years. Now, I have no qualms with that as it is the right of every adult citizen of Anambra to aspire to lead the state, the challenge though is that what will Soludo be building his aspiration on? On what premises would he want the electorate to trust his bogus manifesto, when he had initially told us that Anambra was in good hands when it wasn’t. How would he promise us good roads when the state of Anambra under the watch of Governor Willie Obiano has left our infrastructure in a perpetual state of disrepair. How will Soludo promise Ndi Anambra more jobs when Governor Obiano’s policies in Anambra have imposed more burdens on small businesses and have forced many of them to close shop.

Will Soludo be building on the impunity that has been allowed  to reign unchecked for the past eight years or the debauchery misrepresented as governance?

Can Soludo positively tell us whether with Governor Obiano’s eight years of shambolism, the elite cohesion and consensus that he claimed existed with Obiano’s performance is still in existence?

What legacy or legacies has the Obiano administration consolidated upon in order to transform the Anambra society into the so called Asian Tigers? How near or close is our dear Anambra to building the virile economies as espoused by Soludo four years ago?

Perhaps, Soludo may one day own up to the damage he helped engineer and seek penance afterwards but then that is not all, as Soludo still possess baggages weightier than the average Anambrarian can imagine.

For example, Soludo claims that his consolidation agenda  of the banking sector yielded immense dividends to that sector as well as the Nigerian economy, yet it was under his watch that a number of these banks lay inactive with weak and phony assets in less than five years and had to be subsequently saved by the same CBN under Sanusi Lamido Sanusi .  How such insider lending and margin loans occurred without detection from Soludo’s CBN also calls to question his much touted credibility, since it took his successor little or no time  to see beyond the tampered books that all didn’t seem to be well with the banking system.

Let me finally puncture the Soludo bid for Governor, truth be told, Soludo as an academic believes in nothing and possess a transactional nature and a crude willingness to jettison whatever values he claimed to possess using all known instruments in his quest for power, it was in such manner that he captured the PDP ticket in 2010 before moving into APGA to do same.

• Soludo’s guber ambition is indeed broken and will not be requiring any fixing!

It is appropriate that the Nigerian Guild of Editors has chosen to beam the searchlight on the major issues, major crises, that our beloved nation is grappling with today. These issues are multi-faceted, interrelated and complex and are proving difficult to resolve because of our ethnic, regional and cultural idiosyncracies as well as the lack of political will by the ruling elite. Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world in the last quarter of 2019 unexpectedly, our lives as individuals and as a nation have been turned upside down because it is an ailment for which no one has yet found the cure. But the situation has been compounded by the naysayers, the Doubting Thomases, among us. They tell us that Covid-19 does not exist and that if it exists it does not kill, and if it is capable of killing, the heat in Africa will kill it dead. These foolish remarks have sowed seeds of doubt in our people despite the efforts made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to lead the world properly, scientifically, on the matter. This pandemic has compounded our health situation which was not in the best shape in the first place. Government’s inability to meet the needs of our medical personnel has led to a long strike and an exodus of some of our doctors and paramedical personnel to foreign countries in search of greener pastures. This brain drain will hurt us immeasurably. Now the Federal Government has had to insist that its civil servants must take the jab eventhough some of our people are still not fully convinced about the efficacy of the vaccine. I believe it is better for the government to seek to persuade people to be vaccinated than to use force because each person is personally responsible for his own health or the lack of it. While we were grappling with the pandemic our educational system stayed locked down. That posed a major challenge, the challenge of resorting to educating our kids by other means which we were not ready for. Even now many of our educational institutions are not fully functional because some parents are holding back their kids because they are worried about the possibility of their children being infected at school. In these matters there are no easy solutions but solutions we must find.

During this period our economy has taken a battering. The cost of food and other essentials has gone skywards; our debt servicing burden has increased; there has been a sharp fall in the value of the naira; the funds spent on petroleum products subsidy has gone up because the price of crude oil is up and we import the bulk of the petroleum products consumed in this country. How can we be a crude oil producing country and also be a major importer of petroleum products? How can we have four refineries that have been lying fallow for years without being refurbished or sold? Is repairing or selling a refinery the equivalent of rocket science? No, it is not. I suggest that our ruling elite should hide their faces in shame because they have broken their covenant with the people. If they have no idea why we elected them let me inform them: we elected them to solve our existential problems for us. Nothing less. If they fail to solve those problems, that is leadership failure. What have we done with the massive arable land that we have in this country? Not much of it has been under serious cultivation since the arrival of crude oil. What are we doing about the solid minerals including gold which is buried under our feet in 14 states of the federation? Nothing substantial. The states are Kaduna, Kogi, Kebbi, Sokoto, Taraba, Zamfara, Oyo, Kwara, Niger, Osun, Abia, Bauchi, Ebonyi and Edo. In all the 774 Local Government Areas there is an assortment of solid minerals sleeping and waiting to be exploited, for the benefit of us all but we prefer to just sit and wait for oil money to be put in our wallet by the international oil companies (IOCs).

The other problem that we are confronted with is the failure by our leaders to respect the tenets of democracy, the gross partisanship in the system, the huge corruption, the reckless carpet crossing, the creeping authoritarianism, the loss of trust in government due to leadership failure and the lack of respect for diversity and inclusivity. These have conspired together to create a situation where some people feel sufficiently frustrated to call for separation. If you condemn separation, as I do, you must also condemn what gave birth to it: injustice, unfairness, lack of equity, parochialism and prebendalism. These have deprived our country of its binding force which ought to be justice and fairness to all our country men and women. You cannot have peace without justice. You cannot have development without peace. These are triplets: peace, justice and development. They work together for the good of all societies.

The most significant of our problems today is the lack of security for the lives and properties of our people. Our failure to secure the nation effectively and efficiently despite the commendable efforts of our security personnel is due to what I call The Seven Anomalies.

Anomaly number one: Nigeria is a federation that is culturally, linguistically and traditionally heterogenous but unlike other federations such as United States, Canada, Australia and Germany. Nigeria is being managed in security matters as if it is a homogenous entity.

Anomaly number two: The Governor of a state is designated as the Chief Security Officer of the State. That is merely de jure. In real terms, the Commissioner of Police assigned to a state is the de facto Chief Security Officer who reports only to the Inspector General of Police in Abuja. The Governor is a figure head, pure and simple.

Anomaly number three: In 23 states of the federation there is one form of local policing system or the other yet we refuse to accept the concept of State Police. The states that operate one form of local security outfit or the other are Kaduna, Sokoto, Kano, Zamfara, Borno, Yobe, Rivers, Osun, Benue, Katsina, Cross River, Enugu, Taraba, Adamawa, Anambra, Ondo, Ebonyi, Edo, Nasarawa, Plateau, Niger, Bauchi and Abia. So who is fooling whom?

Anomaly number four: The APC panel headed by Governor of Kaduna State Mr Nasir El-Rufai toured all the zones of the country, gathered memoranda and received verbal presentations on various national issues including security. The overwhelming opinion of Nigerians was that to be able to police the country State Police was a desideratum. Now the APC government has refused to implement the report of a committee it set up which was headed by an APC Governor and comprised only APC members. So who is fooling whom?

Anomaly number five: There is now a regional security outfit in the South West called Amotekun, in South East named Ebubeagu and a yet-to-be-named one in South South approved or recognised or condoned by the Federal Government. But there is no regional security outfit in either the North East, North West or North Central, three of the most serious and extreme theatres of conflict and violence in the country. So are the three northern zones happy with the security situation in their zones?

Anomaly number six: The police is the primary security outfit for the regular maintenance of law and order in the country. In cases of serious disturbance the mobile police is supposed to be invited to put down the riot or disturbance. But in Nigeria the Army is now being used, more or less, as the regular law enforcement outfit to the discomfiture of the police. But the officers of the Army know the boundary of their duties. When they arrest a civilian for any offence they always hand over such suspects to the police for appropriate action.

Anomaly number seven: It is estimated that more than one third of the funding for equipment and services of the Nigeria Police Force is borne by State Governments. Yet, the Federal Government claims that the State Governments are in no position to fund State Police, a claim that is highly untenable. The real truth, however, is that the Federal Government does not want security power bifurcated in the country. It wants to hold all the power in both hands. However, some of those who oppose State Police are of the view that State Governments may abuse their power over the police if State Police is approved.

My view is that the media, civil society, lawyers and labour are capable of jointly checkmating through demonstrations and legal processes such potentially power drunk governors. Also, if we have State Police, there will be a balance of terror which will be a check on either side as it happened to the super powers during the cold war.

• Excerpts from paper presented at the 17th All Nigerian Editors conference held in Abuja on October 21, 2021.

One of the troubles with our politics in Nigeria is that a number of its actors do not gift the world a collation or insight into a number of events that transpired while they held sway in government, office or whatever contraption life foisted on them. At best, what we get are biographies written by proxies meant to serve as the originals and at worse maybe a biography hurriedly written with gaping holes between events and insufficient information on a number of them, these biographies naturally make a bad read and deny posterity that insight into what may have transpired during such periods which could guide future generations in their dealings. For example, why did Emeka Ojukwu not give us a vivid account of what led to the Civil War or why has Gowon denied us insights into what transpired before the Civil War? Why has a Babaginda kept in secrecy the intrigues that transpired during his annulment of June 12? When will Jim Nwobodo gift us his memoirs? What of C. C Onoh? Abraham Adesanya and a host of others?

Thankfully, the likes of Senator Ken Nnamani has risen to the challenge by gifting Nigerians an insight into his version of what transpired during the heady days of the “Third Term” agenda. Nnamani,  who was a senator was also a major player as Senate President presiding over 108 of his colleagues. Nnamani in his book “Standing Strong” a 491 – page book, in which he detailed the attempts by Nigeria’s self proclaimed Saint, former President Olusegun Obasanjo to arrogate to himself another term in office after exhausting his eight years as spelt out in the 1999 constitution.

Much as I have not read the book as well as could not attend the book launch as I had other pressing matters to attend to, I was able to garner some snippets of what the book had in its stock from a number of authoritative sources close to the author.

From my research, I garnered that the book chronicled Senator Nnamani’s time as Senate President and the numerous  reforms he brought to the National Assembly and his role as well the roles of many principal actors in the Third Term struggles.

Standing Strong attempts also to amply examine the troubles with governance and leadership in Nigeria, the need for legislative independence, the challenge of tampering with the political processes in Nigeria as well as ground breaking legislation such as the passage of the Freedom of Information bill, the ceding of the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon and a number of other sundry issues.

For example, we now know how Obasanjo railroaded Yar Adua into the Presidency by bullying every other disagreeing voice into submission.

Described as a hounding, Nnamani narrates how every serious aspirant jostling to succeed Obasanjo were asked to step aside for Yar Adua. Most affected by this development was former Governor Peter Odili who was asked to withdraw because of the sudden discovery of a  “skeleton in his cupboard, about the EFCC and some documents”.

Nnamani also gives us a glimpse into how the nation’s leadership class has been selected with the example of how an Ahmed Markafi was rejected by Saint Obasanjo because he was allegedly too intelligent for Obasanjo to control. So while other nations look for its best and intelligent to lead their citizenry, Obasanjo who has always boasted that he loves this country rejected a Markafi because he was intelligent but rather chose a supposedly pliant Yar Adua. Little wonder he gifted Nigerians a Shehu Shagari at the expense of an Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe and even was alleged to have quipped on one occasion that “ The best candidate may not win the election”

Nnamani goes on to describe the situation then as the “evidence of an inverted and corrupted democracy” pointing out that the 12 contestants and the delegates who cast their votes “ were just following the motions to give the impression of democracy in action. It was clear to anyone who had been following the events of recent weeks that the whole process at the Eagle Square that day was a charade because the outcome of the election had been predetermined.”

But Markafi, Odili and other frontliners were not the only victims of such a corrupted and inverted democracy, the author himself was also victim of such shenanigans when he bowed to Chimaroke Nnamani’s directive that he step down for Ike Ekweremadu for the office of the Senate President at the inception of 6th National Assembly. Again following the fall of Wabara following the bribery allegations Nnamani was again ordered by Chimaroke to step aside for Ekweremadu but this time the Senator refused to budge and eventually defeated Ekweremadu to become Senate President.

A year after, the memory of the horror lingers.

It started as a protest against police brutality by a set of youths: agitated, exuberant. It was meant to be a legitimate demonstration. But axiological ethics was soon violated; wise counsel fell on their deaf ears.

Consequently, the protest went beyond limits. It was hijacked by another set of youths: indecorous, pernicious. Hoodlums entered the scene. They were also youths, but they fancied a life that turned order into disorder.

As the protest was getting out of hand, a legitimate government imposed curfew to stop the mayhem. But both the original protesters and the hijackers defied the lawful order.

Those claiming to protest brutality started engaging in brutality. To prevent chaos, security agents were dispatched to the scene to disperse the crowd. But the protesters and the hoodlums would not shift ground. It became a bone of contention.

Allegations started flying around about a massacre. Government called them spurious because they were not backed by proofs, 366 days after.

What have the youths learnt from the #EndSARS protest? What lessons has the country taken away?

The identities of the “victims” or their bodies remain unknown. Nobody has provided vital clues. While the youth had insisted that many protesters were killed by soldiers and continued to demand justice, they are aloof to the fate of other victims; fellow compatriots who lost loved ones and property.

Read Also; Lagos Neighbourhood officers sanctioned for brutalising Uber driver during #EndSARS protest

The protest dislocated socio-economic activities. It made the ordinary people poorer. Schools and markets were closed. Flights were cancelled. Freedom of movement was curtailed. Many important engagements were cancelled or postponed.

COVID-19 protocols were jettisoned; rioters never observed social distancing and many protesters were out without nose masks.

Looting became prevalent. Not only were warehoused COVID-19 palliatives stolen, private concerns and homes were also burgled.  Some mediahouseswere not spared. It was an excruciating experience for those who made their money through honest labour. The looting of businesses was a disincentive to investment and violation of the right to legitimate ownership.

Protesters also fueled falsehoods. They indulged in propaganda. Lies were peddled against certain political leaders. Personalities were maligned. The moral value of yore collapsed as youths heaped undeserved curses on elders who offered explanations that could throw more light on associated subject matters that were misunderstood. Many “social media influencers” became willing tools in the hands of opposition foes itching for a pound of flesh of perceived opponents.

Has the nation pondered on the tragedy that befell policemen the protesting youths and hoodlums cut down in the line of duty? Some of them were actually butchered.

How did their relations, friends and loved ones feel as the same youths converged for the one-year anniversary protest in Lagos and other parts of the country?

Have the arrowheads of the protests been held for introspection? Have they appropriately evaluated the gains and costs of the demonstration, particularly the destruction of vital state assets?

Their seven-point demands were tabled before President Muhammadu Buhari by Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Some of them, particularly the scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and setting up of panel of investigation into the allegations of police brutality, were met.

Should the protesters not have marked the anniversary with a thoughtful intellectual engagement, for instance, a symposium to dissect the state of the nation and reassess how far their demands were met and why certain aspects, like improved welfare package for the police, have not been fulfilled by government?

Would a brainstorming session, a sort of conference involving youths and the police to discuss the mutual suspicion between them, not have been more meaningful than an anniversary protest that enabled some acclaimed activists and influencers to play to the gallery?

Since last year, how have the youths engaged the government? What is their future agenda, now that Nigeria is gazing at 2023? How many of them, relative to their soaring population, participated in the voter registration? Is a voter card not more important or potent than a transient street march?

Lumping the goal of the #EndSARS protest with an agenda for generational shift is also counter-productive. Youths are expected to move from their rejection of police brutality to the struggle against the general socio-economic and political brutality. They are right to ask for effective education and gainful employment. They are also right to seek positions in government, based on set criteria. A campaign of calumny is not the moral route to power, which is never served a la carte.

The youths can only attain power, not by sheer blackmail, but by political participation and dint of diligence.

Also, it is a fallacy that youths are neglected in governance. Few of them are serving as governors and ministers, but many of them hold positions in the national and state legislative and executive arms, local governments and other government corporations and institutions. Attention should even focus on their activities to determine the difference they have made.

Had the police and other security agencies not risen to the occasion, the lawful and legitimate anniversary protest might have been hijacked again by miscreants eager to hide under a popular action to commit atrocity.

Lagos is still suffering the destruction of state fortunes that have made it a model. It is relatively easier to destroy. It is not easy to rebuild immediately.

Now, the rage is over; the fury has subsided. The funfair at the Lekki Tollgate is now history, but the cost of clearing the mess remains a burden. Sanwo-Olu said Lagos requires N1 trillion to fix its vandalised assets.

The youths also share in the burden of destruction. Many of them are now stranded at BRT terminals, waiting endlessly for the 89 buses they had burnt to ashes to resurrect and convey them to their various destinations. As the buses went up in flames, the BRT officials were also traumatised. Government cannot be in a hurry to fix the damaged public utilities due to financial constraints.

The import of the #EndSARS protest is that Lagos was pushed backwards, almost to the pre-1999 era, by arsonists and vandals.

There are questions begging for answers: Was SARS a creation of Lagos State? Was the state government not initially in solidarity with the protesters before they derailed from their demands? What is the connection between police brutality and burning of transport facilities and buildings, among other property?

It was sheer agitation taken too far that protesters who were fighting against the injustice perpetrated by SARS, which is controlled by the Federal Government, turned round to commit monumental injustice by visiting their frustration on the social amenities provided by state authorities for their welfare.

If the protesters were to make a choice, which one would they choose between the relatively convenient BRT buses and those of “Danfo” that are often used by “one chance” operators to perpetrate atrocities, including kidnappings, robberies and rituals?

What was the motivation for setting council secretariats ablaze by rioters? Many of today’s councillors are youths. The reconstruction or repair of council offices is an additional burden on the Lagos State government.