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  • Olaniwun Ajayi: Goodnight to a moral beacon

    As we surrender his remains to mother earth this week, the life and times of Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, lawyer, statesman, politician, author, intellectual, prodemocracy activist and Knight of John Wesley, will continue to be celebrated by many whose lives he personally touched and the millions whose lots were directly or indirectly dictated, or could have been dictated, by the progressive politics to which he devoted his entire adult life. As a moral beacon and a man of great self-possession, Sir Olaniwun was a rare combination of unbending resolve and inexhaustible patience. Both attributes were fired by a commitment to egalitarian politics that even the serial setbacks that a polity sworn to political errancy such as Nigeria could not destroy. Though it had become “Africa’s failed asset,” as the title of one of his books concluded, Sir Olaniwun had no doubt that Nigeria could still be saved.

    It was a testament to that unquenchable trust in the possibilities of public good, the creation of a good society and an evangelical sense of rectitude that a few hours before his passing, the old man was still at work building alliances to save Nigeria. To conclude that it was as if he knew that time was running out for him – and for Nigeria – would be wrong, because, indeed, he knew so. “Asiko nlo,” (“we are running out of time”), he said repeatedly, insisting on “the fierce urgency of now” in the last decade of his life. When he and his fellow leaders of Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo and Chief Reuben Fasoranti, met with Governor Bola Tinubu only a few weeks before his death, it was the same urgency that drove them to insist on meeting the “Lion of Bourdillon” in his home rather than continue their tireless wait for Godot. It was yet another mark of the admirable commitment of the disappearing members of the old guard to which he belonged that they kept their eyes on the mission not minding the frustrations and slights they have had to endure. They were convinced that some factions of the progressive camp in Yorubaland were helping to polish the brass of a sinking ship. They had experienced this before and were worried that history was repeating itself as a farce.

    A man of sartorial elegance and measured speech, Sir Olaniwun was one of the most deliberate and considerate Nigerians that ever lived. He was a disciplined man who lived a reflective yet practical life; he was methodical in his private life as he was thoughtful in his public life. His combination of piety and secularist ethos was distinctive. There was no honour that he valued in his life more than his knighthood (of John Wesley) in the Methodist Church – a church to which he devoted a substantial part of his time, efforts and resources. This is why even though we all call him “Baba Olaniwun Ajayi,” we never forget to formally refer to him as “Sir Olaniwun.”

    I first had a close encounter with Sir Olaniwun when I wrote a scathing piece in the newspapers in which I criticized the Afenifere/Alliance for Democracy leaders for allowing President Olusegun Obasanjo to deceive and defeat them in the 2003 elections. I was then teaching political science at the University of Ibadan. He sent a message that I should contact him. I did and was invited to his Isara home. Thus began a relationship that has been so enriching intellectually and culturally. As someone who was interested in studying the Awolowo political movement, this relationship helped in deepening my insight in what resulted in my book, The Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency (2014). Sir Olaniwun’s capacity for reading widely, even in old age would put many young people to shame.

    One of the unmistakable attributes of his class of Awoists is their modesty. Sir Olaniwun combined excess of accomplishments and monumental endowments with manifest unpretentiousness. Even as a living archive of the progressive movement in Nigeria, it was easy to relate to the old man because you knew clearly where he stood and where you stood with him. He was not one to mince words, even though he was a patient listener and sympathetic hearer. But his tolerance never conflicted with his persistence. His inflexible commitment to public good and his unrepentant valorisation of the egalitarian core of the Awoist ethos was not subject to compromise. In the best tradition of his late leader, Sir Olaniwun was a patriarch whose abundant wisdom never stood in the way of his attentiveness to the perception of youth. He possessed a rare capacity for attentive courtesy. I never had any hesitation to disagree with him. He would listen with a kind gaze and then respond with an excess of insight and prudence that would sway you even if your assuredness about the changing dynamics that his generation is yet to fully embrace discourages you from agreeing with his prognosis. One thing was sure though, you were always inspired, even if humbled, by an incontrovertible fact: Your generation will never equal the sacrifices of his generation, if not in the quality of their sacrifices, most certainly in the time span. Baba Ajayi’s generation breathed the struggle for a better Nigeria. From the days of Action Group through the years of the Unity Party of Nigeria to the barricades of the NADECO years and the democratic resurgence of the Alliance for Democracy and the post-AD eras, the Knight of John Wesley was always at his post contributing his task to the struggle to make Nigeria more liveable.

    I once asked him what was responsible for the unending trust in political and social rectitude that was the hallmark of the Awoist progressive politics. I noted that even in the twilights of his life and in the light of clear evidence that incompetence and lack of vision (matched by obduracy) were the persistent qualifications for the headship of the Nigerian state, Obafemi Awolowo still believed that the national political elite would see reason and embrace his Enlightenment project. Sir Olaniwun chuckled characteristically. He waited for a moment, then asked gently: “Do you think it is possible for Nigeria to continue this way indefinitely? Can the country survive along this path?” Even when I argued that the most backward sections of the polity most in need of radical socio-economic redemption are also the parts most conducive to regressive politics and predation; that such regressive politics marked by the story of the boy who sold his patrimony and then pleaded that he should be assisted because he had no inheritance has since been federalized, the old man remained unpersuaded that Nigeria was not saveable. I was forced to revert to my default position of trust in social and political rectitude.

    After all when Awolowo started his unsurpassed political project of “freedom for all, life more abundant”, the margin of error was huge and the possibility of success was almost non-existent. Yet more than six decades after, a combination of nation-wreckers without and heritage-hawkers within have failed to totally eviscerate that yearning for egalitarian rule that was holistically elaborated and cohesively mobilized by the visionary politician.

    Sir Olaniwun lived and fought for a just, equitable, free and egalitarian Nigeria. He and his peers in the long siege laid to the wall of Nigeria’s Bastille believed strongly that power could be truly democratized and decentralized in a way that could turn Nigeria into a truly transformational federation where “though tribe and tongue may differ” we all stand in brotherhood (and sisterhood – as that old national anthem forgot to add). Sir Olaniwun desperately wanted this to be true in his life time.

    As he departs, what can we learn from the life of this most accomplished of men? Plenty, no doubt. As members of my generation are often reminded by Sir Olaniwun’s more contentious and fervent friend and political ally of many decades, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, we must continue to have an unalloyed trust in the possibilities of political rectitude. Another lesson is a commitment to party spirit that is exceptional. The commitment of Sir Olaniwun’s generation to the Westminster model of party supremacy is difficult to replicate in this age. Worthy of emulation too is Sir Olaniwun’s personal commitment to the Awolowo family, particularly after the exit of the patriarch. I know this because I was a witness to his fidelity.

    Sir Olaniwun also taught us that it is never too late to accomplish – or at least try to accomplish –anything in life. At over 80, he began a project of becoming an author. He ended up with five books within a decade. He also wanted to study for a doctoral degree. He approached the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife. When he was told that the process was too rigid to allow an octogenarian without a graduate degree to enrol for a Ph.D, he approached Professor Jacob Olupona of Harvard University in the US and Dr. Raufu Mustapha of Oxford University in the U.K. Both scholars were struck by the thirst of such an old man for knowledge generation. He didn’t succeed in gaining admission to either, so he turned his attention to private research and writing books. Finally, his life teaches us that personal rectitude will never go out of fashion among any serious people….

    Sir Olaniwun Ajayi made our world better. Good night to a good old man.

     

    • Adebanwi is a professor at the University of California, Davis.

  • Aba’s renewal and smart power

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic policy may not be generally considered wonderful, but the commitment to a substantial increase in the domestic content in the real sector of the Nigerian economy may go down in history as his most enduring legacy. The commitment in the agricultural sphere is represented by the steady growth in local rice production and consumption while the commitment to industrial development is symbolized by renewed nationwide interest in locally manufactured goods.

    Buhari did make a mark in the country’s agro-industrial growth in his first incarnation as Nigeria’s leader from 1983 to 1985 when breweries were compelled to use local maize in place of barley malt. The breweries went a step further by producing lager beers with an overwhelming local content. Guinness, for instance, came up with the Merit brand while Premier Breweries in Onitsha, Anambra State, introduced Masters Beer in the market. Though the breweries were to declare crop failures because, in the words of Pius Okigbo in his Essays in the Public Philosophy of Development, the brewers were not farmers, the local content in the Nigerian beverage industry has changed for the better.

    Recent months have seen growing nationwide interest in domestic goods, often called Made-in-Aba products, though most local manufactures are not from this city in Abia State. The interest did not stem from sheer patriotism, as our people are still bewitched by foreign goods and services. It rather arose out of the high costs of foreign items in the wake of naira’s drastic depreciation against international currencies. Every mono-product economy which is import-dependent is bound to experience acute difficulties if its foreign exchange earner crashes. This is Nigeria’s lot, forcing the President to become the cheerleader of the campaign promoting patronage of domestic goods.

    If Made-in –Aba goods have all of a sudden become synonymous with locally manufactured goods, it has to do with a well-choreographed campaign initiated by Enyi Abaribe, the economist and senator representing Aba South in the Nigerian Senate. Since his election into the National Assembly, Abaribe has been organizing the annual Made-in-Aba Trade Fair in Abuja. The choice of Abuja, rather than Aba, as the location is strategic: to get the Federal Government to buy into the campaign. When he commenced the campaign, he was almost derided as an incurable optimist and idealist. But he persisted. The awareness grew. He was joined by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, who appears far more purposeful than his predecessor, Theodore Orji. Senate President Bukola Saraki has now joined the campaign with gusto, almost taking charge. When the army announced it was ordering 50,000 pairs of boots from Aba, Saraki responded with a well-received statement which not just commended it but also enjoined the navy, air force, the police, National Youth Service Corps, and paramilitary organisations like the Federal Safety Corps and the Nigerian Security and Defence Corps and Customs Service to take a cue from the army.

    It is most likely that the army will increase the quantity because Aba products are quite competitive in terms of quality and price. This will have an effect on the other armed forces as well as the police and the paramilitary organisations. As Senator Abaribe has remarked, it is not just boots that these organisations can order from Aba but also belts, bags, caps, trousers, T-shirts and shirts. A good percentage of products wearing the labels of world class fashion designers like Gucci, Louis Vulton and Pierre Cardin are actually produced in Aba. It says something about the quality of Aba products that even many sophisticated people cannot differentiate the local imitations from the original western designs.

    Aba manufacturers’ ingenuity is recognized internationally. It goes beyond the considerable exports to Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo. As World Bank President, James Wolfohnson visited Aba in 2004, accompanied by Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala, then Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, to have first-hand knowledge of problems militating against mostly small and medium scale leather manufacturers at Ariara Market. The producers identified irregular and low quality electric power supply as the foremost constraint. Mrs Okonjo-Iweala then appealed to Bart Nnaji, a well-regarded Nigerian engineering researcher based in the United States who had by 2001 built and successfully run the country’s first indigenous power plant located in Abuja, to establish a plant dedicated to Ariara Market. Nnaji took up the challenge, and with a little prodding from members of the Aba Chamber of Commerce, decided to make the plant serve big manufacturers in other parts of the town. Individual residents were then added to the list which would make Aba an electricity island. That is, Nnaji’s Geometric Power would generate electricity in Aba, supply it to residents and commercial organisations in the place, and recover the cost from revenue paid by the people and firms.

    That the Nigerian Army has placed an order for 50,000 boots from Aba producers, which is bound to have what economists call productivity spill over effects, is a milestone in the support for local manufactures. It is, indeed, a triumph for Senator Abaribe who understands the value of soft power. When the United States in the 1980s unabashedly adopted the jackboot approach in its relations with the world, Joseph S. Nye of Harvard University developed the soft power theory which advised the American government to go on a charm offensive around the world because, as he argued, the world loved American politics, government, media, sports, music, religion, education, science and technology—in fact, American way of life. He was misunderstood by some Americans who thought that Nye, a former Deputy Secretary of Defence who had admirals and generals reporting to him, was asking the United States to become a wimp or lamb in world affairs. Consequently, he changed the term soft power to smart power. But in his recent writings, Nye reverted to soft power, a term now used extensively across the world, from educational institutions to governments. It has caught the global imagination.

    A former business manager and economics lecturer, Abaribe is familiar with Adam Smith’s comparative advantage of nations as well as Michael Porter’s competitive advantage of both nations and firms. Having done an analysis of the Nigerian environment, he has applied the principles in these theoretical frameworks for the benefit of not just his Aba constituency but also the Nigerian nation. In a series of articles earlier this year on the Igbo condition, one had suggested that Igbo political activists replace their “nzogbu, nzogbu” approach to national politics with soft power. Like Nye, one was misunderstood. The critics were blissfully ignorant of how the Jews, who were discriminated against in the United States up to the 1960s, became extremely powerful in today’s America despite constituting less than six percent of the American population. They were obviously ignorant of how the Chinese who are a minority in places like Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam became a great force in each of these countries. Yet, neither a Jew has become the American president nor has a Chinese led Malaysia or Indonesia or the Philippines.

    Today one pays public homage to Abaribe for strategic thinking. He understands the value of smart power. And this fact has stood him out for most effective representation of his people in the legislature.

     

    • Adinuba is head of Discovery Public Affairs Consulting.

  • Economy: Moving from collapse to recovery

    It is interesting that almost all stakeholders who have tried to discuss our current economic predicament believe that the Nigerian economy is in “recession”. But is this a correct characterization? If these stakeholders are in error, then, we can conclude that the nature of the problem is not generally understood, and if policy makers are in error in this regard, then policies designed to revive the economy will be ineffective, and may aggravate current problems.

    What economic condition is Nigeria now experiencing? Let us quickly dismiss what it is not. First, it is not depression, where national output, incomes, employment levels and rate of inflation are all negative. Second, it is not deflation, where price levels and interest rates decline as well as aggregate expenditure in the domestic economy, as is now happening in Japan. Third, it is NOT recession which is characterized by negative growth in national income for two consecutive quarters (six months) without incidence of inflation. Fourth, the closest term to describe the current Nigerian situation is stagflation, which is decline in national income combined with inflation. We can argue that while stagflation is the closest description of the present state of the economy, that state is actually worse than stagflation, in the sense that inflation is accompanied by absolute reduction in national income and employment level, as well as a chronic external deficit. If we accept the fact that Nigeria is experiencing something worse than stagflation, then the appropriate package of policies that can revive the economy is significantly different from that being proposed by government, external donor agencies and by the organized private sector to tackle recession.

    Recognizing the causes of the current Nigerian economic predicament is a major step to resolution. Some of these causes are policy mistakes of previous and present governments, wrong attitudes of Nigerians to production and consumption, and a curious tendency of accepting policy advice from stakeholders who place their individual interest over that of the country. We shall be specific.

    1. Failure to refine crude petroleum at home due to constant breakdown of the four refineries;
    2. Excessive importation of food and other agricultural inputs which Nigeria is well suited to produce, due to irrational dependence on shared oil revenue;
    3. Continued depreciation of the naira exchange rate which propels cost-push inflation arising from imports; especially petroleum products, industrial inputs and food;
    4. Sustained tight monetary policy implicit in high and rising interest rates which discourage investment by small and medium-scale enterprises;
    5. Recent trend of introduction of new taxes at Federal and State levels which is a leakage from the national income stream as it discourages production and consumption;
    6. Failure of the National Assembly to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) which is expected to liberalize the downstream segment of the Petroleum and Gas sector with huge potential to increase output, incomes and employment;
    7. Failure of the political party in power, past and present, to restore a proper federal structure with considerable devolution of powers to federating states which was destroyed when the military overthrew the First Republic in 1966. All federal governments have resisted the restoration of the federal system that provided a solid foundation for stability, peace and mutual respect during the First Republic. Current political discontent and agitation in oil-producing states resulting in destruction of production and pipeline facilities reduces output of crude oil and gas, in the process destroying the environment, reducing earnings of foreign exchange as well as electricity supply. The solution to the constitutional problem is negotiation among the geopolitical regions, and definitely not the militaristic approach adopted by the Federal Government in 2016.
    8. Shortcomings in the implementation of The Treasury Single Account (TSA) which suddenly drained large sums from the commercial banks with adverse effects on liquidity, lending capacity, employment in banks and solvency, and increased exposure to bank distress.

    Current economic problems arise from WRONG exchange rate policies adopted since 1986 under the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). Before then, the country operated a fixed exchange rate regime which provided a stable environment for the country to attain middle-income status during the Gowon Regime. Proponents of SAP and flexible exchange rate system argued that the naira was “over-valued”. From the initial exchange rate of N1= $1 in 1986, the exchange rate has deteriorated to N310.00= $1.00 on the inter-bank market and N475= $1 in the parallel market as at October 5. The orthodox theoretical argument is that depreciation of the national currency raises domestic prices, improves the balance of payments position and increases gross national income. But empirical results of depreciation of the naira indicate that the policy reduces national income as well as worsens the balance-of-payments position. This confirms the position taken by experts that the Nigerian foreign exchange market is unstable. The implication of this is that to obtain the desired results of improved balance of payments position, increased national income and reduction in the rate of inflation, the country should find a way to appreciate (raise the value of) the naira. This would involve devising policies to tackle destabilizing speculation against the naira, increase exports and devise a strategy of taming the parallel foreign exchange market by integrating it with the Bureau De Change and subjecting it to Central Bank control. Appreciation of the naira then results in lower rate of inflation increased national income and improved balance of payments position.

    Nigerian monetary policy has been restrictive since the introduction of SAP. The Central Bank, in its inflation-targeting strategy of monetary policy, regularly mops up so-called excess liquidity by selling securities to banks, resulting in rising short-term interest rates. This discourages lending and makes the structure of lending interest rates prohibitive to investors. This works against increased national output and employment. The assumption of the Central Bank is that lending is for consumption, which would have been tenable if the inflation was demand-pull. In cost-push inflation, rising short-term interest rates, in addition to reducing output, may also compound inflation. In the current Nigerian situation, easy monetary policy is preferred.

    Fiscal policy should be significantly restructured. Government’s commitment to increasing non-oil revenue should continue. The percentage of expenditure on recurrent items should be reduced while capital expenditure is significantly increased to accommodate additional infrastructural facilities. In the short run, budget deficits should be employed to expand national income and employment opportunities. Sale of national assets should not be considered.

    In this era of globalization, application of new technologies, particularly ICT and the development of entrepreneurial capabilities make a country more competitive in world markets as well as increase the productive capacity to satisfy domestic demand. This policy, working closely with fiscal policy, increases national income, improves the balance-of-payments position and reduces inflation.

     

    • Paper delivered by Professor Osagie on behalf of recipients of honorary degree awarded at the 42thgraduation ceremony of the University of Benin, November 26.

  • Saro-Wiwa, Benin Republic and restructuring

    Ken Saro-Wiwa was the pipe-smoking Ogoni writer and rights activist. He had a small physical carriage. But each time he sneezed, Nigeria the behemoth caught cold. So when asked why the small ‘unarmed’ man from a minority stock would discomfit a giant, he would fire back aggressively: “What do you mean? What has size got to do with it? Size has little to do with it!”

    Indeed size has nothing to do with acumen. Otherwise small Cuba wouldn’t outstrip mighty United States of America in healthcare on a doctor-population basis. Nor would little South Korea be rated the most industrialized globally on account of industry spread. And tiny Israel wouldn’t be the home of military drone technology, a feat denied most far more celebrated and wealthier nations.

    It is the reason Nigeria must wake up and put aside this song and dance about our ‘giant-ness’ and learn from little Benin Republic nearby. Its dot-like size hasn’t prevented it from seeking to lay the basis for lasting change and enduring development of its citizens by restructuring the polity. In this Francophone country, the real change is taking place under their leader called Patrice Talon. Let’s see what this man popular called the Cotton King is doing.

    Like our own President Muhammadu Buhari, the Beninois leader has the following as his agenda: Combat corruption, improve the economy and fight terrorism through the instrumentality of diplomacy. He adds: “My mandate will be a mandate of rupture, transition and reforms.” Asked what would come first and remain the compass of his five-year term, Talon declared: “I will first and foremost tackle constitutional reform” insisting he would work towards a one-off presidential tenure for himself and those coming after him.

    In other words there would be no question of a second term for him and subsequent Benin presidents. It was a promise Talon made when he campaigned for office. He reinforced that solemn pact when he was sworn in in April at the Charles de Gaulle Stadium in Porto Novo. Under the constitution Talon is allowed to seek a second five-year term as did his predecessor Thomas Boni Yayi who served for 10 years. Now the new president says two terms-successive or staggered – give way to what he calls “presidential complacency.”

    But let him come to Nigeria; we shall give him free but enriching tutorials on how we have suffered at the hands of politicians who are glued to the romanticism of a presidential system in need of the knife. We shall tell him how the breed here are not OK with two terms; they would scheme a third, a fourth, a proxy, nay an unending term even when the constitution says all these are an anathema. We shall lead Talon into the world of a man who argued that politics is nothing but a game of death. We shall show him how because we have failed to restructure and go for fundamental changes in our federal set-up since the Britons left us, we have had a civil war, upheavals that have landed us on the verge of anarchy, communal clashes, economic dislocations, poverty in the midst of plenty and agony of living with potentially rich states that must depend on the centre for sustenance.

    Nigeria needs to learn from Benin and “first and foremost tackle constitutional reform,” aka restructuring. Our problems are a flow from the poorly sculpted structure we are operating. We must work on it to reduce the power of the central government so that the resulting centrifugal arrangement would allow the outposts of governance and their citizens to engage in creative economic enterprise for wealth generation, growth and development. Under that order, a governor controls his or her own police rather than looking for clearance for action from a distant authority when unruly gangs of herdsmen invade his or her territory on a killing spree.

    If we rejig the constitution to limit the President’s mandate to a one-off five-year term as President Talon is doing in Benin, it would sink the do-or-die inclination and orientation of our politicians and other citizens lured into office by the prospects of nearly a decade of pomp, power and opulence. At the lower levels of governance, the governors also would be made to have a single tenure. What would you be giving to the society that you couldn’t offer in four or five years? Listlessness and declining productivity set in after the first round. That has been our experience in Nigeria. It is what Benin’s new leader is calling “presidential complacency”.

    How about the 36-state shape of Nigeria? It should be abolished. Let the states be boxed back into the old regional outlook or be re-organized along the current geo-political zones. As they are, the states are a little higher than local governments. The central government in Abuja has enervated them the same way Nigeria has denuded its youth, men and women to the point that these critical segments of the society have also resigned themselves to fatal idleness and worthlessness.

    The reform we desire should also address the question of our bicameral National Assembly. If we must have the two chambers, then we would have to reduce their numbers to a third of what we have. What are we doing with 109 Senators and 360 representatives? Each takes home ginormous emoluments in a country with tens of millions of hungry and angry people who wake up working out schemes to be like these politicians or devising means of swindling the state or their fellow citizens. A new order must emerge to displace what we have now.

    I think Buhari should follow in the footsteps of the man next door. He should “first and foremost tackle constitutional reform” that is restructure Nigeria. He will discover to his joy that if we take up this task of tackling the demons responsible for the malaise and tremors in the society and its politics and economy, those distortions would also recede.

    The Republic of Benin posts the same dismal indices of arrested development as Nigeria: Unemployment, poverty, corruption and leadership succession challenges. In fact recently on the question of corruption, a European nation suspended aid to Benin when millions of dollars meant for a project went missing. It was a major scandal that cost a cabinet minister his job. As in Nigeria, its leaders are often trapped in the sit-tight snare. So Nigeria and Benin experience some pangs of nation building arising from a structural paradigm defect.

    But while battling corruption, the Beninois authorities have discovered that this social disease is only a symptom of a deep-seated problem traceable to the structure of the society.

    President Buhari will leave behind a lasting legacy if he restructures the country constitutionally. It’s the only way to outlaw the conditions that throw up corruption, graveyard states, poverty, politics of self-interest, mass unemployment, insecurity and a massive population unindexed with patriotism and spirit of enterprise and adventure to rejuvenate the society.

    Yes, Nigeria needs to fight corruption. But like Benin Republic, we need to push simultaneously for a fundamental change from the present system which is the mother of all our woes. Those before Buhari failed because they failed to drop this cursed system.

     

    • Ojewale is a writer and journalist in Ota, Ogun State.
  • Ondo governorship poll and INEC

    Ondo governorship poll and INEC

    After months of bitter political campaigns, the fiercely contested Ondo State gubernatorial election finally reached its conclusion with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declaring the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Olurotimi Akeredolu, winner with 244,842 votes. Akeredolu clinched the exalted political position  in the Sunshine State by defeating his closest rivals – Eyitayo Jegede of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Olusola Oke  of the Alliance of Democracy (AD), who polled 150,380 and  126,889 votes  respectively.
    But unlike the just-concluded United States presidential election result which sent shockwaves around the world, the Ondo poll did not betray the expectations of many political pundits who had earlier tipped Akeredolu as one to beat in the race.
    The election has been largely adjudged as not only free and fair but also credible by all the election observers and participating political parties. Many have also gone as far as scoring INEC as high as 99 per cent in the conduct of the election, particularly observers.
    While the Prof. Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC left no one in doubt that it is ever and fully competent and committed to credible election as exhibited in Ondo State, the November 26, poll has also drawn a pocket of criticism from some elements on issues bordering on pre-election matters.
    The governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, fired the first salvo on the electoral umpire. Fayose, who reportedly accused the commission of complicity in the run-up to the election, said that the PDP went to the election with its hands tied to the back because of the uncharitable actions of INEC regarding the issue of the party candidate.
    But the governor failed to tell Nigerians whether INEC was responsible for the emergence of two factions in PDP or the conflicting judgements that threw up two candidates for the  same election before the intervention of the Supreme Court. It is high time politicians purge themselves of the penchant for casting aspersion on the electoral umpire to score cheap political points. There is no need to shout wolf where there is none in the conduct of INEC in the election, as doing that will not only endanger democracy in the country but also tarnish the image of highly-respected individuals who work day and night to ensure that election in the country are not only free and fair but also credible.
    The November 26, Ondo  State guber poll, which many political commentators have already dubbed “a textbook approach of free and fair election,”  is worthy of commendations. INEC deserves a pat on the back for improving on its performance in the also well-adjudged Edo State gubernatorial election.
    As testified by election observers who monitored the Ondo State poll, materials and men for the election were deployed as early  as 7:30 am while accreditation and voting started as early as 8: 30 am in almost all the polling units across the state. Card readers were fully used in the election to avoid issue of rigging and over-voting. Faulty card readers were replaced with immediate alacrity and in some few cases incidence forms were used to ensure no eligible voter was disenfranchised.   The swiftness in which the electoral umpire announced the result further endeared INEC to Nigerians and put paid to  any perceived conspiratorial theory.
    The nation’s security agencies that participated in the election  also  lived up to expectation as there was no incident of violence or loss of life during  the election, apart from the skirmishes that occurred in Owo a day before the poll.
    All the political parties, apart from the PDP, totally accepted the outcome of the election as a reflection of what transpired in all the polling booths in the state. The three candidates that garnered the highest votes in the election all exhibited their strengths in their various strongholds. While the eventual winner, Akeredolu garnered large chunk of votes from his Ondo North Senatorial zone and other areas, the PDP candidate, Jegede, showed that he was a major force to reckon with in Ondo Central even as AD’s Oke gave a good account of his political prowess   in the southern part of the state where he hails from.
    As torrent of commendations continues to pour in over the peaceful conduct of politicians and INEC performance in Ondo State, it is the expectation of many Nigerians that the same feat will be replicated, if not surpassed, in the forthcoming Rivers State rerun election. INEC will have to remain resolute as ever, because politicians will always be politicians.
    While I commend the security agencies for protecting human lives and ensuring electorate did not cast their vote in a tense environment, their chiefs will have to look into the allegation of vote-buying. The allegation that security agents watch each political party openly inducing voters with money to vote for their candidates must be probed and, if found to be true, culprits must be punished. But to be just, security agents assigned to work with INEC during election must be well taken care of, both by the authorities and INEC. Only then can we achieve a near perfect election.

    •Amadi, a public affairs commentator, writes in from Abuja.

  • Fidel Castro: Last of the titans

    Fidel Castro: Last of the titans

    Castro was an enigma and undoubtedly one of the most iconic figures of the 20th century. Fidel Castro was an internationalist; charismatic, fierce, daring, and the indisputable leader of the Cuban revolution. He was not born poor and did not belong to the peasantry on the fringe of the society, a confirmation that socialism and liberation struggle is not the pastime for the hoi-polloi trying to gain relevance in the society as is often perceived in our clime. He was a convinced socialist and an unrepentant Marxist Leninist to the very end. He stood for his country in the face of the brutal campaign by the American establishment who wanted to maintain Cuba as a holiday resort of picnic for the American upper class who sees the Latin American countries as banana republics to owe and cherish as play things.
    He rallied the support of the masses and built a country that survived a vicious economic sanctions and isolation as a pariah state defying every prediction of collapse. He did not die until the cracks in the American liberal democracy and capitalism began to show signs of disintegration with the coming into power of the Republican Donald Trump. Cuba is said to have almost 100 percent literacy rate with, arguably the best health care delivery system globally, exporting qualified medical personnel and experts to other parts of the world.
    Cuba is still standing when the imperialists have succeeded in destroying great civilizations like Libya, Egypt, and Syria etc in the name of promoting the Western model of democracy and human rights. Castro survived American state-sponsored assassination plots who perceived him as a fascist and a dictator. He survived because he had the people, the real people behind him. Castro is a truly venerated personality of the 20th Century and belongs to the pantheon of all time greats.
    His life and time is a great lesson to the world that there is always an alternative to any system that serves the people in equal measures. He demonstrated that capitalism and free market economy was just a smokescreen by a few powerful individuals and corporate organizations who wield state power to manipulate and impoverish the majority. Castro did not believe in joining the bandwagon but held tenaciously to the honour of territorial integrity of the Cuban state in spite of the atrocious propaganda and smear campaigns of the Western media to destroy the value of the Cuban people and any efforts and contribution that the Revolution achieved.
    He left a life lesson that with commitment and conviction to a course, a nation can achieve greatness not by choosing the soft-head approach and the easy way out as we do in our own part of the world. Cuba survived merely on sugar cane and later on development in Medicine and health-care delivery that became a brand to them. But here we are, with abundance of resources but we do not have leaders that are able to harness it to shoot us to prominence in the comity of nations. We cringe for aids and hand-outs from donor nations who patronize us and impose values that are alien to us. We look for needless loans that would mortgage the future of our children and it does not bother us and we conclude that the whole world is doing it.
    We create more bureaucracies that increase the wage burden of the state because we cannot think out of the box thereby postponing the dooms’ day. Nigeria truly needs leadership that would carry the entire nation along to build a new consciousness with creative mentality not clueless leaders that are lacking in deep philosophical reflection. Indeed, Nigerians have the misfortune of electing and selecting freakish freebooters to represent us at all levels of government.
    How on earth would the National Assembly be contemplating a Bill on the Peace Corps of Nigeria as a priority so as to create jobs that do not create value but services that we have agencies that are saddled with the same or similar responsibility at this material time when the wage burden of both federal and states are becoming unbearable? How can the Nigerian government be thinking of laying pipes to carry crude from Niger Republic to a refinery in Kaduna or any part of Nigeria for that matter through a very hostile territory that the state does not have the capacity to protect? Common! That is a typical soft-head approach of people with low mentality; it makes no common or economic sense now or on the long run.
    We have not increased the capacity of the agencies that we have in existence like the Police, Federal Road Safety Commission, Civil Defence and other ubiquitous agencies of the state with similar functions. Nigeria needs a “Castronia” prescription of self reliance in the face of the collapsing world order of neo-liberalism and capitalist ethos of democracy.
    As you proudly walk to join the masters in the pantheon, carry with you the revolutionary flowers of all those who stand up to power; you defied the greatest power on earth, the Americans, and call them the bluff. Adieu the last of the titans. You came, you saw, and you conquered and the world would remain in awe of your enigma.

    •Kebonkwu Esq writes from Wuse Zone 5, Abuja

  • Anambra government and the Odysseus of our time

    Recently, I was accused by the aides to the Governor of Anambra State for having taken the pictures of an Aircraft parked at the Akanu Ibiam Airport, Enugu and posted it online through my agents as chartered by their boss.
    Whether Anambra State Government charters aircraft or not is not the issue in focus here. My main concern is that my name was tossed recklessly as having taken pictures of the aircraft when I was neither in Enugu nor the said airport at the time in question. Despite my confirmed disclaimers, the hordes of aides serving in that government continued to move against me like antibodies gathering to attack an infection. For an administration intent on destroying me, my principal and other perceived enemies, it is curious that these aides would go out of their way to ‘rescue’ me from airport security. More revealing in their subterfuges are that neither has any Enugu airport security confirmed my ‘arrest’ nor the CCTV footage of the said date screened to indict me.
    When an account of the present Anambra State government is documented, it would be presented as a government that introduced the use of individuals he considered as opposition to write commentaries on state radio. In attacking some of the state’s best and being insensitive to shame, the administration had rendered Anambra a general butt for mockery and opprobrium. With such a recurring feature in the administration, their propaganda machinery has cranked into over-drive and caught up with them. In this day and age, it is appalling to witness ferocious outbursts of hate, misrepresentations and malice from these effete aides.
    The lies they live with reminds one of the story of the wanderer, Odysseus, who could hardly speak without “lying or act without treachery”. In my earlier release ‘My Life is in Danger – Obi’s Aide Cries Out’, I stated, inter alia, that what were going on were state-sponsored falsehoods against me. I said also that “the way some of his aides even claimed to have seen me personally can only be explained on the theory that they sell dummy to the government as a means of extorting money from her to fight imaginary enemies. I even went extra mile to clear all doubts by beckoning on God to take my life if were in Enugu that day. I also implored Him to treat my accusers according to His will”.
    By choice, many of us have stayed close to Mr. Peter Obi even after he left government. We are happy with his continued people-oriented, value-added pursuits, including his School Apostolate and sharing his experience on good governance at various fora. Yes, monetary compensation is a fact of life, but we have gained more than money. When one of his commissioners, a lecturer in a state university, Dr. Patrick Obi applied to join a federal university, the interview panel told him that to have served with Mr. Peter Obi was enough testament to his qualification to work in any institution in the world. He secured the job. In small business I am engaged in, many of his friends in commerce and industry have granted me generous credit facilities, simply because I am associated with him.
    Virtually all the negative publications about the former governor, Mr. Peter Obi are procured and sponsored – paid by the Anambra State government. Each time Obi’s popularity which has remained high threatens to burst at the seams, they respond with panicky, contrived falsehoods. Mr. Obi’s inspiring presentation at the 2016 edition of The Platform and the subsequent mentoring to the youth in Enugu so much ruffled feathers in Government House, Awka that the former governor was again subtly cautioned to stop attending functions and visiting schools in Anambra State.
    Many people of goodwill have wondered and asked why Anambra government is so hostile to Mr. Peter Obi. Here is a man of substance, even to his enemies – solid with experience, exposure and practical statesmanship.
    On becoming governor, Peter Obi realized that the dog that buried the bone; the squirrel that gathered nuts for a later feast; the bees that filled the comb with honey; the ants that laid up stores for a rainy day, were among the precursors of savings. It was these creatures that taught man the wisdom of providing for tomorrow out of the surplus of today. Obi practised this very effectively by creating that surplus through pruning the cost of governance, and was able to save over N75 billion for the state. His US Dollar savings, going by current exchange rate, is valued at over N185 billion. The SAB Miller project Anambra State government invested in under him has remitted over N300 million in dividends to the state this year alone. Interestingly, the huge savings were matched with tremendous achievements in all critical sectors with the instrumentalities of the acclaimed Anambra State Integrated Development Strategy [ANIDS].
    Who is so indolent as not to wish to understand what formulae of governance that Obi applied in eight years to restore the glory of Anambra State – a thing unique in history? Those inviting him to talk to them recognize his worth and utility. Many are eager to tap from his experience and replicate in their realm what he did in Anambra State.
    All over the world, it is the ideas of great men that rule the world. If you appeal to history, you will discover that the great Ashoka of India built his empire on the ideas of Buddha as Lenin built his with those of Karl Marx. Likewise, people like Rousseau, John Stuart Mill and John Locke gave powerful inspiration to democratic revolutions in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. On the negative pull, Hitler modelled his Third Reich after Nietzsche’s lunatic visions. Peter Obi performed very well for Anambra State and his model has been acknowledged as the best template for states. Indeed, Professor Paul Collier of Oxford University, UK was engaged by the World Bank to study some of the things Obi did to achieve rounded success. It is disheartening that his successor seeks to vilify Peter Obi rather than pursue good governance for the people of Anambra State.
    In the eyes of his traducers, Peter Obi’s great weakness is that he does not believe in fighting dirty. If they are discerning, they need not look far to know that his guiding ethics are the fear of God, due process and evidence-based performance.

    •Obienyem wrote this piece from Lagos.

  • My mother Uzodimma Amalu

    MY memory of my late mother, Ezinne Bernadette Uzodimma Amalu (nee Ejeagha), can be divided into two broad parts. My early years, lasting until Michael junior, my elder brother and her first son, died in 1978; and the years after, lasting until her spirit lured me home last August, to spend some quality days with her, before she suddenly died on September 1, at 86.
    The early years were years of palpable apprehension for my mother for I lived precariously. Stubborn, rascally and prone to accidents, I can still recall some near death incidents after which she would put me on her back as she ran to the community health centre for help. They included my climbing a palm tree barehanded and falling off it. But all that stopped after Michael junior died. His death broke my parents’ hearts.
    At a dreary session with my father’s friend, one Mr Nnamani, I was told plainly that my father, Chief Michael Amalu’s life, henceforth depended on how I conducted myself. My father then in his 60’s had a huge personality, but I had become his first son, even though I was not yet a teenager. Going forward, my mother never ever complained about anything I did, as I made every effort to do the right thing.
    Later, after my father died and I got married, bringing my family home every Christmas to be with my mother became the most important ritual. One year that I gave inclement finance as an excuse, my mother gave me the worst rebuke of our new relationship. She did not shout at me or complain. She merely refused to talk with me when on the Christmas day I called to wish her a happy Christmas. And she did it dramatically. While I could talk on the same phone to my sister Ngozi, each time the phone was passed on to her, she would just say: “I can’t hear anything”. After three trials, I got the message.
    While my mother was deeply interested in my getting married early, she never for one day called a meeting to pressure me. Her encouragement was subtle. When I eventually brought Rita my fiancée home, she just warmly welcomed her, and never made any fuss about where she came from and such stuff. She trusted my judgment.
    At my weeding, she gave me the best advice for any married couple. She told me to love and care for my wife if I want her to love and respect me. That teaching has proved effective for years. My mother loved her grand-children, but would rebuke them, if they misbehaved. She loved my wife and would always keep ihe ntaghari onu (snacks), each time she was visiting. Without my father, I became the ultimate reference for any family decision. On a number of occasions she visited my family in Lagos, my mother never orchestrated any tension between my wife and herself.
    My mother did not lack at her old age, partly because her husband made provisions that fended for her. But she was also blessed by great sons-in-laws and daughters who treated her well. Whether it was Richard and Cecilia, Frank and Justina, Edwin and Marcellina, Nicholas and Clementina, Charles and Ijeoma, or even her step-daughter Monica and her step-son Joseph and his wife Ifenyinwa, my mother swam in an ocean of love and care. There was also Anthony and Godwin, children of her husband’s beloved brother, Chief (Ozo) Joseph Amalu, who cared for her.
    My mother encouraged me to care for my in-laws. She loved to give, and encouraged me to give. Even though my mother had a mouth that could sting occasionally, she had a heart that empathised with the poor and the disadvantaged. She could stake anything for the oppressed, and would rebuke the oppressor without care.
    She was never afraid of the consequences of standing for what she believed in. Her emotions would run riot, if it is needed to push her view point. As she got older, she would always bet with her clear conscience. Indeed, she would argue that if something is going wrong and she keeps quiet, the consequences would be grave for her.
    I respected and loved my mother very deeply, but I never considered her a spiritual titan. Whenever she veered into what is akin to alchemy, I just ignored her. So, whenever she complained about spiritual forces, I thought she was throwing up the relics of her early life. For I heard that she had a fearful uncle, Otugo, who had the magical powers to disappear in a place and re-appear at an appointed place. A feared warrior who could send a beehive of bees to sting an enemy to death. Indeed, he was reputed to have the power to wrestle with a spirit. My mother had a loving father Aniamalu, and a mother Ijeoma Nwakidi who doted on us, her grandchildren.
    But my mother’s passage has challenged my dismissal of her deep spirituality. Weeks leading to her death, I had the irresistible urge to visit and spend some days with her outside our usual Christmas rendezvous. By the time I made the visit, she was holidaying in Enugu in her daughter’s place. I dutifully joined her and we spent the next eight days together.
    On July 31, my sister Justina suggested that we should bring her monthly check-up forward. I enthusiastically agreed and we asked her husband Frank to arrange a session with Professor Neri Picardo of the Niger Foundation Hospital, her physician of over 20 years. The doctor saw her and said she was as okay as she could be, everything considered.
    By the next day, my mother woke early and bathed herself, but complained that she wasn’t feeling well. Walking herself to the car, I drove her to the hospital at about 8am in tow with her grand-daughter Chidimma and her husband, Emeka Onoh, both medical doctors.
    At the hospital towards the evening, my mother held my palm and muttered some prayers, which I mistook as delirium. Around 7pm, there was a blistering lightning followed by a thunder. Shortly, I was told by Iheziako that Obudimma (both grand-daughters) was crying, saying the thunder was ominous. Just as I walked up to console her, Kosi Offor who took over the bedside from me, ran out shouting.
    We all rushed in to witness the doctors and nurses frantically doing their stuff. As I looked at my dying mother, it dawned on me that she spiritually lured me home to be with her during her last days. Later that evening, I spoke with my younger sister, Ijeoma, who lives in the US, and she told me how mama sent strange showers only on her car as she drove home from work, to signal her exit.
    My mother was a devout Christian. She loved life and had a robust health. She died peacefully and left us nothing to regret. As we bury her on December 21, at Amofia, Ogwofia-Owa, Ezeagu L.G.A, Enugu State, I cannot wish for a better mother.
    My dear mother, Ojemba Eweilo, I wish you a blissful rest in the bosom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  • Budget: Why corruption persists

    Alot had been said on corruption in Nigeria. It is so pervasive that one may conclude that most Nigerians have been socialized to see corruption as a national pastime – a normal way of life. At micro household level, for instance, it is not impossible to hear of many parents aiding their wards in examination malpractices thereby contributing to this social malady. At other instances, it is not uncommon to see civil servants routinely demand for kickbacks before they do the needful. More lamentably, evidence of pervasive corruption in every aspect of our daily life could lead to a harsh conclusion that corruption is part of our society and our society is part of corruption.

    In any case, the issue of corruption in our budget systems has been well documented as one critical factor hindering Nigeria’s development agenda for several decades. A lot of manipulations are associated with our budgeting process both at federal and state levels ranging from ghost projects like the so-called constituency projects, frivolous line items, wasteful expenditure, inflation of contracts and illegal virement. Budget line items are often inflated by adding unnecessary wasteful expenditure that would obvious come back to private pockets. In fact, evidence shows that budget padding, which has become somehow accepted as a tradition, is not a new phenomenon. Rather, it is part of a long standing culture of impunity transcending all arms of government especially the executive and legislature. As such illegalities in our budget systems appear to have been perfected as a result of pervasive corruption in the system cut across ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

    While budgeting is not limited to public/government alone as it cut across all human endeavours including individuals, organizations, and cooperate bodies etc., however, our focus here is on the public expenditure/finance management. Whether formal or informal, budget is a critical exercise of raising and allocating resources to attain the economic and social well being goals of the entity concerned. Thus, the term Budget as everybody knows “is an estimate of cost, revenue and resources over a specific period reflecting a reading of future financial condition and goals”. It must be noted that public budget is important because it enables the government to plan and manage its financial resources to support the implementation of various programmes and projects that best promote the development of the country. That’s why there is need for greater budget transparency and effective citizen-participation.

    In recent years, civil society organizations (CSOs) working around budget advocacy work in Nigeria have documented frivolous and wasteful expenditure running into several billions of naira from annual federal budget documents. In 2016, for instance, a saving of about N50 billion was recommended just from the budgets of six MDAs (Power, Interior, Communications, Information &Culture, Labour and Judiciary) of about one trillion naira sent to National Assembly. The purpose of annual budget will never be realized if the document is always laced with deliberate frivolities and wasteful expenditure which is just meant to grease private pockets. The little spending that ought to have been beneficial to the people in terms of provisions of much needed critical infrastructures, human capital development and pro-poor social interventions often suffer from inadequate release of funds, un-completed projects and outright abandonment! Excessive allocation of funds to non-priority projects is detriment to provision of critical infrastructural development and human capital development in the country.

    For how long are we to live with this deception? Yet our fiscal authorities from the executive and legislature arms of government have not demonstrated sufficient will to correct these abnormalities over the years. The budget office and the MDAs involved should top deceiving us. We don’t believe they are not aware of numerous deliberate corrupt practices associated with our budget process such as inflation of project funds, line items repetition or duplications and other frivolities in budget brought before them. If they claim ignorance, perhaps may be some of them do not know their onions which is not impossible since more often than not, we don’t employ people on merit but on the basis of nepotism and favoritism. There should be more effective checking of the budget proposals submitted for their scrutiny. If they need more hands, they should not hesitate to employ vibrant Nigerians who are ready to work, to reenergize the system.

    The National Assembly must ensure that duplications should be streamlined before any budget proposal is passed into law. Using different terms or phrases for the same project/ line item have become recurring events in our budget document. Budget office should stop MDAs from using different languages to describe same project. For budget credibility, there is acceptable margin of error beyond which repetitious line items or duplications would amount to deliberate inanity. This is the more reason the legislature must work collaboratively with CSOs across the country to help track frivolous and wasteful expenditure in order to eliminate repetitious or duplication of line items, which is one of the problems identified as bedeviling our budget template. No doing so would be disastrous and amount to abetting corruption through waste of scarce public resources.

    An experience from our analysis of 2016 Appropriation Act is illustrative. While N400 million was allocated for provision of “Water Supply Scheme in Kwara Central Senatorial District” (which the Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, represent) with the Code no LNRB001016544 for instance; another line item with same budgetary provision and project description is given a different Code no LNRBDA09016547. Yet other line items with Code Nos.: LNRBDA09016546 and LNRBDA09016527 for “Rehabilitation and Expansion of Water Works in Kwara Central Senatorial District” and “Water Supply Scheme and Erosion Control in Kwara Central Senatorial District” were allocated N300million and N350million respectively (see, Budget Factsheet, GDAC forthcoming). These are just few instances of many deliberate duplications and repetition of line items in 2016 Budget.

    Insertion of project or expenditure items without prior knowledge as to the cost of such items is also common in our budget. This amounts to price speculation without effective verification by the MDA concerned. As a matter of fact, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Bureau of Public Procurement and other concerned authorities should carry out field work in this area to ascertain and avoid further anomalies.

    A project approved in previous year is still seen listed as new project in subsequent years despite funding commitments. What happens to the money released in the previous years? Undoubtedly, our public budgets are frequently laced with irregularities, frivolities, wasteful expenditure, including budget padding as most MDAs have perfected the manipulation of our budgeting system to suit their selfish interests. In that sense, it helped overshoot our deficit financing, hindered the direction of available resources to critical capital projects. All these create serious setback for our national development aspiration.

    To minimize these abnormalities, there is need to expand capacity for CSOs participation in budget process. Lack of grassroots participation in budget analysis, tracking and monitoring of projects funded by public budget plays a lot in aiding corruption as little effort is often made to see the reality of what have been budgeted is effectively implemented. Increased grassroots budget literacy will thus play catalytic role in reducing corruption in our budgeting process at all levels of governance in the country.

     

    • Salman and Abdulrasaq are of Grassroots Development and Advocacy Centre

    Ilorin, Kwara State

  • Yoruba’s precarious future in Nigeria – 2

    Beyond any doubt, the Yorùbá have achieved a diaspora status that has cemented our world-historic profile. The Yorùbá culture has insinuated itself into the critical interstices of the world in transnational dimensions—Haiti, Brazil, USA, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Benin, Togo, and so on. The language and heritage has undergone several significant evolutions that strengthen the meaning of being Yorùbá. In a recent lecture in Nigeria, Prof. Toyin Falola, foremost African historian and Yorùbá scholar, delivered a lecture on the Yoruba factor in world history. The lecture detailed the enormous historical achievements of the Yorùbá in terms of their successful transplantation all over the world, the capacity of the Yorùbá culture to be represented in these different locations, the distinctive Òrìsà tradition of the Yorùbá, especially in the Americas, the integration of Yorùbá studies into the global academy, the Yorùbá healing system as a significant dimension that is helping to frame the discourse on alternative medicine in the world. And we can add that the Omolúwàbí value system stands as an emerging worldview with global significance.

    Thus, the Yorùbá culture has nothing to fear in terms of its significance in world cultural affair. The diasporic achievements of the Yorùbá are sufficient to assure us that the culture will still be alive and kicking for a long time to come. But this assurance does nothing to assuage the precarious existence of the Yorùbá people in Nigeria. The diasporic credentials of the Yorùbá culture, that is, does not in any way outline a political and socio-economic blueprint that will keep the Yorùbá relevant in the Nigerian national space. The Yorùbá ethno-national weight, instantiated in the six south-western states in Nigeria, is complemented by a strong Yorùbá spirit founded on several Yorùbá cultural elements—our republican political system, the Omolúwàbí ethos, the accommodationist or empathetic temperament, etc. But all these are not sufficient to turn the table against an imminent political irrelevance in national affairs in Nigeria. The Yorùbá needs a resounding game plan that would be strong enough to transform national governance thinking in Nigeria, and that has the same objective of repositioning the Yorùbá for a better deal in the Nigerian national space.

    The agitation for a sovereign national conference has grown stale. So also is the advocacy for a true federalism which presents an enormous constitutional challenge no government is willing to confront. Even Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a formidable Yorùbá president, was unwilling to initiate even a modicum of restructuring. And no one should grudge his unwillingness. Abraham Lincoln preferred to wage a war over the unity of the United States of America! I have argued before that the call for secession and the formation of the Oduduwa State is not sufficiently pragmatic to succeed. Self-determination requires a pragmatic vision that will begin from a different premise and still achieve the same conclusion of making the Yorùbá a formidable force to be reckoned with in Nigeria. What remains therefore is the need to look inward. What is it about the Yorùbá that ensure their survival within the Nigerian space? Let us examine the Yorùbá republican status.

    The concept of a republic is a particularly difficult idea to unravel. One simple but terribly vague way of describing it is any form of government that revolves around the public good for the empowerment of the people. The republican idea, especially in Yorùbáland, speaks to a specific democratic intent in the election of the leadership. The lineage system constituted an electoral college that produced and elected the Oba and the chiefs. Each Baale represented a particular household, and a configuration of Baales represented specific lineage that elect the Oba and produce chiefs. And the political system itself is so circumscribed by a dynamics of checks and balances, the Ogboni, that ensured that the Oba ruled in the interest of the public good. An Oba with dictatorial tendencies was often forced to commit suicide (Ki o si igba wo; the Oba to open the ultimate mystery calabash). However, the whole essence of the republican idea is its governance element; the entire political culture and system is bent towards ensuring that the people benefitted from the best leadership intelligence that could put A, B and C together to produce a suitable framework of public good.

    When the ancestors invented the republican system, they may not have seen this far into the present predicament of the Yorùbá in Nigeria, but they gave us what we require to get our acts together and move forward. A republican mindset constitutes a sufficiently significant internal dynamism around which a new Yorùbá agenda could be grown. The Nigerian geopolitical configuration has produced six distinct geopolitical zones. The South-west is one of these zones, but with a large potential to becoming a regional power.

    Regionalism is a dream which has been kept in abeyance for too long. A Yorùbá regional entity is favoured by cultural, political, linguistic, administrative and even ideological factors. Indeed, regionalism seems to be the most fundamental framework for the expression of self-determination for the Yorùbá. Within a regional arrangement, we have the most plausible modus operandi for bypassing all the arguments against a sovereign national conference and the refusal to restructure in favour of a true federal system. In fact, a regional sociopolitical framework constitutes the softest landing the Yorùbá can have for transforming all their ideals of nationhood into reality without antagonizing the Nigerian national project. On the contrary, a regional arrangement incubates a very strong motivation for making Nigeria work. Within the context of constitutional allowance, the South-west can therefore initiate a system of fiscal responsibility, inter-state infrastructural cooperation and linkages, trade agreements and competitiveness, and regional policy initiatives that encourage regional development and progress. Essentially, therefore, regionalism in the South-west is economic regionalism. It involves the institutional arrangement that facilitate the free flow of goods and services around joint economic initiatives, like agricultures which is unique to the Yorùbá.

    This regional arrangement is a socioeconomic arrangement, and therefore ought to transcend the PDP-APC party cleavages. In other words, I doubt that it is naïve for an APC governor to initiate a policy agreement with a PDP governor on governance issues that affect the Yorùbá people in their domains. Luckily for the Southwest geopolitical zone, only Ondo and Ekiti states have PDP governments. The remaining four are APC. Thus, geographical contiguity and cultural affinity ought to make it easy for Ondo and Ekiti to cooperate on the development of a road network that will link the two states and enable seamless transportation of, say, agricultural produce. The same argument goes for Lagos and Ogun states, under APC governments. In all possibility, it should also be easy for Osun and Kwara state to initiate certain trade agreement that will involve the exchange of experts. All the South-west states stand the chance of initiating similar administrative reforms, especially around the cost of governance predicament that has prevented them from paying salaries for over six months.

    This regional arrangement in the South-west is not unique. The same thought applies to all the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The South-west is, fortunately, not an alien to this idea. We have the moribund ODUA investment group as well as the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) commission, a body set up to jumpstart the South-west regional integration agenda. These two initiatives allow us to make certain deductions. First, that the South-west has what it takes to facilitate a regional project that will positively sting the national project, and announce the significance of a truly federal Nigeria. We have the educational, professional and administrative wherewithal to compete, trade, and initiate development plans amongst ourselves, and the capacity to generate what is required. There are universities, trade zones, possibility for industrial parks, administrative blueprints, etc. We only need to just pull ourselves together and do what needs to be done. Second, there is however the challenge of an energetic political will to pull a regional agenda through its many complexities. One of its complex challenges will be the need to generate adequate revenue to back any economic plan across the regions. But this is not a challenge sufficiently critical to undermine a regional agenda, if we give our minds to pulling it off.

     

    • Dr. Olaopa is Executive Vice Chairman, Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP).