The Nation Newspaper

Tag: JNC

  • Federating units and suffering subjects: is the JNC in a quagmire of irrelevance? (2)

    Federating units and suffering subjects: is the JNC in a quagmire of irrelevance? (2)

    I ended last week’s beginning essay in this series with the assertion that the Jonathan National Conference (JNC) is premised upon and bases its deliberations entirely on one half of the story of federalism and its problems and challenges in Nigeria while completely ignoring the other half of the story. In the part of the story that drives all the deliberations at the JNC, we are told that the great problem with federalism in Nigeria in the last three or four decades is the fact that the center is too strong, too bloated, too “imperial” by contrast with the federating units comprising all the ethnic groups and religious communities of the country. But in the part of the story that is never told and has in fact been completely left out of the deliberations at the JNC, there is no “strong” centre in Nigerian political governance; where such a centre should be we find an extremely weak, mediocre and dysfunctional system that has been remarkably incapable of controlling itself let alone controlling all the challengers to its power and authority, be they political elites or marauding bandits and jihadists from the lowest social order. In this concluding piece in the series, I would like to start from this observation, this assertion of the two halves of the bitter and tragic story of federalism in our country.

    Every Nigerian knows only too well the first half of the story, together with its plotlines and themes. In the context of this discussion, let us highlight some of these plotlines and themes. First, the central government based at Abuja takes the lion’s share of oil wealth, the principal source of revenue for the country as a whole. Secondly, having done this, Abuja and its potentates then distribute what’s left to the states and the local governments of the federation. Nearly every month, all the states have to go cap in hand to Abuja to receive what the almighty centre gives to them within the terms of a sharing formula determined by the centre. Thirdly, the most important functions of governance, both within the country itself and in relation to the rest of the world, are exercised by this same central government. The armed forces, the police, the uniformed men and women guarding our borders, ports and airspace, together with public officials vested with powers to license companies, issues passports and travel documents, and certify the legal existence of  voluntary and civil society organizations, they are all controlled by this same central government.

    Even if it is only one part of the story of the kind of federalism that has been entrenched in Nigeria since oil wealth replaced cash or export crops as the principal source of revenue in our country, this story is valid and is not without some merits. This is because even in countries like Turkey or Lesotho that are, for the most part, nearly ethnically and linguistically homogenous, control over such over-concentration of resources and power at the centre of governance is full of potential for abuse and misuse. In a multiethnic, multilingual and culturally diverse country like Nigeria, a center of governance that is so strong in relation to the federating units is nothing but a recipe for economic and social crises so deep, so endemic that the nation is forever on the brink of disintegration. This is why we have been through a bitter civil war whose aftermath and legacies still haunt us. This is why our ethnic, regional and religious differences are so heavily politicized that it is part of normal political discourse for threats of war and catastrophe to be issued in the name of the diverse ethnic communities of the country. Finally, this is why 2015, the year of the next cycle of presidential, state and local elections in our country, has emerged as yet another horizon of great fear and anxiety about the survival of the country as a federation. This particular point brings us to the profile of the other half of the story of federalism in Nigeria in the last three or four decades.

    It takes no great powers of observation and discernment to see that where there is said to be a strong and imperial center in political governance in our country, there is a bottomless pit of weakness, ineptitude and mediocrity of the highest order. The signs and expressions of this state of affairs are legion. All the incumbents of the presidency since the return to formal democracy in 1999 have been exceptionally weak and indecisive in their execution of all the things that matter in the processes of governance. Yar’ Adua was at first satirically given the nickname of “Baba Go Slow”. By the time of his death while still in office, that nickname had been changed to “Baba Standstill”. Jonathan, as the whole world knows, is so clueless about how to contain challenges to his authority both within his party, the PDP and from other sources outside the formal or “legitimate” governing process that his wife has emerged as the “strongest” person in his administration. But far from being perceived as a “strong” person, she is for the most part seen as an object of ridicule and derision.

    Some might exclude Obasanjo from this pattern of weakness, mediocrity and ineptitude in the supposedly “strong” centre at Abuja, but this is only because they mistake his blustering, vindictive and megalomaniacal style of governance with strength and decisiveness. For in all the things that matter and matter greatly, Obasanjo was as weak as Yar’ Adua and Jonathan. At the beginning of his presidency, he boasted that inadequate and epileptic supply of power would be a thing of the past within two years; at the end of his two terms in office eight years later, the billions of dollars that he poured into the project had produced no change in power supply in the country because he simply could not deliver on this promise. The two elections that he supervised as President stand as the worst in brazen fraudulence, violence and vote rigging in the country’s political history. As a final measure of his ultimate weakness and ineptitude in things that really matter, there is the evidence of the failure of Obasanjo’s well publicized campaign against corruption, even though he had much help from the credibility and charisma and of his anti-corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu.

    Dear reader, please remember this particular anticlimax to Obasanjo’s anti-corruption crusade: In the year 2006, he went to war with his Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, over allegations of corruption which Obasanjo backed up with a surfeit of documentary evidence; Atiku did not deny the charges; he simply countered with charges of Obasanjo’s own corruption that Atiku also backed up with copious documentary evidence published in prominent advertorials in the national press. After this, stories began to circulate both about Obasanjo’s own corruption and his embrace of the campaign against corruption, not because he was fundamentally against corruption, but as a tool against his real and imagined foes. No, Obasanjo was not a “strong” leader in the things that mattered; he was merely a pompous praetorian autocrat dressed in the garb of a born-again civilian democrat.

    It is not as difficult as it seems to bring these two contradictory halves of the tragic and also farcical story of federalism in our country together to form a whole. The basic requirement is that one must see that the fight for equality of opportunities and access to power and resources must be made simultaneously on two fronts: one, between all the federating ethnic groups and communities in the country; two, between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots of all the communities in the land. If you concentrate on only one of these two fronts, your perception of the problems and challenges of federalism in our country will be skewed toward either the one or the other of the two halves of the story – a strong centre with weak federating units; or a weak and ineffectual centre that cannot guarantee, in a land flowing with oil wealth, even the barest minimum of the basic necessities of life to the vast majority of Nigerians in every part of the country.

    I would like to end these observations and reflections by using the example of the bitter opposition between the so-called “Core North” and the South-south as a way of bringing the two fragmented halves of the story of federalism in our country together. At the JNC confab, these two groups are the most antagonistic, the most seemingly irreconcilable on the issue of fiscal and administrative federalism. The “South-south” which more or less corresponds to the Niger Delta wants the share of the revenue that comes to it from oil wealth to be increased significantly; and it wants greater autonomy in resource control. All this boils down to a centre that is weaker than what we have now. In contrast to these positions, the “Core North” wants to abolish the principle of derivation in the sharing of our oil revenues; for this reason, it wants the “strong” centre of governance in Abuja to be preserved or even strengthened. Well, it so happens that these regions are the two poorest and most economically depressed areas of the country. The years and decades of a strong grip on power at the centre by the political elites of the “Core North” has enriched a few hundreds of enormously wealthy and powerful people but has done nothing to improve present conditions of life and prospects for the future for the vast majority of the peoples of the region. In the “South-south” the same pattern is beginning to emerge: the struggles of the militants of the Niger Delta, together with the principle of derivation, has brought untold wealth to a handful of people while the great majority of the peoples of the region continue to live in conditions of unimaginable immiseration and deprivation. Thus, the delegates from these two areas of the country should be natural allies, not bitter foes. But this is only on the condition that the “federalism” they are fighting for is a federalism founded on the solid rock of justice, with equality of opportunities and access to the necessities of life for all, not just for elites speaking for and on behalf of “federating” ethnic groups and regional communities while all the time cornering the good things of this life for themselves, their families and their cronies.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Federating units and suffering subjects: is the JNC in a quagmire of irrelevance? (1)

    Federating units and suffering subjects: is the JNC in a quagmire of irrelevance? (1)

    The Jonathan National Conference (JNC) is not a people’s national conference. That was always clear, right from the announcement of the intention to convoke the conference to the determination of its agenda and the selection of the delegates to the confab. Men and women of conscience who are known to be progressive and patriotic that were selected as delegates had a hard time justifying acceptance of their selection. Now, more than ever, the confab, the JNC, is in a deep quandary. With the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram, the whole world’s attention is focused on Nigeria to a degree that is unprecedented. In that focus of the world’s attention on our country and its crises, nothing stands out more than the revelation of the weakness, ineptitude and total cluelessness of our government in its response to this particular crisis of the abducted children and, more generally, the security of life in our country. I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, the JNC, meeting on the fate of our country at this particular moment when the whole world is watching events in Nigeria has not, as a body, made any statement on the Chibok abductions. If it has and I can be directed to the place where such a statement was published, I will stand corrected.

    But this is not the real or main point of this article. Its main point is this: the central premise of the confab, of the JNC, is that we have a national government at Abuja, at the centre, that is too strong in comparison with the relative weakness of the federating states and zones of the country. But what the crisis precipitated by the Chibok abductions has shown to us in Nigeria and the whole world is that the central government, especially as concentrated in the presidency, is weak, indecisive and inept beyond belief. Right now as I write these words, you-tube videos of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan – as the “strongest” person in the Jonathan administration – have gone viral on the internet. And the videos show not a strong and decisive person but a blundering, inarticulate figure of great ridicule. As for the President himself, he has never looked more utterly lacking in will, resolve and credibility as the ruler of the largest country on the African continent.   Thus, the JNC is caught on the horns of a dilemma, a contradiction it cannot resolve: its founding, driving premise is that the centre of governance in Nigeria is too strong, too imperial and imperious; but the whole world now knows – as many in our country have known for a long time – that what passes for a strong centre of governance in our country is actually very weak, very lackluster, and very mediocre. What is the basis of this contradiction in which the JNC finds itself trapped, perhaps inextricably?

    It is important to address this question with the greatest clarity possible. The JNC is premised fundamentally on reinventing federalism in our country in order to bring the benefits of federating, plural democracy to all the constituent parts of the country. Stated in this manner, there is nothing wrong at all with this idea; indeed, it a very worthwhile project. However, all federations in history past and present are made up not only of the federating units but also and perhaps more fundamentally, the subjects or persons that constitute the human and demographic majority of the given federation. Let us repeat this observation with as much emphasis as possible: without the living, working, suffering human beings in the federating units of any federal system in the world, a federation is little more than an abstraction. For this reason, federations must necessarily always look simultaneously at the federating units and the human beings that people those units. With this historic and normative context in mind, it is easy to see that the JNC confab is extraordinary in the extent to which, at least so far, it has for the most part ignored the suffering subjects that make up the human reality of the states and zones that make up our currently extremely imperfect federal system. Let me explain with a few telling illustrations.

    From reports of deliberations so far at the JNC confab, together with published interviews with some leading or very articulate delegates to the confab, it appears that fiscal and administrative relationships between the centre and the federating states and zones are being reorganized along the lines of taking some of the over-concentrated power and resources from the centre and giving them to the states and communities in the hinterland of the country. Well so far, so good: more financial resources and more responsibility for governance will go to the states. But the resources and power that will go to the federating units, will they be used for the benefit of the human communities of the federating states? There is not a word, not a policy or constitutional provision for this at the JNC confab. The feeling one gets is that the delegates conflate one with the other: more resources and administrative muscle for the states with better conditions of work, amenities and security of life and possessions for the people. But this is completely specious: that governors and chairmen of local government councils will get more resources and responsibilities will not automatically mean that life will become better for our peoples in states and local government areas across the country. As a matter of fact, the near total silence of the JNC on the actual living conditions and realities of our peoples is an eloquent indication that all the talk at the confab about fiscal and administrative federalism leaves completely intact the existing institutions, policies, practices and norms that vastly enrich our political and economic elites at the expense of the poor, the looted and the marginalized majority of the population in our country. A brief illustration of this observation, this claim is perhaps necessary.

    Well, perhaps it would have been hoping for too much to have expected that the JNC would have a committee on corruption, waste and mismanagement of resources on the colossal scale in which the whole world perceives their incidence in our country. With regard to politics, economy, society and morality in our country at the present moment in history, this is the number one issue. And indeed, how could any national conference in our country at the present time not have such a committee as one of its most crucial working sub-groups of delegates? But of course, no such committee, no such working sub-group emerged at the JNC. And for that very reason, all talk at the confab on corruption has been couched in generalities that do not touch on any actual cases and expressions of corruption and squandermania. The 2.5 trillion naira that vanished with the oil subsidy mega-scam of 2011? Not a word about it. The humungous salaries and jumbo allowances that members of our National Assembly enjoy while over 70% of Nigerians live below the absolute poverty line of $2 (or N320 naira) a day? Not a word about it. The President’s fleet of 12 planes that cost millions of dollars a year to maintain? Not a word about it. The billions of dollars that recently vanished from the account of the NNPC leaving no apparent trail behind? Not a word about it. The statement credited to Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the British newsmagazine, The Economist, that corruption and squandermania in Nigeria being so monumental she would be quite satisfied if, at the end of her current tenure as Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, she was able to achieve 4% clean up of the vast bog of wastage and looting? Not a word about it.

    No, compatriots, there has been no concrete talk whatsoever at the JNC on corruption and the corrupt. All the talk has been in broad, non-specific generalities. As a matter of fact, the committee that should have been named “Committee on Corruption, Waste and Squandermania” but was instead named “Committee on Politics and Governance” co-chaired by Professor Jerry Gana and Chief Olu Falae came up with a recommendation which it touted as the ultimate answer to official corruption in Nigeria. What was this recommendation? It is the removal of the so-called “immunity clause” in the 1999 Constitution that protects the President and Governors from prosecution for any crimes while they are in office. I was totally nonplussed when I read about this. Has prosecution of public officials in our country made the slightest dent on the scale of corruption in Nigeria? Do not public officeholders and other wealthy and powerful figures in Nigeria notoriously and endlessly delay the dispensation of justice in our law courts through the corruption that exists in the judicial system itself?

    A bloated, strong and imperial center confronting weak, often humiliated federating units to the detriment of true federalism and equality and unity between the different parts of our country: that is the central assumption of the JNC confab. But this is only half of the story. In the other half, that “strong” and “imperial” centre is actually extremely weak, ineffective and dysfunctional. And this is not only with regard to the present incumbent of the presidency and his administration. With all his characteristic bluster and bullish exercise of power, Obasanjo was actually very weak and indecisive in the things that matter the most in the present circumstances and future prospects of our country. For like all the other heads of state before and after him in our country, he presided over a predatory political order that could not impose discipline within its own ranks let alone on the forces of resentment and disunity, from above and from below. In next week’s concluding essay in this series, we shall take off from this proposition as we look at the JNC confab and its contradictions, even with the brilliant and progressive minds within its ranks.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Two faces of JNC

    Two faces of JNC

    Since I have consistently and vehemently denounced the whole idea of the Jonathan National Conference (JNC) in this space as diversionary, superfluous and wasteful, the temptation would be to seek to find nothing but fault with the proceedings thus far. That would hardly be fair. For instance, the sometimes contentious, bitter, and divisive exchanges at the JNC are unavoidable and quite inevitable among a congregation of 492 delegates representing a multiplicity of interests in such a diverse and complex country as Nigeria.

    Even if at the end of the day, nothing concrete comes of the JNC, it would at least have served to remind us of the depth of the differences that fracture the country. But then, do we need to squander over N7 billion on a three month talk-shop to realize the obvious? Do the daily butcheries of Boko Haram not blaze our vulnerabilities from the roof tops? How about the rampaging Fulani herdsmen who routinely despatch innocent souls to early graves?

    What about the scourge of corruption that has reached unprecedented heights particularly under the very administration that has convened the JNC?  Remember Stella Oduah and the scandalous procurement of two armoured cars for N255 million. It took four months to ease her most gracefully and honourably out of office when the scandal would not go away.

    Recall Diezanni Alison-Madueke and Her Worshipful Majesty’s continued silence on the alleged squandering of N10 billion on luxurious chartered flights. The alleged missing $20 billion from the coffers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as well as stupendous fuel subsidy and kerosene subsidy heists are other dazzling jewels around the neck of this graceful Amazon. Our amiable President will certainly ‘do the needful’ as regards his Petroleum Minister on the recommendation of the JNC. Perhaps, he is constitutionally incapacitated to act before then.

    Don’t forget Abba Moro who presided over a creative job recruitment exercise that reaped a bountiful N700million for a private consultant from about 700,000 desperate youths chasing less than 5000 jobs with 19 dead and several others injured in the process. Surely, we need a resolution of the JNC to remove this man from office and bring all those involved in this heinous crime to justice.

    How about the daily atrocities of kidnapping, armed robbery and cultism turning the entire country into a veritable wasteland? Must we mention the sore of dilapidated public infrastructure that stare obscenely and mockingly at us across the country? Yes, the convening of the JNC is most necessary to spur President Goodluck Jonathan, our state governors and Local Government chairmen to diligently fulfil the constitutional obligation of their offices and implement the myriad of projects for which billions of Naira are budgeted annually.

    Meanwhile, no patriotic Nigerian can blame President Jonathan for not doing his best. At least, when he is not addressing PDP ‘unity rallies’ in different states, or addressing global audiences, Dr Jonathan is frequently at various church services praying fervently for the nation. With God nothing shall be impossible – not even somebody’s re-election in 2015.

    And to show his commitment to the on-going revolutionary Transformation Agenda, our President and the affectionate Dame Patience were recently in far-away Rome to seek formidable Papal reinforcement for their local spiritual endeavours. Surely, it is well with Nigeria.

    It seems to me that there are two faces of the JNC gradually emerging. One is the face of the old and discredited Nigeria best illustrated by the outburst of the Lamido of Adamawa, Muhammadu Barkindo Mustapaha, in reaction to the then tense debate on the voting formula to be adopted during deliberations.  In addition to threatening that the Northern delegates could walk out of the conference if the 75% voting formula was not upheld, the Lamido reminded his audience that his kingdom extends to neighbouring Cameroun and he can easily relocate to that country if Nigeria disintegrates.

    Unfortunately, those like the respected Sir Olanihun Ajayi who responded to Muhammadu Mustapha implicitly agreed with the Lamido that the latter was indeed speaking for the North. Nothing could be more untrue. Yes, the Lamido Adamawa may have been speaking for those of the northern delegates at the JNC who agree with his position. He lacks the legitimacy or authority to speak for some nebulous north.

    If Northern delegates carried out the Lamido’s threat of staging a walk out from the conference, the JNC would simply collapse and life would go on. The JNC is so famished of legitimacy that if it is scrapped tomorrow, absolutely nothing would happen.

    Neither Alhaji Muhammadu Mustapha nor Sir Olanihun Ajayi can legitimately claim to be speaking for any part of this country. They are at best only expressing personal opinions or those of the respective elite cartels which sponsored them to the confab.  The lack of electoral legitimacy is a fundamental problem with the JNC.

    Which North is the Lamido Adamawa representing at the JNC? He is at best speaking for the exploitative, parasitic and visionless northern elite of which the traditional institution is an integral part. He can most certainly not claim to speak for the peasant farmers, petty traders, Fulani herdsmen, Almajiris and other oppressed elements that have been victims of the Northern establishment in post-colonial Nigeria.

    As Alhaji Balarabe Musa so poignantly put it as Governor of Kaduna State on Tuesday, 22nd June, 1981, “Our state is at the heartland of the northern parts of this country in every sense of history and culture- economically and politically. But we do not belong to the retrograde north of feudalists, slave-holders, crooks, parasites and foreign agents. We are of the cultured north of democracy, liberation and social progress for all the people of Nigeria”.

    Any wonder Balarabe Musa is not a ‘representative’ of the ‘north’ at the JNC?

    The second, more progressive and encouraging face of the conference is symbolised by the activist lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), whose contribution on the floor was characteristically incisive and patriotic. In his words “Jonathan’s National Conference provides the country a window of opportunity for us to find why majority of our people are poor and why a tiny minority of Nigerians smile to the bank. The country is collapsing. Many of the people who contributed to the mess are here. They must tell us it is their fault…The members of the ruling class is the group that engages in pen robbery, which is worse than armed robbery. Let us advise President Jonathan that he still has over a year to put Nigeria in the right place. Who says that the country cannot break? A Minister has just made N700 million from helpless Nigerians. It is the worst case of robbery, extorting money from jobless Nigerians. Nigerians have rights, the right for employment and others which must be protected”.

    And in his last Thursday’s column in Vanguard newspaper, another credible member of the JNC, Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, wrote of attempts to forge a coalition of representatives of labour, the media, youth and progressive intellectuals at the conference. This is “to help sweep the carpet off the feet of the regionalist and sectional agendas that have always proven divisive and are always going to heat up the process as we move forward. These, in the main, have been the life-long agendas of old men, many of them in their eighties and late seventies. They are stuck in a time warp and in my view are far removed from the real issues which Nigerians can unite around.”

    There are certainly interesting times ahead at the JNC as the new forces of youth and change gear up to confront the old forces of division and retrogression. Should the former triumph, the JNC report would most likely end up in the waste paper basket but the point would have been well made.

  • Ondo workers protest against contributory pension bill

    Ondo workers protest against contributory pension bill

    Government activities were yesterday stalled for several hours in Akure, the Ondo State Capital, as civil servants in the state staged a peaceful

    protest against the bill on Contributory Pension Scheme forwarded to the State House of Assembly by Governor Olusegun Mimiko.

    The workers locked all government offices as early as 8.00 am.

    They thereafter invaded the State House of Assembly complex on Igbatoro

    road, Akure in protest against the bill recently forwarded to the House by the governor.

    The workers had last week threatened to block every road leading to the Assembly and ensure that there was no access to the venue of the Public hearing on the bill which was slated for yesterday.

    They had vowed to use every legal to fight government, including grounding all government activities if what they described as “hurried and forceful commencement of implementation of the scheme” without their consent was not reversed.

    The workers in a letter written by the Joint Negotiation Committee (JNC), that the scheme was a fraudulent means of enslaving the entire workforce in the state.

    Titled: Are we save in Our Own State?,the workers accused the Office of the Head of Service(HoS) colluding with the state government to enslave the entire workers.

    The workers noted that the circular issued by the state government on

    March,4 had showed the true colour of the present administration in the

    state, which they said had been full of policy pretension and not genuinely disposed to workers welfare.

    Ondo JNC maintained that the law establishing the scheme allows it to be

    domesticated by each state with input from stakeholders, especially workers in the state public service.

    The workers who were sceptical about the genuineness of the state government on the scheme, called on the government to show proof of evidence that the employer (government) was fully prepared to pay its own monthly share of the contribution as well as the actual valuation before implementation could commence in the State.

     

     

    They said this was necessary to avoid the ugly scenario whereby employers in some states allegedly did not only refuse to pay their own share, but embezzled the amount contributed by workers.

    Addressing workers at the Assembly premises, the HoS, Toyin Akinkuotu, said the contributory pension scheme is a matter of law which was enacted in 2004 with the aim to assist the entire workers in the country to save towards their retirement day.

    He said, “We are proposing that Ondo State will now constitute their own Pension Commission which will coordinate every other existing pension board in the various state agencies and organisations”.

    Akinkuotu pleaded with the labour union that the proposal of government on the scheme would take off as soon as the economy of the state improves, promising that the government will be faithful on its part.

    According to him, government would increase its contribution, saying government will be paying 12.5 per cent as bound.

    He urged the workers to think critically about the age grade of 50 years which he said is in the interest of the labour, but if they think their agitation for 45 years should be the yardstick, then government would have no choice than to follow suit.