The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Reflections

  • Reflections on Babalakin’s birthday

    Interestingly, about a week before Dr. Wale Babalakin turned 57 on July 1, Public-Private Partnership (PPP) grabbed the headlines once again as the National Assembly responded to an allegation by  the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, that the federal lawmakers had unlawfully redesigned the proposed 2017 budget.

    The Senate, in a statement by its Chairman, Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, said: “It was agreed that we should give the Private Finance Initiative a chance to complement government’s resources in the delivery of critical infrastructure assets across the country.”   The Senate further said: “We are looking for private funds for some of these roads, particularly those with high potential of attracting private investors. These include the Enugu-Onitsha road, Kano-Abuja road and Abuja-Lokoja road. It has been our hope that the Lagos -Ibadan road would be a model for private sector funding of infrastructure in the country.”

    It is noteworthy that the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway has been a road of controversy, especially following the Goodluck Jonathan administration’s 2012 termination of a concession agreement with Bi-Courtney Highways Services Limited (BCHSL), which was supposed to reconstruct and manage the toll road. The past government alleged that the company failed to make progress on actualising the objective of the concession four years after the agreement signed with a preceding administration.

    According to the company, “BCHSL won the concession to reconstruct and manage the toll road for 25 years. It’s a Design, Build, Operate and Transfer (DBOT) arrangement.” The company proudly declared that it rebuilt the Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA2) in Lagos “against all odds,”  adding,  ”It is the first airport in Africa to be owned by a private company on a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis, the first of its kind in Nigeria, and it was delivered far ahead of schedule.” MMA2 reportedly handled 20 million passengers and 400, 000 flights in 10 years.

    It is also noteworthy that in the same week airport terminal operator Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL) celebrated the 10th anniversary of MMA 2 in May, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo declared that public-private partnership was important and inevitable for the country’s economic growth. Osinbajo said at the Third Presidential Quarterly Business Forum at the old Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja: “The real challenge is how to efficiently and faithfully implement these great ideas. I think for effective delivery, this partnership with the private sector is undoubtedly the way to go.”

    The MMA2 anniversary was a fitting time to highlight the minuses that dampened the celebration. The company’s chairman, Babalakin, shed light on the negatives when he spoke to reporters about the government’s contractual infidelity. Babalakin stated: “We got approval since 2007 to operate regional flights from MMA2, but the relevant authorities are frustrating our efforts. We could trace it to both the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). It is the airlines that are affected, because they burn aviation fuel moving their aircraft from MMA2 to the international terminal. This would not arise if they had allowed us to operate regional flights from MMA2.”

    A report said Babalakin “urged the Federal Government to pay over N200 billion” to BASL “for failing to hand over the old domestic terminal, otherwise known as General Aviation Terminal (GAT), Lagos.”  According to the report, “Babalakin said the payment was necessary after BASL was awarded damages by the Federal High Court to the tune of over N132 billion in 2012. He said the amount increased to N200 billion, owing to the revenue the terminal operator would have collected as revenue for flights and other commercial activities at the old domestic terminal.”

    Babalakin explained: “As far back as 2012, the Federal High Court awarded damages of N132 billion to Bi-Courtney Airways Limited. Six appeals against the judgment in the Court of Appeal have been dismissed. Even the appeal to the Supreme Court was also dismissed. No nation can truly achieve its potential, if it treats its dynamic citizens this way.”

    There is no doubt about Babalakin’s dynamism. Equipped with a doctorate in Law, Babalakin, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), is also a big player in the business world. Further evidence of his dynamism: “On 7th April 2017, Dr. Babalakin, SAN was appointed as the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of the University of Lagos (UNILAG);  On 6 January 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Dr. Babalakin as Chairman of the Federal Government Committee to Re-negotiate the 2009 Agreement between FG and the University Unions.”

    It is worth mentioning that Babalakin is also a striking philanthropist. Among his philanthropic projects: “Donated an 80-bed hostel to the University of Ilorin in the name of his father, Justice Bolarinwa Oyegoke Babalakin; Donated a 500-seater auditorium to the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic in memory of his late mother, Mrs. Ramotu Ibironke Babalakin; Treated 4000 patients with various eye diseases in Owo Local Government under the Foundation set up in memory of his late mother.”

    Babalakin was a qualified speaker on the problematisation of public-private partnership in the country at last year’s Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, where he shared some of his company’s experiences in connection with the Murtala Mohammed Airport Domestic Terminal 2, Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi, and Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. His group is controversially enmeshed in disagreements connected with concession agreements with the Federal Government on these particular subjects. Guided by personal experience, Babalakin listed the enemies of progress when it comes to  public-private partnership in Nigeria: the attitude of the government, lack of respect for sanctity of contracts and the rule of law, lack of investor security, corruption and malice.

    It will take much more than words to achieve public-private partnerships that work; and it is only when such collaborations work that the country can enjoy the benefits. The PPP model has worked in the development of sectors such as energy, mining, transportation and telecommunications in other countries.  In Western Europe and U.S.A., for example, private investors are involved in infrastructure development based on concession agreements.

    It is interesting that the Federal Government announced plans to concession 22 airports. “We are grateful to Allah that our eye-opening effort had led to the upgrading of some airports in Nigeria and the decision of the Federal Government to concession airports,” Babalakin said. It remains to be seen whether the process and the outcome of the agreements would advance public-private partnership.

    Babalakin’s promotion of public-private partnership prompts reflections as he celebrates his 57th birthday.

  • Personal reflections on Biafra

    The Nigerian polity is currently heated. Apart from  President Muhammadu Buhari’s health challenge, which has virtually relegated him to the background, there are renewed agitations for an independent State of Biafra.

    Not only that, there is unease in the Middle Belt state of Benue, where leaders of Fulani cattle breeders associations are vowing to disobey anti-open grazing law made by the state. They have even gone a notch higher to claim that they are the original inhabitants of the Benue valley and are involved in a struggle to assume control of its natural resources. Since then, the Benue people and government have been kicking, urging the Federal Government to call the Fulani herdsmen to order and thwart their occupation agenda.

    Back to Biafra. An Igbo group has reportedly given the Federal Government six months to conduct a referendum in Biafran ‘territory’ on its independence from the rest of the federation. In response, a coalition of youth organisations in the North under the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) ordered the Igbo out of Northern part of the country, giving them October 1 ultimatum to leave. The group also urged Northerners living in Biafran ‘territory’ to leave by the same deadline.

    While Nigerians are reacting in various ways on the social media and elsewhere, the Federal Government has dismissed the eviction notice served the Igbo. Kaduna State governor, in whose domain the Arewa youth declaration was made, ordered the arrest and prosecution of all signatories to the war-mongering document. The Northern Governors Forum (NGF) also condemned the eviction notice by the Arewa youth. The Emir of Katsina openly assured the Igbo in Katsina of their safety.

    But, every Northern group that matters has not come out to openly condemn the eviction notice. The Northern Elders Forum, for instance, has refused to call the Arewa youths to order. Its leader, Prof Ango Abdullahi, reportedly told newsmen that the forum would not condemn the declaration until Igbo elders condemn agitations for Biafra. At the moment, the Igbo are caught up between whether to succumb to the Arewa threat or put their trust in the assurances of the government.

    While these issues have become deeply entrenched emotional flashpoints in our federation, a peaceful way forward cannot be articulated without a proper impartial evaluation. Agitators for Biafra have made their point again and again – they are feeling sidelined in the Nigerian project and also feeling being victimised in national affairs since the Civil War.

    Consequently, following the failure of the Federal Government to reassure the Igbo through dialogue and appropriate policy adjustments, they prefer an independent state of their own. The truth is, Nigeria has always responded only superficially to the complaints of the Igbo. For the most part we have responded by reminding them that they ought to be content with their lot since it has not been very long since they fought to secede from the federation. We have continued to treat every agitation of the Igbo with suspicion and sometimes frank animosity. The body language of most Nigerians seems to show they are tired of the Igbo. However, for not very clear reasons, they don’t want the Igbo to leave.

    The Igbo may have become rather popular for agitation, but the remaining regions of the country are not doing much different. In the Middle Belt, indigenes are vehemently expressing their tiredness about putting up with Fulani herdsmen who have no apparent regard for law and order, and also human life. The indigenes are equally not amused by the Federal Government’s lack of a firm policy on the Fulani phenomenon and are desirous of an arrangement that will give them more control over their affairs.

    The Southwest has made it very clear that in the event of the secession of Biafra, it will also automatically cease to be part of the federation. Elsewhere, there is a consensus that, as the country is currently constituted, it cannot achieve equity in administration of resources and political power.

    Therefore, the truth is that the Biafran agitation is not an isolated pathology by itself. Instead, it is only the chief complaint of a nation with multiple pathologies. The scientific thing to do is not to try to suppress it, but to do a thorough search into the history and conduct investigation in order to properly diagnose what the problem is.

    Notwithstanding the narrative that best appeals to our side of the dispute, we must realise that the way forward requires us to look objectively at our position and see the excesses in our own proposition. For example, we cannot pretend that Nigeria has been fair to the Igbo. The country has not.

    Since the civil war, an Igbo man has carried the stigma of a betrayer. This notion exists not only in political circles; we hear in our daily interactions with the Igbo on social media and across the several markets in this country.

    At the slightest provocation, the rest of us have often told the Igbo to “go home”, as though they belonged to a different country. Be that as it may, the Igbo must also realise that constant agitation for secession has considerably worn-off the goodwill of Nigerians. Particularly, they must recognise that there is no armed solution to this problem. It failed in the past and has no potential to succeed in the present. The language and approach of the Biafran agitation must reflect sober reality.

    All Nigerians must realise that we owe ourselves the truth. We cannot totally avoid one another even if every region becomes an independent state. At best, we will be neighbours to one another, still having to deal with cross border security, trade and citizen diplomacy. Since only partial separation is possible – and total separation is not desirable even if it were feasible – why don’t we try to achieve a new structural configuration that provides just enough separation while retaining unity in other areas?

    This will enable each region to develop at its pace and establish such legal and cultural structures that suit the aspirations of its people without causing or attracting offense from other regions. The means of attaining this configuration may be difficult, but we are better-off if our conversation is focused on it than on the self-destroying allures of secession.

     

    Msonter, 500-Level Medicine and Surgery, BSU Makurdi

  • Reflections on women empowerment

    Today, the global movement to give meaningful improvement to the circumstances of the female sex has indeed gathered a most remarkable momentum! Thinking positively, it is definitely leading somewhere good. This well-defined and focused global movement seeks to get more women involved in politics and governance; create more avenues for women to be able to invest and thus establish their presence in business and commerce; demand for such legislation that will protect their fundamental rights, peculiar interests, welfare and freedom!
    It must be acknowledged that in public life, as well as in business and commerce, women have been able to strikingly make their marks in terms of personal industry, professional competence and business acumen. What we must remind ourselves of is that women are by no means inferior intellectually to their male counterparts. We have had female astronauts, neurosurgeons, cardiologists, and nuclear engineers etc. to confirm this point. And truly, what is primarily needed in all these professional and highly technical disciplines is the trained human intellect and in this connection, they have recorded splendid and remarkable achievements.
    However, when placard-carrying women now march, sometimes in inclement weather on the streets of New York, London or Abuja (and at other places) demanding for more opportunities in political and economic spheres, then the procession catches the “Eye” of their Creator. The question He will forthrightly ask is, how did they ever get themselves disempowered in the first place; and who was responsible? This is because if womanhood had remained faithfully aligned with the spiritual pathway of their Creator’s Will and His wise Providence, they will not be looking for empowerment in the wrong direction and hoping to achieve it in the wrong place. The awesome Creator of the Woman (who created the male sex as well) can justifiably ask these two questions! This is because in Providential perfection, He had bequeathed the being of every human-woman, with a prime spiritual-essence which eternally empowers her in multi-dimensional ways and no human hand and might, can ever dispossess her of this gracious gift, except herself.
    At the Hour of reckoning…outside and beyond this earth, her Creator will ask her to give account of what she did with the sacred gift which she had largely abused and misapplied; and not the “success” she had achieved in corporate bodies or in political governance. For the human-woman, prioritizing high corporate appointment as her goal in life actually amounts to looking in the wrong direction; and succeeding in getting key political appointment, is actually being in the wrong place. It will be insensitive and uncharitable however, not to acknowledge the many economic exigencies along the line, that have compelled women, having to justifiably fend for themselves and thereby activating, as it were, their natural self-preservative instincts in this connection. This is only natural.
    Woman, know thyself and unto thyself be true! This admonition of old was generally addressed to all human beings, but it is more apt for it to be addressed pointedly to the women of our times, in their present stance of unrelenting empowerment advocacy! Looking at it from the higher spiritual standpoint (i.e from above), it is inexplicably paradoxical and curious that this specially endowed creature, known and called WOMAN and who incidentally has superior and subtly domineering power (for good) within her being (which she is presently lost to) is plaintively advocating for more allotment of spaces in government cabinets and board rooms, where in real terms, she can only wield less incisive and pervading power. The long and short of this very important matter is that womankind on earth is already caught in the sticky web of a crippling spiritual disconnect.
    It is a saddening and sobering fact that the fateful spiritual disconnect which occurred with the well-known spiritual “Fall of Man” led womankind to being fatally exposed to such exhausting challenges, which were not pre-ordained for them to face and contend with, in the first place. Today, as earlier mentioned, economic exigencies in the family set-up have expediently compelled women to go out and earn a living; and having to experience all the abrasions, trauma, assaults and intense struggles that are unavoidable in this connection and literally tearing her apart. But all these earthly exigencies and compelling challenges do not and cannot obliterate or override the inexorable lawfulness that beautifully frame the very being of the woman, regarding her ordained spiritual responsibility. First of all, to the Will of her Maker; and then the human community on earth that they were ordained by the Creative Will to ceaselessly mediate uplifting strength to.
    Let us now ask the empowerment-seeking womankind; how do they see pornography or the nauseous phenomenon of prostitution in the human society? Pornography pictorially shreds into distinct pieces, the anatomy and physical frame of the woman; and presenting this pictorial dismemberment gleefully on magazine stands at city centres. All external parts of the woman’s body (which is sacred) are alluringly featured to feed the minds of those reading-consumers, whose minds have indeed become the cesspit of filthiest lust. The question – what kind of hunger really does the nakedness of the woman satisfy? And prostitution…often referred to as one of the oldest professions, pointedly mocks the inviolability of the God-endowed dignity and honour that should adorn the physical body of the woman! Sexual intercourse is the most intimate physical relationship between the two sexes. Meaningful and mutually enriching spiritual relationship is ideally to precede it! A prostitute invariably sleeps with men she has never seen or met before; charges a price that is subject to negotiations at times…and off they go! Most times they may never see or meet again, as it often happens with animals!
    Whether the generality of contemporary womankind agrees or not…Womanhood is haemorrhaging and badly too! No matter what they have achieved, either as a professor in Harvard, MIT or Oxford; or as a cabinet minister wherever; their offspring could easily get caught in pornography as a youth and later become a loyal customer to a practicing whore! This obviously makes a nullity of whatever parental pride they want to lay claim to!
    So long, as this twin social vices thrive before the eyes of womankind, and they cannot find the initiative and courage to face its eradication, so long would womankind score a neat zero before their Maker. It is when a human creature leaves the earth and steps into the other world that all the sins of omission and commission take-on a different form; and the consequences having to be experienced, in a completely different scenario, like the case of the biblical rich man and Lazarus, when they both got to the other side!
    A mass movement of womankind can eradicate pornography and prostitution, if they want to and millions of genuinely concerned men will join the crusade! It will not be easy but it is realizable if they can look upwards to their Creator; and ask for the backing of His Omnipotence in the necessary sanitizing and edifying drive!
    A divinely sanctioned spiritual purification is insidiously taking place and going on, on this lust-stricken earth! The end result is to have a clean and pure spiritual air which pornography and prostitution blatantly pollute! Womanhood should not get caught on the wrong side, in this cosmic purification, but should be knowingly proactive (through spiritual knowledge) not for any reason, but for their own sake!
    A women-empowerment drive, while pornography and prostitution thrives is self-delusion, when considered from the standpoint of the adamantine Laws of the Creative Will…to which all womankind will be answerable at the end of the day. First thing first!

    •Faboya, a social commentator, lives in Lagos

  • Random Reflections

    There are times when a writer wants to enter abridged comments on a number of issues, rather than an extensive comment on a single issue. This is such a time for me, and here goes:

     

    June 12 and the lost innocence

    Yesterday marked the 23rd anniversary of the June 12, 1993 presidential election – a landmark poll in Nigeria’s political history and a symbolic high point of our nationhood experience. The election was landmark because it was the first to demonstrate a potential in this country to stage an election that is globally applauded. That potential has been reenacted and enhanced with the 2011 and 2015 general elections – particularly the 2015 presidential poll that was the first in this country’s history where a contesting incumbent was unseated through the ballot box by an opposition challenger; and that, without a challenge from the defeated incumbent contender.

    June 12 was symbolic because Nigerians, for the first time, broke from historically besetting ethnic and religious straitjackets in casting their votes. Of the 30 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the country at the time, Chief Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) won in 19 and the FCT with over eight million votes, while Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC) harvested 10 states with some six million votes. Despite that the late Abiola, a professing Moslem, fielded another Moslem, Babagana Kingibe, as running mate, his victory was so resounding that he won nearly 60 per cent of the total votes cast, and only in two states (Kebbi and Sokoto) did he fail to secure at least one-third of the ballots. He actually defeated the NRC flag bearer in his home state of Kano. Again, this feat, to a limited extent, was reenacted in the 2015 presidential election where incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari won across ethno-religious lines.

    Why do I bother to belabour June 12 if, as we hold, Nigeria has encored its high points and moved ahead with recent elections? The reason is this: that election revealed the possibility of forging a rare consensus in this country on national values. Such consensus, as we have noted, would be blind to primordial fault lines that historically pitched citizens against one another. Nigerians in 1993 wanted an end to long years of military rule. They perceived that then ruling regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida was in no hurry to cede power, despite promises to the contrary; and so they rallied after the cause of democracy, for which the Abiola-Kingibe ticket only offered a preferred choice within provided alternatives. Voters across ethnic and religious divides cared less if Abiola came from the outer space, or if his running mate were his younger blood brother. They made the choice that indexed a common resolve to force the hand of the military regime.

    Nothing has changed in the geographical frame of Nigeria since 1993, unless perhaps the loss of the Bakassi Peninsula in 2008, and the only structural difference is the creation of six additional states in 1996. But the nationalist innocence is lost and separatist sentiments have since boiled over. There is the (thankfully, now largely contained) Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East, the resurgence of militancy in the South-south, and heightening pro-Biafra activism in the South-east. The separatist sentiments severely hazard our national security as well as economic well being, and no one would deny in good conscience that these sentiments are fierce enough to advise another look at the Nigerian nationhood. This perhaps explains renewed wise counsel by eminent Nigerians, including former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, that the country be restructured into a true federation.

    Restructuring seems to me a most sensible option to address the separatist agitations presently plaguing our nationhood. But there is a challenge: how would this be done short of convening another National Conference if President Buhari, as he had made clear, would not touch the report of the 2014 National Conference? A fresh National Conference seems a tall order in Nigeria’s present economic circumstance.

    Some have argued that Nigeria’s problem is not about structure, but long years of bad leadership that fostered the current economic woes and stoked separatist sentiments. They may have a point, if June 12 evidenced a latent gene in Nigerians for commonality of purpose when inspired by good leadership as was envisaged in Abiola. But then, I would bet that the innocence of June 12 is irremediably lost at this juncture of our nationhood.

    Now, if we can’t assay the restructuring of our nationhood in the short term, as it seems highly unlikely that we can, the onus of history heavily rests with the Buhari administration to provide the kind of inspirational leadership as could fan even the cold ash of nationalist commitment that was the making of June 12.

    Hillary History Clinton

    Upon the conclusion of United States’ Democratic primaries last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged as the party’s presumptive nominee to run against Republican Donald Trump in the presidential poll scheduled for November. Her resounding victory over Senator Bernie Sanders in ‘Super Tuesday’ primaries in California, New Jersey, South Dakota and New Mexico made Hillary the first woman to secure the nomination of a major political party in America’s 240-year history.

    She came a long, dogged way to the nomination – having given President Barack Obama a tough run for the Democrat ticket in 2008 and falling barely short, but with a notice served that the glass ceiling on women in United States politics had been shattered. An exultant Hillary alluded to this last week when she told a crowd of jubilant supporters: “Tonight caps an amazing journey – a long, long journey. It may be hard to see tonight but we are all standing under a glass ceiling right now. But don’t worry. We’re not smashing this one. Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone. The first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee…Tonight, we can say with pride that, in America, there is no barrier too great and no ceiling too high to break.”

    More than a dozen women previously launched a bid for the White House, starting with Victoria Woodhull in 1872, nearly half a century before women even had the right to vote. Hillary is closer to the mark than anyone to date – being the first woman to lead a major political party’s bid for the presidency. Her chances are bright to ultimately win the presidency.

    With the cost intensity of Nigerian politics and propensity of partisans for violence, you could well say there is a brass ceiling on women’s aspiration for political offices in our country. But women of mettle can yet cut through if they would be dogged and relentless like Hillary, and if they would define the rules of decency for electioneering as would isolate male desperadoes.

    Not as His Lordship pleases!

    Code of Conduct Tribunal Chairman Justice Danladi Umar isn’t one to fight shy of controversy. Amidst the dust being raised by ongoing trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki before him, the judge was last week reported as canvassing the return of Decree 2 to punish journalists.

    Speaking at the end of Tuesday’s proceedings in reaction to media reports that the trial had been adjourned indefinitely, Justice Umar reportedly said “journalists should be punished” for publishing falsehood. “It is a criminal offence. If not that we are under a democratic setting, I would have advocated for the retention of Decree No. 2,” he stated.

    Decree 2 under the former military regime of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari gave the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, power to detain anyone considered a security risk for up to six months without trial. It was a precursor of the Protection Against False Accusations Decree 4.

    It is helpful that His Lordship recognised that we are now under a democracy. Isn’t then the craving for the return of Decree 2 a symptom of military hangover?

  • For a politics of reasonable as compared to desperate and perhaps hallucinatory hope: scattered end-of-year reflections

    For a politics of reasonable as compared to desperate and perhaps hallucinatory hope: scattered end-of-year reflections

    Hope springs forever in the human breast  – Alexander Pope

    The observations and reflections in this piece come from my strong feeling that in our country and our world at the present time, there is a great, pressing need to distinguish a politics of reasonable and realizable hope from a politics of desperate and perhaps delusionary hope. At the heart of this strong feeling of mine is an intuition that with the coming into power of the Buhari administration, Nigeria recently became one of the best expressions of a politics of desperation, a politics of hope against hope that dominates our collective global or planetary community at the present time. What are the indications, the signs of this convergence or similarity of a politics of desperate hope in Nigeria and the world at large?

    Everyone knows that, to put it mildly, all is far from being well in our world. Nonetheless, against powerful negative forebodings, there are enough signs that give us real hope, even if the hope often seems desperate. Thus, although billions still live in dire poverty, for the very first time in world history we actually have the resources and the capacities to end mass poverty forever everywhere on the planet. Additionally, just as we left the Stone Age behind us not because we ran out of stone, there is now a distinct possibility that we can also leave the age of the dominance of fossil fuels behind us, not because we have run out of oil but because we have wisely and effectively moved to the use of clean and renewable sources of energy before succumbing to a looming global catastrophe in which life-destroying emissions and pollutants end life as we know it in our planetary home. Finally, even as deep and crippling divisions continue to divide regional and national communities throughout the world, we are all waking to the fact that the world is really a global village in which our destinies are as indissociably linked as they had never been before at any previous stage of world history.

    As in the world at large, all is also far from being well in Nigeria. But unlike many other places in the world, desperation is far more tightly woven around hope in our country. Indeed, until quite recently hope of any secular, non-religious or non-metaphysical kind seemed impossible in Nigeria. The departing PDD/Jonathan administration left not only an empty treasury, it also left an utterly looted and ruined economy and polity. For this reason, the level of the desperation of hope in the post-PDP Nigeria is infinitely much higher than in the world at large. In other words, although the level of euphoria with which the Buhari administration was ushered into office is fast diminishing, I don’t think that we are as yet willing or able to make a distinction between hope that is reasonable and realizable and hope that continues to be desperately euphoric. This is why although deep down the vast majority of Nigerians are not (yet) convinced that the Buhari administration will defeat the Boko Haram insurgency as expeditiously as everyone wishes and as the administration itself has promised, Nigerians continue to hold dearly to the expectation that quite soon we would have heard and seen the last of the Boko Haram jihadists. We are a bit less desperate in our hopes for the success of the war against corruptionbut in my opinion, that’s only because like the Buhari administration itself, most Nigerians, at least so far, place great value on the rhetoric of the war against corruption.

    At this point in the discussion, it is necessary to emphasize that perhaps the most crucial observation that I wish to make in these reflections is our need for a politics of realistic and realizable hope, together with the recognition that such a politics does exist and has been practiced in many nations and regions of the world. This observation leads directly to the most serious or portentous claim that I wish to make in these same reflections, this being the assertionthat, wittingly or unwittingly, the new Buhari administration is stoking the same fires of the politics of desperate, delusionary hopes that brought it into power. To get to the essential distinction that I am urging here between a politics of realistic and realizable hope and a politics of desperate and hallucinatory hope, it is perhaps helpful to first of all make a prior distinction between a politics and a theology of hope.

    Fortunately for us, Nigeria being one of the most endlessly God-obsessed countries in the world, this is a distinction that we can indicate with a maximum of concreteness and precision in our particular national context. Thus think, compatriots, of the fact that churches and mosques constitute the fastest growing institutions and enterprises in our country because it seems so easy, so effortless for any self-proclaimed and oftentimes self-ordained priest or cleric to give hopes of deliverance to uncountable flocks of followers. Here, one must, it seems, bow to the inscrutable and the ineffable: I do not know how it works, but I do know that the theology of hope works extremely successfully in Nigeria, perhaps more than any other country in the world.

    I have said that I do not know how the theology of hope works so successfully in Nigeria; I must now state that I do have some ideas as to why it worked so well, particularly during the reign of the previous ruling party, the PDP. One factor is so obvious that its very obviousness might serve to hide it from us. This is nothing other than the fact that every one of the three PDP administrations during the party’s sixteen-year reign considerably encouraged Nigerians to pray, to fast, to look to religion for the answers to both national and individual problems and crises. At the risk of being too blunt, let me state this point more forcefully: all the three PDP administrations massively used the theology of hope as a tool for diverting mass or public pressure away from politics and politicians for the satisfaction of both the material and non-material needs and aspirations of the people.And there is the additional factor of the unwillingness of any administration that was/is as corrupt, mediocre and aimless as any of the PDP administrations to base its policies and actions on the politics of realistic and realizable hope. In that predatory looters’ republic, it would have amounted to political suicide for any of the three PDP administrations to have attached itself to goals and objectives on which the Nigerian people could have tied the party’s grip on power.

    If a reliance on the theology of hope has not yet clearly and indisputably emerged as a decisive aspect of the governance style and the policies of the new ruling party, the APC, that is probably because the party is yet to settle down into governing in its own name and right and not merely by default as the aftermath of the PDP era. Meanwhile, everything hinges on the charisma, the mystique, the larger-than-life expectations that have coalesced if not calcified around the personality of Muhammadu Buhari. He is like the Chosen One, the Leader, the Avatar. Not since Murtala Ramat Mohammed has the country had a leader on whom so much of both the realistic and apocalyptic hopes and aspirations of the Nigerian masses been pinned so exclusively on one man and one man alone. Wittingly or unwittingly, Buhari has been satisfied to play to these expectations, to talk the talk if he is yet to walk the walk. Listen to his famous first words after his electoral victory: “I belong to everybody; I belong to nobody!”More spectacularly, he has publicly given the Nigerian military a deadline of this very month, December 2015, for a decisive crushing of the Boko Haram insurgency. He is making pronouncements on what the war on corruption will achieve, even as the country’s criminal justice system is showing clear and unambiguous signs that it is still stoutly on the side of looters.Buhari’s hands are still tied to constitutional and institutional principles and forces that make it near impossible for him to significantly cut down on the colossal cost of governance in Nigeria, but not to worry, Sai Buhari will take care of things. And he seems particularly fond of foreign travels, together with a penchant for making policy or action statements abroad that it would make far more sense for him to make at home. The list goes on and on, seemingly interminably: the politics of hope, yes, but it is desperate, hallucinatory hope.

    If in these observations and reflections I have seemed to be disparaging of both the theology of hope in itself and the politics of desperate, passionate and even delusional hope, I now hasten to say that this is in fact not the case. Hope, all manner of hope, will always be lodged deep in the human heart and imagination. And there is a place for even the most “irrational”, the most phantasmal kind of hope, especially against forces that deploy mystification and unjust social arrangements to prey on human weaknesses and frailties. Nigeria is home to the world’s most extensive and outlandish expressions of the theology of hope precisely because it is also home to so much of the world’s assemblage of looted lives. My emphasis in these reflections on a politics of realistic and realizable hope is an attempt to redress the imbalance between the two kind of politics around hope as a powerful vector of human life, individual and collective. Above all else, my concern is with the tendency of the politics of desperate hope to place agency exclusively in the lap, the subjectivity of the Leader, the Chosen One, the Avatar. Beside Him, there are the technocrats and bureaucrats. This seems to be the APC formula for success. Well, the politics of realistic and realizable hope adds a crucial third element: the Nigerian peoples, acting for and on behalf of their own interests and aspirations, not watching idly and passively from the sidelines of history and politics.

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Those of us who are ‘older’ than the country: October 1st reflections

    Those of us who are ‘older’ than the country: October 1st reflections

    It is Thursday, October 1, 2015. I am writing these words, this column about six hours after the event I am about to reveal took place. I had just finished teaching my last class for the week at Emerson Hall. The class had gone very well and for this reason, I was in a pleasant mood. All teachers like their classes to go well no matter how long they have been teaching and how many teachers they have produced in the course of a long career. And there was also the fact that I was looking forward to a long “weekend” that would go beyond Sunday and Monday to Tuesday, the day on which my first class next week would take place. It was within the soft emotional glow of these pleasant thoughts that one of the students in the class that I had just taught approached me and with a warm, beaming smile said to me: “Happy anniversary, Prof”. A little taken aback, I replied, “what anniversary”? realizing at the very instant that I asked the question that she is Nigerian and was referring to the anniversary of the country’s independence. And so before she could respond to my puzzling question, I said, “Oh, but of course, happy anniversary!” To this, I then added a rather mumbled explanation that my initial response of “what anniversary?” is a product of the fact that I normally do not remember birthday anniversaries, my own and our country’s included.

    In the short conversation that followed this initial exchange with this young compatriot, the thing that stood out the most in my memory is the fact that she was very enthusiastic, very hopeful about many things “Nigerian”, so much so that she effectively sent a powerful if subliminal message to me that her state of mind, her euphoria distinctly reflected a generational outlook on the present historical period. She told me that she was in her senior year as a Biology major intending to go on to medical school with hopes of eventually qualifying and being certified as a medical doctor. She said that the majority of Nigerian-born students at Harvard were majoring in subjects that would lead to professions in medicine, engineering, law and business. She said mine was one of the very few courses in the Humanities she had taken in her three and half years at Harvard. She said that she is a member of the Nigerian Students Association and that they were planning a big gala in celebration of the country’s 55th anniversary on October 11 and I should please be sure to be there as guests were going to be regaled with many festive items like delectable Nigerian cuisine, music, a fashion show and a grand ball.

    Oh, to be young and full of hope and a joyful openness to all of life’s possibilities again! This was undoubtedly the sentiment that I went away with earlier this afternoon after that conversation with this young student of mine. But closely following in the wake of this good-natured “envy” of the young by a man about to enter the eighth decade of his life was the recollection that throughout the first decade of our independence in the 1960s, I had also, like this young woman, been very hopeful, very sanguine about what the country, together with my sense of its place in Africa and the world, had in store for me and members of my generation who did well at school and university. Let me be very specific here.

    When, at the end of the first decade of independence I graduated from U.I. I was not unaware of the fact that I was one of a tiny fraction of the members of my generation that had received a first-rate education that could take me to any educational or professional heights that I aspired to, not only in Nigeria but anywhere in the world. Over the decades, I have written extensively about the elitist privileges, together with the scholarships, that made possible the education that I received at U.I. as an undergraduate and in America as a graduate student. Additionally, I have written on countless occasions that my awareness of this elitism was, I hoped, neutralized by the fact that I and other members of the radicalized segments of our generation dedicated ourselves to extending the privileges from which had enormously benefitted to the less privileged groups and individuals in our society. However, as one decade succeeded another in the post-independence era, the realization gradually dawned on us that it was our fate to be the very last “fortunate” generation among the other generations of living Nigerians who, in the words of the title of this piece, are “older” than the country.

    It is perhaps necessary at this stage in these reflections to clarify exactly what I have in mind in the phrase “older than the country” together with the observation that I belong to the very last “fortunate” generation among this composite cohort of Nigerians that are “older’ than the country. The phrase “older than the country” can be quite succinctly explained as a literal and perhaps even reductive understanding of the age of the country as appertaining only to the post-independence period. But we all know that with regard to the peoples and societies of which it is made, “Nigeria” is much, much older than 55! On this account, I and members of the small demographic group of Nigerians that are older than 55 – far less than 10% of the population – are not older than the country in any substantive sense. In other words, the “birth” of the nation is unlike the birth of an individual, any individual: one is subject to the biological determinism of one single life and its eventual demise; the other transcends biology and includes aeons of time and experience that come in stages or cycles of growth and decline, retrogression and renewal.

    The phrase “the very last fortunate generation” among living Nigerians over the age 55 has its resonance within this idea of cycles of decline and renewal in the stages of the historical being and becoming of the country. Let me be very concrete about what I have in mind here. Only five years separated my graduation from U.I. and my return to the university as a young lecturer but within that very short space of time, all the privileges, all the conveniences and all the rituals of an Oxbridge-type education that we had enjoyed as undergraduates had vanished completely and forever in the experience of all subsequent generational cohorts of university students since that time. Some of the vanished privileges were trivial while some were decisive and life-changing. Let me give only one example of the more trivial and ridiculous dimensions of our “fortunate” generational experience: Sunday afternoon “tea” comprising tea or coffee as beverages, with cakes and ice cream as complements all consumed in unison with the Hall Master and the Wardens seated at the High Table. By the end of the 1968/69 session Kuti Hall, of which I was a resident member, was the only hall of residence that was still clinging to a strict observance of this ritual. But during the second term of that academic year, the hall authorities decided to follow the lead of the other halls of residence and do away with Sunday afternoon “tea”. We successfully revolted against the cessation of the ritual and to my eternal embarrassment I was one of the leaders of the revolt!

    The real “fortune” of our experience as the very last generation to be truly privileged with regard to the conditions under which we were tutored can be gauged by the inestimable fact that we were the last set of Nigerian university students to receive a qualitative education that was the equal of university education anywhere else in the world. I should qualify this portentous claim by two observations. First, it is my belief, my fundamental article of faith that quality education should be the birth right, the civil right of all the young citizens of our country, of indeed all the countries of the world. Second, quality education did not vanish entirely from the Nigerian university system with my generation; it was just the case that as from around the late 1970s, you could find it only in bits and fragments that were unequally distributed among the faculties and lecturers of our universities. For instance, when I taught at both Ibadan and Ife between 1975 and 1987, most students knew which faculties were reputed to have good numbers of conscientious and dedicated lecturers and which faculties were deemed relatively indifferent to high standards of teaching and research. By contrast, in our day, virtually all faculties were deemed reputable; moreover, we had the environment, the facilities for quality education that was equal to any other national tertiary educational systems in the world.

    In bringing these reflections to a close, I must now disclose the reason why my encounter with that student in my class earlier this afternoon of Thursday, October 1, 2015 sparked these thoughts in me. As we talked and she seemed to be proud of, and was rejoicing in how well Nigerian students at Harvard were doing, I wanted to gently remind her that Harvard students are some of the world’s most privileged students; I had an inclination to remind her that hundreds of thousands of university students in Nigeria and millions around our continent and other developing regions of the world do not have even the most elementary infrastructures and the environment conductive to the kind of education that could prepare them for the demands of the world of the 21st century. Of course, I did not utter any of these thoughts to the student; I did not have the heart to spoil her spontaneous celebration that seemed to me both personal and collective in the sense that she was speaking for herself as well as for other Nigerian-born students at Harvard.

    This leads me to the most important point that I wish to make in these reflections on the 55th anniversary of our country’s independence. I am afraid it is a gloomy thought; it is a thought that puts a damper on any hopeful prospects Nigerians might or should be feeling in the wake of the change that came with the last presidential elections: revitalizing education is by far the toughest task that Buhari and his administration will face and I have very serious doubts that they will be up to the challenge. This challenge is far more daunting than the war against corruption and I don’t think the new administration is aware of this. Yes, there are other seemingly intractable challenges like widespread poverty, joblessness and insecurity of life and possessions in many parts of the country. Heaven knows that these other challenges are monumental in their own right. But the challenge of reforming and revitalizing education in our country from its current utterly broken state is the mother and the father of all the other challenges that Buhari, his administration and the new ruling party will face, but I don’t think they are in the least bit aware of this fact. This will be a topic that we shall be exploring in future essays in this column.

    • Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

     

  • Reflections on Nigeria at 55

    SIR: What makes every country great is not its geography but its people. Nigerians have had it both rough and smooth yet we are on the move. We have endured torrential rain, raging storm and puddle waters in the course of building a country we can call our own. In all these Nigerians have carried on despite the odds we face because we have hope that one day the storm would be over and the dreams of our founding fathers realized.

    We have gone a long way with 13 men taking oath as Commander-In-Chief. Nigerians have heard many inaugural speeches and state of the nation addresses, seen various types of government and had witnessed different polices.

    In the last five decades, every regime or administration had talked about one programme or the other with regard to national development. Nigeria has been in a permanent state of introducing transformation programmes. The tragedy, however is that of transformation to nowhere in particular as our nation and people remains underdeveloped. The various promises made were not kept as the people’s hope were spuriously raised and dashed.

    As a result, there is the temptation to define some government agenda and planning as instrument of exploitation based on the arbitrary use of it by the ruling class to maintain or control the ‘business’ of the state in terms of authoritative distribution or allocation of state resources to their own advantage against the masses. The trend has created a lacuna between the leaders and the led with a far-reaching network of hatred and violence.

    The reasons for these myriad of problems are not far-fetched. Before now, Nigerians have been denied the opportunity of having a leader or ruler who actually struggled or canvassed for the ticket on basis of his aspiration and leadership qualities since 1960. The effect has been that our leaders have been imposed or foisted on us by circumstance, profession or by godfathers, etc.

    On the other hand, a dependent economy like Nigeria coheres with foreign control in terms of economic and national planning. Hence, it has reduced Nigerian leaders or policy makers to a mere pawn, thereby making effective planning impracticable. Consequently, we cannot have a truly independent nation without the firm control of our economy even as we claim the Africa’s number one economy.

    It is also not in doubt that the dividends of democracy are yet to be fully realized due to mismanagement of political power. In Nigeria the extent of immunity and privileges enjoyed by the political elites is still an ongoing debate. Be that as it may, democracy did not come on a platter of gold. We should know that no man is all virtue and no vice, likewise democracy has its rough edges. Yet democracy is seen as the best form of government in the contemporary world.

    The outcome of the March General Elections was a glaring testimony of the fact that the people remain the true custodians of power. However, we can begin to trust each other again (the leaders and the led) if we are ready to make hard choices and sacrifices to see Nigeria as our home country and not a mere amalgamated entity.

    • Comrade Chike Leo Oguanya,

    Suleja, Niger State.

     

  • Reflections on Unibadan Vice Chancellorship race

    Reflections on Unibadan Vice Chancellorship race

    The tenure of the incumbent Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university, Professor Isaac Adewole, expires in November. For the past six months 13 aspirants, all distinguished academics and administrators, have been vying to succeed him. In what looked like a move to enhance the credibility and transparency of the selection process, the university’s authorities recently organised an open forum that gave all the aspirants an opportunity to articulate their plans and vision for the institution before critical stakeholders. The Chairman of the session was Chief Afe Babalola (SAN) who was represented by Professor Ibidapo Obe, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, while the moderator was renowned human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN). Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain what impact this initiative had on the selection process or what value it added.

    Last week, the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the University’s council, Dr Umar Mustapha, announced the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor to succeed Professor Adewole. In his words, “When the process started, we advertised in the national newspapers for the vacancy of the office of the Vice Chancellor. A total number of 13 people applied and after conducting interview, six candidates emerged. Out of the six candidates, the first three candidates were recommended and at the end, the best of them all, Professor Idowu Olayinka emerged. I hereby officially approve Professor Idowu Olayinka as the new VC of the University of Ibadan”. This sounds rather casual and cavalier if you ask me. What criteria were used to prune the number of contenders from 13 to 6? How do we know that these were fair and objective? Echoing the Pro-Chancellor, the incumbent VC says that the process leading to Professor Olayinka’s appointment was credible and adhered to due process.

    Now, the University of Ibadan is a distinguished global intellectual community. The process of selecting its Vice Chancellor must meet the highest international standards of credibility and probity. It is not enough for Dr Musa and Professor Adewole to tell us that the process was credible and transparent. Rather, it must be seen to be so. All the aspirants must be seen to have been given a level playing field and the process not skewed in favour of any. Perhaps if the aspirants’ interaction with the stakeholders had been televised nationally, there would have been a basis for the wider public to ascertain the fairness or otherwise of the choice of the Governing Council to appoint Olayinka as Adewole’s successor. Yes, the Vice Chancellor is to preside over the affairs of the university community. But the institution exists to facilitate the achievement of national objectives and the general Nigerian public can thus not be disinterested in its leadership selection process.

    Now, I do not want to be mistaken. Professor Idowu Olayinka is eminently qualified to occupy the position. But in a very competitive race in which there are other equally formidable candidates, the process must be of the highest degree of rigour and transparency. Let me explain. Born on 16th February, 1958, Professor Olayinka attended Saint Bartholomew’s Primary School, Odo-Ijesa from 1964 to 1969 and was appointed Head Boy in his final year. He obtained his West African School Certificate (WASC) from Ilesa Grammar School in 1975 finishing in Division one. In 1981 he bagged the B.Sc degree in geology from the University of Ibadan emerging as the best graduating student in his class with a Second Class Honours (Upper Division).  He obtained the M. Sc degree in geology at the University of London as well as a Diploma of the Imperial College in 1984 and between 1985 and 1987 studied for his doctorate at the Research School of Geological Sciences. He undertook post-doctoral training at the Institute for Geophysics and Meteorology, Technical University, Braunschwei, in 1996 and the Department of Applied Geophysics and Meteorology, Technical University, Berlin in 1997.

    Professor Olayinka joined the academic staff of the University of Ibadan in April 1988 as Lecturer Grade 1 and rose to become Professor of Applied Geophysics in 1999. He has supervised five PhD theses and 76 M. Sc dissertations, written one book, contributed to 11 chapters in books as well as being the author or co-author of 43 articles in referenced scholarly journals. A member of the University Senate and Governing Council, he held several key administrative positions at Departmental and Faculty level before his appointment as Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic). Olayinka is a member of several learned societies and has received several research and travel grants as well as serving as consultant to many organisations.

    You could hardly find a more impressive resume. But then, no less notable are the academic and administrative track records of those who competed for the position with Olayinka. Let us consider the case of my teacher, Professor Adigun Agbaje, for instance. He was born on 14th April, 1957 and attended St Patrick’s Grammar School, Basorun, Ibadan, where he obtained his West African School Certificate (WASC) in Division one in 1973. He was at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, for his Higher School Certificate between 1974 and 1976 – a period during which he won first prize at school level for the J.F. Kennedy Essay competition. He bagged a First Class degree in Political Science from the University of Ibadan in 1979 and was the best graduating student of the Faculty of Social Sciences. After obtaining his M.Sc degree in Mass Communication with distinction at the University of Lagos in 1981, he worked as a journalist in various media organisations including The Guardian, The Punch, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) and the The Democrat based in Kaduna.  He obtained his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Ibadan in 1988.

    A former Director General of the Obafemi Awolowo Institue of Government and Public Policy , Lagos, from 2012 – 2014, Professor Agbaje was appointed Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Political Science of the University of Ibadan in 1984 and rose to become Professor of Political Science on 1st October, 1998. He has supervised 12 PhD theses and more than 100 M. Sc degree dissertations as well as being author or co-author of chapters in at least 50 books, 30 articles in scholarly journals and 7 monographs/technical papers. A member of several academic and professional associations and recipient of scores of scores of research grants, he has served as external examiner and/or assessor for appointments and promotions in various institutions including the University of Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, University of Ghana, Legon, National War (now Defence) College, Abuja, University of Pretoria, South Africa, University of Benin and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. A member of the University’s Senate since 1998, he held several critical positions at Departmental and Faculty level before he was appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), a position he held between 2006 and 2010.

    These are the resumes of only two of the aspirants. We can thus imagine if we had the space to consider the other 11 distinguished contestants for the position. The process of selecting one out of such an outstanding group of aspirants must adhere to the highest possible standards of rigour and transparency. Discussing the UI Vice- Chancellorship race with a distinguished Nigerian Professor and university administrator at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport during the week, he said “You see, both Olayinka and Agbaje are accomplished academics and administrators. Olayinka is a very nice person, very humble and unassuming. Agbaje is very strict and with him there can be no bending of the rules. If Agbaje had made it through to the interview stage, I think it would have been a 50-50 chance between him and Olayinka. Insiders tell me that as Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), Olayinka already had a 10 point lead over his co-contestants who scaled through to the interview stage”.

    But then, how come that Agbaje the only other aspirant who had occupied the position of Deputy Vice Chancellor like Olayinka did not make it to the interview stage? Was the process cleverly manipulated to give Olayinka an advantage? In a report on page 22 of Thursday’s edition of this newspaper, our correspondent, Bisi Oladele writes, “Olayinka is said to belong to the caucus that currently holds sway in the system. It is believed that the caucus also favours the outgoing VC. Some members of the caucus attended the same secondary school or have been colleagues on several assignments and share similar worldview and ideology helping them to bond easily. Sources say the caucus backed Olatunji to pave way for continuity of Professor Adewole’s works”. It is interesting that both Adewole and Olayinka are Ijesas and old boys of Ilesa Grammar School. Without greater transparency and credibility in the process of appointing Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities, suspicions and doubts will always arise no matter how qualified the successful candidate is.

  • Between ourselves and our institutions and between Marx and Rousseau: election eve reflections (2)

    Between ourselves and our institutions and between Marx and Rousseau: election eve reflections (2)

    Man’s conceiving is fathomless. His community will rise beyond the present reaches of the mind. Orisa reveals destiny as – self-destination
    Wole Soyinka

    What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    At the end of last week’s beginning essay in this series, I posed the following question with the promise that it would b the starting point for this week’s concluding piece: Who among genuine, independent-minded patriots in our country today think that we first have to change the character, the morality of a Fayose, a Chris Ubah or a Musiliu Obanikoro from within before we can make our present constitutional and institutional arrangements give us free, fair and credible elections? In case the basis for my citing these particular persons is either not clear or is perceived as a reflection of a partisan promotion of the electoral interests  of the APC, the main opposition party, let me  quickly make some clarifications that would better reveal my purposes in this series.

    As nearly every knows, Fayose, Ubah and Obanikoro are the main anti-heroes of the Ekiti-Gate electoral mega-fraud.  Well then, consider the following developments after the exposure of these men as cynical and ruthless election riggers, developments which, in almost any other country in the world, would be almost unthinkable. First, after initially denouncing the Ekiti-Gate audio clips as fake, Fayose later admitted that it was indeed himself, it was indeed his voice that was so prominent in the clip. From that admission, Fayose then declared for the whole country and the world to hear that he was not taking anything back from what people heard him say in the audio clip and that if it likes the opposition party, the APC, could take the matter to the law courts. This completely leaves out of account the fact that far more than the APC, it was the people of Ekiti State that suffered the terrible criminal wrongs revealed in the Ekiti-Gate audio clip.

    In the second significant post-Ekiti-Gate development, Goodluck Jonathan himself first said the audio clip of Ekiti-Gate was a fake. But after Fayose’s authentication of the audio clip, Jonathan then said he and his administration could and would not do anything about it because the man who secretly recorded the clip, Captain Sagir Koli of the Nigerian Army, had fled the country instead of staying to defend the authenticity of the audio clip. This is exactly what Jonathan said: “How can we do anything about it when the man who recorded it ran away”? As everyone knows, Captain Koli fled for his life. In his absence, his junior brother was arrested, kept in prison for seven months where he was severely tortured. This leaves us to wonder what would have been done to Koli himself if he had not fled for his life. To cap the series of impunities that followed the original mega-impunity of the Ekiti-Gate electoral fraud itself, Jonathan then sent Obanikoro’s name to the Senate for confirmation as Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry. And of course, against the hue and cry of both opposition Senators and the Nigerian public, the Senate President, David Mark, had Obanikoro confirmed.

    In all this we must remember that without Captain Sagir Koli, we would never have known anything about the revelations of Ekiti-Gate. The impunity with which the use of the army, the police and electoral officers to rig the June 2014 Ekiti State governorship elections for Fayose and the PDP was perpetrated in secret. Like all institutions and organs of the Nigerian state, the army, the police and the election commission, together with the women and men who serve in them, are expected to be above undue and illegal control and manipulation by anybody, no matter how highly placed. This, indeed, is the moral and functional foundation of state and public institutions in all modern societies: rational, objective, impersonal and tested bodies before which all persons whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated get equal, lawful treatment. This is why, initially, the impunity revealed by Ekiti-Gate had to be done in secret. Thus, it is a mark of the utterly corrupt and dysfunctional state of our institutions that when the secret impunity was exposed, the impunity became even more brazen and cynical. Fayose said “I am the one who said everything you heard in the tape; go to court if you wish”. Jonathan rewarded Obanikoro with a ministerial appointment which he had David Mark confirm in the Senate, in spite of the universal condemnation of the move. Nigerian Pidgin English has a wonderfully resonant term for this level of impunity and it is – wetin una fit do?

    No Nigerian Head of State has taken “wetin una fit do” to a baser, more odious and more rapacious level than Goodluck Jonathan. This says a lot because without exception, all our military dictators were, in various ways, embodiments of “wetin una fit do”. By the way, this includes Muhammadu Buhari when he was a military dictator. But Jonathan beats them all in the culture, practice and consolidation of “wetin una fit do”, whether the subject is looting and mismanagement on a grandiose scale by his appointees and cronies (remember the 2.3 trillion naira oil subsidy mega-scam?); lies and deceit to cover up mediocre achievements and lack of vision (remember the claim of having created millions of new jobs in an economy in which joblessness is at a historic high?); and gross spinelessness in meeting security challenges and the resultant crippling sense of despair in the country (remember his use of the slogan of the Chibok activists’ “Bring Back Our Girls” at the beginning of his campaign for reelection?).

    Like President, like party. Thus, no political party in our country has come close to the PDP in taking “wetin una fit do” to forms and levels that even the regime of Sani Abacha, the most deranged in our political history, did not or could not go. These include but are not limited to scrambling for political office that is as internally fierce and anti-democratic in party primaries as in local, state and federal elections; a semi-literate former hair dresser as Speaker of the House of Representatives; an illiterate political kingpin whom Chinua Achebe called “a politician with low IQ”  as the political godfather of Anambra state which has one of the highest concentrations of educated elites in the country; a thug who was rigged into office as the governor of a state and immediately proceeded to perpetrate atrocities like publicly slapping and humiliating a high court judge and making 7 members of the state assembly hegemonic over 19 members of the same assembly who belong to the opposition party.

    To this dispiriting profile of the rule of “wetin una fit do” under Jonathan in particular and the PDP in general, we must make two very crucial qualifications. One: PDP and Jonathan may be the worst incarnations, but they do not have a monopoly of the culture, practice and consolidation of “wetin una fit do”. With a few notable exceptions, all our politicians and all our ruling class political parties are implicated in the impunity of misrule, mismanagement of resources and plain and arrant looting of public coffers that PDP and Jonathan have to taken to the depths of moral cynicism. Secondly, there are areas of public institutions, utilities and services in this country that, no matter how miniscule, are resistant to the culture and practice of “wetin una fit do”. I would like to conclude this series of what I am calling “election eve reflections” with a brief discussion of these two points.

    The first point can be very easily and summarily engaged. For me, by far the most telling index of the reign of “wetin una fit do” among the generality of our politicians and political parties is the fact that it is not only the case that there are no important ideological and issue-based differences between them, they are in fact remarkably adept in moving in and out of one party to another. As I once observed in this column, in my estimation, APC is nearly three-fourths composed of former PDP members. As the particularly notable case of Nuhu Ribadu proves, part of PDP is also former APC or other opposition political parties. In concrete terms, perhaps the most eloquent illustration is the fact that, without exception, all the ruling class political parties actively and voluntarily participate in the cult of silence and secrecy around the unjust and wasteful salaries, allowances and emoluments that our legislators receive that, compositely rates as the highest that any group of legislators are paid in the world. All the governments in the country, at all levels spend far more on recurrent expenditure than on capital expenditure for development projects that could extend the national wealth to the masses of our people. Anyone who thinks that without unceasing struggle an APC victory will change this fundamental aspect of political rule in our country at the present time is in for a rude shock if the party is victorious in the coming elections.

    Nigerians in the main don’t pay much attention to this fact, but there are three crucial institutional, regulated aspects of our national economy that are, relatively speaking, free of the impunities of “wetin una fit do”. For this reason, they are worthy of our attention, of our prognoses for the future in terms of building and sustaining modern institutions that work efficiently and work for the benefit of most if not all Nigerians, regardless of ethnicity, religion, age, gender or party affiliation. These are, in a random order of iteration, the financial services industry; the communication and information IT industry; and the air travel industry, especially in conjunction with the infrastructures of airports around the state capitals and major cities and towns in the country. I do not wish to give the reader the impression that I overlook the imperfections and frustrations that Nigerians, as costumers and consumers, experience from these particular sectors of the national economy. What I am saying, what I am emphasizing is the fact that compared with almost any other institutions of the Nigerian state and society at the present time, these three sectors are relatively free of “wetin una fit do”.

    One last word in these deliberately open-ended and inconclusive “eve of elections reflections” and I am done. Please pay attention, dear reader, to the fact that these three sectors of our national economy are for the most part and in all parts of the world, vital areas of the institutional life of bourgeois democracy. Some theorists and commentators have begun to argue that Nigeria is already a developing country with a middle income economy. I don’t think we are there yet. But we are on our way there. The point is that with Jonathan and the PDP and the excesses of their “wetin una fit do” profligacy, we would never have gotten there. I mean, the likes of Fayose, Obanikoro, Ubah and oga patapata himself are nothing but incarnations of a barawo, area boy lumpen-bourgeoisie. The point now is, first, whether an APC victory would take us there and, secondly whether an APC-led bourgeois democracy can incorporate social democratic policies and initiatives that would bring unity, true federalism and social justice to our country in the years ahead. From military dictator to a bourgeois democrat with a dash of populist inclination toward social democratic leanings – this is a tall order for General Buhari (rtd.) to fulfill.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Reflections on Bishop without a cathedral

    Power comes from God, and it is the prerogative of God as the founder of this universe to bestow power on whom it pleases Him. In his concise letter to the Romans, Apostle Paul made it clear that before a God, the race is not about he that runneth or willeth, but of God that showeth mercy. You may dare to call Him a partial God but in His wisdom, he had warned that he will only show mercy to whom he will show mercy and will curse whom he will curse.

    In the race for the governorship seat of Abia state, there are two major contenders although some sections of the media, to entertain their audience, increased the number as it suits them. The race in reality is between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Grand Alliance, while on ballot, there will be other candidates who space will not allow me mention today. But I intend to do so after the election.

    While the PDP after its primaries produced as its standard bearer Dr. Okezie Victor Ikpeazu popularly known as Okezuo Abia (equity), APGA and its followers are still torn in litigations over who the party candidate is between one Alex Otti who is currently holding the ticket and another claimant Reagan Ufomba who is laying claim to the same ticket. As things stand today, Okezie Ikpeazu remains the man to beat as well as toast of many. Given the manner the news of his entrance and subsequent emergence spread like wild bush fire, many were forced to ask the pertinent question, who is Okezie Ikpeazu? Born Of strong religious parentage in Obingwa Local Government Area of present-day Abia State Okezie Ikpeazu is a living of example of whom God has blessed, no man can curse. Venturing into the uncertain world of politics with a doctorate degree acquired at a relatively young age, and in an era when societal values sieved diligence, hard-work and determination out of norm, thus leaving much to be desired in the polity, those who have known him will attest to one fact, and that is his impeccable dose of humility in spite of his educational attainment.

    A close observation reveals that he is a man not moved by his rare achievements in the academic world. He was always driven by the urge to serve. And curiously, he has only remained within verandahs of power even though he was eminently qualified to at least be within the living room. Unlike most politicians who always feel that lucrative portfolios are the measurement of ones political clout and rating, Ikpeazu would rather grab at the difficult task and walk on tough terrains where total commitment and even personal sacrifice were put to remain afloat and achieve desired results thus always standing him out.

    This was why he was able to make his mark as the General Manager of the State Integrated Passenger Manifest Scheme which ensured that Commuters and passengers who travel with the State-owned transport company were insured against any eventuality. After his stint at ASPIMS, Ikpeazu’s next port of call was the Abia State Environmental Protection Agency ASEPA where he had the tough challenge of maintaining the environmental orderliness in Aba the commercial hub of the state. While Ikpeazu stood under the sun to ensure a healthy environment and by implication a beter life for the masses, Otti coiled in the cocoon of his luxury vocation. A lifestyle he will always be used to. I cannot hide my amusement when people try to draw a comparison between Ikpeazu and Otti in terms of attracting electoral fortunes. What are the basis is what I always ask?

    Any attempt to compare Ikpeazu with his main challenger will reveal a movement on two parallel platform. It goes to show and clearly too that this man who has always been with the people will naturally carry the day. That was why it was easy to tell people who Ikpeazu is. It is rather unfortunate that in Abia today, the only profile of Alex Otti known to the common man is that he is a rich man. That further takes us to another dimension of critical analysis of his personal affluence and quite expectedly, the question that flows will be who are the benefIciaries of Otti large treasury before now?

    After building his palatial home while serving as Executive Director of First Bank, Mazi Otti in show of his affluence and proof of outright disconnect from his people build a helipad for his helicopter which takes him home from the airport. When the allure of political enterprise got a better part of him, what did he do? He quickly ran to Nvosi in Isiala Ngwa South also not found within the favored senatorial zone for the 2015 governorship race and within a short time allegedly erected another massive edifice in an alleged bid to attempt buying a birth right and ancestry of the Ngwa land. At an informal gathering recently, a renowned builder who happened to come from same local government as Otti put the entire worth of both houses at nothing less than three billion naira. This is what one man has spent for his personal luxury in the midst of poverty in the land.

    Today, one prominent feature of his campaign is financial profile and pecuniary inducement. He is ready to spend more, yet he never graded even the road to his house. No single person enjoyed the scholarship of our friend. But one thing that has eluded their permutation is their infantile or pedestrian knowledge of Abia political terrain. Abians are no fools. Their eyes are wide open and their political heritage or patrimony is of much value to them than anything else. They don’t want an arrogant leader who will feel he did them a favour by being their governor. They don’t wish for a visiting governor who will be chasing his vast business interests at the expense of the state and good governance.

    This is why it has been difficult for the people to accept Otti. Whereas  Ikpeazu is enjoying a cult- hero followership. They know who has been with them. They know who will occupy the government house and the gates will be open to all and his ears will pay attention to their needs. They know who will look them in their faces and guess that things be not be well and ask what the problem is. That is the Ikpeazu edge and no matter what any person say, his acceptance will reflect into victory at the polls.

    Rather than accept the fact, Otti and his political captors are masturbating in blame game. Again, there is a saying in Igbo parlance that onye nwere mmadu ka onye nwere ego and his Aro kinsmen concluded it with this wise saying “okpogho iche, mmadu iche; mkpuola iche, nwa Aro iche”, meaning that the real value is in the people not your wealth. It is then an instructive fact and mortal lesson to others, and obviously not a surprise that despite his financial war chest he has remained a pitiable lone ranger akin to a bishop without any cathedral daily spending to attract followers.

     

    • Emereuwa writes from Umuahia.