Values matter

AS the countdown to the 2019 general elections continues apace, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration will quite naturally inundate us with facts and figures on why it deserves to be re-elected for a second term. It will understandably focus on brick and mortar as well bread and butter issues. The roads and bridges it is building across the country. The tons of rice and other agricultural products produced and exported. The increased Megawatts of electricity it is generating. The number of beneficiaries of its several truly revolutionary social intervention projects from free school feeding to stipends for the vulnerable and cheap credit for traders.

Impressive as all these are they are not, for me, the most critical highpoints of the administration’s performance over the last three and a half years. One key factor that demarcates the Buhari administration from its predecessors since 1999 is its amazing refusal to continue with the culture of national honours as obscene bazaar that was the practice in the preceding Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) dispensation. The radical discontinuation by the All Progressives Congress (APC) of the annual undiscriminating conferment of national honours on all kinds of characters, mostly sycophantic cronies of the ruling party, is one concrete demonstration of its commitment to a new regime of wholesome values that can serve as the basis for meaningful national transformation and development.

It is not unlikely that a not insignificant number of APC ministers, governors, national and state legislators as well as party financiers and contractors will be quietly seething at the ascetic General’s seeming indifference to what should ordinarily be an elite ‘democratic dividend’ of being a member of the almighty ruling party. For, if it had been under the PDP, many of them would since 2015 have become decorated members of the ever growing army of national honours awardees with all the attendant privileges.

Indeed, an online medium, in 2017 reported PMB’s perceived failure in this regard thus: “President Muhammadu Buhari has failed to confer national honours on any individuals since his inception of office in 2015 contrary to the usual practice of holding the investiture every year. The President who assumed office on May 29, 2015, failed to host the investiture in 2015 and 2016. With only three working days left this year, there are no indications that it can hold in 2017”. Well, it did not hold and, thankfully, the heavens did not fall.

To the Buhari administration’s credit, the only national honours it has conferred so far were the posthumous Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR) awarded this year to the late winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola, as well as the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) awarded to Abiola’s running mate in the aborted election, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe and posthumously to the legendary human rights and pro-democracy lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi.

The enduring positive values of courage, resilience, justice, patriotism and selflessness symbolized by Abiola and Fawehinmi in particular are well known. Those are the kinds of values national honours must be reserved for if they are to retain any significance for society.

The online medium I quoted earlier reported further, “…The last time the conferment of the awards took place was on September 29, 2014, when former President Goodluck Jonathan conferred different categories of national honours on 313 persons. The investiture brought to 4,737 the total of the national honours so far conferred on individuals since its inception in 1963”.

Among the 313 persons awarded national honours by Jonathan in 2014 as the practice had always been were selected serving governors, ministers, judicial officers and an assortment of other categories of public officers and private citizens. Many of the awardees were very ordinary and average performers in terms of contribution to national development with a sprinkling of truly distinguished and outstanding both in terms of accomplishment and character.

Let us consider those conferred with the award of Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) in 2014 for instance. They included Air Marshal Alex Sabundu Badeh, Chief of Defence Staff, Maj-General Kenneth Minimah, Chief of Army Staff, Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin, Chief of Naval Staff, Air Vice Marshal Adesola Amosu, Chief of Air Staff, Col. Mohamed Sambo Dasuki (retd.), National Security Adviser and Ambassador Ayo Oke, Director-General, National Security Agency (NIA).

Virtually every one of these became embroiled in the N2.1 billion arms contract bazaar unveiled by the Buhari administration and have either returned humongous amounts of ill acquired funds and choice property to the federal government  or are currently facing trial for alleged graft. Has the national honour then not become in many instances a badge of national dishonor?

Or take this sample of businessmen and/or former governors, ministers or deputy governors conferred with the honour of CFR, OFR or CON by Jonathan in 2014: Dr. Peter Odili, Engineer Muhammed Abba Gana, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, Chief Tom Ikimi, Senator Iyiola Omisore, Erelu Olusola I.A. Obada, Chief (Dr) Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and Chief Jimoh Ibrahim. Again, none of these can be said to have made any truly path-breaking contributions to national development.

True, we have had a case like that of Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was conferred with the Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR) by President Shehu Shagari even though he never occupied the office of President of Nigeria. In the same vein, President Goodluck Jonathan conferred the award of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) on billionaire businessmen, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and Chief Mike Adenuga. These awards were no doubt richly deserved by the proven lifetime accomplishments of these individuals and were not conferred just because they occupied certain offices.

In sharp contrast to the distance it has kept from the tradition of indiscriminate conferment of national honours, the Buhari administration has consistently kept faith with the conferment of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), which is the country’s highest academic award for her most accomplished intellectuals in medicine, engineering and technology, the sciences as well as the arts, culture and humanities. This is one order of honours that has amazingly retained its integrity, credibility and prestige since its institution in 1979. Its recipients consistently reflect the values of moral integrity, scholastic brilliance, uncompromising patriotism, generosity of spirit and unremitting hard work, which are the building blocks of national greatness.

Past winners of the NNOM award include such academic giants as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Adiele Afiegbo, Lazarus Ekwueme, Taslim Olawale Elias, Francis Idachaba, Ladi Kwali, Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan, Benjamin Olukayode Osuntokun, J.F. A de Ajayi, Isidore Okpewho and Mabel Segun among others. In 2016, Professors Omowunmi Sadik and Tanure Ojaide were conferred with the NNOM award by the Buhari admistration for their accomplishments in the sciences and humanities respectively. And in 2017, the winners were Professors Bruce Onobrakpeya and Adesina Adesoji Adeniran for the humanities/Arts/Culture and Engineering/Technology respectively.

On Thursday, December 6, President Buhari conferred the 2018 NNOM award on the prolific playwright, poet, essayist, literary critic, author, columnist, director, polemicist and teacher, Professor Olu Obafemi of the Department of Theatre and Performing Arts, University of Ilorin. A Fellow and President of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL), Professor Obafemi is a former Director of Research of the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos.

While conferring the award on the recipient at the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Buhari said, “Our country needs the knowledge, expertise and contribution of today’s recipient to help boost and improve its intellectual development…The recipient of today is admitted into this admirable, respected and distinguished class of Nigerians as the 76th member of the body of Nigerian National Order of Merit Awardees. He has made Nigeria proud with his remarkable achievements drawing global attention to our nation”.

In his acceptance speech, Professor Obafemi gave a moving account of his academic trajectory, which is a grass to grace story. Even after gaining admission into one of the Northern Nigerian government’s Provisional Secondary Schools in 1964, “…the relatively small school fees could only be paid after my father had sold his cocoa/coffee plantation and my mother the finest of her few clothes”. Continuing, he said “It was not until the third year, when by government policy, the Provincial colleges in the region became full-fledged Government colleges, that my parents were marginally able to sponsor my secondary education with less hardship”.

He was full of praise for the combination of good mission, regional, state and federal education policies of the 60s and 70s, which opened access and opportunities to qualified pupils and students to obtain sound education. In his words “The story of my life’s journey provides instruction on the value of merit in the attainment of possibilities for individuals, groups and societies…This has affirmed my conviction that merit is a veritable credo of governance and I propose that it is forever good to stick to what is just and right. What remains is for our governments to adhere to the merit principle as the objective condition for national transformation”.