EDO NORTH SENATORIAL DISTRICT: THE IMPERATIVES FOR THE AKOKO - EDO PEOPLE
INTRODUCTION
POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND LAW
A great political publicist defined politics as the authoritative allocation of values and another defined it as who gets what, when and how. Yet another defined it as war without guns and the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt let it known that nothing ever happens in politics by chance or accident and that if it happens you can be sure it was programmed to be so.
From the above exposition, it should become apparent that there is something to be gained from participation in politics. If this is the case, it therefore means that whoever occupies the position of power or authority in any political system has enormous influence to peddle as he is the arrow head dispensing political favour as he wills.
Another important factor which cannot be discountenanced is the economic factor. So long as political decisions and actions affect the economic wellbeing of persons, so long will the fierce struggle for political power and sometimes domination continue.
The third important concept in the equation is the law. The law zeroes in to bring some order and set minimum rules of engagement in the struggle and competition for political and economic power even though some commentators have been circumspect and suspicious of the role law plays in society.
KARL MARX & THE ROLE OF LAW IN SOCIETY
One of the best known exponents of this skepticism is Karl Marx and his thinking runs through the entire gamut of communist philosophy. He famously defined law as a super structure upon an economic base. By this, Marx meant and sought to show how the law is a powerful tool in the hands of the bourgeois (that is the owners of capital) to perpetually put down the proletariat (that is the poor majority who are suppliers of labour) and to maintain their strangle – hold on the means of production in order to maintain the class society so they can forever keep their privileges.
Marx envisaged a time when the proletariat (labour) will overthrow the bourgeoisie (capital) in the industrial complex of developed Europe, abolishing class, establishing a society organized on a classless basis and by the dictatorship of the proletariat an eternal fair and equitable order of “from every man according to his ability and to every man according to his needs” will be established. Ironically though, it was in Russia, the European industrial back waters of the time that any semblance of communism was eventually established after the Bolsheviks outwitted the Mensheviks in what is today known as ‘Red October’ in 1917. The Great Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the intellectual powerhouse of the revolution unfortunately died early in 1924 before intellectual Communism had opportunity to take root and his right hand man, Leon Trotsky was driven into exile and subsequently assassinated in Mexico by a Soviet state agent. The coast was clear as Joseph Stalin, one of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history unleashed a reign of terror and bloody putsches on the Russian people for over two decades.
THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
The end of the second world war and the emergence of two super powers and the consequent cold war and the arms race that ensued, the cry of oppressed people’s of the world and the internal contradictions and decay within the Soviet Empire itself eventually led to the demise of Communism and the Soviet State in 1990 when the Berlin wall fell. The Soviet Union at the height of its powers sprawled over most of Eastern Europe and with the mammoth red army behind it; it seemed that its relentless march across frontiers could not be halted. A real scepter of what Sir Winston Churchill first saw at the end of World War II and captured succinctly thus: “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the continent” stared the rest of the free world in the face.
But eventually, with Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika adopted in the 1980s, Communism died and it is capitalism that lives on. Capitalism has endured; Communism never really took root and with the demise of the old Soviet Union in 1990 and the overthrow of communist vestiges and outposts around the world Communism as we know it at least has ceased to exist.
THOUGHTS ON NIGERIAN AND AMERICAN POLITICS
Capitalism, American style supposedly thrives best in a democratic atmosphere. Nigeria in the run up to the second republic in 1979 fashioned and adopted an American Executive type Presidency and has continued to operate such a Constitution in the present political dispensation and our economy and market is supposedly organized on the laissez faire American model Capitalism.
In Nigeria, the Executive President, State Governor, Local Council Chairman occupies a very powerful office and is a very powerful and influential person that is. Perceptibly, a Nigerian President is more powerful than the President of the United States of America. Witness the imperial Presidency of General Olusegun Obasanjo, his ‘can do and undo’ attitude, the unspeakable Constitutional breaches ho got away with. Any American President who tried what “baba Iyabo” got away with here would long be history. It will be blue murder.
Elected officials in Nigeria are very powerful; they hold the purse strings and have enormous influence to peddle. If politics is the authoritative allocation of values and if it determines who gets what, when and how, then we ought to be interested in who controls the levers of power, holds the purse strings and peddle influence in our local communities which in the peculiar circumstances of Nigeria is enormous.
Away from the urban centres, Nigeria’s local communities are desperately underdeveloped and as they say, see the poverty in some of these places and die. I have carefully avoided to say anything ever since the raging debate on the suitability of the candidates who are angling to represent my local community (Edo North Senatorial District) in the senate or otherwise but not anymore bearing in mind what I have earlier observed. I have seen all the comments for and against the candidates on the revolutionary social networking site, face book, the new fad in town and at other forums and I am hugely disappointed that no one is considering the real issues.
Yes, I mean those for and against the leading candidates. Every one seems to be fixated with the ideal when we should go the way of practicability. No one will deny that one of the corner stones of any serious polity is fairness and equity. Politics every where in the world is an expensive venture. The cost of running Governments – a democratic one at that is enormous and many have questioned the utility of such governments in poor countries.
The United States of America is a prime example of this culture. At the last campaigns that brought President Barack Obama to power for example, both candidates of the dominant parties (the GOP and the Democrats) raised tens of millions of dollars to fund the campaign and the elections. Without funds no one can come close to the Presidency of the United States. Nigeria is therefore no exception. Those who tell you otherwise are either ignorant or are outright mischievous. They should tell you there are institutions called Political Action Committees (PACs) of diverse interests who raise money to support candidates for various causes. The problem we have in this part of the world is that we usually do not have well entrenched institutions to do most of these things that are done abroad properly and legitimately. What is Lobbying for example? Money does change hands, in a legitimate manner albeit though; but in our part of the world we know it only as corruption because we have not found an ethical and acceptable way to do it within the rules with transparency. For example Donors are required to disclose to the necessary authorities how much they are donating. Candidates likewise disclose money raised and received from donors and appropriate taxes are paid on the sums. Certain donors and sums are prohibited. Some entities, e.g. Companies cannot donate to political causes unless they have PACs. This no doubt is meant to curb the corruptive influence of big businesses but just what do you have here?
During the run up to the 2003 General Elections, all manner of businesses and businessmen under the amorphous umbrella of Corporate Nigeria unabashedly raised billions of Naira for the electoral conquest of the then incumbent President, General Olusegun Obasanjo in violent disregard of Section 38 (2) of the Companies and Allied Matters Act. For clarity of purpose, the section provides under Corporate powers and capacity and I copiously quote “a company shall not have or exercise power either directly or indirectly to make a donation or gift of any of its property or funds to a political party or political association, or for any political purpose; and if any company, in breach of this subsection makes any donation or gift of its property to a political party or political association, or for any political purpose, the officers in default and any member who voted for the breach shall jointly and severally be liable to refund to the company the sum or value of the donation or gift and in addition, the company and every such officer or member shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine equal to the amount or value of the donation or gift”.
We did not hear that any one tried to enforce this law, the monies were not accounted for, no taxes were paid and we all have since carried on as if nothing was amiss.
Nigerian politics replete with cronyism is such that if the so called power brokers and ‘godfathers’ do not sanction a candidate, nine times out of ten, the candidate is doomed to fail. If you will call the bluff of the ‘godfathers’, you must either have other powerful backers or you have very deep pockets. Definitely it is not right, volumes have been written on this point but unfortunately that is where we are. Ignoring these variables amounts to burying our heads in the sands the proverbial way of the ostrich.
ISSUES IN EDO, EDO - NORTH AND AKOKO – EDO LGA POLITICS
Now to the real issues to which I earlier alluded in this piece.
The issues as I see them are these: No Akoko - Edo person nay Igarra has ever been senator in the history of the senatorial district and that is serious; conservatively you need at least the sum of Three Hundred Million Naira to get to the Senate unfortunately again; the hard work begins after you are elected senator; you need men of influence and power to get things done for your constituency at whatever level how much more the senate in a country where the already scarce resources are surreptitiously deployed to build personal empires and fiefdoms; the only thing constant in life is change and men do change for good or for worse; Victor Hugo wrote "a man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour"; no privileged class ever lets power go on a platter; it must be wrestled from their grip; Akoko - Edo is the oldest Local Government Area in Nigeria today; other local divisions in the old Midwest State are now 2 - 3 Local Government Areas.
Akoko – Edo Local Government Area was one of the original divisions created in the old Midwest State for administrative convenience in 1963. It is disheartening that all other divisions have since metamorphosed into two or three Local Government Areas, even the State has since become two, with the Deltans taking their fate in their own hands when history beckoned in 1992 and today they have the “big heart” where their dreams and aspirations in the old Bendel State find expression, while Akoko – Edo remains one.
Akoko – Edo has only undergone change once, when in 1967 the Midwest became Bendel State it was re christened Akoko – Edo Local Government Area from the earlier nomenclature (Akoko – Edo Local Division) with which it was known. Apart from this Akoko – Edo remains the only Local Government Area in the federation that has remained pristine since independence. The consequence of this is that Akoko – Edo has been much marginalized. A clear example of this marginalization is this Senatorial seat issue.
The mosaic I will paint now is a model of what has happened to the Akoko – Edo people in every facet of their existence in a State and Nation they call their own.
The senatorial district is a tripod-like structure, made up of Akoko-Edo, Etsako and Owan Local Government Areas. The Constitution has made the three components heirs to the Edo North senatorial seat. The seemingly lacklustre performance of the present senator from Edo North, Hon. Yisa Braimoh, from Owan East LGA, who is perceived more as a bench warmer, appears to have thrown the doors wide open for other interested stakeholders particularly candidates from the ruling Action Congress in the state as it does not appear on the face of it and there is nothing on the ground to suggest that Senator Yisa Braimoh of the Peoples Democratic Party can muster a second win.
Historically, the battle for the Senatorial seat has always been a straight fight between the contending forces from the three Etsako LGAs and the two Owan LGAs, leaving out the third leg of the tripod, Akoko Edo LGA from the race. The Edo North people who are also referred to as the Afenmai people comprise of Owan (2 LGAs), Akoko Edo (1 LGA) and Etsako (3 LGAs). Please note that in 1963, you only had Owan Division, Etsako Division and Akoko – Edo Division. How the Etsako people and the Owan people now have 3 and 2 LGAs respectively while Akoko - Edo remains one big entity beats one silly.
Before now, at the advent of Executive type Presidency in Nigeria, in the second republic, in the 1979 general elections to be precise, Senator John Umolu from Agenebode, now Etsako East LGA was elected the Senator to represent the district. In 1983, Senator (Mrs.) Franca Afegbua from Etsako East LGA occupied the office all be it for a short while.
During the aborted third republic; before General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida threw away the opportunity to be the Charles de Gaulle of modern Nigeria by annulling what was generally acclaimed the freest and fairest elections in Nigeria’s political history, Senator Albert Legogie from Etsako East LGA represented the Edo North people in the senate until 1993. In the days of the dark goggled General, Sanni Abacha, Senator Remi Agbowu from Owan East LGA was elected to represent the senatorial district. At the return of democratic rule in 1999, Senator Victor Oyoifo from Etsako West LGA was elected to represent the district and he served out two terms which ended in 2007, before the Owan people took their turn again in 2007. In all these Akoko – Edo which is the third leg, the third arm of the tripod if you like has been ignored with ignominy/disdain.
More compelling facts and nearer home even; On March 19, 1964 when the then Midwest State House of Assembly was inaugurated, Hon. P.K. Tabiowo, an Urhobo man was Speaker until 1966 when the Military led by Kaduna Nzeogwu struck. Hon. Benson Anthony Alegbe from Owan East was Speaker of the old Bendel State House of Assembly from 1979 to 1983. Hon. Louis Ijeoma took over and was Speaker from October to December, 1983 before the second republic administration of President Shehu Shagari was truncated and consigned to the dustbin of history by the then fiery military junta led by the draconian laws loving General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd). In the course of the aborted third republic, Hon. Matthew Egbadon from Esan Central was Speaker from January 1992 to August 1993 and when he was removed Hon. Joe Ekpenkhio from Etsako Central was sworn in (in his stead) meanwhile Reverend Peter Obadan, also from Owan East, was Deputy Governor of Edo State at the relevant time.
In the same vein, at the return of democratic governance in 1999, Hon. Thomas Okosun another Esan man was elected Speaker in October 1999 and when he was impeached in February 2000, Hon. Matthew Egbadon in what was his second coming was elected Speaker of the House. In the year 2003, after the elections of that year, Hon. Friday Itulah from Esan North East, who is now a member of the Federal House of Representatives, was elected Speaker but after a short while, he was impeached and Hon. David Iyoha from Esan Central emerged Speaker in October, 2003. In the year 2007, Zakawanu Garuba of Etsako West Constituency was elected Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly until recently when crisis erupted in the house between the contending forces of the evenly matched Peoples Democratic Party and the Action Congress in what many saw as a fight for supremacy between the incumbent Governor elected on the platform of the Action Congress and the ‘eternal godfather’ of Edo politics and a King pin of the Peoples Democratic Party. Hon. Bright Omokhodion from Esan West Constituency, elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party but who defected to the Action Congress in the heat of the crisis has since emerged Speaker of the House though the crisis lingers.
Hmmm, how instructive, what manner of marginalization? Is it not Criminal neglect to discover that in this impressive long list of Speakers, Akoko Edo LGA with two Constituencies has never produced any? It is simply unfathomable. What has the Akoko – Edo people done to the rest of Nigeria? Though some say it is a self inflicted injury and they have questioned the quality of representatives sent to the Assembly by the Akoko – Edo people in recent years. Even at that, nothing justifies this kind of neglect. Our Comrade Governor must hear this, the elders of Edo state must hear this and we will take our legitimate case to the Federal Government and all well meaning Nigerians.
Stretching it further, George Agbazika Innih from Agenebode, Etsako East LGA was at a time the Military Governor of the old Bendel State, Admiral Mike Okhai Akhigbe (Rtd) from Fugar, Etsako Central LGA was in recent memory Chief of General Staff and effectively second in command to the then Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar (Rtd). Today, the highest ranking member of the President Jonathan Goodluck kitchen cabinet from Edo State is Chief Mike Oghiadome, the Chief of Staff to the President, who was also Deputy Governor of Edo state from 1999 to 2007; he is also from Etsako Central LGA.
The Governorship of the State? Do not even go there. How will a People who have never produced a Deputy Governor, A Speaker of the State House of Assembly and A Senator ever hope to produce the Governor of such a State. Infact other than George Agbazika Innih, who was a Military Governor, the whole of Edo North is only now producing a Governor in the person of the incumbent Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole. You can now see why it is a no go area for the Akoko – Edo people.
Twenty men have governed the State in its chequered history. Seven of these twenty men are relevant to our present discourse. Jereton Mariere, a Deltan was the first Governor at the inauguration of the old Midwest State from February 1964 to January 1966. Lt. Colonel David Ejoor, another Deltan, became Administrator of the State at the onset of Military rule in Nigeria from January 1966 to August 1967. Brigadier General Samuel Ogbemudia from Uhunmwonde LGA, who is still active in contemporary Nigerian politics succeeded him and was Military Administrator and later Governor from September 1967 to July 1975. For the Brigadier General history came full circle again when as Dr. Samuel Ogbemudia he was elected Governor of the old Bendel State from October 1983 to December 1983 in the fading moments of the ill fated second republic. Colonel George Agbazika Innih from Etsako East succeeded Ogbemudia as Military Governor from July 1975 to March 1976. At the onset of the second republic, Professor Ambrose Folorunsho Alli from Esan West was elected the first Executive Governor of the old Bendel State from October 1979 to October 1983. John E. K. Odigie Oyegun from Uhunmwonde LGA again was Governor of the new Edo State from January 1992 to November 1993. As democracy returned to our shores in 1999, Chief Lucky Igbinedion from Oredo LGA was elected Executive Governor of the State from May 1999 to May 2007. Professor Osarheimen Osunbor of the Peoples Democratic Party from Esan West yet again was purportedly elected Governor from May 2007 before his pyrrhic election victory was overturned by the Court of Appeal sitting in Benin on November 12, 2008 and in the process declared Comrade Adams Oshiomhole from Etsako West of the Action Congress validly elected as Governor of Edo State as he scored more of the lawful votes cast at the April 14 2007 Gubernatorial elections.
Again an impressive cast of former Governors of the State and yet again the Akoko – Edo’s are conspicuous by their absence.
So our cause is just. It will take sheer insensitivity and monumental wickedness for any one to say that our cause is false. All men of good will recognize that something must be done about the privations the Akoko – Edo people have suffered for so long.
Fairness and equity demands that an Akoko – Edo person must be senator now. The Etsako and Owan people have had more than their fair share of the largesse of office.
That Akoko-Edo is a complementary part of the tripod is not disputed by anyone. That we have been much maligned and marginalized is also not in issue. That as a result of this marginalization, development has eluded the LGA is crystal clear for all to see.
THE WAY FORWARD FOR THE AKOKO –EDO PEOPLE
Now to the possible solutions I now turn my attention.
On the basis of equity, justice and fair play, an Akoko - Edo person must be senator now.
If that is true then this senator with all sense of fairness and responsibility must be an Igarra person. Even in the LGA, the Igarra people have always held the short end of the stick. In recent memory, between 1999 and now, Dr. Tunde Lakoju, who incidentally is also a Commissioner in the present administration of the Comrade Governor and Colonel Tunde Akogun (Rtd) who currently represents the Akoko – Edo people in the House of Representatives have been elected to the House of Representatives. Chief Paul Kehinde Udofe was also Commissioner in the Administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion. The Late Chief Samson Ekhabafe before his unfortunate demise was Commissioner in 1983, He was Attorney General in the administration of Chief Lucky Igbinedion, He was again Commissioner for Water Resources in the administration of Professor Oserhiemen Osunbor and was factional Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party in Edo State. My point is by now obvious. Telling you none of these men hails from Igarra and that in all that time no Igarra man has been elected or appointed to any of these posts will be merely begging the question. So our next senator must be an Igarra person.
Politics is not cheap. As earlier noted, the cost of successfully campaigning and winning elections, the cost of running democratic Governments is enormous. In the absence of proper institutions as we have in saner climes, then anyone who will run for a senatorial seat has to be well heeled or have powerful backers. Conservatively, to successfully run a senate race, you at least need Three Hundred Million Naira. Now will anyone tell me if they know any Igarra man who has three hundred million naira or is willing to spend such a mind boggling sum to get to the senate? We know those who have marginalised us and they have enormous resources. If we agree on an ideal Igarra candidate and we are to raise funds for him, does anyone sincerely believe that the Igarra people can raise fifty million naira for such a project? So left for us and those who will perpetually subjugate us, without any Igarra man of means who is personally interested we will perpetually be marginalised. These people do not care about us so we must find a way to get the senatorial slot first however imperfect. We can always return home to sort out issues of concern. Let the man who can go, go for us.
At the senate, a senator must be able to work across party lines and divide. He must be able to call on the external influence of men of power and means if he will be able to attract meaningful projects to his constituency. Tell me who will be able to do this as Igarra is today? There is visible and invisible labour and as the bible tells us that which is unseen is more important than that which we can see. Has anyone heard of the ongoing Constituency delimitation/delineation stuff? Who is making sure it is done to the advantage of the Akoko – Edo people? If we get this sorted out properly, it will solve 75% of our political problems. We should not concern ourselves with what we will eat alone. Why worry if someone gives you a job or not when with God and smart work, everything is possible. Let us concern ourselves with what will benefit all. What will outlast all. The common good.
I know and I am sure and I severally contemplate it in the innermost recesses of my heart. If Akoko – Edo always had a man of means and power who was interested enough, Akoko – Edo would not have remained a single LGA till date. Does anyone remember the circumstances that led to the creation of Etsako Central LGA and how Fugar became a Local Government headquarters? That is what you get when you have a man of means and power at the top who is interested enough.
I am pragmatic enough to see, comprehend, accept and agree that mistakes have been made in the past and on the part of all but if we continue to see the negatives, then we will miss the positives, we are saying that men cannot change. People do change and we must see what today is and stop living in the past - whatever anyone has done in the past is past. What is past is past; never go back, not for excuses and certainly not for justification. But if we insist on stoning others for their past lives, I will simply say as Christ did in his time "let he who is without sin be the first to cast a stone". The question now really is what are you doing for Akoko – Edo and Igarra today?
As I canvassed elsewhere, in whatever we say or do, we must know that we have only one place to call home, whatever heights we attain in life, we can never, ever divest ourselves from Akoko – Edo nay Igarra. Let these words of Martin Luther King Jnr. be a constant reminder of what you owe yourself, others and Igarra as an Igarra man, “every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment; life’s most persistent and urgent question is what are you doing for others?” And for Akoko – Edo and Igarra permit me to add if we shall come through these dark years of privation together.
And I end this treatise as I did elsewhere by asking you to call to mind the immortal words of Frantz Fanon thus, “every generation must discover its mission which it either fulfills or betrays”. We have and you have discovered yours, it is Akoko –Edo, it is Igarra, we must fulfill it.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law firm of Fountain Court Partners.
FOUNTAIN COURT PARTNERS
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08052066172Kingjaja_j@yahoo.com or obaoni@yahoo.co.uk
Friday, July 16, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
NIGERIA: THIS FOREIGN COACH THING
NIGERIA: THIS FOREIGN COACH THING
There is a stage you get to in life and you refuse to be deceived any longer. The world knows us and we know the world. However much we try to hide our shame we will never succeed. Our sins are as red as crimson; they will not become as white as snow because a country that seeks peace without justice is as hypocritical as a country can be. It is folly and an exercise in futility. Why will we continue to mouth vision 2020 when everything and every one who knows their onions have indicated that the vision is unattainable? What makes it more sickening is that those telling us it is achievable know it is not and are doing nothing to speed up the process of development. If there are some who still lend their ears and time to the shenanigans and deceit of these people then I am not one of them. No one will ever sell me a dummy in this country again. Does it take forever to build or repair refineries? Why on earth will any serious country be unable to add a single megawatt to its electricity needs in ten years? Yet the country has the economic pretensions of being one of the biggest 20 by 2020.
We wanted the Super Eagles of Nigeria to perform wonders at the just concluded nation’s cup in Angola. They did not and they are being vilified front, back, left, right and centre and their unfortunate coach, Amodu Shuaibu has been sacked or did they say redeployed? Nonsense. These boys do not owe us anything. A Country that has a non performing President or is even without one? A country with unaccountable Ministers? A country where Governors do nothing other than to fiddle and twiddle? A country where Lawmakers pass no bill? A country where the Attorney General is the Chief lawbreaker? A country that Citizens do nothing to make? What is anyone’s justification in condemning the boys? What has anyone of these critics done to make Nigeria? How have these critics made their own personal lives a success and a model for others to copy? Spare us this nonsense and let us get on with the job of making Nigeria.
To start with the coach thing, I think one of the chief culprits destroying Nigerian football are these clueless nitwits who call themselves football analysts on television, radio and sometimes the print media. The same analyst who told you yesterday that you do not need a foreign coach will shamelessly eat his words and vociferously call for one today. Statistics they say do not lie but in football you can use correct statistics to make anything look good or bad. For example, until his recent injury set back, only Thierry Henry (before he left for Barcelona) scored more premier league goals than Yakubu Aiyegbeni. And that in a league with the likes of Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres to mention a few truly class acts of the European game. Now juxtapose this with the perennial pedestrian in Nigerian colours and tell me what that tells you.
No one will argue that Thijs Libregts is a bad coach. We all know what he did with the Dutch national team. Berti Vogts, a coach that took Germany to the European Championship runner up spot in 1992 and the title in 1996 is by no stretch of imagination a bad coach. Brazilian Alberto Torres turned his back on us when we thought we had a done deal. The ‘white witch doctor’ Phillippe Troussier was not a bad coach either. He proved it at Korea/Japan 2002 with the Japanese national team. In the same vein, I dare say that the much vilified Amodu Shuaibu is not a bad coach. Festus Adegboye Onigbinde was one of the most technically astute coaches in his time. Former Green Eagles captain Christian Chukwu was not bad either. Stephen Okechukwu Keshi proved that indigenous coaches can go the whole hog. He did it with Togo and is doing it with Mali. Ex international, Samson Siasia is about the best Youth coach in the world. He did it at the Under 23 World Youth Championship in the Netherlands and at the last Olympics in Beijing, China, though he lost both final matches to Argentina.
Thijs Libregts did not suddenly become a bad coach as soon as he put pen to paper with the NFF. Berti Vogts cannot become bad as soon as he berthed on our shores. Far from it. Perhaps as Peter Drucker wrote in Corporate Governance when institutions continue to fail perhaps it is time to focus on the institutions themselves and not the men who run these institutions. What is in the Nigerian make up and constitution that suddenly turns eagles into chickens? Why do proven world beaters fail here? Bora Milutinovic is a classic example at the 1998 World cup with Nigeria. After credible spells as coach of Mexico, a team he took to the Quarter finals of the 1986 World cup in Mexico, lowly Costa Rica which he took over Four months before Italia ’90 and miraculously led them to the second round, the United States where he led the modest hosts to a narrow loss in the second round of the 1994 World cup to eventual Champions – Brazil, he led Nigeria to the Mundial in France after the unjust removal of the ‘white witch doctor’, denying him the right to lead the team to the World cup finals in his native France. After two unconvincing wins against Spain and Bulgaria, the team fell apart as they were pummeled three goals to one by Paraguay and got a hiding with Denmark drubbing the team four goals to one in a match the Eagles were widely expected to win. The team left France in tatters and Bora Milutinovic never returned to our shores.
In Nigeria, I dare suggest we modify Peter Drucker’s thesis. We do have weak institutions and focus must truly be directed at these institutions but we must also question the sanity of the men who run these institutions in this country. Or did not our FA Chairman sign a contract that allowed Berti Vogts to live in Germany and yet coach Nigeria? We hear though unconfirmed that Glenn Hoddle wanted less than half of the Kings ransom Lars Lagerback will earn in five months and yet he did not get the job. These people are clowns. How much did the FA pay Amodu for this same job? Where on earth does a coach earn N 50, 000,000.00 (Fifty Million Naira) per month? Only in Nigeria you will say. And if this is also true, what manner of FA will employ a coach because he seems familiar with the names of the national team players? How dumb can the men who run our institutions be? Should not these people realise that all the Swede needs do to get the information with which he dazzled the FA was to look up the internet even for a minute? I am so ashamed of my country men. Though not that I support looking up to the Nile to solve our football problems, it is even an insult that in the 21st Century, Nigeria will look to the land of the Pharaohs for a coach for our National team, but if part of the reason Hassan Shehata was not considered good enough for the Eagles was that he failed to qualify for the World cup with Egypt then what makes Lagerback’s failure to do same with his native Sweden more tolerable? Why did the NFF prevaricated so much in sacking Amodu if he was going to get the boot anyway? The immense opportunity the Nations cup in Angola would have afforded the new man at the helm to prepare for South Africa 2010 was therefore lost. Why does the NFF pay about the most attractive match bonuses across the globe at competitions and yet get nothing done? The players remain unmotivated usually. Why does Nigeria lose semi final matches only to win the third place match? Why has Nigeria lost so many competition finals – 1984, 1988, 1990, and 2000 to use the Nations cup as a parameter?
We still delude ourselves in football in the same manner we delude ourselves as ‘giant of Africa’ in the world committee. After Egypt with six wins now, the most successful sides in nations cup history are Ghana and Cameroun with four wins apiece. Nigeria has only won the competition on two occasions on home soil in 1980 and in Tunis in 1994. Cameroun defeated Nigeria in the 1984, 1988 and 2000 finals to win her first three titles. The 1988 and 2000 finals were particularly painful and leave a sour taste in the mouth. Nigeria had no business losing those two finals if our football administrators were any astute in the discharge of their duties. So in what stupid sense do we still consider ourselves a powerhouse in African football? Even the politics of the game in Africa passes us by. How many times has Nigeria pulled her weight at CAF? Does what we feel or think cut ice with Issa Hayatou? It took close to four decades for Enyimba FC of Aba to finally earn us a little respect in Club football when the team won the African Champions League in 2003 and repeated the feat a year later. Two wins till date. Contrast this with the many wins of two Egyptian clubs – Zamalek and Al Ahly. Even Orlando Pirates since won it for South Africa which was a pariah in world football until the 1990’s before we mustered our first win. When last was a Nigerian footballer in CAF’s top three yet a Nigerian company gleefully bankrolls the Multi million dollar awards every year. Oh how the rest of the football community must be having a jolly laughter at our expense!!!
To get back to the foreign coach thing, without questioning the desirability or otherwise of a Foreign coach for the Super Eagles, it is worthy of note however that Foreign coaches have not proven any more successful than their indigenous counterparts across the continent. Save for the 1996 Olympic Gold medal in football which we won with the Dutch understudy of Clemence Westerhof, Johannes Bonfrere, all other age grade competition medals have been won with indigenous coaches. Our female national team, the best in Africa has never been tutored by a foreign coach. The Brazilian, Otto Gloria won the nations cup for us in 1980, the ‘Dutchgerian’, Clemence Westerhof with no pedigree whatsoever when he arrived our shores in 1989 led Nigeria to glory in 1994 and to our first ever world cup but no one will deny that in 1980 things were not this bad and that you could not question the commitment of the Christian Chukwu skippered Green Eagles. But then that was before big money and European football destroyed the African game. Neither will anyone deny that the 1994 team can and has been described as the Golden team of Nigerian football and the coach then had the ears and eyes of those that mattered at Aso rock. And does anyone remember how Westerhof treated us the morning after? Abandoning Nigeria and the team in the United States after the painful loss to Italy, he elected to fly home straight to his native Netherlands even though we gave him a platform on which to build his career and pedigree.
No indigenous coach has won the nations cup with Nigeria but they have nonetheless had successful stints with the National team. Adegboye Onigbinde lost the final of the Nations cup in 1984 to a massively experienced Camerounean team led by such great players as Theophile Abega, Roger Milla, Thomas Nkono and Joseph Antoine-Bell. In the year 2002, when Amodu Shuaibu was first unjustly removed after qualifying us for the World cup and with little time to prepare, Adegboye Onigbinde again did creditably well with the team playing some good football on the way to losing narrowly to Argentina and Sweden. The team drew their last match against England. Infact I still consider that team unlucky not to qualify from the tough group and that speaks volume of the character the coach and his wards exhibited at that world cup especially considering that the Argies did not eventually qualify from that group too. Along the line, he defeated an Ireland team tutored at the time by Berti Vogts two goals to one in an international friendly preparatory to the World cup.
The much vilified Amodu Shuaibu did something great with BCC Lions of Gboko in the 1990’s winning both domestic and continental honours before joining the National team set up. In 2002 in Mali, he narrowly lost the semi finals to a Senegalese team that went all the way to the final of that year’s competition and further still to achieve fame at that year’s World cup by defeating defending Champions France and eventually reaching the Quarterfinals with Frenchman, Bruno Metsu. They had two years earlier almost eliminated Nigeria in Lagos in the Quarter final of the 2000 Nations cup until Julius Aghahowa came to the rescue. That team was tutored by Johannes Bonfrere. The same Amodu led and qualified Nigeria for the 2002 world cup but was unjustly shown the exit door after Mali, 2002 because some influential group of people in the FA did not like his face and style. The German, Berti Vogts, with a wonderful contract that will make Amodu green with envy played boring football all his days at the helm of affairs, he did not take Nigeria to any world cup and presided over a woeful nations cup performance at Ghana 2008, Nigeria’s worst outing in 26 years and he was reluctantly sacked by the FA. Now history has come full circle, Amodu has again been sacked unjustly. That is the thanks he gets for leading Nigeria to the 2010 world cup ticket against all odds. And all because he had a rough patch to the Quarter final of Angola 2010 and came unstuck against a youthful Ghanaian side just when his team was starting to play some decent football and the improvement could only have peaked from then on. And I also remember that on November 16, 1994, this man led the Super Eagles against England at Wembly Stadium where the Eagles played what for me remains their best match ever although they still were beaten by a David Platt headed goal. But hell, if you are the NFF, you do not consider these variables.
Christian Chukwu led the Super Eagles to a Bronze medal at the 2004 edition of the Nations cup losing the semi final to the hosts and eventual winners, Tunisia on penalties after extra time. Another Ex international Augustine Eguavoen again led us to the bronze medal two years later in 2006 after a narrow semi final loss to a questionable Didier Drogba lone goal and only failed to qualify for the 2006 World cup by the narrowest of margins having tied with Angola on points only for Angola to nick it on the head to head rule. It is easy to delude ourselves that Nigeria should be winning the nations cup for fun but anyone who has followed the game for a considerable length of time will tell you why these things are not necessarily as they seem. I know cynics may say as the Legendary Bob Paisley, the man who built Liverpool, England’s most successful club into the force they became in the modern game that ‘first place is everything and second place is nothing’, but it still cannot be emphatically said that foreign coaches have necessarily fared better than the indigenous ones simply because no indigenous coach has led Nigeria to first place and the coveted diadem at the Nations cup, Africa’s premier showpiece competition.
Again, I say enough of these trumped up technical astuteness of the foreign coaches. At the Nations cup final in 1994, Zambia drew first blood before Nigeria replied with a brace from Emmanuel Amunike and as the second half wore on, the Copper bullets as the team later became known led by the mercurial Kalusha Bwalya played like a team demon possessed. They threatened to overrun the Super Eagles at some point and towards the end of proceedings a fierce strike from Kalusha Bwalya cannoned off the Crossbar with the Goalkeeper well beaten. Imagine if that had gone in. All the good work by Westerhof at that competition could easily have been undone at that point. At the final whistle the relief etched on the faces of the players, the technical crew and the fans watching on television back home was obvious and there for all to see.
At the 1994 world cup in the United States, Nigeria came within two minutes of achieving the nearly impossible with the same Westerhof when the Super Eagles traded tackles with Italy in the second round. Nigeria took a first half lead ironically by another Emmanuel Amunike strike from a corner kick and defended that up until the 88th minute of that eventful encounter but just when the team should have bedded down and see out the last two minutes of the match, one of the players carelessly lost the ball in Midfield, the ball made its way upfield and found the incomparable Roberto Baggio who coolly slotted past the despairing arms of Peter Rufai. A questionable penalty in extra time when Austine Eguavoen needlessly clattered into Antonio Benarrivo was again converted by Roberto Baggio to send the Eagles out of a tournament which final they could well have reached. This was a match wherein the Eagles outplayed, outmaneuvered, outfought and outthought the feared Azzuri. A match where the legend of Austine (Jay Jay) Okocha was born. A match in which Gianfranco Zola was sent off in the 75th minute to hand the Eagles a massive advantage. Yet the Eagles lost the match. In the course of that match Westerhof took off Daniel Amokachie and brought on Mutiu Adepoju in the 35th minute and he replaced Emmanuel Amunike with Thompson Oliha in the 57th minute when we already had Sunday Oliseh and Jay Jay Okocha in midfield and just when we needed to hit the Italians on the break as they were pressing for an equalizer with a man down. Westerhof had Victor Ikpeba, Samson Siasia and Efan Ekoku on the bench. Any two of the lot would have been genius as we will keep our attacking impetus and there was no way Italy was going to come back into it. But as they say all that is history now and a moot point but I shudder to think of the unprintable things we would have heard if an indigenous coach was at the helm of affairs. So much for the technical superiority of the foreign coaches then.
In 1998, Bora Milutinovic was brought in a few months to the start of the World cup and for all we were told about his competence, only a sublime strike from Sunday Oliseh separated us and Spain in the first match. We squeezed past Bulgaria in the second but that was the end of the tournament for Nigeria. We were comprehensively beaten by Paraguay in the last group match but then we had done enough to qualify for the second round. At a time any coach that was half as good as Bora was touted to be would have warned his players to stay focused on the match against Denmark; his wards were already dreaming Brazil. All that is history now too as we well know what happened. A disastrous match for the Eagles. Four goals to one it ended in favour of the Danes. Bora left us and the world has since moved on. Something tells me and I have the nagging fear that the story of Lars Lagerback and the 2010 world cup may not be any different from that of Bora Milutinovic and the 1998 world cup.
Finally these mercenary tacticians, because that is what they really are, have nothing to lose. They come here, get a great contract, they are not monitored and whether they do well or not their perquisites of office are guaranteed (I hear they now lodge a copy of their executed contracts with the world football governing body, FIFA) and there is no sanction mechanism should they fail. In short they have the best of both worlds and when the misadventure ends we are usually left to lick our wounds until the vicious cycle repeats itself again. But what I know is this, as long as we will not run our country properly so long will we continue to suffer in the hands of those who know not how to run football.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
There is a stage you get to in life and you refuse to be deceived any longer. The world knows us and we know the world. However much we try to hide our shame we will never succeed. Our sins are as red as crimson; they will not become as white as snow because a country that seeks peace without justice is as hypocritical as a country can be. It is folly and an exercise in futility. Why will we continue to mouth vision 2020 when everything and every one who knows their onions have indicated that the vision is unattainable? What makes it more sickening is that those telling us it is achievable know it is not and are doing nothing to speed up the process of development. If there are some who still lend their ears and time to the shenanigans and deceit of these people then I am not one of them. No one will ever sell me a dummy in this country again. Does it take forever to build or repair refineries? Why on earth will any serious country be unable to add a single megawatt to its electricity needs in ten years? Yet the country has the economic pretensions of being one of the biggest 20 by 2020.
We wanted the Super Eagles of Nigeria to perform wonders at the just concluded nation’s cup in Angola. They did not and they are being vilified front, back, left, right and centre and their unfortunate coach, Amodu Shuaibu has been sacked or did they say redeployed? Nonsense. These boys do not owe us anything. A Country that has a non performing President or is even without one? A country with unaccountable Ministers? A country where Governors do nothing other than to fiddle and twiddle? A country where Lawmakers pass no bill? A country where the Attorney General is the Chief lawbreaker? A country that Citizens do nothing to make? What is anyone’s justification in condemning the boys? What has anyone of these critics done to make Nigeria? How have these critics made their own personal lives a success and a model for others to copy? Spare us this nonsense and let us get on with the job of making Nigeria.
To start with the coach thing, I think one of the chief culprits destroying Nigerian football are these clueless nitwits who call themselves football analysts on television, radio and sometimes the print media. The same analyst who told you yesterday that you do not need a foreign coach will shamelessly eat his words and vociferously call for one today. Statistics they say do not lie but in football you can use correct statistics to make anything look good or bad. For example, until his recent injury set back, only Thierry Henry (before he left for Barcelona) scored more premier league goals than Yakubu Aiyegbeni. And that in a league with the likes of Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres to mention a few truly class acts of the European game. Now juxtapose this with the perennial pedestrian in Nigerian colours and tell me what that tells you.
No one will argue that Thijs Libregts is a bad coach. We all know what he did with the Dutch national team. Berti Vogts, a coach that took Germany to the European Championship runner up spot in 1992 and the title in 1996 is by no stretch of imagination a bad coach. Brazilian Alberto Torres turned his back on us when we thought we had a done deal. The ‘white witch doctor’ Phillippe Troussier was not a bad coach either. He proved it at Korea/Japan 2002 with the Japanese national team. In the same vein, I dare say that the much vilified Amodu Shuaibu is not a bad coach. Festus Adegboye Onigbinde was one of the most technically astute coaches in his time. Former Green Eagles captain Christian Chukwu was not bad either. Stephen Okechukwu Keshi proved that indigenous coaches can go the whole hog. He did it with Togo and is doing it with Mali. Ex international, Samson Siasia is about the best Youth coach in the world. He did it at the Under 23 World Youth Championship in the Netherlands and at the last Olympics in Beijing, China, though he lost both final matches to Argentina.
Thijs Libregts did not suddenly become a bad coach as soon as he put pen to paper with the NFF. Berti Vogts cannot become bad as soon as he berthed on our shores. Far from it. Perhaps as Peter Drucker wrote in Corporate Governance when institutions continue to fail perhaps it is time to focus on the institutions themselves and not the men who run these institutions. What is in the Nigerian make up and constitution that suddenly turns eagles into chickens? Why do proven world beaters fail here? Bora Milutinovic is a classic example at the 1998 World cup with Nigeria. After credible spells as coach of Mexico, a team he took to the Quarter finals of the 1986 World cup in Mexico, lowly Costa Rica which he took over Four months before Italia ’90 and miraculously led them to the second round, the United States where he led the modest hosts to a narrow loss in the second round of the 1994 World cup to eventual Champions – Brazil, he led Nigeria to the Mundial in France after the unjust removal of the ‘white witch doctor’, denying him the right to lead the team to the World cup finals in his native France. After two unconvincing wins against Spain and Bulgaria, the team fell apart as they were pummeled three goals to one by Paraguay and got a hiding with Denmark drubbing the team four goals to one in a match the Eagles were widely expected to win. The team left France in tatters and Bora Milutinovic never returned to our shores.
In Nigeria, I dare suggest we modify Peter Drucker’s thesis. We do have weak institutions and focus must truly be directed at these institutions but we must also question the sanity of the men who run these institutions in this country. Or did not our FA Chairman sign a contract that allowed Berti Vogts to live in Germany and yet coach Nigeria? We hear though unconfirmed that Glenn Hoddle wanted less than half of the Kings ransom Lars Lagerback will earn in five months and yet he did not get the job. These people are clowns. How much did the FA pay Amodu for this same job? Where on earth does a coach earn N 50, 000,000.00 (Fifty Million Naira) per month? Only in Nigeria you will say. And if this is also true, what manner of FA will employ a coach because he seems familiar with the names of the national team players? How dumb can the men who run our institutions be? Should not these people realise that all the Swede needs do to get the information with which he dazzled the FA was to look up the internet even for a minute? I am so ashamed of my country men. Though not that I support looking up to the Nile to solve our football problems, it is even an insult that in the 21st Century, Nigeria will look to the land of the Pharaohs for a coach for our National team, but if part of the reason Hassan Shehata was not considered good enough for the Eagles was that he failed to qualify for the World cup with Egypt then what makes Lagerback’s failure to do same with his native Sweden more tolerable? Why did the NFF prevaricated so much in sacking Amodu if he was going to get the boot anyway? The immense opportunity the Nations cup in Angola would have afforded the new man at the helm to prepare for South Africa 2010 was therefore lost. Why does the NFF pay about the most attractive match bonuses across the globe at competitions and yet get nothing done? The players remain unmotivated usually. Why does Nigeria lose semi final matches only to win the third place match? Why has Nigeria lost so many competition finals – 1984, 1988, 1990, and 2000 to use the Nations cup as a parameter?
We still delude ourselves in football in the same manner we delude ourselves as ‘giant of Africa’ in the world committee. After Egypt with six wins now, the most successful sides in nations cup history are Ghana and Cameroun with four wins apiece. Nigeria has only won the competition on two occasions on home soil in 1980 and in Tunis in 1994. Cameroun defeated Nigeria in the 1984, 1988 and 2000 finals to win her first three titles. The 1988 and 2000 finals were particularly painful and leave a sour taste in the mouth. Nigeria had no business losing those two finals if our football administrators were any astute in the discharge of their duties. So in what stupid sense do we still consider ourselves a powerhouse in African football? Even the politics of the game in Africa passes us by. How many times has Nigeria pulled her weight at CAF? Does what we feel or think cut ice with Issa Hayatou? It took close to four decades for Enyimba FC of Aba to finally earn us a little respect in Club football when the team won the African Champions League in 2003 and repeated the feat a year later. Two wins till date. Contrast this with the many wins of two Egyptian clubs – Zamalek and Al Ahly. Even Orlando Pirates since won it for South Africa which was a pariah in world football until the 1990’s before we mustered our first win. When last was a Nigerian footballer in CAF’s top three yet a Nigerian company gleefully bankrolls the Multi million dollar awards every year. Oh how the rest of the football community must be having a jolly laughter at our expense!!!
To get back to the foreign coach thing, without questioning the desirability or otherwise of a Foreign coach for the Super Eagles, it is worthy of note however that Foreign coaches have not proven any more successful than their indigenous counterparts across the continent. Save for the 1996 Olympic Gold medal in football which we won with the Dutch understudy of Clemence Westerhof, Johannes Bonfrere, all other age grade competition medals have been won with indigenous coaches. Our female national team, the best in Africa has never been tutored by a foreign coach. The Brazilian, Otto Gloria won the nations cup for us in 1980, the ‘Dutchgerian’, Clemence Westerhof with no pedigree whatsoever when he arrived our shores in 1989 led Nigeria to glory in 1994 and to our first ever world cup but no one will deny that in 1980 things were not this bad and that you could not question the commitment of the Christian Chukwu skippered Green Eagles. But then that was before big money and European football destroyed the African game. Neither will anyone deny that the 1994 team can and has been described as the Golden team of Nigerian football and the coach then had the ears and eyes of those that mattered at Aso rock. And does anyone remember how Westerhof treated us the morning after? Abandoning Nigeria and the team in the United States after the painful loss to Italy, he elected to fly home straight to his native Netherlands even though we gave him a platform on which to build his career and pedigree.
No indigenous coach has won the nations cup with Nigeria but they have nonetheless had successful stints with the National team. Adegboye Onigbinde lost the final of the Nations cup in 1984 to a massively experienced Camerounean team led by such great players as Theophile Abega, Roger Milla, Thomas Nkono and Joseph Antoine-Bell. In the year 2002, when Amodu Shuaibu was first unjustly removed after qualifying us for the World cup and with little time to prepare, Adegboye Onigbinde again did creditably well with the team playing some good football on the way to losing narrowly to Argentina and Sweden. The team drew their last match against England. Infact I still consider that team unlucky not to qualify from the tough group and that speaks volume of the character the coach and his wards exhibited at that world cup especially considering that the Argies did not eventually qualify from that group too. Along the line, he defeated an Ireland team tutored at the time by Berti Vogts two goals to one in an international friendly preparatory to the World cup.
The much vilified Amodu Shuaibu did something great with BCC Lions of Gboko in the 1990’s winning both domestic and continental honours before joining the National team set up. In 2002 in Mali, he narrowly lost the semi finals to a Senegalese team that went all the way to the final of that year’s competition and further still to achieve fame at that year’s World cup by defeating defending Champions France and eventually reaching the Quarterfinals with Frenchman, Bruno Metsu. They had two years earlier almost eliminated Nigeria in Lagos in the Quarter final of the 2000 Nations cup until Julius Aghahowa came to the rescue. That team was tutored by Johannes Bonfrere. The same Amodu led and qualified Nigeria for the 2002 world cup but was unjustly shown the exit door after Mali, 2002 because some influential group of people in the FA did not like his face and style. The German, Berti Vogts, with a wonderful contract that will make Amodu green with envy played boring football all his days at the helm of affairs, he did not take Nigeria to any world cup and presided over a woeful nations cup performance at Ghana 2008, Nigeria’s worst outing in 26 years and he was reluctantly sacked by the FA. Now history has come full circle, Amodu has again been sacked unjustly. That is the thanks he gets for leading Nigeria to the 2010 world cup ticket against all odds. And all because he had a rough patch to the Quarter final of Angola 2010 and came unstuck against a youthful Ghanaian side just when his team was starting to play some decent football and the improvement could only have peaked from then on. And I also remember that on November 16, 1994, this man led the Super Eagles against England at Wembly Stadium where the Eagles played what for me remains their best match ever although they still were beaten by a David Platt headed goal. But hell, if you are the NFF, you do not consider these variables.
Christian Chukwu led the Super Eagles to a Bronze medal at the 2004 edition of the Nations cup losing the semi final to the hosts and eventual winners, Tunisia on penalties after extra time. Another Ex international Augustine Eguavoen again led us to the bronze medal two years later in 2006 after a narrow semi final loss to a questionable Didier Drogba lone goal and only failed to qualify for the 2006 World cup by the narrowest of margins having tied with Angola on points only for Angola to nick it on the head to head rule. It is easy to delude ourselves that Nigeria should be winning the nations cup for fun but anyone who has followed the game for a considerable length of time will tell you why these things are not necessarily as they seem. I know cynics may say as the Legendary Bob Paisley, the man who built Liverpool, England’s most successful club into the force they became in the modern game that ‘first place is everything and second place is nothing’, but it still cannot be emphatically said that foreign coaches have necessarily fared better than the indigenous ones simply because no indigenous coach has led Nigeria to first place and the coveted diadem at the Nations cup, Africa’s premier showpiece competition.
Again, I say enough of these trumped up technical astuteness of the foreign coaches. At the Nations cup final in 1994, Zambia drew first blood before Nigeria replied with a brace from Emmanuel Amunike and as the second half wore on, the Copper bullets as the team later became known led by the mercurial Kalusha Bwalya played like a team demon possessed. They threatened to overrun the Super Eagles at some point and towards the end of proceedings a fierce strike from Kalusha Bwalya cannoned off the Crossbar with the Goalkeeper well beaten. Imagine if that had gone in. All the good work by Westerhof at that competition could easily have been undone at that point. At the final whistle the relief etched on the faces of the players, the technical crew and the fans watching on television back home was obvious and there for all to see.
At the 1994 world cup in the United States, Nigeria came within two minutes of achieving the nearly impossible with the same Westerhof when the Super Eagles traded tackles with Italy in the second round. Nigeria took a first half lead ironically by another Emmanuel Amunike strike from a corner kick and defended that up until the 88th minute of that eventful encounter but just when the team should have bedded down and see out the last two minutes of the match, one of the players carelessly lost the ball in Midfield, the ball made its way upfield and found the incomparable Roberto Baggio who coolly slotted past the despairing arms of Peter Rufai. A questionable penalty in extra time when Austine Eguavoen needlessly clattered into Antonio Benarrivo was again converted by Roberto Baggio to send the Eagles out of a tournament which final they could well have reached. This was a match wherein the Eagles outplayed, outmaneuvered, outfought and outthought the feared Azzuri. A match where the legend of Austine (Jay Jay) Okocha was born. A match in which Gianfranco Zola was sent off in the 75th minute to hand the Eagles a massive advantage. Yet the Eagles lost the match. In the course of that match Westerhof took off Daniel Amokachie and brought on Mutiu Adepoju in the 35th minute and he replaced Emmanuel Amunike with Thompson Oliha in the 57th minute when we already had Sunday Oliseh and Jay Jay Okocha in midfield and just when we needed to hit the Italians on the break as they were pressing for an equalizer with a man down. Westerhof had Victor Ikpeba, Samson Siasia and Efan Ekoku on the bench. Any two of the lot would have been genius as we will keep our attacking impetus and there was no way Italy was going to come back into it. But as they say all that is history now and a moot point but I shudder to think of the unprintable things we would have heard if an indigenous coach was at the helm of affairs. So much for the technical superiority of the foreign coaches then.
In 1998, Bora Milutinovic was brought in a few months to the start of the World cup and for all we were told about his competence, only a sublime strike from Sunday Oliseh separated us and Spain in the first match. We squeezed past Bulgaria in the second but that was the end of the tournament for Nigeria. We were comprehensively beaten by Paraguay in the last group match but then we had done enough to qualify for the second round. At a time any coach that was half as good as Bora was touted to be would have warned his players to stay focused on the match against Denmark; his wards were already dreaming Brazil. All that is history now too as we well know what happened. A disastrous match for the Eagles. Four goals to one it ended in favour of the Danes. Bora left us and the world has since moved on. Something tells me and I have the nagging fear that the story of Lars Lagerback and the 2010 world cup may not be any different from that of Bora Milutinovic and the 1998 world cup.
Finally these mercenary tacticians, because that is what they really are, have nothing to lose. They come here, get a great contract, they are not monitored and whether they do well or not their perquisites of office are guaranteed (I hear they now lodge a copy of their executed contracts with the world football governing body, FIFA) and there is no sanction mechanism should they fail. In short they have the best of both worlds and when the misadventure ends we are usually left to lick our wounds until the vicious cycle repeats itself again. But what I know is this, as long as we will not run our country properly so long will we continue to suffer in the hands of those who know not how to run football.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Monday, March 8, 2010
BRT: RETHINKING THE LAGOS JAM
BRT: RETHINKING THE LAGOS JAM
On March 17, 2010 it will be two years since the Lagos State Government unveiled the Bus Rapid Transit Scheme (BRT) with considerable success recorded thus far. It is therefore appropriate at this point in time to take a second look at the perpetual Lagos traffic chaos/gridlock.
Lagos is a mega city no doubt and one of the fastest growing around the world, but the problem of Lagos is the problem of every mega city in the world. The difference is that mega cities in the first world have through planning and discipline surmounted most of the challenges they face in urban transportation and traffic management. If traffic management and control were impossible, as the Lagos scenario seems to suggest, then New York State would be the most chaotic place in the world. All the cars in Nigeria put together is not even up to the number of cars in New York City alone, yet except for occasional moments in down town New York, traffic flows. London, Berlin and such other great cities are not much different from New York in this respect. Apart from Berlin and some other German cities which has large thoroughfares built by Adolf Hitler in the 1930’s to facilitate the easy and fast movement of man and machinery in preparation for war, other world cities have roads approximately the size of Lagos roads, Lagos roads are the same size as those of London, infact the Lagos inner city roads were modeled after that of the city of London. Contrast this with the chaos of Lagos, Mexico City in Mexico and Harare in Zimbabwe, then you will begin to appreciate what those nations that value time and man hours have done even in the face of daunting challenges.
The Lagos situation is particularly disgusting, everything thrown at it, every measure taken to curb it has ultimately fallen short. When the Government of Alhaji Lateef Jakande proposed the metro line in the 1980’s, the situation was not even this grave but that did not see the light of day though. The Federal and State Governments built bridges but bridges do not last forever – a case in point is the dilapidated and overstretched third mainland bridge, the federal capital and ministries/parastatals were moved out of Lagos to decongest the city yet nothing changed. There is no place in Lagos today where one can escape the population pressure, new areas opened up in Lagos less than 5 years ago are now reeling under the impact of overpopulation, too many people come into Lagos everyday and no one leaves – what baffles me is that over 40% of these people live in poverty and are unemployed.
Nigerians do not understand the implications and what we lose in and to the Lagos traffic jam. Consider that we spend an average of 4 to 6 hours in traffic snarls around the city every day. What does that translate to in terms of man hours lost; time wasted viz a viz economic growth and development. What are the health implications, why do we wonder when workers suddenly slump and die? The statistics are grim; six hours everyday in the Lagos traffic with the attendant inconveniences for 20 years is enough to send anyone to an early grave.
The major cause of the Lagos jam, though hard to believe is mere indiscipline, amongst others. Quite apart from the fact that the infrastructure in Lagos will barely support a population of 5 million and that the number of people who now struggle for space in Lagos is conservatively put at over 15 million, if only we are a bit more disciplined, the situation will be much more manageable. Take for instance, the rise and rise of area boys who collect tolls on all roads imaginable, holding up traffic with sundry violent conduct. If only it were quantifiable, the illegal toll taken on Lagos roads annually will run into billions of naira. The average cab or bus driver is a menace on Lagos roads; he will drive against traffic, overtake recklessly, run the speed limit and never allow others the right of way. The bus conductor is as rude and irresponsible as the driver and God save other commuters on a day he meets another equally irresponsible passenger and either an argument or a fight ensues.
The private car owner is not any different on Lagos roads. He curses and holds up others at the slightest provocation. He will obstruct traffic for several minutes and even hours if you are unlucky to dent or scratch his ‘tokunboh’ car which could be anything from third hand you know even though for all he cares, he was the one at fault. He will block access roads in a bid to avoid a gridlock on the major highways in the belief that movement, any movement is better than a standstill even though most of these so called short cuts end up taking longer to traverse.
The advent of the BRT is a welcome development if it works but if it does not, we will find ourselves in even more dire straits. However, there are other simple actions we may take to address the deteriorating traffic situation in Lagos. One, we could and as a matter of urgency start a process to redirect the flow of traffic by identifying what people need and why they go long distances every day to get them. For example, most people who work on the island live on the mainland, why can’t they stay and work on the mainland if most things were right. It is not every one that heads to Lagos, Victoria Island and Ikoyi every morning who wants such a tiring routine but most times they are forced to. Many who live on the mainland will gladly own and operate their businesses around where they live, if only a fraction of the facilities in highbrow Victoria Island were in such places.
Many people have suggested ways out of this by building industrial parks and self contained cities. All this is good but whither the capital and the political will? If the woman who lives in Ikeja is sure of getting all the jewelleries and lace materials she needs from such a commercial acreage in close by Egbeda, then the incentive to head for Idumota in Lagos is removed. We could also encourage people to work from home if we are able to solve our power and energy problem. For most professionals especially the self employed, there is actually no need to live in Ikorodu and own an office in Victoria Island when with the aid of technology you can actually stay at home these days, do your work and only go out to deliver at auspicious times.
If however, we must continue our excruciating daily pilgrimage to Lagos Island, we must begin to explore another work ethic that makes the city of New York unique. New York City did not earn the sobriquet “the city that never sleeps” for nothing. Many New Yorkers work alternate hours. The way it works is simple, some people work during the day while others work at night using the same offices and the same facilities, all the worker need do is to attune himself to his work time and sleep time such that for the man who works at night, the day becomes his night and this can be reversed after a number of weeks and vice versa. This simply means that instead of having a Million cars snaking into the island every morning and at the close of business everyday and a handful moving in the opposite direction, there will be some balance and about half or even less than half of that number of cars will have to be on the road at any particular rush hour. Imagine how much this will ease the traffic situation in Lagos.
The Government could also make a mandatory toll payable for any private car that travel to designated areas with less than four persons when they could take advantage of the multi million dollar BRT project of the state government and save themselves and others the stress of hold up.
If all these are in place and the Government does nothing in terms of infrastructure, then the purpose will again soon be defeated as it is projected that the population of Lagos will continue to grow in geometric proportions and that in a few years close to 30 Million people will live in Lagos. What is it with the Fourth Mainland Bridge that nobody seems to know what is happening with respect to building it? If the Lagos traffic chaos must be solved any time soon, then the fourth mainland bridge must be built and existing ones rehabilitated and maintained.
In this, the federal government must lend the Lagos state government a helping hand. All the federal roads in Lagos should be rehabilitated and new ones built as trunk A roads are very expensive to build and maintain. It is a thing of joy that the present administration both at the state and national level are co – operating and working together to solve the myriad problems of Lagos state. For these, they deserve commendation and we hope that Lagosians will begin to reap the fruits of their co-operation soon.
Finally, all hands must be on deck, the necessary enlightenment should be done; Lagosians must know why and be willing to park their cars at home during the week days and use the BRT as it is done in saner climes around the world. It saves them the stress of driving, time wasted in traffic, energy expended in driving, money as they would not have to burn fuel. It saves their cars for the weekends and above all, it saves their lives.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
On March 17, 2010 it will be two years since the Lagos State Government unveiled the Bus Rapid Transit Scheme (BRT) with considerable success recorded thus far. It is therefore appropriate at this point in time to take a second look at the perpetual Lagos traffic chaos/gridlock.
Lagos is a mega city no doubt and one of the fastest growing around the world, but the problem of Lagos is the problem of every mega city in the world. The difference is that mega cities in the first world have through planning and discipline surmounted most of the challenges they face in urban transportation and traffic management. If traffic management and control were impossible, as the Lagos scenario seems to suggest, then New York State would be the most chaotic place in the world. All the cars in Nigeria put together is not even up to the number of cars in New York City alone, yet except for occasional moments in down town New York, traffic flows. London, Berlin and such other great cities are not much different from New York in this respect. Apart from Berlin and some other German cities which has large thoroughfares built by Adolf Hitler in the 1930’s to facilitate the easy and fast movement of man and machinery in preparation for war, other world cities have roads approximately the size of Lagos roads, Lagos roads are the same size as those of London, infact the Lagos inner city roads were modeled after that of the city of London. Contrast this with the chaos of Lagos, Mexico City in Mexico and Harare in Zimbabwe, then you will begin to appreciate what those nations that value time and man hours have done even in the face of daunting challenges.
The Lagos situation is particularly disgusting, everything thrown at it, every measure taken to curb it has ultimately fallen short. When the Government of Alhaji Lateef Jakande proposed the metro line in the 1980’s, the situation was not even this grave but that did not see the light of day though. The Federal and State Governments built bridges but bridges do not last forever – a case in point is the dilapidated and overstretched third mainland bridge, the federal capital and ministries/parastatals were moved out of Lagos to decongest the city yet nothing changed. There is no place in Lagos today where one can escape the population pressure, new areas opened up in Lagos less than 5 years ago are now reeling under the impact of overpopulation, too many people come into Lagos everyday and no one leaves – what baffles me is that over 40% of these people live in poverty and are unemployed.
Nigerians do not understand the implications and what we lose in and to the Lagos traffic jam. Consider that we spend an average of 4 to 6 hours in traffic snarls around the city every day. What does that translate to in terms of man hours lost; time wasted viz a viz economic growth and development. What are the health implications, why do we wonder when workers suddenly slump and die? The statistics are grim; six hours everyday in the Lagos traffic with the attendant inconveniences for 20 years is enough to send anyone to an early grave.
The major cause of the Lagos jam, though hard to believe is mere indiscipline, amongst others. Quite apart from the fact that the infrastructure in Lagos will barely support a population of 5 million and that the number of people who now struggle for space in Lagos is conservatively put at over 15 million, if only we are a bit more disciplined, the situation will be much more manageable. Take for instance, the rise and rise of area boys who collect tolls on all roads imaginable, holding up traffic with sundry violent conduct. If only it were quantifiable, the illegal toll taken on Lagos roads annually will run into billions of naira. The average cab or bus driver is a menace on Lagos roads; he will drive against traffic, overtake recklessly, run the speed limit and never allow others the right of way. The bus conductor is as rude and irresponsible as the driver and God save other commuters on a day he meets another equally irresponsible passenger and either an argument or a fight ensues.
The private car owner is not any different on Lagos roads. He curses and holds up others at the slightest provocation. He will obstruct traffic for several minutes and even hours if you are unlucky to dent or scratch his ‘tokunboh’ car which could be anything from third hand you know even though for all he cares, he was the one at fault. He will block access roads in a bid to avoid a gridlock on the major highways in the belief that movement, any movement is better than a standstill even though most of these so called short cuts end up taking longer to traverse.
The advent of the BRT is a welcome development if it works but if it does not, we will find ourselves in even more dire straits. However, there are other simple actions we may take to address the deteriorating traffic situation in Lagos. One, we could and as a matter of urgency start a process to redirect the flow of traffic by identifying what people need and why they go long distances every day to get them. For example, most people who work on the island live on the mainland, why can’t they stay and work on the mainland if most things were right. It is not every one that heads to Lagos, Victoria Island and Ikoyi every morning who wants such a tiring routine but most times they are forced to. Many who live on the mainland will gladly own and operate their businesses around where they live, if only a fraction of the facilities in highbrow Victoria Island were in such places.
Many people have suggested ways out of this by building industrial parks and self contained cities. All this is good but whither the capital and the political will? If the woman who lives in Ikeja is sure of getting all the jewelleries and lace materials she needs from such a commercial acreage in close by Egbeda, then the incentive to head for Idumota in Lagos is removed. We could also encourage people to work from home if we are able to solve our power and energy problem. For most professionals especially the self employed, there is actually no need to live in Ikorodu and own an office in Victoria Island when with the aid of technology you can actually stay at home these days, do your work and only go out to deliver at auspicious times.
If however, we must continue our excruciating daily pilgrimage to Lagos Island, we must begin to explore another work ethic that makes the city of New York unique. New York City did not earn the sobriquet “the city that never sleeps” for nothing. Many New Yorkers work alternate hours. The way it works is simple, some people work during the day while others work at night using the same offices and the same facilities, all the worker need do is to attune himself to his work time and sleep time such that for the man who works at night, the day becomes his night and this can be reversed after a number of weeks and vice versa. This simply means that instead of having a Million cars snaking into the island every morning and at the close of business everyday and a handful moving in the opposite direction, there will be some balance and about half or even less than half of that number of cars will have to be on the road at any particular rush hour. Imagine how much this will ease the traffic situation in Lagos.
The Government could also make a mandatory toll payable for any private car that travel to designated areas with less than four persons when they could take advantage of the multi million dollar BRT project of the state government and save themselves and others the stress of hold up.
If all these are in place and the Government does nothing in terms of infrastructure, then the purpose will again soon be defeated as it is projected that the population of Lagos will continue to grow in geometric proportions and that in a few years close to 30 Million people will live in Lagos. What is it with the Fourth Mainland Bridge that nobody seems to know what is happening with respect to building it? If the Lagos traffic chaos must be solved any time soon, then the fourth mainland bridge must be built and existing ones rehabilitated and maintained.
In this, the federal government must lend the Lagos state government a helping hand. All the federal roads in Lagos should be rehabilitated and new ones built as trunk A roads are very expensive to build and maintain. It is a thing of joy that the present administration both at the state and national level are co – operating and working together to solve the myriad problems of Lagos state. For these, they deserve commendation and we hope that Lagosians will begin to reap the fruits of their co-operation soon.
Finally, all hands must be on deck, the necessary enlightenment should be done; Lagosians must know why and be willing to park their cars at home during the week days and use the BRT as it is done in saner climes around the world. It saves them the stress of driving, time wasted in traffic, energy expended in driving, money as they would not have to burn fuel. It saves their cars for the weekends and above all, it saves their lives.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Monday, January 11, 2010
YAR’ADUA: WHEN MEN PLAY GOD
YAR’ADUA: WHEN MEN PLAY GOD
This is what you get when men play God. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a sick and tired man who is obviously incapable of steering the ship of this nation. The President will not resign. He will not invoke the provisions of Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution to empower Vice President Jonathan Goodluck as Acting President and the Senate President, David Mark will not invoke the powers conferred on him by Section 144 of the Constitution in order to determine whether or not the President is incapable of discharging the functions of his office for obvious reasons. Vociferous calls for his resignation from a section of the committee has gone unheeded and a formidable section of the committee has counseled otherwise. We have also heard that pressures were mounted on the Vice President from some powerful quarters to resign in the event that the President is incapable of discharging his duties so that some nebulous concept of power rotation can be maintained. Now we are between the hard place and the rock. The country is drifting. Everything is being stultified and stalemated may be because we were foolish enough to allow the election of a sick President who did not seek power in the first place.
We have been asked now to don the garb of piety and pray unceasing for the recovery of the President by the same people who could not care less about the feelings of Nigerian’s when they foisted his candidature and subsequent election on the nation. Yet the foundation for this nonsense was laid a long time ago. The former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo was released from General Sanni Abacha’s gulag and was looking forward to a quiet and probably reclusive life with his tails between his legs praising God that he was alive to tell the story but some Generals and their allies who liked to play god and think they know it all got together and thought their lot was best protected with an Olusegun Obasanjo as President compared to a predictable Bola Ige or an unpredictable Olu Falae for that matter; they promptly recruited and imposed him on hapless Nigerians browbeaten, battered and cowed by decades of military rule. At the end of Eight tortuous years thankfully, not only were their noses bloodied by their supposed stooge, the man that paid the piper did not dictate the tune, he was put in his place such that by 2007 he was out of contention for the presidency and he humbly ate the pie. Olusegun Obasanjo had his own agenda and that he pursued until it culminated in the sham elections that produced the current president after his grand illusion of ruling Nigeria forever was truncated in the National Assembly.
Yar’Adua’s case might not be an isolated case but his has snowballed into a Constitutional matter. Many critically acclaimed world leaders have performed creditably well in difficult personal and health circumstances. Sir Winston Churchill, that iconoclast leader of the World War II effort of the Allies suffered from what may be described nowadays as bipolar disorder or manic depression. We all know that Churchill was a great leader but he indeed suffered from bouts with depression. His personal physician, Lord Moran wrote “Winston has never been at all like other people …. In his early days…he was afflicted by fits of depression that might last for months”. He recorded that Churchill once remarked, “When I was young, for two or three years the light faded out of the picture. I did my work. I sat in the House of Commons, but black depression settled on me. A low point in Churchill’s career occurred in the winter of 1942, at about the time of the fall of Singapore, the greatest disaster in British military history. Churchill came under intense political fire and there were calls for his resignation – calls that often emphasized Churchill’s seeming inability to concentrate and erratic work habits. A high-ranking official who saw him at the time wrote, “He seems quite incapable of listening or taking in the simplest point but goes off at a tangent on a word and then rambles on inconsecutively …. For the first time I realized he is not only unbusinesslike but overtired and really losing his grip altogether.”
Churchill himself remarked in retrospect that it was amazing he had managed to remain in power during that dark period. Dr. Doyin Okupe also made the point that when Evita Peron, the late Argentine president was dying of a terminal illness nobody asked for her resignation. There was no bad press about her health. She was moribund and on a down hill course to her demise, yet night after night, the citizens of Argentina lit their candles, prayed and cried until her final passing over to the world beyond. May be the Doctor wants us to adopt a similar approach though he did not say.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America’s young and most beloved President of the 20th Century suffered debilitating pains and illness. According to a recent Thisday publication, “Kennedy grappled with serious health problems for the most part of his Presidency. Though, he projected a youthful and vigorous image, he had a history of health problems. Kennedy suffered the Addison’s disease – an incurable disorder of the adrenal glands – which was diagnosed in 1947, but he tried hard to hide the ailment. And when his health condition became an issue of rumour and public suspicion, Kennedy’s personal physician declared, “John F. Kennedy has not, nor has he ever, had…Addison’s disease.” He suffered major back problems for which he underwent major surgery while a U.S senator, took steroid treatments, and wore a back brace. It had been speculated that he also had celiac disease, often linked to Addison’s disease, which may have been the cause of Kennedy’s gastrointestinal upsets. Kennedy suffered from allergies and an overly sensitive stomach, and took a whole host of medications including cortisone shots for his Addison’s disease and lomotil for his diarrhea. He was hospitalized more than three dozen times in his life.”
These instances – the illnesses of Winston Churchill and J.F Kennedy - may have raised a few political issues but it never did boil down to Constitutional ones as the illness of president Yar’Adua has done notably.
This brings us to the point. What do we mean when we say the President “is incapable of discharging the functions of his office”? The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America in 1967 provides for the Vice President to become the acting president in the event that the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” This Constitutional amendment in the United States was manifestly necessary because there was equally a manifest lacuna in the US Constitution that needed to be addressed.
Jay M. Shafritz, the editor of the source book, “Dictionary of American Government and Politics” wrote extensively on the point and I copiously quote him “In outlining the duties and functions of the president, the framers of the Constitution included provisions regarding the continuity of the executive. Article II, Section 1, reads in part: “In case of the removal of the president from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vice president.” In several respects, this provision of the Constitution is unclear, and eventually it presented a number of questions insufficiently answered by the document. For example when President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, Vice President John Tyler was left unsure whether he should serve as an “acting” or “official” president of the United States. Although Tyler did ultimately take the oath of office as president, the decision to do so by no means met with unanimous approval. The controversy that ensued was, however, finally quieted when both houses of the Congress voted to recognize Tyler as the official president of the United States. The action taken by Tyler established the precedent followed by eight future vice presidents faced with similar circumstances: Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford – each of whom became president of the United States through succession.
Another uncertainty arose about presidential succession in cases when a president was unable to “discharge the powers and duties” of his office. Again, the Constitution provided no clear answer to the problem. In three instances in American history the president was considered unable to perform his duties. In all three cases, largely because of uncertainty over correct procedure, the vice president did not assume the incapacitated president’s responsibilities.
The first occasion arose in 1881, when President James Garfield fell victim to an assassin’s bullet. Garfield lingered for nearly eighty days, during which he was able to perform only one official act – the signing of an extradition paper. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke, leaving him largely disabled for the rest of his term. Finally, at least three times during his administration, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was considered unable to perform as president because of poor health. He chose to solve the problem by means of an informal working agreement with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, rather than an amendment to the Constitution. The Twenty-fifth Amendment provides a formal process for such situations.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the succession of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963 reminded the nation of yet another gap in the succession clause – the lack of a mechanism for choosing a vice president when the previous vice president succeeds to the presidency. The framers foresaw the need to have a qualified vice president in office should the president die, but they neglected to establish a procedure whereby a vice presidential vacancy could be filled. The Twenty-fifth Amendment provides such a process. This procedure was first used in 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to be vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace. It was next (and last) used in 1974, when Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president. This was the only time when both the offices of president and vice president were held by people who had not been elected to either one.”
A crash course in a political issue that ultimately became constitutional as it often happens in the United States and how it was resolved!! Now the question is what we can learn from these examples from abroad as we navigate the political/constitutional landmine the Yar’Adua succession issue is sure to become in due course.
First and foremost, there does not seem to exist any gap in the 1999 Constitution on succession. Sections 143, 144, 145 and 146 of the Constitution perhaps having already learnt from the U.S example has amply taken care of this copiously providing for succession and leaving no gaps. So anything otherwise will amount to a breach of the Constitution. The question of the Vice President resigning to make way for some nebulous power rotation agreement is nonsensical and should not arise in the face of clear and unambiguous Constitutional provisions. Any further debate of this issue is elevating a political issue over a Constitutional one when it should clearly be otherwise.
In our pathetic shortsightedness, we never reckoned that there could be such a breach between a President and his Vice elected on a joint ticket that the Vice President will leave the ruling party to join another, neither did the Constitution and ancillary rules of any of the numerous political parties provide for this, so we were hopelessly unprepared when the duo of President Olusegun Obasanjo and then Vice President Atiku Abubakar brought unimaginable shame to us and made a spectacle of our beloved nation in the world committee. Remarkably, the Supreme Court saved the day when it ruled that the President cannot unilaterally remove the Vice President from office.
Again we seem unprepared for the moment fate may thrust upon us in the event of the death of the President of Nigeria (not necessarily Yar’Adua) because in our usual greed and power grab the hypocritical political class and the Peoples (Un) democratic Party foisted on us an insincere and so called power rotation that has no relevance to equity for as we have seen the same people continue to hold the reigns of power for as long as anyone can remember now whether they are Northerners or Southerners. As I canvassed elsewhere in the runup to the 1999 elections, if we were serious about power shift, power rotation or by whatever contrived name it was called, the President and his Vice should have been chosen from the same zone bearing in mind that in the event that the President is unable to complete his term, the Constitution provides that the Vice President will succeed him. This would have saved us this entire headache about shortchanging the North in the event that Jonathan Goodluck succeeds Yar’Adua and forever throwing spanners in the works – this contrived power rotation.
An offshoot of this power rotation thing is the methodology and the zones we are talking about. Nothing seems clear. Is it a straightforward dichotomy between the traditional North and South divide as we know it? Shall it be the old regional basis of North, West and East? And whatever happened to the recent contraption known as the six geopolitical zones – South West, South East, South South, North East, North Central and North West? Answers anyone?
Well we now have what you get when men play God. Maybe if General Ibrahim Babangida and his ilk had let Obasanjo be in 1999, may be if Olusegun Obasanjo had let Atiku be or better still allow all the presidential contenders under the platform of the PDP in 2007 a free and fair primaries and allow a Yar’Adua who Six months prior to his election as President was looking forward to a peaceful retirement in his Katsina country home be, we would not have this political/constitutional quagmire on our hands today.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
This is what you get when men play God. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a sick and tired man who is obviously incapable of steering the ship of this nation. The President will not resign. He will not invoke the provisions of Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution to empower Vice President Jonathan Goodluck as Acting President and the Senate President, David Mark will not invoke the powers conferred on him by Section 144 of the Constitution in order to determine whether or not the President is incapable of discharging the functions of his office for obvious reasons. Vociferous calls for his resignation from a section of the committee has gone unheeded and a formidable section of the committee has counseled otherwise. We have also heard that pressures were mounted on the Vice President from some powerful quarters to resign in the event that the President is incapable of discharging his duties so that some nebulous concept of power rotation can be maintained. Now we are between the hard place and the rock. The country is drifting. Everything is being stultified and stalemated may be because we were foolish enough to allow the election of a sick President who did not seek power in the first place.
We have been asked now to don the garb of piety and pray unceasing for the recovery of the President by the same people who could not care less about the feelings of Nigerian’s when they foisted his candidature and subsequent election on the nation. Yet the foundation for this nonsense was laid a long time ago. The former president, General Olusegun Obasanjo was released from General Sanni Abacha’s gulag and was looking forward to a quiet and probably reclusive life with his tails between his legs praising God that he was alive to tell the story but some Generals and their allies who liked to play god and think they know it all got together and thought their lot was best protected with an Olusegun Obasanjo as President compared to a predictable Bola Ige or an unpredictable Olu Falae for that matter; they promptly recruited and imposed him on hapless Nigerians browbeaten, battered and cowed by decades of military rule. At the end of Eight tortuous years thankfully, not only were their noses bloodied by their supposed stooge, the man that paid the piper did not dictate the tune, he was put in his place such that by 2007 he was out of contention for the presidency and he humbly ate the pie. Olusegun Obasanjo had his own agenda and that he pursued until it culminated in the sham elections that produced the current president after his grand illusion of ruling Nigeria forever was truncated in the National Assembly.
Yar’Adua’s case might not be an isolated case but his has snowballed into a Constitutional matter. Many critically acclaimed world leaders have performed creditably well in difficult personal and health circumstances. Sir Winston Churchill, that iconoclast leader of the World War II effort of the Allies suffered from what may be described nowadays as bipolar disorder or manic depression. We all know that Churchill was a great leader but he indeed suffered from bouts with depression. His personal physician, Lord Moran wrote “Winston has never been at all like other people …. In his early days…he was afflicted by fits of depression that might last for months”. He recorded that Churchill once remarked, “When I was young, for two or three years the light faded out of the picture. I did my work. I sat in the House of Commons, but black depression settled on me. A low point in Churchill’s career occurred in the winter of 1942, at about the time of the fall of Singapore, the greatest disaster in British military history. Churchill came under intense political fire and there were calls for his resignation – calls that often emphasized Churchill’s seeming inability to concentrate and erratic work habits. A high-ranking official who saw him at the time wrote, “He seems quite incapable of listening or taking in the simplest point but goes off at a tangent on a word and then rambles on inconsecutively …. For the first time I realized he is not only unbusinesslike but overtired and really losing his grip altogether.”
Churchill himself remarked in retrospect that it was amazing he had managed to remain in power during that dark period. Dr. Doyin Okupe also made the point that when Evita Peron, the late Argentine president was dying of a terminal illness nobody asked for her resignation. There was no bad press about her health. She was moribund and on a down hill course to her demise, yet night after night, the citizens of Argentina lit their candles, prayed and cried until her final passing over to the world beyond. May be the Doctor wants us to adopt a similar approach though he did not say.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America’s young and most beloved President of the 20th Century suffered debilitating pains and illness. According to a recent Thisday publication, “Kennedy grappled with serious health problems for the most part of his Presidency. Though, he projected a youthful and vigorous image, he had a history of health problems. Kennedy suffered the Addison’s disease – an incurable disorder of the adrenal glands – which was diagnosed in 1947, but he tried hard to hide the ailment. And when his health condition became an issue of rumour and public suspicion, Kennedy’s personal physician declared, “John F. Kennedy has not, nor has he ever, had…Addison’s disease.” He suffered major back problems for which he underwent major surgery while a U.S senator, took steroid treatments, and wore a back brace. It had been speculated that he also had celiac disease, often linked to Addison’s disease, which may have been the cause of Kennedy’s gastrointestinal upsets. Kennedy suffered from allergies and an overly sensitive stomach, and took a whole host of medications including cortisone shots for his Addison’s disease and lomotil for his diarrhea. He was hospitalized more than three dozen times in his life.”
These instances – the illnesses of Winston Churchill and J.F Kennedy - may have raised a few political issues but it never did boil down to Constitutional ones as the illness of president Yar’Adua has done notably.
This brings us to the point. What do we mean when we say the President “is incapable of discharging the functions of his office”? The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America in 1967 provides for the Vice President to become the acting president in the event that the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” This Constitutional amendment in the United States was manifestly necessary because there was equally a manifest lacuna in the US Constitution that needed to be addressed.
Jay M. Shafritz, the editor of the source book, “Dictionary of American Government and Politics” wrote extensively on the point and I copiously quote him “In outlining the duties and functions of the president, the framers of the Constitution included provisions regarding the continuity of the executive. Article II, Section 1, reads in part: “In case of the removal of the president from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the vice president.” In several respects, this provision of the Constitution is unclear, and eventually it presented a number of questions insufficiently answered by the document. For example when President William Henry Harrison died in 1841, Vice President John Tyler was left unsure whether he should serve as an “acting” or “official” president of the United States. Although Tyler did ultimately take the oath of office as president, the decision to do so by no means met with unanimous approval. The controversy that ensued was, however, finally quieted when both houses of the Congress voted to recognize Tyler as the official president of the United States. The action taken by Tyler established the precedent followed by eight future vice presidents faced with similar circumstances: Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford – each of whom became president of the United States through succession.
Another uncertainty arose about presidential succession in cases when a president was unable to “discharge the powers and duties” of his office. Again, the Constitution provided no clear answer to the problem. In three instances in American history the president was considered unable to perform his duties. In all three cases, largely because of uncertainty over correct procedure, the vice president did not assume the incapacitated president’s responsibilities.
The first occasion arose in 1881, when President James Garfield fell victim to an assassin’s bullet. Garfield lingered for nearly eighty days, during which he was able to perform only one official act – the signing of an extradition paper. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke, leaving him largely disabled for the rest of his term. Finally, at least three times during his administration, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was considered unable to perform as president because of poor health. He chose to solve the problem by means of an informal working agreement with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, rather than an amendment to the Constitution. The Twenty-fifth Amendment provides a formal process for such situations.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the succession of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963 reminded the nation of yet another gap in the succession clause – the lack of a mechanism for choosing a vice president when the previous vice president succeeds to the presidency. The framers foresaw the need to have a qualified vice president in office should the president die, but they neglected to establish a procedure whereby a vice presidential vacancy could be filled. The Twenty-fifth Amendment provides such a process. This procedure was first used in 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to be vice president after Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace. It was next (and last) used in 1974, when Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president. This was the only time when both the offices of president and vice president were held by people who had not been elected to either one.”
A crash course in a political issue that ultimately became constitutional as it often happens in the United States and how it was resolved!! Now the question is what we can learn from these examples from abroad as we navigate the political/constitutional landmine the Yar’Adua succession issue is sure to become in due course.
First and foremost, there does not seem to exist any gap in the 1999 Constitution on succession. Sections 143, 144, 145 and 146 of the Constitution perhaps having already learnt from the U.S example has amply taken care of this copiously providing for succession and leaving no gaps. So anything otherwise will amount to a breach of the Constitution. The question of the Vice President resigning to make way for some nebulous power rotation agreement is nonsensical and should not arise in the face of clear and unambiguous Constitutional provisions. Any further debate of this issue is elevating a political issue over a Constitutional one when it should clearly be otherwise.
In our pathetic shortsightedness, we never reckoned that there could be such a breach between a President and his Vice elected on a joint ticket that the Vice President will leave the ruling party to join another, neither did the Constitution and ancillary rules of any of the numerous political parties provide for this, so we were hopelessly unprepared when the duo of President Olusegun Obasanjo and then Vice President Atiku Abubakar brought unimaginable shame to us and made a spectacle of our beloved nation in the world committee. Remarkably, the Supreme Court saved the day when it ruled that the President cannot unilaterally remove the Vice President from office.
Again we seem unprepared for the moment fate may thrust upon us in the event of the death of the President of Nigeria (not necessarily Yar’Adua) because in our usual greed and power grab the hypocritical political class and the Peoples (Un) democratic Party foisted on us an insincere and so called power rotation that has no relevance to equity for as we have seen the same people continue to hold the reigns of power for as long as anyone can remember now whether they are Northerners or Southerners. As I canvassed elsewhere in the runup to the 1999 elections, if we were serious about power shift, power rotation or by whatever contrived name it was called, the President and his Vice should have been chosen from the same zone bearing in mind that in the event that the President is unable to complete his term, the Constitution provides that the Vice President will succeed him. This would have saved us this entire headache about shortchanging the North in the event that Jonathan Goodluck succeeds Yar’Adua and forever throwing spanners in the works – this contrived power rotation.
An offshoot of this power rotation thing is the methodology and the zones we are talking about. Nothing seems clear. Is it a straightforward dichotomy between the traditional North and South divide as we know it? Shall it be the old regional basis of North, West and East? And whatever happened to the recent contraption known as the six geopolitical zones – South West, South East, South South, North East, North Central and North West? Answers anyone?
Well we now have what you get when men play God. Maybe if General Ibrahim Babangida and his ilk had let Obasanjo be in 1999, may be if Olusegun Obasanjo had let Atiku be or better still allow all the presidential contenders under the platform of the PDP in 2007 a free and fair primaries and allow a Yar’Adua who Six months prior to his election as President was looking forward to a peaceful retirement in his Katsina country home be, we would not have this political/constitutional quagmire on our hands today.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
AFRICA, NIGERIA AND THE NOBEL PRIZE
AFRICA, NIGERIA AND THE NOBEL PRIZE
The Alfred Nobel Prize, the world’s most prestigious international awards has being awarded in different categories for 109 years now. A Noble Gentleman Chemist, Alfred Nobel by his will instituted the Nobel Prize in five categories namely Peace, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, Chemistry and Physics and the 1st prizes were awarded in 1901, with the Prize in economics created in his memory in 1968.
By his will Alfred Nobel directed that the Prizes be awarded to those who during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. In his words "The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical works by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not."
However the prize for practical reasons would be awarded for a life’s work or work spanning several decades. A few individuals have won the Nobel which is seen as the greatest recognition for achievement in the selected fields in the world more than once and countries like the US and the UK have lost count of Nobel laureates. Even South Africa has won the Nobel 6 times, 4 for peace and 2 for literature but Nigeria with all its avowed size, intellectuals and human capital has only won the Nobel once, incidentally in an epoch making manner, when in 1986, Professor Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel prize in literature because Professor Wole Soyinka according to the Swedish Academy “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence” following in the footsteps of ethereal literary giants – Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, T.S Elliot comes to mind.
Why no Nigerian has won the Nobel in the intervening 23 years beats me silly. In literature for example, there is nothing left for Chinua Achebe to do to deserve the recognition. Some have argued that the literary prize is too Eurocentric and they may not be far from the truth, the 2009 Nobel prize for literature was awarded to Roman born German poet and novelist, Herta Muller with the Swedish academy describing Muller as a writer “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”. Though she is relatively unknown, she has been celebrated as one of Germany’s best writers in a long while. American’s it has been reported were shocked at the choice of Muller. If American’s were shocked at the choice of Muller because no American has won the prize in a couple of years then African’s ought to be enraged. In its 109 years old history, only five Africans have won the Nobel prize for literature – Wole Soyinka of Nigeria in 1986, Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt in 1988, Nadine Gordimer of South Africa in 1991, J.M Coetzee of South Africa in 2003 and Iranian/Zimbabwean/British Doris Lessing in 2007.
At least two names I know and I am sure of are missing from the list – Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe and Kenya’s Ngugi nwa Thiong’o. These authors could and ought to have won the Nobel Prize for literature decades ago on the strength of the popular classics that brought them fame and fortune. In the case of the Nigerian “Things fall apart”, the Kenyan, “Weep not Child”. These books apart, the writers have shown durability over the decades, they were not merely flashes in the pan and these works and subsequent ones have stood the test of time. The style and messages of the two authors continue to burnish the world’s literary firmament and not corruption, globalisation, the web, ravages of time and decay has dimmed the fires of these authors and their works. Sure a continent that has produced countless brilliant poets and novelists – Wole Soyinka, Ngugi nwa Thiong’o, Ayi Kwei Armah, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Flora Nwapa, Mongo Beti, John Pepper Clarke, Kofi Awoonor, Buchi Emecheta, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Efua Sutherland, Francis Selormey, Camara Laye, Elechi Amadi, Aly Diallo, David Rubadiri, Bessie Head, Ama Ata Aidoo, Joseph Muthee, Atieno Odhiambo, Mariama Ba, Birago and David Diop, Aminata Sow Fall, Peter Abrahams, Dennis Brutus, Athol Fugard, Mazisi Kunene, Alex La Guma, Lenrie Peters, Okot p’Bitek, Frantz Fanon, Ferdinand Oyono, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to mention but a few examples could not only have won a handful of Nobel prizes in literature if fairness were entrenched in the award process as it was the expressed wish of Alfred Nobel that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.
The respected Peace prize is another category where only five African’s have won – South African’s Albert Lithuli in 1960, Desmond Tutu in 1984, Nelson Mandela with Fredrick De Klerk in 1993, Ghanaian Kofi Annan in conjunction with the UN in 2001 and Kenyan Wangari Maathai in 2004. No Nigerian has even come close in this category though the Foreign Policy Magazine believed that Ken Saro Wiwa did enough for peace in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria to win the Nobel peace prize. One other Nigerian many believe could well have won the Nobel Prize for peace is the late legendary lawyer Chief Gani Fawehinmi who in the estimation of many did much more than any other Nigerian dead or alive for the cause of law, human rights, good governance and peace in Nigeria and the African continent.
The only other time it was reported that a Nigerian was nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics was in 2002 when Mathematician Gabriel Audu Oyibo in what may well be a hoax was reportedly nominated for the prize in Physics on the strength of his work on the God Almighty’s Grand Unified Theorem (GAGUT). The genuineness of the theory is still a cause of debate in academic circles though. There is also the scientist Phillip Emeagwali, whose claim to fame was the 1989 Gordon Bell prize of which he was one of two winners but his eminence in Science is being disputed by many on account of the fact that for someone who dubbed himself the ‘father of the internet’ and who is said to have built the fastest computer, he has no patent registered in his name and he failed his PHD programme at the University of Michigan. Are these men fake? Otherwise they seem to have done enough to win a Nobel Prize. Do they remind any one of a Doctor Jeremiah Abalaka? Does anyone know whatever happened to the Doctor and his cure for AIDS? He seemed to have fallen off the radar?
But really how and when will a Nigerian win the Nobel prize again when our Universities are without books, there are no research tools and laboratories, there is even no electric power to do paper work to which all our Universities have been consigned, many Universities are nothing but breeding grounds for cultists and semi illiterates, University campuses have become hotbeds for political intrigues as people vie for Vice Chancellorship and other University principal posts in a do or die affair, many University graduates abound who cannot pitch two sentences together much less write decent letters. In the midst of this decay, Professorial chairs are still being endowed and people are elevated to the position of professors; you wonder what they are professing!
Now does this partly explain why no Nigerian has won the Nobel since 1986? Some have posited that Nigeria has too many charlatans posing/masquerading as intellectuals. Yeah there are intellectuals and there are intellectuals but I personally believe that for every charlatan our system throws up there are at least two genuine intellectuals strewn across our University campuses. There was the Mathematician, Doctor Chike Obi in recent memory and there still is the formidable Physicist, Professor Alexander Animalu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. What is wrong with us has destroyed everything that should make us a proud people. Look at the Olympics for example – a nation of 150 million persons could not raise One Gold medalist at the last Olympiad in Beijing, China where a single American swimmer, Michael Phelps won eight Gold medals.
Just where are we getting it right in our national life? Answers anyone or is it me? I am so disappointed and disillusioned I doubt my generation will ever see our country on the part of sanity. We have made a show of fighting corruption since 1999, but it seems those who will dip their hands in the common till are unimpressed, they have carried on with unimaginable daring. Scamming, gaming and thieving involving gut wrenching and mind blowing sums are being reported everyday. How much of this can we really investigate and prosecute properly? People are getting away with all sorts, the security agencies are overstretched, and the EFCC and ICPC short of anything superhuman cannot be reasonably expected to adequately fight corruption in the especial circumstances of Nigeria, how will they cope with the several revelations of monumental corruption in high places everyday?
Inadequacies in the legal framework continue to provide barriers in the fight against corruption. As much as the courts try, in a tough environment, laws are not interpreted with consistency, delay in the administration of justice, the ease with which accused persons of power and means game the judiciary and the inadequate enforcement of existing laws mean that the fight against corruption will be a long and arduous task. The credibility and efficacy of the judicial system has been questioned by many in the past and many Nigerian’s have continued to express these sentiments. In general, many Nigerian’s perceives the judicial system as slow, corrupt, and not to be trusted.
Where does this all leave us? Some people it would seem have sworn that this country will never work and are positively pursuing that outcome with everything at their disposal. These people, it is becoming apparent by the day, have enough power and means to make good their threat. Now what are the good people doing as a counter force or counter balance? I dare say nothing. They have become like sheep without shepherd, like sailors marooned in an inaccessible island, like knight errands without sword and shield in inevitable skirmishes. Oh we have made such a public spectacle of ourselves in the committee of nations that only God can liberate us now.
Unfortunately we are here now and the reality is we are where we are. How we got here for a country that had so much promise at independence and even now is an unmitigated disaster in nation building and resource management and it grieves the heart so but still we must find practical ways forward and this way forward is what I have canvassed elsewhere thus “It is so bad now that we do not know where to start fixing Nigeria. If we try to do everything at the same time as we are wont to do and yet getting nothing done, we will fail yet again. Let us adopt a simple approach and do the simple things first. What to do is fix our Schools, invest heavily in education, provide basic infrastructure that will stimulate and engender job creation. The Nigerian government may well not have enough resources to do all that is required, but if the sleaze, waste and corruption that permeates most of our national life is halved by two and the resources thereby released dedicated to providing infrastructure such as electricity, roads and fighting disease, the day may not be far off when Nigeria will meet its development goals”.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
The Alfred Nobel Prize, the world’s most prestigious international awards has being awarded in different categories for 109 years now. A Noble Gentleman Chemist, Alfred Nobel by his will instituted the Nobel Prize in five categories namely Peace, Medicine or Physiology, Literature, Chemistry and Physics and the 1st prizes were awarded in 1901, with the Prize in economics created in his memory in 1968.
By his will Alfred Nobel directed that the Prizes be awarded to those who during the preceding year shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. In his words "The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical works by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not."
However the prize for practical reasons would be awarded for a life’s work or work spanning several decades. A few individuals have won the Nobel which is seen as the greatest recognition for achievement in the selected fields in the world more than once and countries like the US and the UK have lost count of Nobel laureates. Even South Africa has won the Nobel 6 times, 4 for peace and 2 for literature but Nigeria with all its avowed size, intellectuals and human capital has only won the Nobel once, incidentally in an epoch making manner, when in 1986, Professor Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel prize in literature because Professor Wole Soyinka according to the Swedish Academy “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence” following in the footsteps of ethereal literary giants – Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, T.S Elliot comes to mind.
Why no Nigerian has won the Nobel in the intervening 23 years beats me silly. In literature for example, there is nothing left for Chinua Achebe to do to deserve the recognition. Some have argued that the literary prize is too Eurocentric and they may not be far from the truth, the 2009 Nobel prize for literature was awarded to Roman born German poet and novelist, Herta Muller with the Swedish academy describing Muller as a writer “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”. Though she is relatively unknown, she has been celebrated as one of Germany’s best writers in a long while. American’s it has been reported were shocked at the choice of Muller. If American’s were shocked at the choice of Muller because no American has won the prize in a couple of years then African’s ought to be enraged. In its 109 years old history, only five Africans have won the Nobel prize for literature – Wole Soyinka of Nigeria in 1986, Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt in 1988, Nadine Gordimer of South Africa in 1991, J.M Coetzee of South Africa in 2003 and Iranian/Zimbabwean/British Doris Lessing in 2007.
At least two names I know and I am sure of are missing from the list – Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe and Kenya’s Ngugi nwa Thiong’o. These authors could and ought to have won the Nobel Prize for literature decades ago on the strength of the popular classics that brought them fame and fortune. In the case of the Nigerian “Things fall apart”, the Kenyan, “Weep not Child”. These books apart, the writers have shown durability over the decades, they were not merely flashes in the pan and these works and subsequent ones have stood the test of time. The style and messages of the two authors continue to burnish the world’s literary firmament and not corruption, globalisation, the web, ravages of time and decay has dimmed the fires of these authors and their works. Sure a continent that has produced countless brilliant poets and novelists – Wole Soyinka, Ngugi nwa Thiong’o, Ayi Kwei Armah, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Flora Nwapa, Mongo Beti, John Pepper Clarke, Kofi Awoonor, Buchi Emecheta, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Efua Sutherland, Francis Selormey, Camara Laye, Elechi Amadi, Aly Diallo, David Rubadiri, Bessie Head, Ama Ata Aidoo, Joseph Muthee, Atieno Odhiambo, Mariama Ba, Birago and David Diop, Aminata Sow Fall, Peter Abrahams, Dennis Brutus, Athol Fugard, Mazisi Kunene, Alex La Guma, Lenrie Peters, Okot p’Bitek, Frantz Fanon, Ferdinand Oyono, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to mention but a few examples could not only have won a handful of Nobel prizes in literature if fairness were entrenched in the award process as it was the expressed wish of Alfred Nobel that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not.
The respected Peace prize is another category where only five African’s have won – South African’s Albert Lithuli in 1960, Desmond Tutu in 1984, Nelson Mandela with Fredrick De Klerk in 1993, Ghanaian Kofi Annan in conjunction with the UN in 2001 and Kenyan Wangari Maathai in 2004. No Nigerian has even come close in this category though the Foreign Policy Magazine believed that Ken Saro Wiwa did enough for peace in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria to win the Nobel peace prize. One other Nigerian many believe could well have won the Nobel Prize for peace is the late legendary lawyer Chief Gani Fawehinmi who in the estimation of many did much more than any other Nigerian dead or alive for the cause of law, human rights, good governance and peace in Nigeria and the African continent.
The only other time it was reported that a Nigerian was nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics was in 2002 when Mathematician Gabriel Audu Oyibo in what may well be a hoax was reportedly nominated for the prize in Physics on the strength of his work on the God Almighty’s Grand Unified Theorem (GAGUT). The genuineness of the theory is still a cause of debate in academic circles though. There is also the scientist Phillip Emeagwali, whose claim to fame was the 1989 Gordon Bell prize of which he was one of two winners but his eminence in Science is being disputed by many on account of the fact that for someone who dubbed himself the ‘father of the internet’ and who is said to have built the fastest computer, he has no patent registered in his name and he failed his PHD programme at the University of Michigan. Are these men fake? Otherwise they seem to have done enough to win a Nobel Prize. Do they remind any one of a Doctor Jeremiah Abalaka? Does anyone know whatever happened to the Doctor and his cure for AIDS? He seemed to have fallen off the radar?
But really how and when will a Nigerian win the Nobel prize again when our Universities are without books, there are no research tools and laboratories, there is even no electric power to do paper work to which all our Universities have been consigned, many Universities are nothing but breeding grounds for cultists and semi illiterates, University campuses have become hotbeds for political intrigues as people vie for Vice Chancellorship and other University principal posts in a do or die affair, many University graduates abound who cannot pitch two sentences together much less write decent letters. In the midst of this decay, Professorial chairs are still being endowed and people are elevated to the position of professors; you wonder what they are professing!
Now does this partly explain why no Nigerian has won the Nobel since 1986? Some have posited that Nigeria has too many charlatans posing/masquerading as intellectuals. Yeah there are intellectuals and there are intellectuals but I personally believe that for every charlatan our system throws up there are at least two genuine intellectuals strewn across our University campuses. There was the Mathematician, Doctor Chike Obi in recent memory and there still is the formidable Physicist, Professor Alexander Animalu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. What is wrong with us has destroyed everything that should make us a proud people. Look at the Olympics for example – a nation of 150 million persons could not raise One Gold medalist at the last Olympiad in Beijing, China where a single American swimmer, Michael Phelps won eight Gold medals.
Just where are we getting it right in our national life? Answers anyone or is it me? I am so disappointed and disillusioned I doubt my generation will ever see our country on the part of sanity. We have made a show of fighting corruption since 1999, but it seems those who will dip their hands in the common till are unimpressed, they have carried on with unimaginable daring. Scamming, gaming and thieving involving gut wrenching and mind blowing sums are being reported everyday. How much of this can we really investigate and prosecute properly? People are getting away with all sorts, the security agencies are overstretched, and the EFCC and ICPC short of anything superhuman cannot be reasonably expected to adequately fight corruption in the especial circumstances of Nigeria, how will they cope with the several revelations of monumental corruption in high places everyday?
Inadequacies in the legal framework continue to provide barriers in the fight against corruption. As much as the courts try, in a tough environment, laws are not interpreted with consistency, delay in the administration of justice, the ease with which accused persons of power and means game the judiciary and the inadequate enforcement of existing laws mean that the fight against corruption will be a long and arduous task. The credibility and efficacy of the judicial system has been questioned by many in the past and many Nigerian’s have continued to express these sentiments. In general, many Nigerian’s perceives the judicial system as slow, corrupt, and not to be trusted.
Where does this all leave us? Some people it would seem have sworn that this country will never work and are positively pursuing that outcome with everything at their disposal. These people, it is becoming apparent by the day, have enough power and means to make good their threat. Now what are the good people doing as a counter force or counter balance? I dare say nothing. They have become like sheep without shepherd, like sailors marooned in an inaccessible island, like knight errands without sword and shield in inevitable skirmishes. Oh we have made such a public spectacle of ourselves in the committee of nations that only God can liberate us now.
Unfortunately we are here now and the reality is we are where we are. How we got here for a country that had so much promise at independence and even now is an unmitigated disaster in nation building and resource management and it grieves the heart so but still we must find practical ways forward and this way forward is what I have canvassed elsewhere thus “It is so bad now that we do not know where to start fixing Nigeria. If we try to do everything at the same time as we are wont to do and yet getting nothing done, we will fail yet again. Let us adopt a simple approach and do the simple things first. What to do is fix our Schools, invest heavily in education, provide basic infrastructure that will stimulate and engender job creation. The Nigerian government may well not have enough resources to do all that is required, but if the sleaze, waste and corruption that permeates most of our national life is halved by two and the resources thereby released dedicated to providing infrastructure such as electricity, roads and fighting disease, the day may not be far off when Nigeria will meet its development goals”.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Monday, November 23, 2009
THE PRESS AND FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVES AND DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLES OF STATE POLICY
THE PRESS AND FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVES AND DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLES OF STATE POLICY
As the debate on the desirability or otherwise of the new Press Law pending before the National Assembly at its hallowed chambers continue to rage, I like to point out an important aspect of our Constitutional provisions as regards the press and its freedom which the framers of the Constitution in being clever by half made non justiciable, in the hope that necessary amendments may be made to the present effort or that the National Assembly may take cognizance of this in the Constitutional review it is presently undertaking.
I have canvassed elsewhere that the 1999 Constitution and many others before it were deliberately made tenuous and unworkable. In my view no other provision of the constitution drives the point home more that the Constitution was not designed to work than the obnoxious provisions of Chapter II of the Constitution known as Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. The Chapter provided that it shall be the duty and responsibility of all organs of Government, and of all authorities and persons, exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers, to conform to, observe and apply the provisions of that Chapter of the Constitution. But in a curious twist, the same Constitution in what an informed commentator has likened to lying against itself in one fall sweep made the provisions non justiciable. Exactly what are these provisions? The Chapter provides for Political, Economic, Social, Educational, Foreign policy and Environmental objectives of state policy. These rights which roughly correlate with the third generation rights now recognized by the United Nations Organisation and espoused in several international documents/instruments are now treated as basic rights which any nation serious about development should incorporate in its constitution and make justiciable because rights such as the one to education and clean water are hardly negotiable any more.
A Constitution is a serious document, these rights should not be contained in it if they are non justiciable and in a tongue in cheek macabre, the Chapter further provided that the press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people. Just how will the mass media fulfill this obligation when this section is non justiciable? The fourth estate of the realm is in no way protected, laws that gag the press abounds and yet the Constitution will not even protect media houses and media practitioners.
Whatever informed the non justiciability of this Chapter of the Constitution? Some informed commentators have pointed out the deluge of court actions that will arise as a result of the leeway its justiciability will give citizens to enforce these rights and the fear that the Government of the Federation will never be able to meet the cost of guaranteeing these rights to every Nigerian. However founded these concerns may be, it must be borne in mind that if Chapter II of the Constitution is made justiciable, our Law courts will in no time rise to the occasion and formulate rules that will checkmate the expected floodgate of cases sifting and identifying deserving ones as a result.
This point is particularly important because the role of the media in a democracy cannot be overemphasized and in the unique case of Nigeria, the media ought to be feted and not fettered because in more ways than one, the press in Nigeria has helped keep hope alive and have continually demanded accountability from those who would rather rule than govern us. Let us not forget that were it not for the courageous media practitioners with great personal and sometimes fatal risk, we would not have democracy today. They fought the Military junta’s of Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, Sanni Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar to a standstill. They have kept the memory of June 12 alive to this day. Were it not for the media, the Siemens/Halliburton scandals and many like it, the Abacha loot and the misdemeanors of Obasanjo’s imperial presidency would since have been trampled underfoot, buried and forgotten. All hail the press and let us give force to the words of one of America’s founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson – who wrote that, ‘were it left for me to decide whether to have a government without a newspaper or a newspaper without a government, I will not hesitate to choose the latter’. For me, this brilliantly sums up in a poignant way the role and importance of the press especially in an emerging democracy as ours.
The provision of the 1999 Constitution on the obligation of the mass media is one provision that must be removed from Chapter II and made justiciable so the mass media can properly fulfill its assigned Constitutional mandate of freedom to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people if we will not make Chapter II of the Constitution justiciable in its entirety.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
As the debate on the desirability or otherwise of the new Press Law pending before the National Assembly at its hallowed chambers continue to rage, I like to point out an important aspect of our Constitutional provisions as regards the press and its freedom which the framers of the Constitution in being clever by half made non justiciable, in the hope that necessary amendments may be made to the present effort or that the National Assembly may take cognizance of this in the Constitutional review it is presently undertaking.
I have canvassed elsewhere that the 1999 Constitution and many others before it were deliberately made tenuous and unworkable. In my view no other provision of the constitution drives the point home more that the Constitution was not designed to work than the obnoxious provisions of Chapter II of the Constitution known as Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. The Chapter provided that it shall be the duty and responsibility of all organs of Government, and of all authorities and persons, exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers, to conform to, observe and apply the provisions of that Chapter of the Constitution. But in a curious twist, the same Constitution in what an informed commentator has likened to lying against itself in one fall sweep made the provisions non justiciable. Exactly what are these provisions? The Chapter provides for Political, Economic, Social, Educational, Foreign policy and Environmental objectives of state policy. These rights which roughly correlate with the third generation rights now recognized by the United Nations Organisation and espoused in several international documents/instruments are now treated as basic rights which any nation serious about development should incorporate in its constitution and make justiciable because rights such as the one to education and clean water are hardly negotiable any more.
A Constitution is a serious document, these rights should not be contained in it if they are non justiciable and in a tongue in cheek macabre, the Chapter further provided that the press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people. Just how will the mass media fulfill this obligation when this section is non justiciable? The fourth estate of the realm is in no way protected, laws that gag the press abounds and yet the Constitution will not even protect media houses and media practitioners.
Whatever informed the non justiciability of this Chapter of the Constitution? Some informed commentators have pointed out the deluge of court actions that will arise as a result of the leeway its justiciability will give citizens to enforce these rights and the fear that the Government of the Federation will never be able to meet the cost of guaranteeing these rights to every Nigerian. However founded these concerns may be, it must be borne in mind that if Chapter II of the Constitution is made justiciable, our Law courts will in no time rise to the occasion and formulate rules that will checkmate the expected floodgate of cases sifting and identifying deserving ones as a result.
This point is particularly important because the role of the media in a democracy cannot be overemphasized and in the unique case of Nigeria, the media ought to be feted and not fettered because in more ways than one, the press in Nigeria has helped keep hope alive and have continually demanded accountability from those who would rather rule than govern us. Let us not forget that were it not for the courageous media practitioners with great personal and sometimes fatal risk, we would not have democracy today. They fought the Military junta’s of Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, Sanni Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar to a standstill. They have kept the memory of June 12 alive to this day. Were it not for the media, the Siemens/Halliburton scandals and many like it, the Abacha loot and the misdemeanors of Obasanjo’s imperial presidency would since have been trampled underfoot, buried and forgotten. All hail the press and let us give force to the words of one of America’s founding fathers – Thomas Jefferson – who wrote that, ‘were it left for me to decide whether to have a government without a newspaper or a newspaper without a government, I will not hesitate to choose the latter’. For me, this brilliantly sums up in a poignant way the role and importance of the press especially in an emerging democracy as ours.
The provision of the 1999 Constitution on the obligation of the mass media is one provision that must be removed from Chapter II and made justiciable so the mass media can properly fulfill its assigned Constitutional mandate of freedom to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people if we will not make Chapter II of the Constitution justiciable in its entirety.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
THE RIGHT CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP
THE RIGHT CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP
I read with concern a report on the front page of the Guardian of Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 under the caption “After 10 years your state of origin may change” and the paper went on to report that according to a Bill sponsored by Gozie Agbakoba, a member of the House of Representatives from Anambra State titled ‘A Bill for an Act to Integrate Non-Indigenes into states other than their state’s of origin’, if a person stays in another state for about 10 years and fulfills all his obligations, he or she should be conferred all rights and benefits enjoyed by the indigenes.
According to the widely circulated and leading national daily, Section 1 of the Bill provides “A person who resides in a state other than his state of origin continuously, that is to say without a break for a period of 10 or more years, contributes to the development, lives in harmony with the people of the state; pays taxes to the state, shall be entitled to the rights and benefits accruing to the indigenes or people of that state notwithstanding the fact that he is not an indigene or citizen of that state”. Section 2 of the same Bill went on to extend the rights and benefits to appointments, scholarships, attainment of the highest political office in the state and other such perquisites of indigeneship.
Well it is a good thing that this is coming up now even though belated but those involved should do well to note that this is a fundamental Constitutional matter and treat it as such. Any Constitutional amendment such as the one the National Assembly is now undertaking must as a matter of urgency take this question of citizenship or indigeneship into critical consideration and make lasting constitutional provisions to exorcise the ghost of this divisive issue from our national life forever. No other issue has conspired more to derail Nigeria’s continued search for Unity and Nationhood than the wrong concept of citizenship or indigeneship as conceived in this clime. This Bill though a welcome relief is a mere palliative if what it seeks to correct is not recognized and entrenched in the Constitution. In doing this we must appreciate and understand what the right concept of citizenship is. To this right concept will I now turn.
What exactly is Citizenship? A right concept of citizenship should solve most if not all issues that have to do with patriotism and communal living. Our leaders know this and most commentators do but it is surprising no one has really made an issue of the point. The right concept of Citizenship will foster harmony, self esteem/worth, unity and coherence of the Nigerian state, regardless of our estimated 250 ethnic nationalities and 513 linguistic groupings and their divergent group interests.
The 1999 Constitution in Chapter III provides for Citizenship and what do we find in its provisions. It merely prescribes how Nigerian citizenship may be acquired, exercised and renounced. It did not in any way make any telling provision on how these citizens shall live in the space they choose within the larger Nigerian society. The only provision that remotely comes close to doing so is again contained in the non justiciable provisions of Chapter II of the Constitution thus ‘it shall be the duty of every citizen to respect the dignity of other citizens and the rights and legitimate interests of others and live in unity and harmony and in the spirit of common brotherhood; make positive and useful contributions to the advancement, progress and wellbeing of the community where he resides”.
Again much ado about nothing. How is the average Nigerian expected to live out these ideals in a community where he resides and is seen as a ‘stranger’, a ‘non native’, a ‘non indigene’, and a ‘bird of passage’, taking it to the extreme if you like. If we are all citizens of Nigeria, why is it so difficult for the various ethnic nationalities in Jos to live together in peace and harmony? Why are there so much ethnic flash points across the length and breadth of this country? Again the answer is simple, the Constitution was deliberately made tenuous and unworkable so those who have access to power and who know how to exploit the little differences and the insignificant issues that make for disunity can continue to keep their privileges and forever. No one should deceive us; the things that should unite us are far greater than those that divide us if only the generality of the people who bear the brunt of the mismanagement of this country were any wiser. As President Barack Obama said in his recent Cairo address to the Muslim world, ‘so long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity’. We have sacrificed merit on the alter of Federal Character in this country, entrenching ineptitude and mediocrity under the guise of balancing the equilibrium. What equilibrium? As if Nigerian’s care who their Leaders are if this country is run properly.
In 1992 when Bill Clinton was sworn in as President of the United State’s, his Vice President, Albert Gore was from a neighbouring Southern State. Who cared? No one. President George Bush was Governor of Texas before he became President of the United State’s in the year 2000 and while he was President; his younger brother, Jeb Bush, was Governor of Florida. Again who cared? No one. Rodham Hillary Clinton was first lady at Little Rock when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas and when it was time for her senate seat run; she ran from New York and thus represented New Yorkers in the Senate until recently when she was appointed Secretary of State by President Barack Obama. Now, this is the example of a nation which is serious about Citizenship, Patriotism and Unity. Just what are the examples we have here?
How did the United State’s achieve this? Simple, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United State’s solved the problem of ethnicity, indigeneship in one simple sentence when while extending Citizen rights to all Americans (Black, White, Hispanic, Caucasian, and Indian) provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. Brilliant you might say. So it does not matter where an American was born or where he resides, for where ever he is/lives in the United State’s at any point in time, he is a citizen of that place so questions of ‘indigeneship’, ‘stranger’, ‘non native’ or whatever which has led to violence and avoidable deaths in this clime will never arise.
Imagine how much good this singular provision in one sentence will do to our nation if we have the necessary political will to incorporate same into our constitution. Our leaders know this but because they seek to divide us so they can continually exploit us and feather their nest they will not allow it but any genuine effort at constitutional review must provide that anyone born or naturalized in Nigeria is a citizen of Nigeria and of the state wherein he resides and that he is entitled to the equal protection of the laws of the state. This provision will not solve all the problems in one day but it will be a constant reminder to all involved of our resolve to ensure the protection of Nigerian lives and property, our resolve to ensure that every Nigerian who will thrives, find happiness and fulfillment no matter where he resides in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
I read with concern a report on the front page of the Guardian of Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 under the caption “After 10 years your state of origin may change” and the paper went on to report that according to a Bill sponsored by Gozie Agbakoba, a member of the House of Representatives from Anambra State titled ‘A Bill for an Act to Integrate Non-Indigenes into states other than their state’s of origin’, if a person stays in another state for about 10 years and fulfills all his obligations, he or she should be conferred all rights and benefits enjoyed by the indigenes.
According to the widely circulated and leading national daily, Section 1 of the Bill provides “A person who resides in a state other than his state of origin continuously, that is to say without a break for a period of 10 or more years, contributes to the development, lives in harmony with the people of the state; pays taxes to the state, shall be entitled to the rights and benefits accruing to the indigenes or people of that state notwithstanding the fact that he is not an indigene or citizen of that state”. Section 2 of the same Bill went on to extend the rights and benefits to appointments, scholarships, attainment of the highest political office in the state and other such perquisites of indigeneship.
Well it is a good thing that this is coming up now even though belated but those involved should do well to note that this is a fundamental Constitutional matter and treat it as such. Any Constitutional amendment such as the one the National Assembly is now undertaking must as a matter of urgency take this question of citizenship or indigeneship into critical consideration and make lasting constitutional provisions to exorcise the ghost of this divisive issue from our national life forever. No other issue has conspired more to derail Nigeria’s continued search for Unity and Nationhood than the wrong concept of citizenship or indigeneship as conceived in this clime. This Bill though a welcome relief is a mere palliative if what it seeks to correct is not recognized and entrenched in the Constitution. In doing this we must appreciate and understand what the right concept of citizenship is. To this right concept will I now turn.
What exactly is Citizenship? A right concept of citizenship should solve most if not all issues that have to do with patriotism and communal living. Our leaders know this and most commentators do but it is surprising no one has really made an issue of the point. The right concept of Citizenship will foster harmony, self esteem/worth, unity and coherence of the Nigerian state, regardless of our estimated 250 ethnic nationalities and 513 linguistic groupings and their divergent group interests.
The 1999 Constitution in Chapter III provides for Citizenship and what do we find in its provisions. It merely prescribes how Nigerian citizenship may be acquired, exercised and renounced. It did not in any way make any telling provision on how these citizens shall live in the space they choose within the larger Nigerian society. The only provision that remotely comes close to doing so is again contained in the non justiciable provisions of Chapter II of the Constitution thus ‘it shall be the duty of every citizen to respect the dignity of other citizens and the rights and legitimate interests of others and live in unity and harmony and in the spirit of common brotherhood; make positive and useful contributions to the advancement, progress and wellbeing of the community where he resides”.
Again much ado about nothing. How is the average Nigerian expected to live out these ideals in a community where he resides and is seen as a ‘stranger’, a ‘non native’, a ‘non indigene’, and a ‘bird of passage’, taking it to the extreme if you like. If we are all citizens of Nigeria, why is it so difficult for the various ethnic nationalities in Jos to live together in peace and harmony? Why are there so much ethnic flash points across the length and breadth of this country? Again the answer is simple, the Constitution was deliberately made tenuous and unworkable so those who have access to power and who know how to exploit the little differences and the insignificant issues that make for disunity can continue to keep their privileges and forever. No one should deceive us; the things that should unite us are far greater than those that divide us if only the generality of the people who bear the brunt of the mismanagement of this country were any wiser. As President Barack Obama said in his recent Cairo address to the Muslim world, ‘so long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity’. We have sacrificed merit on the alter of Federal Character in this country, entrenching ineptitude and mediocrity under the guise of balancing the equilibrium. What equilibrium? As if Nigerian’s care who their Leaders are if this country is run properly.
In 1992 when Bill Clinton was sworn in as President of the United State’s, his Vice President, Albert Gore was from a neighbouring Southern State. Who cared? No one. President George Bush was Governor of Texas before he became President of the United State’s in the year 2000 and while he was President; his younger brother, Jeb Bush, was Governor of Florida. Again who cared? No one. Rodham Hillary Clinton was first lady at Little Rock when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas and when it was time for her senate seat run; she ran from New York and thus represented New Yorkers in the Senate until recently when she was appointed Secretary of State by President Barack Obama. Now, this is the example of a nation which is serious about Citizenship, Patriotism and Unity. Just what are the examples we have here?
How did the United State’s achieve this? Simple, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United State’s solved the problem of ethnicity, indigeneship in one simple sentence when while extending Citizen rights to all Americans (Black, White, Hispanic, Caucasian, and Indian) provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”. Brilliant you might say. So it does not matter where an American was born or where he resides, for where ever he is/lives in the United State’s at any point in time, he is a citizen of that place so questions of ‘indigeneship’, ‘stranger’, ‘non native’ or whatever which has led to violence and avoidable deaths in this clime will never arise.
Imagine how much good this singular provision in one sentence will do to our nation if we have the necessary political will to incorporate same into our constitution. Our leaders know this but because they seek to divide us so they can continually exploit us and feather their nest they will not allow it but any genuine effort at constitutional review must provide that anyone born or naturalized in Nigeria is a citizen of Nigeria and of the state wherein he resides and that he is entitled to the equal protection of the laws of the state. This provision will not solve all the problems in one day but it will be a constant reminder to all involved of our resolve to ensure the protection of Nigerian lives and property, our resolve to ensure that every Nigerian who will thrives, find happiness and fulfillment no matter where he resides in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
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