GEJ v GMB rematch 2015

As you read this, we have just 62 days to the February 14 general election in Nigeria. Once again, the election will square up incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) against General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB). This much emerged last Wednesday and Thursday at the national conventions of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Both men were the top finishers in the 2011 elections, a contest which left in its aftermath, sorrow, death and blood, following days of post-election violence across the land. Should the planned rematch raise worries?

The worries stem from the post-2011 election incidents. This is because both men have been anything but friendly towards each other, post-2011. There have been overt and subtle allegations of either promoting violence or incompetence in handling incidents of violence. Even if both men do not openly deride each other, their followers and supporters tend to exacerbate the gulf between. The effect of this on the political space has been enormous.

Interestingly, the processes that threw both men up as candidates in 2011 seem to have played out again this year, but in a reverse manner. In 2011, President Jonathan fought for a presidential election ticket from his party against formidable oppositions and still got through. Buhari on the other hand got the ticket of his then party, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), on a platter, even as he ‘owned’ that party.

Today, conversely, Jonathan got the PDP ticket with little stress, even as the party blatantly refused to allow other interested party members a fair chance to give it a shot. The signpost of what a party’s internal democracy should be was on Wednesday and Thursday when the APC held what could be described as the best party primary in recent times. Interestingly, the main legacy parties that formed APC – namely the ANPP, CPC and the ACN, including its progenitor, Alliance for Democracy (AD) – had reputations for non-democratic decision-making. They were in the habit of pressuring aspirants to abandon their ambitions and allow the preferred candidate of the ruling class to prevail. All that became history last week. All the five aspirants in the APC stood election and wooed about 7,000 delegates with Buhari emerging the clear winner.

As both men go into the race, one hopes they would focus on the real issues besetting the country such as corruption, the collapsing economy, insurgency, poor state of roads and other infrastructure and provision of social services such as health and education. Just as the country begins to groan under the effect of austerity, we want to know how the aspirants plan to get us out of this economic mess through sound policies which must necessarily include cutting down frivolous costs associated with governance.

And while they consider the above, we should remind them to cut off the sophistry and tell us their real blueprints for addressing those issues. We should remind both men and their managers not to further divide the country into the fragments of ethno-religious identities. Those identities, after all, do not define honesty, integrity, competence and commitments. They only appeal to our base instincts which are not sustainable. As the Chinese saying goes, ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice’.

It is time for GEJ and GMB to commit to issues-based campaign and rein in their supporters from doing anything that could lead to violence before, during and after the elections. And for the blind supporters out there who see the elections as ‘do-or-die’, we should also remind them that we have a country to protect and defend. After all, if we lose our country after the general elections, it would not matter who won the elections.

http://www.thenicheng.com/gej-v-gmb-rematch-2015/ 

The big man and his entourage

After my initial fits and starts attempt at reading Michaela Wrong’s book, It’s Our Time to Eat, I have recently got into the groove of it. The book tells the story of John Kithongo, a principled activist who was hired by the Kenyan government to head its anti-corruption agency, the Kenyan Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC).

Kithongo’s story reflects much of what we see across Africa. It tells the story of the multi-facetted nature of corruption in seeping through the building blocks of society. There are several lessons to learn from the book. One is that the fight against corruption is herculean and the commitment of governments often suspect. Page after page, I keep seeing Nigeria’s local context in Wrong’s book. Just take a look at the following quote, for instance:

“Reporting Africa, I’ve always been puzzled by the readiness otherwise intelligent diplomats, businessmen and technocrats show in embracing the ‘Blame the Entourage’ line of argument. The Old Man himself is OK’ runs this refrain echoed at various times from Guinea to Cote d’Ivoire, Zaire to Gabon, Tanzania to Zambia. 
“Deeply principled, a devout Muslim/Protestant/Catholic, he observes, in his own life, a strict moral code. It’s his aides/wife/sons who are the problem. They’re like leeches. If only he’d realise what they are doing in his name and put a stop to it. But of course he adores them. It’s his one weakness. Such a shame.”

The argument has always struck me as a form of naivety so extreme it verges on intellectual dishonesty. In countries where presidents have done their best to centralise power, altering constitutions, winning over the army and emasculating the judiciary, the notion that key decisions can be taken without their approval is laughable. If a leader is surrounded by shifty, money-grabbing aides and family members, it’s because he likes it that way. These are the people he feels at ease with, whose working methods he respects. Far from being an aberration, the entourage is a faithful expression of the autocrat’s own proclivities.”

How convenient it is for people to avoid talking truth to power but flip-flop to blame the excesses and, yes, corruption of such leaders on their entourage. We hear that a lot in Nigeria at different levels. The apologists of the incumbents ascribe every achievement recorded on such officials, yet for every failure, they find a way of blaming it on their aides. And truth is, our government officials are often very smart and smooth enough in their corruption as to claim ignorance of what is going on under them. That explains why every leader is often described as having ‘tried his/her best’.

That also explains why, whenever someone is ever jailed for corruption and abuse, it is never the top dog but at best, many of the numerous aides. The exception to this was the conviction of former Delta State governor, James Ibori. But then, such conviction was only achieved outside Nigeria after years of legal rigmarole at home.

For those who try to extricate the chief executives from the actions of their subordinates, they forget that the chief executive, in a winner-takes-all political system as ours, hires and fires his aides, not the other way. As such, the buck, as they say, stops at the big man’s table because he made the choices. They should take full responsibilities for the team’s excesses, just as they do with the successes.

So, where the police boss goofs, the president should take the can if he fails to call him to order. When a minister misappropriates funds, the president should not claim ignorance. And when a commissioner is found out to be living under the shadows of a forged certificate or fraudulent academic claims and still retains his exalted office two years after, it stops being just his problem, but a big question mark on the integrity of his boss, the governor.

Perhaps our problem flows from the workings of our traditional societies where the king can do no wrong or is at best excused of his excesses. But then, we operate a different political system in the name of presidential democracy where the standards are different. So, let our big men take responsibility for themselves and the actions of their entourage.

See more at: http://www.thenicheng.com/big-man-entourage/#sthash.lfXpMP9k.dpuf

Austerity? Cut governance cost

So, now, it is confirmed that we are officially in ‘austerity’. The last time we had that was sometime in 1982 under the Shehu Shagari administration. A few weeks ago, Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announced stiffer economic policies following dwindling prices of oil, the country’s mega bucks spinner. Although she avoided referring to it as austerity, the indicators are all too obvious. These include the devaluation of the national currency (the naira), increase in lending rates and higher taxes on certain luxury goods. That our economy was not on solid ground has always been known and appreciated by many Nigerians, even when the government kept pretending. The good thing is that our government has now accepted the reality and has shown interest in confronting the challenge.

  

While not claiming to be a better expert on the economy than the finance minister who also goes by the superfluous title of ‘Coordinating Minister for the Economy’, I have a few suggestions on how to manage our economy better than we do currently. While the focus would be mainly on the federal government, the issues apply equally, if not more, with state and even local governments.

  

One major step to take is to cut down on the cost of governance. The starting point is the number of cabinet members in the government. Averagely, we find a crowd of 40 or more cabinet ministers. I appreciate that the constitution requires the president to appoint as many ministers as there are states in Nigeria. That translates to at least 36, or 37 if we treat the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as a state. Until that provision of the constitution is changed, could we at least ask the president to be prudent as to limit his ministers’ list to 37?

  

It is also important to prune the number of the president’s aides. In June 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan sought and obtained the approval of Senate to appoint 20 advisers, but at a particular time and in apparent breach of the number of aides approved for him, he had at least 24. Notice that some of these adviser positions are irrelevant and superfluous to exist with ministers and ministers of state for related areas of government. Added to this is the fact that these motley crowd of ministers and advisers carry along their own list of advisers and assistants, complete with salaries, allowances and other perks of office, thus further bloating up the cost of governance.

  

Yet another contentious addition to the cost of governance are the huge costs run up in the name of governance by the wife of the president and wives of state governors and even wives of local government councils chairmen. Those positions, not recognised by the constitution, have since been illegally elevated to offices for spending public funds which are hardly accounted for.

  

Another waste point in public expenditure that needs to be addressed is the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet. It seems we end up buying a new aircraft every other year such that, at the last count, we had about 10 aircraft in the presidential fleet. This is scandalous for a country that has no official airline. Pray, what do we need all that number of aircraft for, given the high cost of maintenance?

  

Even more nauseating in the list of wastages in governance is the fact that every government – federal, state and local – criminally subsidises the political party in power at each level. This they do through several ways, including hosting of political party meetings in government houses, using public funds to foot the costs of meals, even when they do not pay for the cost of venues. In other instances, government officials use public funds to attend purely partisan functions that have no bearing on their official duties. See, for instance, the number of cabinet members, including the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), who keep attending the rallies of the political support group for President Jonathan, ahead of the presidential elections. Related to this is the fact that most governors do not just sit down in their states to govern. Rather they spend more time travelling to and virtually living in Abuja, running up unnecessary costs, in pursuit of political advantages.

  

And need we remind government again that pilgrimages, being religious exercises, are purely personal concerns of individuals, and as such government has no business spending money on anyone to attend them? The time is ripe for government to stop this spending, more so when the funds are usually splashed on privileged citizens who can afford such luxuries.   It is apparent from the above that it doesn’t take so much thinking to cut down cost of governance after all. What is needed is the political will to do so.

See more at: http://www.thenicheng.com/austerity-cut-governance-cost/#sthash.86fUFryL.dpuf

EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THE BOSS

"Reporting Africa, I've always been puzzled by the readiness otherwise intelligent diplomats, businessmen and technocrats show in embracing the 'Blame the Entourage' line of argument. 'The Old Man himself is OK', runs this refrain, echoed at various times from Guinea to Ivory Coast, Zaire to Gabon, Tanzania to Zambia. 
'Deeply principled, a devout Muslim/Protestant/Catholic, he observes, in his own life, a strict moral code. It's his aides/wife/sons who are the problem. They're like leeches. If only he'd realise what they are doing in his name and put a stop to it. But of course he adores them. It's his one weakness. Such a shame.' 
The argument has always struck me as a form of naievity so extreme it verges on intellectual dishonesty. In countries where presidents have done their best to centralise power, altering constitutions, winning over the army and emasculating the judiciary, the notion that key decisions can be taken without their approval is laughable. If a leader is surrounded by shifty, money-grabbing aides and family members, it's because he likes it that way. These are the people he feels at ease with, whose working methods he respects. Far from being an aberration, the entourage is a faithful expression of the autocrat's own proclivities."
(Michela Wrong, 'It's Our Time to Eat', p. 181.)

Lest we lose the nail of democracy

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost

For the want of a shoe the horse was lost

For the want of a horse the rider was lost

For the want of a rider the battle was lost

For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail

(Benjamin Franklin)

The above rhyme frighteningly sums up what has been happening to Nigeria’s hard-won democracy as it is being desecrated by a band of politicians whose guiding principle is self, driving force is power and inspiration is lucre.  As we travel towards another era of political war and the sharing of the spoils thereof, the politicians are again at each other’s jugular as they jostle to grab every opportunities.

In the quests for individual diadems, they brook no obstacle. In fact, in the altar of politics, nothing is too sacrosanct to be sacrificed. That much has been in display of late in Nigeria. Governance has since taken a back seat, where they ever existed. It is now politics, dirty, grimy, soulless politics.

See the mess they have made of political party’s internal elections. See the shenanigans all over the land, in many state houses of assembly such as Rivers, Edo and lately, Ekiti and Ebonyi. At another level, the police, under the control and authority of the Executive arm are being used to lay siege on the National Assembly through the attempt to frustrate and stampede out the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The event of last Thursday, where the speaker and other legislators were denied free access to their offices and later tear-gassed by the police, remains the greatest assault on democracy. Every time I train or talk to people about democracy, I stress the fact that the existence of the legislature as an independent arm of government is what defines democracy. This is as opposed to the era of the military where the other two arms of government – Executive and the Judiciary existed. Thus, the Legislature is the engine room of democracy. An attack on this therefore is a clear attack at the very foundation of democracy.

It insults the sensibilities of Nigerians for the police to do what they did and the president’s spokesperson, Doyin Okupe, claims the presidency has no hands in it but that the police are doing their legitimate duty. Nigerians have had a harrowing experience watching acrobatic displays by desperate lawmakers who had to scale fences to gain access into the National Assembly. We watched as news reporters struggled to report the news in tear gassed environment, coughing and choking in front of television cameras. We saw legislators panting, clothes torn and some close to fainting for the same reason. And I kept wondering, what if someone had dropped dead as it happened in 2007 with Dr Aminu Safana in the House after one of the fighting sessions?

Someone asked why Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and the other fence-scaling representatives did not just turn back home rather than put on such ‘un-parliamentary’ displays. Truth is if they had been unwise enough to do so, they would have been done with. Later when the House sat, I saw a few of the PDP bigwigs like Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha and Leo Ogor in the chambers. Who knows if they would have done the abracadabra of leading a few legislators to claim to remove the speaker had he and his supporters not forced themselves in there? And that is what just happened in Ekiti state where seven members claimed to have removed the speaker in a 26-member House and the state governor now recognises the criminal leadership of the House.

And while all these happen, there are many loose cannons in government circles mouthing political obscenities and sounding drums of war. The latest is Governor Ibrahim Shema of Katsina State shown in a trending online video, describing the opposition to his political party in the state as ‘cockroaches’! Yes, you read that correctly. It was the same description of hate used in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. And just like in Rwanda, the man in Katsina was in the video urging his supporters to squash the ‘cockroaches’.

Pray these politicians don’t destroy this democracy by first losing the nail.

Political sinfulness and governance miracles

Nigeria is an interesting country and its people are even more confounding. Our love for and belief in miracles is unparalleled.  The word, ‘paradox’ finds expression here too. Here you find students who do everything but study; yet they look forward to fantastic results at the end of examinations. They may even run after some prayer contractors who promise them miraculous success in such examinations, rather than sit down to study. Process isn’t one of our strong points. So no matter what someone is doing or is not doing, it is still okay if he/she comes out reeking of sudden, huge wealth. ‘He/she has arrived’, many would say or ‘he/she is blessed’. I have heard of a so-called ‘miracle money’ wherein some religious adherents are promised sudden monetary windfall or payment into their bank account for doing absolutely nothing. It is a new wave of religiosity that beats the imagination of many right-thinking people.

It is not only in the realm of religion that we see this contradiction. It is all over the place. One area is in politics. Although politics here is full of sharp practices, fraudulent behaviours, lies and violence, it beats me when citizens expect to see good governance emanating from the cesspit that our politics is. This has led many of us to conclude that the country is not honestly ready for real democracy, the type that brings about the famed ‘dividends of democracy’. And the reasons are many. Here are a few ways we do the wrong thing and expect a good result by way of miracles.

Where in the world do we hear of citizens paying a fee to their political party to qualify to seek nomination as standard bearer? And even if that exists, are the sums paid so embarrassingly high as here? Pray, how much is the official and legitimate earnings of the president of Nigeria that the two major political parties would demand N27m and N22m respectively for aspirants seeking to be the parties’ presidential candidates? And the citizens, ever passionate believers in miracles expect the aspirants in this process to come into office and devote their lives to giving everyone a brighter future. That must be some great expectation to think that the aspirants will not first recoup and seek profit for their investments.

We breed a class of politicians who do not believe in democracy. This is because while democracy is hinged on the freedom of choice by citizens on who should lead or represent them, today’s politicians abhor the promotion of such freedom to choose. Instead, they try to foist ‘consensus’ candidates on the populace. Someone said recently that whenever a Nigerian (man) says ‘that is our culture’, then watch it, a woman’s right is about to be breached. Similarly, when politicians talk about ‘consensus’ candidacy, watch it, for someone’s right and privilege to aspire for a political position may be at the risk of a breach.

And for all the teeming contractors and professional praise singers who supposedly brought their hard-earned incomes to purchase forms for politicians even more privileged than them, did they really believe many citizens were fooled by such lies? And assuming the facts were as they claimed, what is in it for them by way of payback? A free and fair contract awarding system is certainly not a natural outcome of such but a miraculous expectation.

What about social, cultural and religious affiliates of persons in government who put much pressure and make so many demands from these persons to bring in illicit funds and patronage to the group? Yet they expect good governance and prudence in state finances. That again is political miracle or great expectation. And the delegates at party primaries who for a few bundles of money (sometimes laundered) and some other material items like cars, plasma television would readily give their votes to the highest bidder, they should kiss goodbye to any miracle of good governance four years hence.

Whether or not democracy and good governance thrive in Nigeria is not going to be dependent only on the politicians, but the citizens themselves who know what is right but sit on the fence, suck up to the wrong doers or claim weakness to act in the face of tyranny.

Why PDP senators must get back to work

It turned out last week that senators of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, many of whom were outsmarted by their state governors in the party’s congress held the previous weekend, decided to carry out what may be termed a “work to rule” in Nigeria’s labour lexicon. They were angry with their party but they exacted their anger on the country, claiming instead to be directing it at President Goodluck Jonathan. In Nigeria’s peculiar democracy, the line separating a political party from the government it leads is almost non-existent. The result is that the elected President of the country becomes a maximum ruler, using state apparatuses and resources to unfairly control his party at all levels. This humunguous power is replicated at a lower level by the state governors, even as the President still serves as a “headmaster” to them all.

But the state governors have since pooled their powers and resources together to give the President a run for his money, never mind the pun. This has resulted into a rub-my-back-I-rub-yours or quid pro quo arrangement between President Jonathan and the governors, where they call the shots in our politics. This alliance is what has left our senators on the wrong side of the political grabbing. While the PDP has almost certainly reserved the presidential standard-bearer slot to incumbent President Jonathan, the governors have unwittingly negotiated what they call “a right of first refusal” for the party’s ticket to contest the senate seat, since most of them are completing the maximum term to remain as state governor. It is this greedy position grab that has set them on a collision course with the senators, many of whose seats are being poached by the powerful governors. And the senators are now fighting back, using a wrong approach.

The mere thought of senators refusing to carry out their constitutional duties on account of their selfish political contestation within their party portrays them as callous and unpatriotic. For one, they will keep their pay, allowances and other perks of office for the period they did not work. Two days without sitting in plenary out of a possible three days of sitting in a week means that legislative work is set back severely. And there are very urgent legislative assignments begging to be addressed at this time, with just about six weeks left of the year and at a time the legislators are torn between their duties and party primaries. So, every single day counts. By threatening not to carry out legislative duties, more particularly any executive bill and requests, the senators are saying they will not consider and pass the budget for instance.

About a month ago, the Executive presented the Medium Term Expenditure Framework to the National Assembly and that has yet to be passed, a pre-condition to the submission of the proposed budget 2015. At this rate, there is absolutely no way the appropriation bill would be passed into law before the end of this year, unless the legislature plans to do a shoddy job and fail to scrutinise the draft well enough. And that would be a grave disservice to the Nigerian people.

Yet another critical piece of legislative work the senators overlooked in their selfish action last week is the amendment of the Electoral Act. It is bad enough that they delayed this work until this time, three months to the next general elections, even as the amendment will have far-reaching consequences on the elections. As a fact, the Independent National Electoral Commission has been unable to update its voter education information document, pending the passage of the amendment so as not to produce a document that would become useless after the amendment. Therefore, while we would be quick to condemn INEC for its looming failure next year, we shouldn’t fail to stress the part played by senators in that failure, as far as legislative duties are concerned.

If the PDP senators feel so angry about their fortunes in their party, they should channel their grouse to the Wadata Plaza headquarters of their party and not reduce our National Assembly to a freedom square for their protests.

http://www.punchng.com/opinion/letters/why-pdp-senators-must-get-back-to-work/ 

• Obo Effanga, Governance manager, ActionAid International, Abuja