Belonging to everybody and keeping the oaths

One of the most-talked-about take-away lines from President Muhammadu Buhari’s inaugural speech a few days ago is the “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” sentence. It is a sublime expression of what an elected leader ought to be in a democracy, even when we hardly experience that in these climes. But we must try all the same. And we must help the president and all public office-holders to realise that and uphold it.

The starting point is to underscore the basis for this “leader for all” expression. For most of the offices created under the Constitution such as the president, vice president, governor, deputy governor, ministers and commissioners, as well as all the legislative offices, there is a common oath of allegiance they swear to. It is a short sentence that says the oath-taker swears to be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria and to protect and defend the Constitution.

Allegiance refers to duty of fidelity owed, or freely committed by someone to his/her state. What this oath therefore means is that the oath-taker commits to wholly and, without any reservation, be faithful to the country and to do everything within his/her powers to uphold the Constitution of the country. By taking that oath, the person is publicly swearing or affirming that any other allegiance he has is subject to the Constitution. That is why we must stress that public office-holders cannot claim to be under an obligation to support any other interest, including even their political party on whose platform they got into office. Public office-holders cannot also owe allegiance to their ethnicity, region or faiths against the oath of allegiance to Nigeria and its Constitution.

This is where I find it totally unacceptable for state governors to decorate the public spaces they occupy (office, official vehicles etc) with the colours of their political party. In fact, I had cause to object when I saw the video clip of the swearing-in of Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State with the flag of the All Progressives Party (APC) fluttering directly behind him. I equally saw a photo of Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos on his first day at work with the flag of APC by his side.

It is not a practice limited to any political party. Until recently, in front of the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) office, there used to be a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flag flying alongside the Nigerian flag. I also see state governors and local government chairpersons fly the flags of their political parties on official vehicles. Has anyone ever wondered how silly it would be for the official aircraft of the president to be painted in a political party’s colours/flags?

There are various oaths of office, depending on the office. Let us start with the oath of office of the president for which many of the other oaths have some similarities with. The Nigerian president swears or affirms to an oath of office to discharge his/her duties to the best of his ability, “faithfully and in accordance with the Constitution …and the law, and always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, well-being and prosperity … of Nigeria”.

The president further swears/affirms to “strive to preserve the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy contained in the Constitution” and not allow any personal interest to influence his/her official conduct or official decisions. Citizens who are related to public office-holders or belong to the same society (political, religious, ethnic, cultural, educational, professional etc) as those officers must not mistake such closeness as suggesting that the officer then belongs to them exclusively.

Under the same oath, the president is under a duty to use his/her best ability to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. This no doubt reiterates the oath of allegiance which he/she first swears to before the present oath. It is important therefore for public officers to be conversant with the provisions of the Constitution to be able to preserve, protect and defend them.

The president is under the provisions of the oath of office obliged to abide by the Code of Conduct contained in the Fifth Schedule to the Constitution and, in all circumstances, to do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. It is important to stress here that under the Code of Conduct, it is a crime for any public officer to maintain a foreign bank account. Until that law is changed, every one of them must abide by it.

And should anyone be found to have erred, whether in or out of office, our laws must be allowed to take its course and their community people should not get in the way. That is the way to show that the officer belongs to everybody and to nobody.

First published in The Niche on June 7, 2015 http://www.thenicheng.com/belonging-to-everybody-and-keeping-the-oaths/

My Change wish list (parts 1 and 2)

PART 1:

By this time next week, General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) will become President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB). Since he will transmute from being GMB to PMB, let me play a pun on the new tag of PMB by sending my ‘Change wish list’ to his private mail bag, albeit publicly. I do so in my capacity as a proud holder of the ‘Office of the Citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’, the highest and most important office in Nigeria. The list is a very simple one, focusing on governance issues. It requires clear steps to be taken by the new administration to save us some of the problems we face as a country, especially since 1999. Here we go.

I call on President Buhari to limit the number of political appointees to the barest minimum. To be honest, we don’t need more than 20 ministers of government. However, having regard to the provision of the Constitution, I will ask that he limits this to 37 ministers. He should not appoint more than 10 special advisers by whatever nomenclature. I submit that many of the governance and administrative duties carried out by some of the large retinue of aides of government officials could be effectively carried out by senior civil servants in those ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), and that would even be carried out in a professional manner.

The president should ensure that there are specific job titles and descriptions to all officers of government, to avoid overlaps and thus cut inefficiency. The government should streamline the functions of different agencies that overlap at the moment. PMB needs to pick out a few tips from the recommendations in the Orasanye Panel Report which is in the presidency and I believe should form part of the hand-over notes/briefings he will get from President Goodluck Jonathan.

Experience shows that it is easier to prevent corruption than investigate, prosecute and punish infringements. The government must commit to implementing and strengthening the existing mechanisms for preventing corruption, to reduce the level of corruption. This includes ensuring that proper audits are carried out when due and the reports of such audits implemented. PMB must work closely with the legislature to do more with the reports of the Auditor-General, to ensure that sanctions are carried out as appropriate.

It also follows that the Auditor-General’s office has to be reformed in a way that builds the confidence of the head and all the auditors, that their professionalism would not be compromised or they made to suffer for whistle-blowing. This above should be done along with the proper prosecution, to its logical conclusion, of all cases of corruption that have remained in court for many years. We need to speed up and conclude the prosecutions for corruption that started in 2007 against many of the former state governors.

Still on the issue of cost of governance, the new president should show leadership by ensuring a drastic reduction in the budget of the presidency and by extension the executive arm, so as to be on the right moral platform to request similar reduction from the other arms. PMB can start by reducing the number of aircraft in the presidential fleet. Reports indicate that there are currently between nine and 11 such aircraft. I opine that our country does not need more than three of such aircraft. He must see to the offloading of the excess aircraft and pay similar attention to the number of other facilities such as vehicles of government as well as those assigned to government officials.

A situation where the government provides too many vehicles to an official, such that some of the vehicles are put to the use of the official’s family members, as though they were state officials, must stop. Let every paid official and worker be responsible for organising their families and their transportation needs, and not pass such the public coffers.

I have severally canvassed against government getting involved in the private affairs of citizens. One of such is the issue of pilgrimages. While citizens should be allowed the right to practise their religions and while government can do well to protect the welfare of their citizens wherever they are, I believe that can still be done without government getting involved in pilgrimage arrangements. This is because, currently, the country is being haemorrhaged through the pilgrimages by both Christians and Muslims. What is more, this has become a colossal waste of state resources on the elite class or for currying political favours by those in government.

(End of part 1 published in The Niche on May 24, 2015 http://www.thenicheng.com/my-change-wish-list-1/)

PART 2:

As I was saying last week and now that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) has been inaugurated, I wish to continue with my change wish list. I am excited to hear that some of the suggestions contained in my last week’s wish list may be implemented by the new president, especially the one about a leaner government in terms of cabinet appointment. The decision we heard of not taking or working with a list from the state governors for the composition of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) is a welcome one. It is a political masterstroke to save the country from the clutches of the governors who constitute one of the most powerful political cabals.

The new government must take adequate steps to reform the criminal justice system to allow for speedy prosecution for crimes. Happily, the vice president is not only a professor of law and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), but was for some years the attorney-general in Lagos State, where he drove some reforms in the justice sector.

Agreed that there are peculiar situations that warrant the entering of plea bargains, we suggest that even where such is entered into, the minimum the state should ensure is the recovery of stolen sums/proceeds of such corruption and a conviction which would therefore disqualify the criminal from certain privileges. On no account should this new administration consider granting state pardon, whimsically, to convicts whose only seeming qualification for such consideration is the fact that they are politicians and as such part of a ‘family’. The cases of the pardon and active involvement of Salisu Buhari and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in the public space should never be used as precedent and must be seen as an embarrassing milestone of our political history.

To provide the basis for driving development, we need data for proper planning. The government should immediately strengthen and expand the national citizens’ registration system to ensure that every citizen from birth is captured in the database. It should be very easy to register new-borns in hospitals and during the monthly immunisation exercises, and such registration should feed directly into the national database. There should also be a harmonisation of every other citizens’ data capture such as from the voter registration, international passport, telephone SIM registration and the bank customers’ registration.

There is no doubt that our country and the component units are broke! Much of what led to the present situation include corruption, greed, poorly thought out projects with poor funding architecture and, very importantly, the failure to make savings.

PMB and team must commence a process of getting all stakeholders to buy into and approve a legal framework for saving a percentage of our earnings for the future. They need to revisit all issues associated with the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and address all obstacles. If well managed, it is even possible for states to also set up similar savings and wealth management schemes at their levels.

My other wish is for the PMB government to immediately commence a thorough audit of government agencies which currently operate in an opaque manner, detrimental to the wellbeing of Nigeria and its citizens. These include the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It is clear that there is something fishy and faulty about the financial DNA of those agencies that make them perpetual cesspit of corruption, while a few crooked citizens benefit from it.

We also need to review the budgeting system to ensure citizens’ involvement in a bottom-up approach. This would ensure that citizens’ needs are addressed in the budget. This would save the country the burden of government officials mortgaging our future through white elephant projects that do not have positive effect on generality of citizens, even as many of such projects get abandoned after huge sums of money have been splashed on them.

We must take every step to end impunity. This means that PMB must not only live by example (and I have no doubt he can) but he must lead his government to ensuring that every breach of the law and regulation is punished. On this account, the new government must re-open investigation and ensure appropriate sanctions for certain glaring cases of impunity in the recent past. Of particular note is the bungled recruitment into the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) where money was extorted from applicants and the process was mismanaged, leading to the death of about 20 citizens and injuries to many others across the country.

There are certainly a lot more things too wish for. But I would leave them at these few, knowing that many others also have their wish list. It is left now for President Buhari to consider the list and address them. It is a new dawn for the country and we all must work hard to make this work.

(Concluding part published on May 31, 2015 http://www.thenicheng.com/my-change-wish-list-2/)

Prayer for NASS members on their inauguration

To all who would be sworn in today as Senators and members of the House of Representatives, whether deserving or by stolen mandates, whether you would last or be kicked out when your fraud or other skeleton in your cupboard is discovered, I commend you to God that He may arrest your entire being and use you to achieve His purpose for our country. I pray when you read your oaths of allegiance and of office, you be convicted by it and uphold it at all times, even against your will. May you strive to serve and not see the National Assembly as your farmland, goldmine or oil block. May you help reduce the cost of governance by your taste and actions. May you not be as corrupt and wayward as most of your predecessors were. May God save you from the pressures and negative influences of your political parties, family, friends, neighbours, associates, town unions, religious groups, old boys leagues, former work colleagues etc who may see you as the conduit to loot the public treasury. And if you ever try to defraud or act against the interest of Nigeria. and the welfare and security of its people, may God visit His wrath upon you in His own spectacular way and bring you to shame. And may the Good LORD see you through this national assignment. Amen!

Jang, the gang and us

And so the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) came back as a single group, after two years of inane politics that tore it into two factions and made our country the laughing stock in the art of understanding the basic principles of democracy. Our understanding of simple counting and ‘mental sums’ (as it was called in the primary school days), was called to question.

For about two years, a bunch of megalomaniac governors, driven by their insatiable love and lust for impunity insisted, in spite of clear evidence, that there was a new mathematical theorem which made 16 greater than 19. That theorem was celebrated and given official acknowledgment by Nigeria’s President and Commander-in-Chief, thus giving it the official imprimatur of the government of Nigeria. We complained; we shouted. But the government, the irresponsible governors and, sadly, their ninny followers and supporters, sneered at us, because they thought us too weak to matter where they operated from.

But this week, as we count down to the official commencement of the much touted ‘Change’ that all the while seemed impossible, the prodigal governors represented by Jonah Jang, Godswill Akpabio and Babangida Aliyu shamelessly went back to the mainstream fold, thus admitting that they were all along wallowing in perfidy.

Not that it mattered to us who was heading the NGF, that being nothing more than a social club of state governors, without any legal or constitutional authority or power. What worried us though was the quality and character of those calling the shots as far as our politics goes at the state level. If as few as 36 highly-placed politicians occupying very high political offices in Nigeria could not conduct themselves with a high sense of integrity to even carry out a credible and dispute-free election, we feared for the general elections. If we couldn’t count 36 votes, how were we going to be able to count millions? It was enough to deflate our already sagging image in the international scene.

While the division remained, some of these hapless and clueless followers were busy abusing and even hating one another (supposedly on behalf of their ‘leaders’). I hope they can see clearly now how they have once again been used and dumped as pawns on the political chessboard.

What happened in Abuja on Monday was that the authentic Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) headed by Governor Rotimi Amaechi met and the prodigal governors, including Akpabio and Aliyu attended. Jonah Jang sent in an apology for his absence, thus also acknowledging that Amaechi had all along been in the right on this and the so-called Jang-led faction (I call it the ‘Jang-Gang’) was fake and inglorious.

At the media briefing, a journalist asked the governors about their inglorious past but Amaechi was quick to save his prodigal brothers the humiliation by saying bygones were bygones and that any question about that would be met with the answer, ‘no comments’.

Well, Governor Amaechi, while we appreciate how you politicians love to operate as family and protect each other when it suits your purpose and make a fool of the rest of society, we are not going to let you off easily on this. We must name and shame every part of us that reeks of obscenity and abuse of process, lest that part of us falls into it again and again and keeps kissing and making up. No society develops through such.

We see this happen too often. In the parliaments, we remember how, after wasting everybody’s time, accusing their presiding officers of corruption and even removing them on account of that, at the end of the parliamentary session, parliamentarians would often open their book of perfidy and reading therefrom, pronounce every ‘sinner’ cleansed of any wrongdoing. They once even declared that certain records of their ignominy be expunged. That is the power of the crooked ruling class, a power we must break or change.

To what do Nigerians owe this newfound love of the 36 state governors? And how do their willy-nilly cheerleaders feel now? While the division remained, some of these hapless and clueless followers were busy abusing and even hating one another (supposedly on behalf of their ‘leaders’). I hope they can see clearly now how they have once again been used and dumped as pawns on the political chessboard.

First published in Premium Times of May 20, 2015 http://blogs.premiumtimesng.com/?p=167626 

For want of a nail in Rivers State...

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail".

Oh dear Rivers State, shall the above rhyme remind us of thee come May 29?

Thy brawl in thy parliament and thy slaughter of thy judiciary have brought thee this ignominious recognition.

Now we need a chief judge to swear in a new Governor but none is found.

And in cometh Adoke the law, directing or ordering Bayelsa chief judge to proceed into a different jurisdiction an act to perform.

And I ask Adoke the law, 'quo warranto?'

Should such order not have come from the National Judicial Council (NJC) or the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) rather than from a partisan law officer?

Hmm...the very thing the loss of a nail can cause, all because we cared less for the city though we claim otherwise...

If only we knew our realities

If only they had seen the oil as a dwindling resource. If only they had appreciated that the bonus from oil windfall was an aberration and couldn’t be relied upon to build a dream on. If only they had saved for the rainy day. If only they did not have a champagne taste, even with their palm-wine pockets. If only they didn’t have to steal not only for themselves but their numerous families, friends, hangers-on, bootlickers, religio-cultural communities and their future generations.

If only they did not splash state resources on frivolities and elitist tastes. If only they did not have to build air-conditioned footbridges or commit money into building Africa’s tallest building in a land where electricity is still a luxury. If only they did not build gargantuan edifices and ‘world class’ stadium where only one game (football) can be played, and that a few odd times in a year. If only they did not build state-of-the-art entertainment centres, where state resources are spent to subsidise gate fees. If only state resources were not looted to fund political party activities. If only they thought through every project proposal to be sure it is in the interest of the people rather than be driven by ‘what is in it for me’ (WIII-FM). If only they realised that it is evil to take a loan for projects that would sell off their state’s future for the pleasure of today’s elite.

If only they realised that governance is about service to the citizens and the state and not a ‘food-is-ready’ for family and friends. If only they realised that spending colossal sums to build a physical wall round a city is idiotic, just like committing huge funds from loans to build a conference centre that is unlikely to host as many conferences as to recoup the loans. If only government officials realised state resources should not be utilised for funding private religious luxuries like pilgrimages, instead of committing those to deliver quality public services like electricity, health and education.

If only governments were not top heavy with political appointees whose job descriptions overlapped and there are no monitoring of value added to the state by such officials. If only state agencies were not over-populated by workers many of whom have neither a job to do nor a seat and office space to work from, yet collect salaries and allowances. If only we had effective monitoring mechanisms for efficiency and efficacy of government workers and operations.

If only our opinion, traditional and religious leaders were not compromised and as such could speak truth to power. If only those leaders were statesmanlike and not interested in WIII-FM. If only those who had no courage to speak up did not spend time discouraging and disparaging those who spoke up against bad governance and squandering of public resources.

If only people got punished, and severely too, for looting our commonwealth rather than be celebrated by their communities as heroes and heroines who brought the bacon home to their clans. If only we entrenched the culture of naming and shaming rather than hailing and sharing with corrupt public officers.

If and only if all the ifs above had happened, we would not have been in this horrible mess of states going bankrupt and governors beginning to beg for bailout from a federal government that itself is operating below the level of capability.

If only citizens are thoroughly angry enough about the waste in government and rise up to say enough is enough and mean it, the government would sit up and not take us for granted. But that again depends on another set of ifs. If only we stop seeing who is running the government but how he or she runs it. If only we realise that we own the government and not the government that owns us. And if only we realise the power of our collective actions as citizens. Oh, if, and only if we appreciate where the power lies, we would not allow the few who run the governments to take us for granted.

First published in The Niche newspaper, May 17, 2015. http://www.thenicheng.com/if-only-we-knew-our-realities/

Do We Ever Spew Out the Rot?

And it came to pass that a certain Godwin Moffat Eyo who carries the title of ‘pastor’ got convicted this past week for stealing. That is no news because hundreds of people get convicted for stealing in Nigeria every week. It is also no biggie that he committed the crime while serving as a ‘big man’ in one of the ‘big’ government offices. Many of them do, still do and will continue to do so. The part that stood out for me in this matter was the items he stole. The convict stole electricity transformers; not one, not two, not 10, not even 20 or 30. He stole all of 56 transformers. Yes, you read that correctly, 56!

When the news broke, many people asked what he wanted to use all those transformers for when he is not NEPA. As an aside, NEPA (National Electric Power Authority) is the precursor to the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) which was later unbundled to give way to the present power generating companies (gencos) and power distribution companies (discos) that dot the entire country. Names have a way of sticking with us here, so by whatever name the power supply company goes, most Nigerians call them NEPA now, since the generation that knew of ECN (Electricity Corporation of Nigeria) is now in the minority.

So back to our man, Pastor Eyo. How on earth did he come about 56 transformers valued at N220,176,320? That’s the big question. As I hinted, Eyo is (or was) a big man. He was the commissioner representing his state (Akwa Ibom) in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), a specialised intervention agency of the federal government meant to address some of the peculiar challenges of that region. In saner climes, such an agency and its resources would be treated with utmost protection by everyone from that area the way communities treasure their stream as the source of potable water. You don’t mess with it without grave consequences from the people. But not so with the NDDC.

To many citizens of the Niger Delta, the commission is just another spinner of freebies coming from a distant federal government. You just pray to get into it or know someone in it to take as much from it as possible. So, it was that this representative of an entire state applied for 90 electricity transformers for the benefit of his state and was given 70. When these were released, the convict claimed that the NDDC office in the state capital did not have enough space to store that quantity of equipment and he was benevolent enough to offer his private home in Eket for the safe-keeping of the transformers. It turned out that this thief eventually released only 14 of the equipment and, well, ‘pocketed’ 56!

My questions are many, but let me pose a few here. How so easy is it that all of 70 transformers approved for an entire state by the NDDC could be physically handed over to an individual? Shouldn’t the agency have verified the specific location the transformers needed to be sited and ensure they were delivered there? Could it be that the agency works like one huge bazaar where the big men just share and cart away as much as they want and nobody cares about what it is meant for? Does NDDC have a way of following up with equipment it shares out?

How did the pastor dispose of those 56 transformers without people raising issues? Possibly, he became a huge benefactor, sharing transformers to different communities whimsically, or, as some pastors like him are wont to say, ‘as the spirit led’. Did it ever prick the consciences of the beneficiaries that there was something amiss in the manner he doled out the transformers? Maybe he became known as the transformer man. Did his church ever see anything absurd and wrong with that? He couldn’t possibly have stolen 56 of those equipment without ‘blessing’ his church and maybe other ‘men/women of God’ with a few, you know.

It is likely that many who knew of it and many more who would read this would justify the action as a norm because they have accepted that our society cannot run better than this. This is the shocking reality for us. The problem is not usually only about the criminal, but also about the society members who abet, acquiesce, endorse or celebrate the criminality. I was sore disappointed a few days ago where I read about a young man who swindled a bank of N53.6 million by hacking into its database during his internship with the bank. It was not just the criminality that I was disappointed with, but the comment of another young man who chided the thief for not being smart enough to have escaped from the country soon after the loot.

That says a lot about our society. And I am sure there are many more Pastors Eyo across the land and in different scales who are being protected by the same society. Until we sensitise ourselves enough to spew out their likes, our society will continue in this cycle of rot.

First published in The Niche newspaper, May 3, 2015 http://www.thenicheng.com/do-we-ever-spew-out-the-rot/