WEST AFRICA REVIEW ISSN: 1525-4488 Issue 6 (2004)

Julius O. Ihonvbere

Introduction

It is indeed a privilege to be among you brilliant lawyers of Nigeria today. I thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to give a talk at your annual meeting. In spite of my relocation to Abuja, the challenges of settling into a new job and the multitude of issues to be dealt with on a daily basis, I found your invitation too important to ignore. I crave your indulgence however to modify the topic of the talk a little. I wanted to relate my comments to the task of the on-going efforts at nation building and I think this is the core of your conference deliberations this year. I felt I should deal with some of the contentious issues facing us today especially the new bold steps that our nation is adopting to promote growth, stability, development and democracy.

We all have our fears, biases, ideas, and ideals about government, the custodians of state power, government policies, and the future of our great nation. We are all agreed also that things have not gone too well in the direction that we all would wish or want. In fact, leadership has failed us very badly and followership has become trivialized, commoditized, contaminated and corrupted. The challenge today is for all of us to join hands in finding democratic solutions to the failures of the past and the challenges of the present.

What is so interesting about our country and its peoples is that we all demand the good things of life: from good governance to basic human needs. There is nothing wrong with this. However, we demand these benefits from government forgetting that directly and indirectly we are all part of what is called “government.” More importantly, when it comes to expressing the necessary requirements to make the country capable of delivering on basic human needs, we tend to prevaricate, procrastinate, fractionalize our loyalty, find excuses, evade responsibilities, and privatize our participation in the national objective.

Of course, we all know that good governance is the ultimate answer to insecurity, human rights abuses, the suffocation of civil society, social injustice, unemployment and the marginalization of non-bourgeois communities and constituencies. Whether citizens are patriotic, hardworking, and empowered or not would depend on the context of government policy, the strength of the private sector, the nature of the educational system, the quality of governance, and the depth of sensitivity to the plight of marginalized members of the society. Before we look at the issues of today, let us make a brief excursion down memory lane into our recent history. After all, if you do not know your history, you are not likely to appreciate the world around you much less have a holistic strategy for engaging the challenges of life.

Nigeria In 1999: The Limits Of A Failed State

In January 1966, a young and charismatic military officer, in a coup broadcast made the following observations:

Our enemies are the political profiteers, swindlers, the men in high and low places who seek bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste, the tribalists, the nepotists…(Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, January 1966 Coup Broadcast.)

I have a few questions for you bright and educated professionals today: Are the political profiteers gone from the Nigerian society? Are the bribe takers gone? Do they demand ten percent or more today? Are those that seek to keep Nigeria permanently divided gone? Are the VIPs of waste no longer with us? What about the tribalists? Are they gone? Are they weaker in their politics? What about the nepotists? Have they been reformed? If we can answer “yes” to one of these questions, we can end the lecture right here, go home, pop some champagne and sing halleluiah because our country has been reborn. Let me put it to you all (as if you did not already know) that our country is still in big trouble. These troubles were not created by some invisible elements or by God. They were generated and nurtured by people that live amongst us; people that we all know very well. Some of those that have encouraged, reproduced and sustained these negative features of our society are even right here with us in this room: all that I can say is -- search your soul and tell yourself if you are part of the problem.

In many instances we have encouraged and protected these characters and this attitude has emboldened them to take more risks in perpetuating their dubious agenda. Today, we are all paying very dearly for the indiscipline, irresponsibility, arrogance, limited vision, wickedness and greed of this group. Unfortunately, their pathological fixation on irresponsibility, nepotism, corruption, waste, and other lucrative but unproductive and not really helpful ventures have percolated to the lowest ebbs of our society to such an extent that even ordinary people now mimic the decadent elite with some sort of silly arrogance. This is very unfortunate for a creative and hardworking people.

I want to make bold to say that the roots of the problems of our country can be found at five major levels:

1. The nature of our history, historical experience and the consequences of that experience;
2. The nature and character of the Nigerian postcolonial state
3. The character, hegemony and accumulative base of the Nigerian governing (as against ruling) class;
4. The nature of contestations and engagements within and between social classes; and
5. The location and role of the Nigerian social formation in the global divisions of labor and power.

It is the coalitions, contradictions, distortions and disarticulations arising from these factors and forces that shape the content and context of our politics and society. It is the inability of the state to emerge as a relatively autonomous force; the inability of the governing class to build hegemony and emerge as a ruling class; the contradictions of production and exchange relations; and the continuing marginal location and role of the social formation in the global power balances that have created the foundations for political rascality or indiscipline in Nigeria.

The consequences have been gargantuan. Cynicism and general distrust of government; susceptibility to manipulation; low capacity to understand and support good public policies; in fact, a general dedication, especially by the urban based elite, bureaucrats, politicians, and the so-called middle class to subverting public policies has become the norm. Thus, rather than build structures, ideologies, relationships, networks, and enabling environments to build a nation-state (if not a nation) out of the contending diverse interests, identities and nationalities that occupy our political landscape, the opportunistic politics of the power elite has rather, congealed alternative sites of loyalty and power. It has enthroned and reified norm-less politics, alienated significant communities that continue to survive and operate outside the hegemony of the state, and promoted a culture of criminality and shameless reliance on extra-legal processes and actions that now guide relations between the people on the one hand and the state and its custodians on the other. It is not an accident therefore that informality and informal relations continue to reign supreme whether it is to get a job, scholarship, admission, contracts, relate to public institutions and officers or whatever, Nigerians consider first an informal approach before or alongside a formal one.

No one believes in justice anymore. Few trust the police. No one deals with the customs without first thinking of how much bribe to pay. We evade taxes but want all public services to be provided by government. Even in dealing with the market, we are so used to free things that we want the price of goods and services that prevailed in the 1980s to prevail today. Why not, it is our money and we are entitled to operate within our own laws! Parents bribe teachers to ensure that their wards are passed in exams or promoted no matter the outcome of exam results. Parents hire persons to write JAMB and GCE and other exams for their wards. The wards, having taken a leaf from their parents, hire others to sit exams for them on campus. Cults reign supreme on campuses not libraries, social clubs, friendship associations, or political groups. It is so bad that in one of our famous (should I say infamous) state universities, cultists picked a young man from an exam hall and killed him in broad daylight! The social fabric of our society has gone to the dogs as merit, service, integrity and loyalty are shamelessly sacrificed on the alter of mediocrity, opportunism, corruption, ineptitude, greed, and socio-political rascality. People play and joke with the present and the future and believe that the stolen funds stashed away in local and foreign banks would save them when things fall apart. Please, take a look at Liberia and learn.

The rascality that I am talking about is the brand of politics or social engagement that lacks ideological content and context that is short sighted, disorganized, opportunistic, and incapable of building strong, efficient and effective institutions. This brand of politics is generally superficial, alienating, and pedestrian. It is often focused on the capture and deployment of raw power and its mobilizational capacity is often limited or superficial. In broad contexts, it is anti-people. This is because issues of gender equality especially women’s rights, the environment, social cultural rights, community rights, minority rights, and popular participation in the making and implementation of decisions are often taken for granted, trivialized or simply ignored. Political rascality is essentially individualistic and is often expressed in the inability of politicians to maintain discipline within their own parties or constituencies. There is an excessive focus on building personality cults, subverting laid down rules, seeking short cuts to power, and using power to marginalize already voiceless and marginal communities and citizens.

Of course, political rascality is also a “strategy” for covering up monumental policy failures on the part of the elite. It shows up as a sort of “shakara” politics where critical issues and discourses are reduced to pedestrian levels and trivialized. Thus rather than present serious minded and focused well-thought out strategies or programs for change, the politicians engage in the politics of personality and diversions. Under this mould of politics, there is often a well-packed strategy of blaming the victims rather than the perpetrators. A steady strategy of depoliticization, defensive radicalism and de-ideologization become the basis of political relations and competition. In sum, it is nothing short of “political 419”. When political rascals get into power at any level, they use state power to visit violence, pain, and poverty on the masses. In the localities, they simply become leaders in the “local axis of evil” created to reproduce an existing unjust system. They use such opportunities to negate the public good and become clogs in the wheels of progress. Thus the state become an instrument of domination, exploitation and marginalization rather than the bastion of human rights, gender equality, social justice, environmental protection, eradication of poverty, and the sanctity of the rule of law.

Allow me to spend a few minutes on the type of elite that is, in large measure, making life impossible for our people today. These are the so-called big men. They are “big” because of stolen funds and because they stepped on the souls of millions of poor voiceless Nigerians to acquire their numerous cars, mansions, foreign accounts, and countless police and private security escorts and guards. What are they scared of? Whose goat did they steal? As Malam Nasir el-Rufai, the Honourable Minister of the Federal Capital Territory noted recently in relation to the Nigerian elite: “We have a middle class in this country which historically have made money from doing nothing but living off public enterprises” (Newswatch October 2, 2002).

The "big man" in Nigeria has always been and remains a danger to society. The evidence of elite failure (often based on government) is all around us. This so-called “big man” is a really dangerous, undemocratic character whose track record shows nothing but corruption, waste, violence, human rights abuses, misplaced priorities, and a pathological commitment to the recycling of mediocrity. The typical “big man” in Nigeria (with very few exceptions) has no respect or regard for women, much less gender equality. He is not interested in environmental protection. He is anti-intellectual and hates non-governmental organizations. He sees the media as a menace and minority rights hardly feature in his confused understanding of pluralism and social justice. He measures his worth or importance by the degree of poverty, disease and squalor around him. For him, rural people are idiots and illiterates and have no right to discuss national issues. The youth are stupid: after all they pay no taxes and have no grounds to comment on the challenge of national development. The so-called “big man” spends most of his time thinking and plotting how to corner public funds, subvert the course of justice, weaken public institutions to cover his criminal activities, and while constantly tooth-aching and bellyaching about how public facilities fail to work, does nothing about a viable alternative.

The “big man” is not ashamed to be in charge of an unstable, ramshackle, unsteady, inefficient and corrupt state or corporation in so far as all allocations can go into his private bank account. He insists on being called by all sorts of flamboyant names: “The Great Lion,” “The Big Goat”, “The Huge Lizard,” “The Killer” and “The Teacher”, “The Father of the Nation”, “The Rain Maker” to take a few examples. You know the other prevalent titles in Nigeria anyway! He carries himself as if without him the world would be destroyed by the almighty. His every word, even jokes are to be treated as law. He blames real and imaginary enemies, especially trade unionists, students, the IMF and World Bank and armed robbers for his policy failures. Impatient with democracy and due process, he contaminates, compromises and encapsulates the other arms of government. He does not hesitate to eliminate or ruin his opponents. He constructs huge houses for his sycophants, mistresses and relatives. While closing local schools because of “irresponsible” and radical students, he keeps his wards at the best schools abroad. While reducing budgets to local health facilities, he regularly seeks medical check-ups and treatment abroad. He attends the Mosque and Church regularly and with fanfare but has a resident babalawo IIfa priest) in his mansion or village. His morality stinks as he sleeps with the daughters of his priests, friends and contractors. He fathers children all over the place but care little, if at all for them. Acquiring new mistresses is a hobby. He treats public resources as his personal assets and insists on being thanked for constructing highways and paying salaries to workers. He is very convinced that he is the nation’s best warrior, bureaucrat, thinker, businessman, accountant, and sportsman. Even when he can hardly read a legibly written speech, he considers himself the best orator in the world. Whether we like it or not, we do have a problem here and some of us in this room have relatives, parents, friends, associates and neighbors that fit this mould of behavior. What have you done so far about it? To the best of my knowledge, such an elite has never moved any nation forward. No wonder, by 1999, Nigeria was almost ready to give up, to put it starkly.

Historical memory can be short. Many of us act as if 1999 was twenty years ago. We are set for business as usual. Yet, we must recall that Nigeria in 1999 had all the features of a failed state: institutions and structures had collapsed, political spaces were suffocated, civil society was intimidated, and government had lost all its credibility. Extra-legal strategies of engaging the state were commonplace; the judiciary had been corrupted and compromised, and citizens hardly devoted any time on how to uplift the nation.

It is quite easy to forget the violence, corruption, intimidation, assassinations and negation of all positive values of society because of our newfound freedoms and voices. In 1999, leadership had been totally discredited. Institutions had stopped providing relevant services to the people, public projects were abandoned and public interest had been compromised. The economy was in shambles and all indicators of growth and development were in the negative. The values of probity, social justice, transparency and accountability had all become compromised. In fact, the rule of law had become privatized, as were the instruments of coercion. Creativity had been pushed aside as the society celebrated mediocrity and terror.

Internationally, Nigeria had become a pariah nation: loans and foreign aid dried up and investors abandoned the country. There were restrictions on the liberties of citizens abroad. International organizations withdrew their cooperation with the country as she was expelled or suspended from one organization or the other. The creative and productive energies of our people abroad were constrained by the repressive and contaminated environment in the nation. Within Africa, Nigeria had given up her leadership role, became ineffective in continental organizations, and was no longer the arrowhead in issues of peace and conflict resolution. Irrespective of the limitations of the present, things are changing.

The Obasanjo Reforms: Reconstructing The Present and Laying A Foundation For The Future

The challenge today is how to join hands to engage pedestrian, opportunistic, and backward ideas that have been responsible for Nigeria’s underdevelopment, marginalization in the global order, poor and insensitive leadership, and other avoidable afflictions that have become the lot of our people. In Nigeria our people have cause to feel angry and alienated. They have been taken for a ride for too long. Clearly, in spite of efforts by some governments to respond robustly to the conditions of the oppressed and exploited masses, the entrenched cabal of crooks, 419 kingpins and their agents, drug barons, scammers of all sorts, political profiteers, and persons with no vision and no sense of nation have tried to resist progress and consolidate anti-people strategies of reproducing the system.

At the federal level, we are poised for a peaceful democratic revolution. It is a revolution that would be challenging, painful and demanding. It would close or block leakages in the system. It would demystify some of the invented basis of power, accumulation and politics. The revolution would require us all to strive for the highest points of our creative abilities and make us work harder than ever before. In fact, we might feel the pain and reap no reward but only lay the foundation for the future. The truth is that we just cannot go on like this. This nation has been turned into a cesspool of corruption, arrogance, waste, indiscipline and undemocratic conducts. We cannot continue like this. It does not matter whether you like President Obasanjo or not. True, some mistakes have been made and things have not worked out as expected in several quarters. But no one ever thought that it was going to be easy. There is no short cut to good governance or development. The inheritance was bad, very, very bad and the gestation period for the task ahead would be long. Our people can be impatient. This is understandable, but we must and can only move forward in the true spirit of tolerance, accommodation and sacrifice. Let me now just mention some of the cardinal reforms being undertaken by the new Obasanjo government.

A Strong And Focused Cabinet

You would all notice that a lot of thinking and calculation went into the selection of the current Obasanjo cabinet. If President Obasanjo had followed the advice or succumbed to the pressures from political opportunists, you would have seen a different type of cabinet today. Today we have experienced, exposed, highly motivated, creative, and loyal cabinet members. They have direct instructions on targets, and strategies for meeting those targets set by the President. The objective and mantra is performance, service delivery and productivity. In a short time, I can assure you that the output would be there for all to see. In health, works, science and technology as well as trade and agriculture, you would already see the results of serious-minded hard work. President Obasanjo has also designated six core areas where the ministers and advisers are not expected to sleep: oil and gas, solid minerals, agriculture, manufacturing, and works. I can assure you that these ministries are working very hard to satisfy Nigerians.

The Economic Team

As measure of how seriously he is committed to the economic reconstruction and repositioning of Nigeria, President Obasanjo has set up an economic management team of technocrats and experts. The team meets every Wednesday before the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting. Not all members of the Team are members of Council. In fact, less than five percent of the members attend FEC. But they are young, experienced, committed, dedicated, and highly motivated professionals. Economic and management issues are subjected to vigorous debates and strategies for moving the economy and related sectors forward are addressed by the Team. Unlike in the first term, the President has been able to attract some of “his own people” so to speak and this is bringing new perspectives, new ideas, and new ideals into policy making. Many of these technocrats do not owe any debt to any political party or godfather as their appointments were based solely on need, track record, merit and commitment to established reform objectives.

Local Government Reform

The decision by President Obdasanjo to revisit the structure, functions, performance, even relevance of the local government system in Nigeria is part of the larger strategy of rethinking, redefining, reconceptualizing, reorganizing, and reinventing governance and politics in the country. The performance of local governments in the last four years is a total disgrace to the idea of local governance. To be sure, there were some shining examples but they were very few. I do not know about you, but what was called local government in my own area was a huge joke: it did not govern and was certainly not local. Even the chairman lived two local governments away. It is so bad, that it requires not too much talk and unnecessary arguments, but a focused and urgent attention. Of course, the report of the Committee, when ready, would be available for all Nigerians to study and debate with further opportunities for inputs. Rather than going to court and making unnecessary distractions, why don’t we all make inputs into how to consolidate democracy at the grassroots level? Once the local level is restructured and sufficiently empowered, it would radiate upwards and generate the sort of discourse that would affect the state level, another level of gross mismanagement and financial recklessness.

Monetization Of Benefits

Even with my education, I do not have enough words to describe to you the waste and corruption that attended the issue of benefits to political office holders and top bureaucrats in Nigeria. These benefits were enjoyed at the expense of the people. Yet, what did they achieve over the years? Some officials had 14 cars. The former Senate president returned 38 cars to government when he left. He had over 78 police officers attending to him alone as well as countless aides. There were over 10,000 police men following public officials around and thousands more following private individuals around rather than protecting citizens. To reverse these anomalies, the current government is committed to making public office humane, sensitive and reasonable. Unreasonable benefits have been withdrawn and security escorts are now streamlined. Henceforth, government would not pay for maids, drivers, personal assistants, security guards and so on. There would be no official cars to public officials… imagine how much we would save from the rackets of car repairs, fuel, and spare parts! Of course, it would be painful, costly and tough to implement but you can take my word for it: there is absolutely no going back on this and with time it would cover all government departments and parastatals. We hope the state and local governments would follow the example set by the federal government. This is one of the best policies ever initiated in Nigeria since political independence.

Pension And Tax Reforms

Revenue generation through taxes is one huge problem that government is facing. Beyond the pay-as-you-earn system (and that also contains huge frauds), Nigerians do not pay taxes—individuals and businesses regularly evade tax responsibilities—including many politicians whose tax papers are forged. This is ungodly and unpatriotic, especially in a nation where people constantly demand the best of services. Thus, efforts at tax reforms would be focused on how to establish a basis for progressive taxation and to ensure effective tax collection. The pension problem is a different story. Nigeria makes approximately N1.3 trillion a year.¹ The pension backlog today is about N2 trillion. The question here is: how would any economy under this condition be able to cope? Take the infamous case of Nigeria railways. The monthly pension bill is N250 million. The monthly wage bill is N210 million. The monthly income from the railways is N30! Now, there is no where else in the world where this sort of situation would be regarded as normal or acceptable. This is why government is introducing a contributory pension scheme where both workers and employers would contribute monthly. Most of the major nations of the world build their structures and cities from pension funds that are guaranteed and invested properly. While Nigerians should not have undue expectations on pension reform, everyone can be rest assured that the pension bill would be enacted into law by the Obasanjo government.

Privatization

The privatization of government owned enterprises continues with vigor. Of course, there have been complaints here and there but government has paid attention to outstanding financial obligation, public participation in the purchase of shares, regulation of employment, local sourcing of raw materials and technology transfer issues. The truth is that privatization is inevitable in Nigeria. Public ownership has failed and the Nigerian elite has disgraced itself beyond redemption. Regrettably, it would be difficult to identify one enterprise that the Nigerian elite has run or operated successfully from flour mills and cement factories through paper mills and hotels to airlines, aluminum factories, and steel mills. How on earth could the NICON-Hilton hotel have accumulated huge debts? These failed efforts have precipitated huge debts while the so-called boards and managements maintain a fleet of cars and several guest houses all around the country.

Anti-Corruption Campaign

Clearly, the effort to significantly reduce if not eliminate corruption in government has not been as fast and decisive as the public expected. Following the process of constitutional law, one is innocent until proven guilty. In a society where news can move faster than sound it is important to be very sure on the basis of evidence before individuals are presented to the public as guilty or corrupt persons. But this government has done more than its predecessors to initiate the process and to substantively deal with the issue of corruption. I know there is a public statement on zero tolerance for corruption and several persons have lost their jobs on being found guilty of corruption. In addition there is the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the Due Process Mechanism that has now become a standard review mechanism for cutting the fat that Nigerians usually build around contracts. Today, in 18 months of operation, the Due Process mechanism introduced in the Presidency has saved the country over N50 billion. The savings have been put into capital development. If we can imagine the loss or theft from the Nigerian people by greedy contractors, politicians and bureaucrats since 1960 when Due Process was not in place, we can also visualize the impact such revenue would have had on such sectors as education, water supply, health services, roads, technology and industrial development.

Civil Service Reform

The civil service, ordinarily, should be the hub or core of policy making and implementation. It should be a seat of innovation and creativity. Not the Nigerian public service. To be sure there are some very good, focused, and motivated public servants who do a lot of good work under very difficult conditions. However, taken together today, the public service has become an obstacle to growth, development, creativity, innovation, and progress. It is not just over bloated but has become a haven for scammers, crooks and unpatriotic elements. Virtually every policy initiated by government is subverted within six months by public servants and their parastatals. The stealing of public funds in the ministries is simply mind boggling. Tales of corruption in the service and its parastatals sound like stories concocted by children to satisfy their fertile imaginations. Virtually every position is 400 to 500 percent above establishment. Almost a quarter or half of the civil servants were not recruited on merit. More than 60 percent are technologically illiterate. Inefficiency, ineffectiveness, laziness, de-motivation, and an “I-don’t-care-attitude” has taken over the entire system. Something has to happen. How can the Federal Ministry of works have 48,000 workers? What are they really doing? Do we need that much in the ministry? The civil service reforms proposed by government would be comprehensive and would be directed at rightsizing the service, introducing new technology, redefining its mission, retaining officers in line with modern administrative procedures, and integrating it into the larger objective of reform for growth and stability. Those that cannot cope would have to go, though government, unlike in the past, would ensure that all entitlements are paid as and when due. It would be painful and as usual, some people would read meanings into the exercise. The truth is that we cannot go on like this, spending over 75% of income on overheads and carrying along people who are totally unproductive.

Foreign Policy

Under the current administration, Nigeria’s foreign policy has undergone significant refurbishing, reformation and transformation. For one thing, we have a very experienced and very highly regarded minister at the helm of affairs. For another, the President has given the minister the full mandate to overhaul the ministry to make it more efficient, dignified, and responsive and in tune with on-going reforms. At another level, the President’s stature, credibility, power, influence, and understanding of the intricacies of foreign policy are beginning to yield positive results. As some one who has been with Mr. President at virtually all his foreign trips since his re-election, I have been humbled by the degree of adoration he enjoys from other presidents. Of course, this directly translates into respect for Nigeria. Whether you consider Sierra Leone, Liberia, ECOWAS, NEPAD, the African Union, relations with Europe, North America, donors, lenders and bilateral organizations, Nigeria is today the darling of the world. The closure and reopening of the border with Benin Republic leading to the signing of a major agreement that heavily favor’s Nigeria is another evidence of this new courageous, focused, and result-oriented foreign policy. Nigeria’s achievement in Liberia is unprecedented. Without American funds or subsidy and with unprecedented courage, Nigeria has brought peace to that country, stopped the killings and helped map out a new path to recovery, reconciliation and reconstruction. The world has acknowledged this feat. And I was present recently when President Blah of Liberia visited Nigeria to thank the President and the Nigerian people and described President Obasanjo as the “Father of the Liberian nation.” It is important to point out that Nigeria’s intervention in Liberia was not a unilateral act: it was endorsed by ECOWAS, the African Union, the UN, and the Western powers, especially the United States and United Kingdom. We can only hope for better things to come.

Banning Of Some Imported Products

As you all know, the federal government has banned several imported products such as, juices, imported canned beer, textiles, rice and poultry products, and more would be banned in the future. The war against fake products continues with zeal and investments; and incentives are being increased in the production of local alternatives. No country survives on simply importing all importable products. Imports do not generate local jobs, transfer technology, create local capacity, and increase value added. Importation of frozen poultry products has brought in contaminated and dangerous foods. The cost to the Nigerian economy is usually ten times the cost of duty paid (when paid at all) or the cost of the product itself when you factor in the health costs as well as the man hours or days lost due to ill health or deaths caused by such products. Of course, government knows that some people would be unhappy. Fortunately, they are in the minority and their interests cannot supercede those of the vast majority of the people. As a consumer I know that Chivita is just as good in every sense of the word as Just Juice!

Telecommunications

One of the consequences of the absence of viable infrastructures in Nigeria is the opportunity for some foreign companies to exploit their access to technology at the expense of their Nigerian customers as evident in the telecommunications sector. That GSM operators are ripping Nigerians off inconsistent with their practices elsewhere is common knowledge among Nigerians. The services they render to Nigerians are arguably the worst in the world; services that are unthinkable in their home state, South Africa: lack of connectivity among carriers, especially with NITEL, charging per minute, incomplete calls, failed calls, inability to send text messages at critical times, too many down times, high tariffs, noise receptions, charging for unanswered calls, and so on. It is a shame because we know that they are making good money in Nigeria and that if they lower the tariff they would triple the market and even make more money from increased volume. The questionable business practices by MTN have not escaped the attention of the President who has taken a personal interest in addressing these problems. In fact, recently, NITEL, the NCC, ECONET, and MTN were summoned to a meeting by Mr. President to discuss this problem. The meeting was postponed because MTN executives were out of the county on a retreat. The meeting would take place as soon as they step on Nigerian soil and it is going to be a definitive meeting to address how to end the frustrations, disillusionment and pains they are causing to Nigerians. But the President should be commended for leading the revolution in telecommunications reform in Nigeria. In fact, Mr. President is coming with an even bigger initiative in this sector through the rural telephone scheme designed to provide telephone service in every village in this country with the assistance of China. It is well known that every village in China has telephone service and that helped to contain the SARS disease among other benefits. This initiative would be concluded very soon.

Other Policies

The poverty eradication program is a continuing effort. A new National Coordinator has been appointed and the program is being restructured to work hand in hand with the private sector to create jobs and improve the conditions of living of Nigerians. The debt management office has been restructured as is the budget office. The latter has a new director-general and the effort is to spend only what we earn and eliminate deficit financing of projects. The emphasis is to effectively manage and streamline our debts, manage debt servicing, carry out effective debt verification, pay off the domestic debts, and avoid further borrowing. A Procurement Commission is being established in the Presidency to eliminate over-invoicing and the duplication of purchases. The Ministry of Finance is spearheading an initiative to streamline the work of monitoring agencies and units such as the National Economic Intelligence Unit, the National Planning Commission, and the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit to ensure coordination, faster checks on work being done and to ensure that set targets are met and on time and within budget. In the oil sector, scarcity remains because only the NNPC is importing and the subsidy remains. Government cannot continue to subsidize the importation. Smuggling also continues because it is cheaper in Nigeria compared with the neighboring countries. When the Benin border was closed for six days recently, petrol was available in the neighboring towns and cities. If private distributors import at the current international price, they would have to subsidize the price and that would not make any sense to a serious businessperson.

Of course, the solution is to privatize the downstream sector and increase competition. Government has no plans to build new refineries and it is important to know that the contracts for the refurbishments of the Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries were awarded and paid upfront before the Obasanjo government came into power in May 1999. The war is on against pipelines vandalisation and stealing of Nigeria’s oil that costs the nation between US$3-5 billion annually and very soon its impact would be visible. There is no going back on this and the smugglers and barons involved in the stealing of Nigeria’s oil are in for a very hard time. Already government has set up a special task force to wipe out this menace that has been bleeding the economy, promoting violence and other crimes, polluting the environment, and contributing to the misery of the communities and peoples of the Niger Delta in particular, and Nigeria at large. All barges that are used for illegal bunkering (which is really outright stealing) are to be destroyed not just seized. The barons are to be prosecuted in special court to avoid delay. Punishment would be heavy and swift; and they would lose more than the instruments of their criminal activities. Only special jetties are to be allowed the majority of those used to facilitate the stealing of oil would be closed and security patrols, surveillance and investigations have been increased.

Neighboring countries would no longer process stolen oil from Nigeria. An agreement has already been signed with Cote d’Ivoire and land borders are being watched as are those industries around the country, especially Lagos that receives stolen oil and oil products. It is a comprehensive war that should soon yielding results. In the areas of water resources and agriculture, the President has made it very clear: there are do or die priority areas and the two ministers have been working harder than ever. I know because I have had to follow-up on several action points related to water, agriculture and works. Finally, government is acting as buyer of last resort in agriculture in order to stabilize prices and improve earnings by farmers. It is trying to keep inflation down and continues to work on reducing interest rates to enable investors borrow.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen these and other reforms would not happen overnight and would not happen without costs. In addition, it requires the cooperation of all stakeholders. More importantly, the reforms must be initiated at the state and local levels. At the moment, many state governments are acting as very isolated islands. It is a matter of time. It is best to reform voluntarily, than to be forced to reform through radical pressures from below.

To appreciate the challenges therefore, we must go back to the drawing boards to revisit the basic structure and policies that prevent Nigeria from engaging the inherited conditions of conflicts, poverty, foreign domination, underdevelopment, institutional fragility and inefficiency. We must discuss those structural distortions that have made us exporters of products that we could have refined within Nigeria thus adding value and creating jobs for our people. We must examine why the military and security forces we inherited and nurtured since political independence appear to be opposed to the people rather than being with the people. Why do we distrust each other so much? Why do we distrust our leaders? Why have Nigerians become so cynical? Why do we accommodate our so-called kith and kin who have stolen or privatized what should belong to us all and why do we honor them with religious and traditional titles? We need to look into why leadership in Nigeria has become so bad that you wonder why some appear to dislike their people so much -- else, how could local government councils and state governments explain the limited changes in the lives of our people to such an extent that everyone now looks up to the federal government for everything?

It is critical that we look into the reasons why corruption, waste and mismanagement that have contributed in large measure to the recycling of poverty and underdevelopment are not being addressed decisively. Why are local and state governments behaving as if the anti-corruption war is a purely federal affair? Equally critical is why primordial differences especially gender, identity, language, religion and ethnicity now divide us and precipitate massacres rather than serve as platforms of unity and collective struggles to challenge underdevelopment. We must not shy away from examining why a nation with such fertile soils cannot produce enough food to feed its people and why a market of close to 130 million people continues to attract such limited foreign investment. Why are our children begging on the streets and we drive by them in our heavily tinted and wickedly air conditioned jeeps and Mercedes cars and really sleep well at night without a care? What sort of so-called leadership are providing? Why can’t we ensure basic services: good roads, drugs in hospitals, teachers in the schools, payment of salaries to those that have worked, caring for the disabled and disadvantaged, and maintaining security even as we draw billions of dollars in foreign loans? Many of us think that security is just a police affair -- nothing could be father from the truth. It is a community or collective affair. Armed robbers, smugglers, assassins, thieves, pick pockets, area boys, currency traffickers, kingpins, drug smugglers, and pen robbers live amongst us. Many are our relatives, clients, friends, parents, neighbors, etc. How many Nigerians have reported these criminals to the police? Rather, we give them reserved seats in Churches, praise them to the high heavens, give them numerous chieftaincy titles, struggle to become their friends, and recommend them for national honors. This is how we all encourage corruption, waste, arrogance, indiscipline and the reproduction of mediocrity and underdevelopment. If we are serious about moving Nigeria forward, we must all join hands to cleanse our souls, clean up our lives and communities, and re-dedicate ourselves to collectively rebuilding our country. We must, as a matter of commitment and rededication avoid the creeping culture of fatalism, I-don’t-carism, opportunism, cynicism, and accommodation to what is clearly evil.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are really some of the issues and it is my view that Nigerians as a people and our governments and leaders cannot shy away from them. We must learn to admit that we are in deep trouble. Government is not working and sustained critical reforms are needed. If government were working, things would have been very different. People wont or don’t pay taxes because they are poor, alienated, and believe that the funds would be stolen by those in government. Yet, by not paying taxes, government cannot generate funds to provide services. We are back to square one. People have no regard for government that they perceive as an arrogant, wicked, distant, inefficient, oppressive and irrelevant force that should be cheated, avoided, attacked, and dismantled as opportunity permits. Yet, with such attitudes, it is impossible to mobilize the people for collective struggles and sacrifices to challenge poverty, insecurity, underdevelopment and corruption. We are caught in square one.

The elite have devised a short-cut to the problems that their poor leadership have precipitated: move about with fierce looking and very well armed police officers or thugs, use sirens to speed through town like people running from the devil, build prisons and call them homes fully equipped with close circuit televisions, bullet proof doors, burglary proofs, very high walls and iron gates, starving dogs, and motion sensors among other security gadgets. Many have discovered that these pseudo-security gadgets have not kept away the criminals and the angry and hungry. Finally, the elite, rather than improve on the situation, have decided on a strategy of creating a parallel state: they send their children abroad while local schools are closed; send their infants to private schools while teachers in public schools are unpaid and neglected; they use private or foreign hospitals, airlines, courier services while local equivalents are neglected; they sink their own water boreholes while public taps remain dry; and they purchase their private generators for electricity while the nation remains in darkness. Then in the day time, they come out of their “prisons” in expensive, fast and bullet proof or at least heavily tinted cars and speed through the cities in the hope that the poor, unemployed, oppressed, hungry, homeless, unpaid, and alienated majority would not be able to stop them. As we know in Nigeria this has not worked. Armed robbers even stop convoys of governors and have made life unbearable for everyone. What can lawyers and the legal professions do to help out in this situation?

Lawyers, The Reform Agenda And Nation-Building

I have a lot of regard for the legal profession. No one can ignore or trivialize the contributions of lawyers to the liberation of our nation, the struggle for independence, and efforts at nation-building. Some of my closest comrades and associates are lawyers and I am always proud of them. No one can forget the role played by some lawyers in the struggles to reclaim our country from the hands of uncouth military dictators. For these and more, we must be thankful.

However, lawyers in Nigeria have not effectively used their special knowledge, special training, professional opportunities, and special gifts to promote development in our country. Like my neighbor believes, there are more bad lawyers than good ones in Nigeria and the law is no longer an instrument or weapon of service and liberation. The law is no longer within the reach of ordinary people. I am not going to complain about the language of the law which is still very elitist. Public interest law hardly interests Nigerian lawyers, at least the vast majority of them. Law in Nigeria has become a weapon of domination, exploitation, intimidation, and the subversion of the general good. Lawyers have been found in all sorts of criminal activities in Nigeria, including 419. Lawyers have derided democratic values and subverted democratic institutions. When some progressive lawyers tried to run for office recently, their most ferocious opponents or critics were their lawyer colleagues. Lawyers have been found on the side of political brigandage and violence. In the South-South or Niger Delta, some lawyers have been at the core of the tension, violence and other activities that should make a true Nigerian feel ashamed. Even as an association, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has had its ups and downs. I recall the leadership of Alao Aka Bashorun with nostalgia. I also recall the tenure of O.C.J Okocha. The current leadership has had to contend with very difficult choices. I expect a more decisive and definitive engagement of critical issues. Some of the positions adopted by the NBA in recent times have made me worried as to the progressive content of its larger political philosophy. I will take two examples.

First, the campaign for an interim government was wrong and a negation of the values that lawyers should stand for. This is because, more than any other constituency, lawyers ought to know that it was an undemocratic and unconstitutional call. Interim governments are not provided for in the constitution, the state had not collapsed, and the so-called interim government was to be constituted by unelected persons and interests. I was shocked that this was coming from the NBA rather than groundnut sellers association nor even road transport workers. The law is a profession for deep reflection and given the special character of legal training, lawyers ought to know better.

Secondly, the campaign for a single five-year term in office is undemocratic. As a political scientist, I was disappointed that the NBA allowed itself to be dragged into such diversionary, opportunistic, and generally undemocratic prescription that did not address the critical predicaments of our society. Is it the length of time one spends that determined the degree of political violence or the amount of damage that could be precipitated in society? A bad leader could cause unprecedented harm in less than one year. What we need is to redefine the nature of the parties, set serious control mechanisms, redefine the nature and purpose of politics, empower civil society, emphasize transparency and accountability, and build platforms that mediate clannish and extra-legal strategies for capturing political power. We need to emphasize service delivery, positive leadership, good governance, and true democratic practice rather than setting dates for those who stay in office. The constitution is clear on how many terms a candidate could run for the same office; but in seeking change, we must go beyond the superficial, the sound-bite and the opportunistic. The NBA had no business joining the bandwagon of political opportunists and scammers.

I could be wrong on my last point here. I am yet to see a comprehensive or holistic articulation of the relationship between the legal profession and the challenges of socio-economic and political reconstruction in Nigeria. I make bold to say that our legal profession has largely jettisoned all pretensions to compassion and identification with the cause of social justice and the liberation of the people. The reification of money and power has turned young lawyers into agents of the devil, willing to sell justice to the highest bidder and ready to cut corners to achieve pre-determined unjust ends. Lawyers are no longer advocates of human rights, gender equality, environmental protection, good governance and democratization. Those that are left to sing the tired old songs of liberation find themselves isolated and mocked by their professional colleagues.

If I might ask, which of the following institutions do the NBA collaborate with: National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Women in Nigeria (WIN), Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), and the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights--CDHR? How many rural people and organizations can the NBA claim to be in league with? How many oppressed communities, the legacy of our repressive and undemocratic past has the NBA defended or identified with? How many of the criminals and looters of our treasury have the NBA prosecuted? How many Nigerian students in the numerous law faculties enjoy scholarships from the NBA? Where is the research fund that the NBA uses to support far-reaching and development or people-focused research in Nigeria? Finally, where is the policy or program of the NBA to support gender equality and specifically, the conditions of women and the girl child?

Yes, I have touched some raw nerves. I am only trying to help you lawyers to take yourselves more seriously, search your souls, and be more relevant to our society. I am only trying to help you to see beyond your bank accounts; your fat-cheeked clients sand see the larger society?

Moving Nigeria Forward: What Must Be Done?

Many of us sitting in this hall right now are part of the problems of Nigeria. Many of us are guilty of most of the crimes highlighted above and more. In some situations, circumstances compel us into committing those crimes against the people and in other cases it was often a deliberate and well-calculated crime. I still do not understand how one could call him or herself a leader when the community or country is riddled with so much frustration, hopelessness, disillusionment, anger, disease, corruption, waste, indiscipline, arrogance, and bad-belle. Many of us know the right thing but we just find it so difficult to stand with the people and struggle for social justice.

It is not too late to change: to move from belief in personal security or money security to social and collective and community security; it is not too late to believe that we can do better and make progress when we work together, sow together, harvest together and care for each other. I am not trying to moralize here. I know the drawbacks and evils of capitalism. But there is a way in which a right leadership can exploit the underlying social and cultural foundations of our society to promote values that encourage social responsibility, accumulation, patriotism, and social justice at the same time. I know that resources are scarce and must be carefully deployed to meet the basic needs of the majority. But the little we have in Nigeria appears to be dedicated to improving the lot of the small elite and their families or communities. As well, our elites have not even explored half of the opportunities for revenue generation and wealth creation. They are unable to do this because of the gulf and distrust between them and the people. A corrupt, insensitive, arrogant and distant elite cannot mobilize the people to make sacrifices or contribute to development. More importantly, such an elite and government cannot encourage the people to reach the highest points of their creative and productive abilities in the larger interest of society. Thus, the linkage between leadership and followership must be revisited as a starting point.

Distinguished learned ladies and gentlemen, let me end by saying that we are on the threshold of change for good or for retrogression. Leadership is important. If leaders fail to help move the nation forward, ordinary people would take the initiative to struggle for change. The truth is that at the federal level, government is working on new strategies for socio-economic and political reforms. These policies would be rolled out shortly to complement the on-going monetization programme. The commitment to quality governance for contemporary Nigeria is total. I can only hope that at the other levels of government, we would all join hands to make government relevant to the lives of our people and to the current democratic enterprise. Let me therefore reiterate the salient issues: We must rise above narrow thinking and interests. We must expose and challenge indiscipline. We must respect our youth and women. We must build new leaders and new platforms of democratic politics. We must build and strengthen civil society and we must build strong, democratic, transparent and accountable institutions and structures. I am sure that if we work together and focus on the positive, Nigeria would be great again.

Notes

Citation Format:

Julius O. Ihonvbere. “The Obasanjo Second Term in Office: Reinventing and Repositioning Nigeria for Growth, Stability and Democracy,” West Africa Review: Issue 6, 2004.

Copyright © 2005 Africa Resource Center, Inc.