ETHNICITY AND NIGERIAN POLITICS
By Sam Onimisi
This piece will commence by assuming that we all know what ethnicity means and by way of introduction, the word ‘ethnic’ relates to a group of people having a common national or cultural tradition and denotes origin of birth or descent rather than by present nationality. It denotes a large group of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic and or cultural origin and background. According to an authority, to understand ethnicity, it has to be “related” to self-identity systems, stereo-typing, class systems, systems of resource competition, and systems of political and economic domination and change.”
If politics is the art or science of guiding or influencing governmental policy and; of winning and holding control over a government, then ethnicity which seeks self-identity cannot be separated from politics. Competition for power and the quest for economic advantage and socio-cultural dominance by each ethnic group in a polity are legitimate expectations in a plural or heterogeneous country such as Nigeria. In this competition for power and if it is to be democratic, no ethnic nation is expected to be restrained by artificial or arbitrary rules, except those natural restraints imposed by numerical strength and the most accepted ideology.
In order to attain an ideal equal access in the competition, there ought to have been an agreement by all ethnic nations in the polity with regards to the terms of: co-habitation, terms of efforts and reward, rules of competition and engagement and penalties for breaches etc. In all these, it is taken for granted and most times, expressly so – that each ethnic group in the polity was and remains autonomous, to some extent. In the absence of any agreement accented to by all ethnic groups in the polity, political practice tends to be characterized by ethno-centric attitude, which suggests that one’s own group is superior.
Nigeria is a country coupled together by foreign powers whose hundreds of ethnic nationalities never really sat together to agree on how to co-habit. What passes for dialogue were the so-called London constitutional conferences of 1957/58. Neither the constitution emanating from those conferences or subsequent ones answers to this basic agreement. This is because the various ethnic groups were under foreign subjugation and so had no free will to resist or contest the provisions of those constitutions. This implies that the existing Constitution is not only imposed, it has proved inadequate and unacceptable to the extent to which it has failed to address or mitigate our differences.
It means that our democratic experiment or experience may never come of age if the various ethnic groups have no acceptable agreement on co-habitation – given the pretence that now goes for Constitution. Whatever the National Assembly comes up with as amendments to the Constitution will only worsen the worthlessness of the 1999 Constitution and not improve it. And why not? A Parliament is not the same thing as a Constituent Assembly, and the current Parliament is a product of the imposed 1999 Constitution and a fraudulent 2007 election. They therefore lack the mandate to make or amend fundamental laws such as the constitution. But this is only a necessary digression, if only to underscore the fact that no concrete steps has been taken to make a nation out of Nigeria.
This country exists only in name and as a geographical expression. The quest for relevance by many ethnic groups has given rise to mutual distrust and disharmony. Labels such as the ‘North’ or the ‘South’ are meaningless and deceitful diversion from the defects afflicting Nigeria. As a non-nation but a mere country, Nigeria is a nation only to foreigners or while one is abroad; but inside the country, everyone knows to which ethnic nationality he belongs.
Even the nebulous National Assembly is a congregation of strangers the moment the alien language of English is removed as a means of discourse. Which is why they often resort to fisticuffs to settle (more often unsettle) issues among themselves. Law-making is reduced to pool-betting rather than resolution of problems. On their jumbo allowances, they don’t disagree. On their privileges and allocation of offices and positions to their kin, there is little disagreement. How could they even make good laws when they represent only themselves? Beyond their individual gains, there is no consensus on how Nigeria should be developed. Such is the fate of a nationless country.
When you hear people fighting for the North or the South, it is a push of their ethnic agenda and an evidence of ethno-centrism and a vote of no hope in Nigerian ‘nationhood’. A nationless state lacks the patriotism to sustain common values, create and maintain commonwealth and so, adopts ad hoc method or solution to lingering problems. In a nationless country, citizenship is meaningless, for you don’t even know the nation ‘Nigeria’, not to talk of being one of her citizens.
Because no one owns Nigeria, no one is loyal to her. Everyone looks for what he/she can take out of her, take it to his/her family and ethnic nation for enjoyment. In such political clime, patriotism is meaningful only when it leads to your stomach –which is that each person is patriotic to his/her interest only, not to an entity called Nigeria.
No one is obliged to maintain or secure public infrastructures, for they belong to no one in particular. No one keep faith with another, except when they are of the same ethnic nationality. This is why public officials’ breaches public trust and official oath at will.
When it is said that Nigeria could become a failed state, it is not a death wish by an enemy. It is the result of the mass failure in all areas of development and the fact that nothing is on-going by way of public policy implementation that is capable of reversing the tide to extinction. Right now, Nigeria is ranked as the 14th most likely to-fail country in the world! Think of it. The last civil war was fought and ended 40 years ago. Yet, visitors from other countries often asked whether our roads were bombed in a recent war, given their deplorable condition.
Where there is no discussion, there can be no agreement. If there is no agreement, harmony cannot be achieved. Where there is no harmony, there can be no unity and in the absence of unity, disunity and chaos reign supreme. Power is sweet, but it has to be shared to be enjoyed, since no one ethnic group owns the whole of Nigeria. Let each retain its internal autonomy and let us agree on how to run the whole. Assumptions and pretentions only hasten the ruin. Must we ruin Nigeria?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
THE MYTH AND MEANING OF THE NORTH
THE MYTH AND MEANING OF THE NORTH
By Mas Damisa
To an average Nigerian, the ‘North’ means the peoples of the geographical area created and made a region called Northern Region by the British colonial powers, which existed up to the creation of states in 1967. That region became defunct thereafter but cleverly retained for political purposes. Thus, you hear of a so-called ’19 Northern States Governors’ meeting or Commissioners of this and that of the “19 Northern States”.
The sheer physical size of the defunct northern region was about two-third of the whole country and for that reason, it was also assumed by the powers-that be that the region was numerically more populous than whatever was called the Eastern and Western regions put together. Now that the Bakassi Peninsula have been awarded to Cameroon, the ‘South’ has shrinked even further.
For whatever reason, purposes and motive, those who created ‘Northern Nigeria’ as described used it to intimidate and cow the South into submission to their designs for Nigeria. This is because having had the first contact with Europeans and embraced western education, the peoples of the ‘South’ were more vociferous in the struggle against colonial rule and the call for independence of Nigeria.
Thus, pre-independence census and electoral exercise were guided to return figures which served to confirm the assumption of the ‘North’. In fact, post-independence censuses and elections have largely been teleguided to conform with the myth of the North. It is called a myth because neither the peoples nor the area constituted into ‘Northern Region’ are actually in the geographical North; and the population allocated to them never tally with demographic principles, norms and rules. The so-called Northern Nigeria has the largest ethnic nationalities and therefore, the most heterogeneous part of Nigeria and never monolithic as assumed in some quarters up to now. Therefore, what is the North?
In ethno-geographical terms, the real North consists of the Hausa-Fulani, the Fula and the Kanuri. They occupy the far-north of British Northern Nigeria, they also share artificial borders with the Republic of Niger and Chad. Two points need to be made clear: why Hausa - Fulani and why artificial borders? Since the Uthman Dan Fofio’s jihad of the 19th century, a period of over two hundred years have passed during which the patrimony of the Hausa nation was captured by the Fula and ever since, there has been inter-ethnic marriage between the Fula and the Hausa which has produced a people who are a combination of both.
These people prefer to be known and called Hausa-Fulani because they speaks only Hausa language and do not hear Fula language and also because they have the two bloods in their veins;thus enjoying the strenght of both ethnic groups. As at now, there is hardly a pure Hausa ethnic nation and so, Hausa is reduced to a language spoken by the Hausa-Fulani and some others to whom it is a second language. The Fula is distinct as they retained their own language and culture and hardly inter-marry with other ethnic nations.
And why artificial borders? It is an open secret that since before independence and thereafter, there is no actual borders between Nigeria and Niger. Immigration officials never bothered themselves to control or check the influx of people between both countries. The reason is that the Hausa ethnic nation constitute about 50% of the population of the Republic of Niger, a country in the Sahel region which suffers from drought for over 4 decades now. They enter into Nigeria at will as they have biological relations across the borders. This has always helped to swell the number of the Hausa in Nigeria and aided the distortion of census figures and election results in the country.
To the Hausa-Fulani and real northerners, the North is composed of Muslims and as such, other ethnic nations in the defunct Northern Nigeria are mere statistics so long as they are non-Muslims and are useful only to the extent of their services in the pursuit of the interests of the Hausa-Fulani.
Given the experience of ethnic cleansing during the incessant Muslim fundamentalists riots of Kano, the non-Hausa/Fulani Muslims have now known that they don’t belong neither are they part of the ‘North’. Of course, the ‘North’ as a system maintains clients among some other ethnic nations within the defunct Northern region and other parts of the country. These clients are individuals whose political relevance are consciously oiled for as long as they are supportive of, and loyal to the interest of the ‘North’. Here lies the myth and real strength of the North. These individuals are perennial office holders and are recycled by the system so as to be economically strong. It must be noted that where loyalty is concerned, the North can pay any price to keep their clients who remain loyal and besotted to northern interest, regardless of the religion the loyalists professed. Minus the Hausa-Fulani, the Fula and the Kanuri, all other ethnic nations are in Central Nigeria, are of distinct culture and languages and are not religiously monolithic, most of who prefer to be called and known as Middlebelters. They occupy what the British colonial administrators choose to call ‘non-Muslim … pagan areas.’ of their ‘Northern Nigeria’.
In view of the foregoing, and whenever elements like Alhaji Tanko Yakassai speaks, they pretend to speak for all the people of the defunct Northern Region. At least we now know who he represents. Like when he said to The Nation newspaper that “our reason is that given our sheer number, since the North has more than 50 percent of the population, the North will always retain the leadership of this country, if we would go by our number”. He was talking about the PDP’s zoning formula and rotational tomfoolery.
In summary, the confidence with which Alhaji Yakassai or other Northerners speaks of their numerical strength and ability to win election derives from the fact of the influx of Hausa immigrants from Niger Republic. To them, the Hausa or Fula, no matter which country they belong are bona-fide Nigerians. They are employed and deployed to fight the Jihads of the Hausa-Fulani and the North. Yakassai’s statement also presupposes that the ‘North’ is monolithic, votes for one party and only for that party’s candidates. Meaning therefore that only the ‘North’ is Nigeria and no other ethnic nation is part owner of Nigeria; their boasting of always winning election cannot mean otherwise. Just as there is no monolithic North, there is no monolithic South Nigeria is a plural country and highly heterogeneous and ought to be politically organized and administered as such. Until then, the ‘North’ is free to make all manners of claims and roam over the country at will.
By Mas Damisa
To an average Nigerian, the ‘North’ means the peoples of the geographical area created and made a region called Northern Region by the British colonial powers, which existed up to the creation of states in 1967. That region became defunct thereafter but cleverly retained for political purposes. Thus, you hear of a so-called ’19 Northern States Governors’ meeting or Commissioners of this and that of the “19 Northern States”.
The sheer physical size of the defunct northern region was about two-third of the whole country and for that reason, it was also assumed by the powers-that be that the region was numerically more populous than whatever was called the Eastern and Western regions put together. Now that the Bakassi Peninsula have been awarded to Cameroon, the ‘South’ has shrinked even further.
For whatever reason, purposes and motive, those who created ‘Northern Nigeria’ as described used it to intimidate and cow the South into submission to their designs for Nigeria. This is because having had the first contact with Europeans and embraced western education, the peoples of the ‘South’ were more vociferous in the struggle against colonial rule and the call for independence of Nigeria.
Thus, pre-independence census and electoral exercise were guided to return figures which served to confirm the assumption of the ‘North’. In fact, post-independence censuses and elections have largely been teleguided to conform with the myth of the North. It is called a myth because neither the peoples nor the area constituted into ‘Northern Region’ are actually in the geographical North; and the population allocated to them never tally with demographic principles, norms and rules. The so-called Northern Nigeria has the largest ethnic nationalities and therefore, the most heterogeneous part of Nigeria and never monolithic as assumed in some quarters up to now. Therefore, what is the North?
In ethno-geographical terms, the real North consists of the Hausa-Fulani, the Fula and the Kanuri. They occupy the far-north of British Northern Nigeria, they also share artificial borders with the Republic of Niger and Chad. Two points need to be made clear: why Hausa - Fulani and why artificial borders? Since the Uthman Dan Fofio’s jihad of the 19th century, a period of over two hundred years have passed during which the patrimony of the Hausa nation was captured by the Fula and ever since, there has been inter-ethnic marriage between the Fula and the Hausa which has produced a people who are a combination of both.
These people prefer to be known and called Hausa-Fulani because they speaks only Hausa language and do not hear Fula language and also because they have the two bloods in their veins;thus enjoying the strenght of both ethnic groups. As at now, there is hardly a pure Hausa ethnic nation and so, Hausa is reduced to a language spoken by the Hausa-Fulani and some others to whom it is a second language. The Fula is distinct as they retained their own language and culture and hardly inter-marry with other ethnic nations.
And why artificial borders? It is an open secret that since before independence and thereafter, there is no actual borders between Nigeria and Niger. Immigration officials never bothered themselves to control or check the influx of people between both countries. The reason is that the Hausa ethnic nation constitute about 50% of the population of the Republic of Niger, a country in the Sahel region which suffers from drought for over 4 decades now. They enter into Nigeria at will as they have biological relations across the borders. This has always helped to swell the number of the Hausa in Nigeria and aided the distortion of census figures and election results in the country.
To the Hausa-Fulani and real northerners, the North is composed of Muslims and as such, other ethnic nations in the defunct Northern Nigeria are mere statistics so long as they are non-Muslims and are useful only to the extent of their services in the pursuit of the interests of the Hausa-Fulani.
Given the experience of ethnic cleansing during the incessant Muslim fundamentalists riots of Kano, the non-Hausa/Fulani Muslims have now known that they don’t belong neither are they part of the ‘North’. Of course, the ‘North’ as a system maintains clients among some other ethnic nations within the defunct Northern region and other parts of the country. These clients are individuals whose political relevance are consciously oiled for as long as they are supportive of, and loyal to the interest of the ‘North’. Here lies the myth and real strength of the North. These individuals are perennial office holders and are recycled by the system so as to be economically strong. It must be noted that where loyalty is concerned, the North can pay any price to keep their clients who remain loyal and besotted to northern interest, regardless of the religion the loyalists professed. Minus the Hausa-Fulani, the Fula and the Kanuri, all other ethnic nations are in Central Nigeria, are of distinct culture and languages and are not religiously monolithic, most of who prefer to be called and known as Middlebelters. They occupy what the British colonial administrators choose to call ‘non-Muslim … pagan areas.’ of their ‘Northern Nigeria’.
In view of the foregoing, and whenever elements like Alhaji Tanko Yakassai speaks, they pretend to speak for all the people of the defunct Northern Region. At least we now know who he represents. Like when he said to The Nation newspaper that “our reason is that given our sheer number, since the North has more than 50 percent of the population, the North will always retain the leadership of this country, if we would go by our number”. He was talking about the PDP’s zoning formula and rotational tomfoolery.
In summary, the confidence with which Alhaji Yakassai or other Northerners speaks of their numerical strength and ability to win election derives from the fact of the influx of Hausa immigrants from Niger Republic. To them, the Hausa or Fula, no matter which country they belong are bona-fide Nigerians. They are employed and deployed to fight the Jihads of the Hausa-Fulani and the North. Yakassai’s statement also presupposes that the ‘North’ is monolithic, votes for one party and only for that party’s candidates. Meaning therefore that only the ‘North’ is Nigeria and no other ethnic nation is part owner of Nigeria; their boasting of always winning election cannot mean otherwise. Just as there is no monolithic North, there is no monolithic South Nigeria is a plural country and highly heterogeneous and ought to be politically organized and administered as such. Until then, the ‘North’ is free to make all manners of claims and roam over the country at will.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
EXPECTATIONS OF ATTAHIRU JEGA’s INEC
EXPECTATIONS OF ATTAHIRU JEGA’s INEC
By Ahmed el-Salam
One will wonder why the National Assembly is yet to approve the nomination of Professors Attahiru Jega as Chairman of the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission, INEC. Given the fact that the advisory National Council of State had, without a whimper of scrutiny, gave approval to his nomination, it is not unlikely that a game is a foot.
All hailed his antedent as a radical academic a principled individual whose reputation is beyond reproach, and as such, will serve in a way to preserve his integrity. This may well be so.
Be that as it may, it is necessary to examine the issues involved, if we are not to misplace our hopes or optimism. This is so because; Jega operated in the Academic Staff Union of Universities, itself a radical group capable of radicalizing the most conservative person. Again, the context in which he operated could not but influence his conduct and response to pressures. And so, Jega as president of ASUU may not be the same as, Jega the Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, and much less as Chairman of INEC.
Now we know that Professor Maurice Iwu, the despicable immediate past chairman of INEC was Jega’s deputy in ASUU. We now know also that Iwu made Jega a consultant to INEC even though he had denied it. Unknown to us is the quality of Jega’s imput into Iwu’s INEC while it lasted. There is no record of disagreement between the two in so far as their cooperation is concerned. There is even the insinuation that Jega was recommended by Iwu to President Goodluck Jonathan. We may not be able to tell but we can connect their past relationships and then draw a reasonable conclusion.
Granted that Attahiru Jega is his own man, he has a responsibility to himself, his family and admirers to maintain whatever reputation he had prior to INEC. Jega was a prominent member of Justice Muhammed Uwais’ Electoral Reform Committee whose recommendations the government and the National Assembly have made nonsense of. That Committee made specific recommendation on how INEC Chairman should be appointed and by who. But Jega’s appointment or nomination was done differently, yet he made no protest or complaint. If he agreed passionately with his Committee’s position, he also ought to have objected to the manner and process of his nomination. If Jega’s nomination is based on the same law and the process through which Iwu was appointed, then the only difference we have a right to expect is the difference between Jega and Iwu’s character and integrity. But if both were radicals at ASUU, and Iwu became ultra-conservative at INEC and was still besotted to and accommodative of Jega whom he made a (consultant?), do we have a guarantee that Jega will not turn a conservative at INEC?
The fact that Jega made no protest as to the manner and process of his nomination is an evidence that he is at home with it. And if Iwu had a hand in the emergence of Jega, it follows that he was permitted to appoint his own successor at INEC. Of course, the man at INEC is different from INEC but has to operate within the law and the context of it. Here is where Jega and Nigerians may be disappointed. If, according to Mr. President, he nominated him on the basis of the existing law, Jega cannot reasonably be expected to operate with a non-existent reform law. In which case, it is unreasonable to expect that the radicalism of Jega will not succumb to the manipulations of the PDP’s government.
Prof. Attahiru Jega cannot do without a job and having left the university, he will need to do this INEC’ job to keep body and soul together; and may not risk a sack for ‘undue radicalism’. In which case, he will have to play ball to retain his job. Afterall, no one feeds on verbal hyperbole alone.
The structure and system at INEC remains what they were during Prof. Iwu’s tenure. Removing known card-carrying members of PDP is unlikely to help Jega or improve his perception as a man of integrity. No one has asked him this question: Is Jega a sympathizer or admirer of the PDP, if he is not a member? Can anyone accept a job from a party or government to which he is not affiliated? I do not expect Attahiru Jega to turn-around a non-reformed INEC or electoral law-just by his reputation as a radical. His Commissioners may not even buy into his radicalism, not if they are also sympathizers or admirers of PDP and its government. Without a new electoral law that could be seen to be radically different from what exist at the moment, Attahiru Jega may end up not differently but just a little less nauseating than his friend and confidant, Prof. Maurice Iwu. In which case, all talks and promises of electoral reform may just be a waste of everybody’s time and breath.
If President Jonathan, his Party and government will not accept Justice Uwais’ reform recommendations, they could spare this country their pretence to the contrary. If only the president, who is a partisan Party member is the one mandated by law to nominate people into INEC, he could do so by not insisting that non-partisan Nigerians are the qualified candidates-because there are no such Nigerians who are non-partisan, politically. There is not use packing a horde of pretenders at INEC just to show a non-existing neutrality, no. This will be worse than useless.
If I am in position to make recommendation to Mr. President, I would advice to let the PDP and the opposition Parties forward their nominees to him for consideration. All Parties in Jonathan’s Government of National Unity should be represented by the PDP, while opposition Parties will choose their own representatives – by a ratio of 50:50. By this formula, everyone will know from the onset that the electoral body is made up of bipartisan representatives with the interest of all shades of political opinion at heart. If the President insists on existing law and process without input from opposition parties, the result will be a nude-dance of masquerades, with Attahiru Jega as the Chief masquerade!
By Ahmed el-Salam
One will wonder why the National Assembly is yet to approve the nomination of Professors Attahiru Jega as Chairman of the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission, INEC. Given the fact that the advisory National Council of State had, without a whimper of scrutiny, gave approval to his nomination, it is not unlikely that a game is a foot.
All hailed his antedent as a radical academic a principled individual whose reputation is beyond reproach, and as such, will serve in a way to preserve his integrity. This may well be so.
Be that as it may, it is necessary to examine the issues involved, if we are not to misplace our hopes or optimism. This is so because; Jega operated in the Academic Staff Union of Universities, itself a radical group capable of radicalizing the most conservative person. Again, the context in which he operated could not but influence his conduct and response to pressures. And so, Jega as president of ASUU may not be the same as, Jega the Vice Chancellor of Bayero University Kano, and much less as Chairman of INEC.
Now we know that Professor Maurice Iwu, the despicable immediate past chairman of INEC was Jega’s deputy in ASUU. We now know also that Iwu made Jega a consultant to INEC even though he had denied it. Unknown to us is the quality of Jega’s imput into Iwu’s INEC while it lasted. There is no record of disagreement between the two in so far as their cooperation is concerned. There is even the insinuation that Jega was recommended by Iwu to President Goodluck Jonathan. We may not be able to tell but we can connect their past relationships and then draw a reasonable conclusion.
Granted that Attahiru Jega is his own man, he has a responsibility to himself, his family and admirers to maintain whatever reputation he had prior to INEC. Jega was a prominent member of Justice Muhammed Uwais’ Electoral Reform Committee whose recommendations the government and the National Assembly have made nonsense of. That Committee made specific recommendation on how INEC Chairman should be appointed and by who. But Jega’s appointment or nomination was done differently, yet he made no protest or complaint. If he agreed passionately with his Committee’s position, he also ought to have objected to the manner and process of his nomination. If Jega’s nomination is based on the same law and the process through which Iwu was appointed, then the only difference we have a right to expect is the difference between Jega and Iwu’s character and integrity. But if both were radicals at ASUU, and Iwu became ultra-conservative at INEC and was still besotted to and accommodative of Jega whom he made a (consultant?), do we have a guarantee that Jega will not turn a conservative at INEC?
The fact that Jega made no protest as to the manner and process of his nomination is an evidence that he is at home with it. And if Iwu had a hand in the emergence of Jega, it follows that he was permitted to appoint his own successor at INEC. Of course, the man at INEC is different from INEC but has to operate within the law and the context of it. Here is where Jega and Nigerians may be disappointed. If, according to Mr. President, he nominated him on the basis of the existing law, Jega cannot reasonably be expected to operate with a non-existent reform law. In which case, it is unreasonable to expect that the radicalism of Jega will not succumb to the manipulations of the PDP’s government.
Prof. Attahiru Jega cannot do without a job and having left the university, he will need to do this INEC’ job to keep body and soul together; and may not risk a sack for ‘undue radicalism’. In which case, he will have to play ball to retain his job. Afterall, no one feeds on verbal hyperbole alone.
The structure and system at INEC remains what they were during Prof. Iwu’s tenure. Removing known card-carrying members of PDP is unlikely to help Jega or improve his perception as a man of integrity. No one has asked him this question: Is Jega a sympathizer or admirer of the PDP, if he is not a member? Can anyone accept a job from a party or government to which he is not affiliated? I do not expect Attahiru Jega to turn-around a non-reformed INEC or electoral law-just by his reputation as a radical. His Commissioners may not even buy into his radicalism, not if they are also sympathizers or admirers of PDP and its government. Without a new electoral law that could be seen to be radically different from what exist at the moment, Attahiru Jega may end up not differently but just a little less nauseating than his friend and confidant, Prof. Maurice Iwu. In which case, all talks and promises of electoral reform may just be a waste of everybody’s time and breath.
If President Jonathan, his Party and government will not accept Justice Uwais’ reform recommendations, they could spare this country their pretence to the contrary. If only the president, who is a partisan Party member is the one mandated by law to nominate people into INEC, he could do so by not insisting that non-partisan Nigerians are the qualified candidates-because there are no such Nigerians who are non-partisan, politically. There is not use packing a horde of pretenders at INEC just to show a non-existing neutrality, no. This will be worse than useless.
If I am in position to make recommendation to Mr. President, I would advice to let the PDP and the opposition Parties forward their nominees to him for consideration. All Parties in Jonathan’s Government of National Unity should be represented by the PDP, while opposition Parties will choose their own representatives – by a ratio of 50:50. By this formula, everyone will know from the onset that the electoral body is made up of bipartisan representatives with the interest of all shades of political opinion at heart. If the President insists on existing law and process without input from opposition parties, the result will be a nude-dance of masquerades, with Attahiru Jega as the Chief masquerade!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
NIGERIA: RUDDERLESS GIANT ON A BLIND ALLEY
NIGERIA: RUDDERLESS GIANT ON A BLIND ALLEY
By Mas Damisa
Giants, whether animals (like elephant) or man are not known to be physically smart or fast in movement. There are exceptions, though. Those trained to do so and who subjected themselves to the required discipline are different. They could run unbelievably faster than normal.
However, countries or nations could choose how to move. They could move either slowly or fastly as they choose. China, India and Indonesia are large countries that have chosen the fast lane. Their economic, industrial, technological strides and political stability are testimonies of their choice.
Although Nigeria is in the league of giant countries, her choice appears to have been to crawl conveniently. A rudderless ship sailing on a blind-alley? Y-e-s! No country develops economically or technologically without first making a good choice of a suitable political system, except Nigeria. Lets get the facts right by going back on memory lane.
Alh. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was made the Prime Minister in 1957 by the British Colonial masters, and they also conducted the 1959 pre-independence general elections which returned him as Prime Minister. Opposition parties and progressive forces believed that the 1959 elections was rigged in favour of the conservative Northern Peoples Congress who was favoured by the British Colonialists to lead Nigeria to independence in 1960. The Balewa government could not conduct a credible election in 1963 as the year’s election ended in dispute even though it was eventually awarded to the NPC. Balewa and NPC’s interference in the Western Regional affairs in 1962 disabled them from conducting a free and fair elections thereafter and so, Balewa’s federal government wobbled on till January 1966 when the army decided to terminate it via a coup de-tat. Thus the first republic ended in a fiasco.
The nature of military regimes made them undemocratic, arbitrary and dictatorial, and so were regimes laden with impunity that could not have been the choice of the people but imposed on them by external forces. From General J.T. Aguiyi-Ironsi, to General Yakubu Gowon, General Murtala Muhammed, and General Olusegun Obasanjo (1966-1979) Nigeria’s geo-political structures, administrative and economic systems were mutilated beyond redemption. Thus ended 13 years of political insanity.
Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo starving to make history as the first military head of state to voluntarily hand over power to civilians, and deviously determined to do so with a view of covering-up his corrupt practices in government, made the choice of Alh. Shehu Shagari as the man, among better men of excellent track records. The defining character of Shehu Shagari’s regime can be summarized in two words: corruption and ineptitude! Worse still, the 1983 general election was massively rigged to return Shagari, which the military lapped on to topple his government in December 1983.
Given the rot in the system, the army led by Gen. Muhammed Buhari tried to sanitize the polity, enthrone discipline and put in place an appropriate fiscal policy but his regime was cut short by a combination of subversion and inordinate political ambition within the armed forces on one hand, and the perceived high-handed and ethnic bias of the Buhari regime, on the other hand.
If there is any regime in Nigeria that could be defined as incurably deceitful, full of policy inanities and irredeemably corrupt then General Ibrahim Babangida’s government earns the trophy. He conducted the freest and fairest general election so far but frittered the accolade by annulling the same elections, thus aborting the epoch of a truly electoral representative government of the people! He left office after he defecated governance with faeces called Interim Government headed by a Shonekan whom Babaginda single-handedly appointed. There is nothing useful to say for the three-month tenure of Earnest Shonekan who was shoved away by Gen. Sani Abacha.
Between 1983 to 1999 (16 years) the military embarked on a relay race between generals in governance and made a thorough mess of it as before. Cooling off in prison, having been convicted of treasonable felony by Sani Abacha, General Olusegun Obasanjo was foisted on Nigerians by the military regime of General Abubakar Abdusalami in 1999 as against Chief Olu Falae for whom the people voted. Of course, Obasanjo awarded himself a second term of office in 2003 via a heavily rigged election and made it worse in 2007 when he inflicted on the country the most perversed election in history. The chief beneficiary of the so-called election, late Presidet Umaru Musa Yara’dua himself admitted he came into office via a ‘flawed’ election. At his demise on May 5, 2010, Dr. Jonathan Goodluck who, via a strange “doctrine of necessity” was made an acting President in February was sworn in as substantive President. So what are we saying all this while?
It is that in the 50 years of existence as an independent country, Nigeria has never really had a Prime Minister or President that was actually elected by the people! They were always imposed either by colonial agents, the military high command, rigged election or the doctrine of necessity!
Any wonder that Nigeria never had a good and appropriate national direction? And this because none of her leaders ever had the peoples’ mandate? And so, if Nigeria is described as a rudderless giant on a blind alley, is the assertion factual, accurate and sincere, or unpatriotic and harsh?
What hope is there that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan will give Nigeria a free and fair election in 2011? This question needs further emphasis because his political party, the People Democratic Party (P.D.P.) has proved beyond doubt that its enslaved to a do-or die election. If there is any hope at all, it certainly is not in P.D.P. or its government but on God and the people!
By Mas Damisa
Giants, whether animals (like elephant) or man are not known to be physically smart or fast in movement. There are exceptions, though. Those trained to do so and who subjected themselves to the required discipline are different. They could run unbelievably faster than normal.
However, countries or nations could choose how to move. They could move either slowly or fastly as they choose. China, India and Indonesia are large countries that have chosen the fast lane. Their economic, industrial, technological strides and political stability are testimonies of their choice.
Although Nigeria is in the league of giant countries, her choice appears to have been to crawl conveniently. A rudderless ship sailing on a blind-alley? Y-e-s! No country develops economically or technologically without first making a good choice of a suitable political system, except Nigeria. Lets get the facts right by going back on memory lane.
Alh. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was made the Prime Minister in 1957 by the British Colonial masters, and they also conducted the 1959 pre-independence general elections which returned him as Prime Minister. Opposition parties and progressive forces believed that the 1959 elections was rigged in favour of the conservative Northern Peoples Congress who was favoured by the British Colonialists to lead Nigeria to independence in 1960. The Balewa government could not conduct a credible election in 1963 as the year’s election ended in dispute even though it was eventually awarded to the NPC. Balewa and NPC’s interference in the Western Regional affairs in 1962 disabled them from conducting a free and fair elections thereafter and so, Balewa’s federal government wobbled on till January 1966 when the army decided to terminate it via a coup de-tat. Thus the first republic ended in a fiasco.
The nature of military regimes made them undemocratic, arbitrary and dictatorial, and so were regimes laden with impunity that could not have been the choice of the people but imposed on them by external forces. From General J.T. Aguiyi-Ironsi, to General Yakubu Gowon, General Murtala Muhammed, and General Olusegun Obasanjo (1966-1979) Nigeria’s geo-political structures, administrative and economic systems were mutilated beyond redemption. Thus ended 13 years of political insanity.
Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo starving to make history as the first military head of state to voluntarily hand over power to civilians, and deviously determined to do so with a view of covering-up his corrupt practices in government, made the choice of Alh. Shehu Shagari as the man, among better men of excellent track records. The defining character of Shehu Shagari’s regime can be summarized in two words: corruption and ineptitude! Worse still, the 1983 general election was massively rigged to return Shagari, which the military lapped on to topple his government in December 1983.
Given the rot in the system, the army led by Gen. Muhammed Buhari tried to sanitize the polity, enthrone discipline and put in place an appropriate fiscal policy but his regime was cut short by a combination of subversion and inordinate political ambition within the armed forces on one hand, and the perceived high-handed and ethnic bias of the Buhari regime, on the other hand.
If there is any regime in Nigeria that could be defined as incurably deceitful, full of policy inanities and irredeemably corrupt then General Ibrahim Babangida’s government earns the trophy. He conducted the freest and fairest general election so far but frittered the accolade by annulling the same elections, thus aborting the epoch of a truly electoral representative government of the people! He left office after he defecated governance with faeces called Interim Government headed by a Shonekan whom Babaginda single-handedly appointed. There is nothing useful to say for the three-month tenure of Earnest Shonekan who was shoved away by Gen. Sani Abacha.
Between 1983 to 1999 (16 years) the military embarked on a relay race between generals in governance and made a thorough mess of it as before. Cooling off in prison, having been convicted of treasonable felony by Sani Abacha, General Olusegun Obasanjo was foisted on Nigerians by the military regime of General Abubakar Abdusalami in 1999 as against Chief Olu Falae for whom the people voted. Of course, Obasanjo awarded himself a second term of office in 2003 via a heavily rigged election and made it worse in 2007 when he inflicted on the country the most perversed election in history. The chief beneficiary of the so-called election, late Presidet Umaru Musa Yara’dua himself admitted he came into office via a ‘flawed’ election. At his demise on May 5, 2010, Dr. Jonathan Goodluck who, via a strange “doctrine of necessity” was made an acting President in February was sworn in as substantive President. So what are we saying all this while?
It is that in the 50 years of existence as an independent country, Nigeria has never really had a Prime Minister or President that was actually elected by the people! They were always imposed either by colonial agents, the military high command, rigged election or the doctrine of necessity!
Any wonder that Nigeria never had a good and appropriate national direction? And this because none of her leaders ever had the peoples’ mandate? And so, if Nigeria is described as a rudderless giant on a blind alley, is the assertion factual, accurate and sincere, or unpatriotic and harsh?
What hope is there that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan will give Nigeria a free and fair election in 2011? This question needs further emphasis because his political party, the People Democratic Party (P.D.P.) has proved beyond doubt that its enslaved to a do-or die election. If there is any hope at all, it certainly is not in P.D.P. or its government but on God and the people!
Saturday, June 19, 2010
NIGERIA POLICE: UNITARISM AS TERRORISM
NIGERIA POLICE: UNITARISM AS TERRORISM
By Onesimus Enesi
One of the vestiges of English domination of Great Britain was ended by Northern Ireland Assembly on Tuesday, 9th March 2010. In a vote for the devolution of policing and justice 105 voted for and 17 voted against, thus ensuring that Northern Ireland will now be self-policed without the over-bearing English sentries blowing hot air over them.
In a country of several ethnic nationalities such as the Welsh, the Scots, the Irish and the English, it was an insult that any of them could not control its own physical security as it was with Northern Ireland. Although the effective date of devolution April 12, 2010, the thought of liberty or liberation from being a colonial or vassalage of the English has already injected an elixir of hope and self-fulfillment on Northern Irelanders. As it is, the 38 years old imposition of centrally controlled policing and justice on that region of Great Britain has ended. While it lasted, it generated hate, violence and injustice. Which is why Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the vote as a “powerful message to those who would return to violence that democracy and tolerance will prevail.” Brown did not stop there. He praised the courage of the parties and their leaders who so voted. “The courage and leadership of the parties who voted to complete devolution at Stormont will be noted around the world”. Well said, Mr. Prime Minister! Just as the wind of freedom blew against imperial Great Britain at the end of the second world war, I hope that the vote at Stormont will reverberate throughout Britain’s former colonies where unitarism still holds sway.
My own country Nigeria remains a neo-colonial vassalage of the United Kingdom in all its ramification. Nigeria operates a centrally-controlled and unitary police force at the instance and advice of Great Britain, who is currently engaged in a so-called ‘community police’ consultancy at the invitation of late President Umaru Yar’ Adua.
“Community Policing” as conceived by the British and their Nigerian collaborators is an euphemism for a repressive force that is centrally (or remotely) controlled. In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual Nigeria, no ‘community police’ can be counted upon to do justice in matters of physical security. As a result of overwhelming rejection of the imposed Central Nigeria Police Force, the ploy was to introduce ‘community police’ to placate the people as if policing will now be their duty or responsibility, directly or otherwise. But it is all a lie!
The Nigeria Police as presently constituted is an instrument of torture, terror and neocolonialism in the hand of those who control power at the centre. Pretending to run a federation while actually operating a unitary polity, the entire citizenry is forcefully held down by the so-called Nigeria Police to be raped by the ruling cabals at the centre. States are mere appendages of the central government and are not accorded the rights of federating units. That is why state governments are denied the right to own their own Police Force and state governors are chief security officers of their states – only on paper. No state Commissioner of Police is appointed by the state governor and none takes orders from any governor but from the President through the Inspector general of police.
Which is why communal and ethno-religious crises remain unresolved and instead is escalating on daily basis. The Plateau State crises is an example. To blame the state governor for the conflicts is share wickedness, or is derived from ignorance or could be outright mischief. There can be no question of good governance in the area of security when it is contracted or misappropriated by a remote and insensitive ‘federal government’ which is an artificial entity with no territory of its own.
There can be no adequate or informed and effective physical security when strangers are in charge. And a policeman who is posted to a town to which he doesn’t belong is a stranger. He should not be expected to know the people, their culture or understand their language. In such an environment, the stranger-policeman is an instrument of terror, a cannon of accidental discharge of killer bullets and a comrade-in-trade with armed and pen robbers. Why? He has no stake in the town or community as he belongs elsewhere. His loyalty and sense of justice can neither be counted or relied upon. He is easily recruited into criminal schemes and partisan contrivance. He is eternally conscious of being a stranger in an ‘unfriendly’ environment and so, often gripped with either fear, anger or contempt for the people. As a result, in Nigeria, we have lost count of unresolved murders, assassinations, disappearances and arsons all of which are expected to be prevented, combated or arrested by an official police outfit under the control of the most immediate political authority.
Co-operation with the Nigeria Police has more often than not ended with the detention and prosecution of the co-operator. The complainant most frequently ends up as the accused. The culprit has often willy-nilly turned the victim. The innocent is found guilty for his naivety. So it turned out that the more co-operation the unitary police enjoys, the more terror it unleashes on its co-operators. The more information is given to them, the stronger and more sophisticated the criminals become.
The usual refrains are: inadequate funds, poor salary, lake of equipment and non-cooperation by the citizenry. But how come that successive inspector-generals retire on bulging tommies? Who impregnated many police officers on patrol duties and at toll gates, or is it road blocks?
The truth is that a unitary police outfit in a multi-national environment is an instrument of terror, a bottomless pit, an irredemable waster with an insatiable appetite. No one can satisfy their demand, pacify their anger, massage their ego or convict them on their errors!
Therefore, hope was kindled when Mike Okiro, ex-Inspector-General of Nigeria Police opined recently (May 26,2010) that “The exclusive federal control of the Police leaves the political heads of the other two tier of government helpless in the fight against crimes and maintenance of law and order. The inability of these elected officials to direct police officers to perform their duties had made a mockery of designation of the officials as the chief security officers of their units of government.” But why did Mike Okiro waited to retire before he realised these truths?
It is my earnest hope and prayers that the vote at Stormont for devolution of power of policing and justice will reverberate across the world of Nigerian political leaders that will give birth to local policing in Nigeria - making physical security a specialized local affair.
By Onesimus Enesi
One of the vestiges of English domination of Great Britain was ended by Northern Ireland Assembly on Tuesday, 9th March 2010. In a vote for the devolution of policing and justice 105 voted for and 17 voted against, thus ensuring that Northern Ireland will now be self-policed without the over-bearing English sentries blowing hot air over them.
In a country of several ethnic nationalities such as the Welsh, the Scots, the Irish and the English, it was an insult that any of them could not control its own physical security as it was with Northern Ireland. Although the effective date of devolution April 12, 2010, the thought of liberty or liberation from being a colonial or vassalage of the English has already injected an elixir of hope and self-fulfillment on Northern Irelanders. As it is, the 38 years old imposition of centrally controlled policing and justice on that region of Great Britain has ended. While it lasted, it generated hate, violence and injustice. Which is why Prime Minister Gordon Brown described the vote as a “powerful message to those who would return to violence that democracy and tolerance will prevail.” Brown did not stop there. He praised the courage of the parties and their leaders who so voted. “The courage and leadership of the parties who voted to complete devolution at Stormont will be noted around the world”. Well said, Mr. Prime Minister! Just as the wind of freedom blew against imperial Great Britain at the end of the second world war, I hope that the vote at Stormont will reverberate throughout Britain’s former colonies where unitarism still holds sway.
My own country Nigeria remains a neo-colonial vassalage of the United Kingdom in all its ramification. Nigeria operates a centrally-controlled and unitary police force at the instance and advice of Great Britain, who is currently engaged in a so-called ‘community police’ consultancy at the invitation of late President Umaru Yar’ Adua.
“Community Policing” as conceived by the British and their Nigerian collaborators is an euphemism for a repressive force that is centrally (or remotely) controlled. In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual Nigeria, no ‘community police’ can be counted upon to do justice in matters of physical security. As a result of overwhelming rejection of the imposed Central Nigeria Police Force, the ploy was to introduce ‘community police’ to placate the people as if policing will now be their duty or responsibility, directly or otherwise. But it is all a lie!
The Nigeria Police as presently constituted is an instrument of torture, terror and neocolonialism in the hand of those who control power at the centre. Pretending to run a federation while actually operating a unitary polity, the entire citizenry is forcefully held down by the so-called Nigeria Police to be raped by the ruling cabals at the centre. States are mere appendages of the central government and are not accorded the rights of federating units. That is why state governments are denied the right to own their own Police Force and state governors are chief security officers of their states – only on paper. No state Commissioner of Police is appointed by the state governor and none takes orders from any governor but from the President through the Inspector general of police.
Which is why communal and ethno-religious crises remain unresolved and instead is escalating on daily basis. The Plateau State crises is an example. To blame the state governor for the conflicts is share wickedness, or is derived from ignorance or could be outright mischief. There can be no question of good governance in the area of security when it is contracted or misappropriated by a remote and insensitive ‘federal government’ which is an artificial entity with no territory of its own.
There can be no adequate or informed and effective physical security when strangers are in charge. And a policeman who is posted to a town to which he doesn’t belong is a stranger. He should not be expected to know the people, their culture or understand their language. In such an environment, the stranger-policeman is an instrument of terror, a cannon of accidental discharge of killer bullets and a comrade-in-trade with armed and pen robbers. Why? He has no stake in the town or community as he belongs elsewhere. His loyalty and sense of justice can neither be counted or relied upon. He is easily recruited into criminal schemes and partisan contrivance. He is eternally conscious of being a stranger in an ‘unfriendly’ environment and so, often gripped with either fear, anger or contempt for the people. As a result, in Nigeria, we have lost count of unresolved murders, assassinations, disappearances and arsons all of which are expected to be prevented, combated or arrested by an official police outfit under the control of the most immediate political authority.
Co-operation with the Nigeria Police has more often than not ended with the detention and prosecution of the co-operator. The complainant most frequently ends up as the accused. The culprit has often willy-nilly turned the victim. The innocent is found guilty for his naivety. So it turned out that the more co-operation the unitary police enjoys, the more terror it unleashes on its co-operators. The more information is given to them, the stronger and more sophisticated the criminals become.
The usual refrains are: inadequate funds, poor salary, lake of equipment and non-cooperation by the citizenry. But how come that successive inspector-generals retire on bulging tommies? Who impregnated many police officers on patrol duties and at toll gates, or is it road blocks?
The truth is that a unitary police outfit in a multi-national environment is an instrument of terror, a bottomless pit, an irredemable waster with an insatiable appetite. No one can satisfy their demand, pacify their anger, massage their ego or convict them on their errors!
Therefore, hope was kindled when Mike Okiro, ex-Inspector-General of Nigeria Police opined recently (May 26,2010) that “The exclusive federal control of the Police leaves the political heads of the other two tier of government helpless in the fight against crimes and maintenance of law and order. The inability of these elected officials to direct police officers to perform their duties had made a mockery of designation of the officials as the chief security officers of their units of government.” But why did Mike Okiro waited to retire before he realised these truths?
It is my earnest hope and prayers that the vote at Stormont for devolution of power of policing and justice will reverberate across the world of Nigerian political leaders that will give birth to local policing in Nigeria - making physical security a specialized local affair.
Friday, June 18, 2010
ROTATIONAL TOMFOOLERY
ROTATIONAL TOMFOOLERY
By Ohi Ohida
Power rotation entered into Nigeria`s political lexicon around 1993 after Gen. Ibrahim Babangida`s infidelity by his failure to conclude his transition to democracy program on a honest note.
For twenty continuous years (1979-1999, save for Chief Earnest Shone- kan’s three months shenanigan), the North dominated political power and meted out injustice by denying Chief M.K.O. Abiola his well deserved trophy in the 1993 presidential race. The odium this singular act brought against the North and, the sense of humiliation it brought to the South propelled the quest for power rotation or power shift and Obasanjo became the first beneficiary of power shift.
By power rotation, it is meant that power shifts every four or eight years between the North and the South. The Peoples Democratic Party quickly appropriated the rotational formula into a doctrine of turn –by – turn. The philosophers of power rotation could not be blamed, given the poor and ruinous service delivery of those at the helm of affairs at the time. What more, there was no prospect of power ever shifting to the South except by the rotational formula. And so, for a country divided by political power monopolists, it was considered that the cause of equity will be served through power rotation. With it, the PDP hopes to cling onto power for eternity by presenting (or is it imposing?) candidates from both sides of the geographical divide at every eight years interval. They have done so successfully twice so far, in spite of its undemocratic method. The country was forced to endure Obasanjo`s crudity for eight long years even when there were myriads of reasons to impeach him. Tried as Speaker Umar Na` Aba did, he and the National Assembly were prevailed upon to spare the country of another round of political crisis. So, the PDP or power monopolists considered Obasanjo’s acts of impunity a lesser evil to the possibility and implications of allowing power to get into the hands of ‘unpatriotic elements’. The doctrine of power rotation is an expedient one as it is devoid of the best interest of the country, for the test of its desirability could not be adequately assessed until after President Yar’adua’s demise.
Even on his sick bed in Saudi Arabia, various groups and individuals were jostling to succeed him, some of which will make nonsense of the so-called power rotation formula. As Yar’adua succumbed to his sickness, the Constitution supports his deputy Vice President Jonathan Goodluck to succeed him, which in effect, rendered the doctrine of power rotation a non-starter. But geo-political politics says no to such constitutional succession. The North believes that by power rotation, Goodluck may only complete Yar’adua’s first term tenure, while a Northerner must become President in 2011. All manner of lies, intrigues and subtleties have been deviced by government functionaries, politicians, interest groups and power-brokers for or against constitutional succession or power rotation. The truth is that there is no easy escape from power devolution and geo-political restructuring if the country is to enjoy political stability. The reason why the then Vice President was incapacitated from acting as President is not because the National Assembly, the Federal Executive Council or the ailing Yar’adua has done or failed to do one thing or the other to enable such to happen.
They failed to do what was needed to enable the then Vice-President to become acting President on the basis of the geo-political, religious and the ethnic origin of Jonathan Goodluck – the same needs or factors which rotational formula was made to serve. As important as the health of an individual is, even if that person is the President of a country, the health of a country of over 140 million people is much more important and should have been considered by power hustlers who connived to prevent Goodluck from acting as President. The truth is that Nigeria was on sick-bed with Yar’adua for those 6 months and the country’s economy, politics and governance are the worse for it. Whereas, the President was receiving adequate medical attention by competent doctors and at a hospital of his choice, Nigeria was not receiving the same attention as needed – all because the sick President is from a particular region, or of a particular religion and or from a particular ethnic group – who was taking their turn in power!
Fear is at the root of those besotted to power rotation; the fear of misuse of power in the area of resource allocation, of hire and fire and of justice, equity and fair play – all of which have been denied by past experience. But are we not experimenting with rotational vengeance in rotational presidency or governorship? Have we not seen Yar’adua reversing certain decisions of his predecessor? The Oodua nation has been complaining of Yar’adua’s lopsided appointments to executive positions against the Yoruba – and the allegation is self-evident. Other ethnic nationalities were of the same opinion. What we are left with is rotational vengeance as the cycle of offence and revenge goes full circle from South to the North, from Hausa to Igbo, or Yoruba to Fulani ad infinitum! Covetousness of power by people from certain ethnic, religious and geographical origin heightens the fear of domination, cheating and even enslavement. If this is true, it means that the answer does not lay in rotating power but in its devolution.
Rather than concentrating power in the centre to be exercised by one individual who is not only fallible but susceptible to sectional, sectarian, regional and religious influences, why not devolve power to geopolitical regions based on ethnic nationality, territorial contiguity, geographical and cultural affinity and linguistic harmony? The truth is that in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural society such as Nigeria, no individual could be so detribalized as to be trusted with the kind of power invested in the Presidency as presently constituted. In the absence of such trust – and there is no basis for it - rotational presidency or power rotation is not only a formula for offence and – revenge, it amounts to collective un-wisdom, that is, rotational tomfoolery!
By Ohi Ohida
Power rotation entered into Nigeria`s political lexicon around 1993 after Gen. Ibrahim Babangida`s infidelity by his failure to conclude his transition to democracy program on a honest note.
For twenty continuous years (1979-1999, save for Chief Earnest Shone- kan’s three months shenanigan), the North dominated political power and meted out injustice by denying Chief M.K.O. Abiola his well deserved trophy in the 1993 presidential race. The odium this singular act brought against the North and, the sense of humiliation it brought to the South propelled the quest for power rotation or power shift and Obasanjo became the first beneficiary of power shift.
By power rotation, it is meant that power shifts every four or eight years between the North and the South. The Peoples Democratic Party quickly appropriated the rotational formula into a doctrine of turn –by – turn. The philosophers of power rotation could not be blamed, given the poor and ruinous service delivery of those at the helm of affairs at the time. What more, there was no prospect of power ever shifting to the South except by the rotational formula. And so, for a country divided by political power monopolists, it was considered that the cause of equity will be served through power rotation. With it, the PDP hopes to cling onto power for eternity by presenting (or is it imposing?) candidates from both sides of the geographical divide at every eight years interval. They have done so successfully twice so far, in spite of its undemocratic method. The country was forced to endure Obasanjo`s crudity for eight long years even when there were myriads of reasons to impeach him. Tried as Speaker Umar Na` Aba did, he and the National Assembly were prevailed upon to spare the country of another round of political crisis. So, the PDP or power monopolists considered Obasanjo’s acts of impunity a lesser evil to the possibility and implications of allowing power to get into the hands of ‘unpatriotic elements’. The doctrine of power rotation is an expedient one as it is devoid of the best interest of the country, for the test of its desirability could not be adequately assessed until after President Yar’adua’s demise.
Even on his sick bed in Saudi Arabia, various groups and individuals were jostling to succeed him, some of which will make nonsense of the so-called power rotation formula. As Yar’adua succumbed to his sickness, the Constitution supports his deputy Vice President Jonathan Goodluck to succeed him, which in effect, rendered the doctrine of power rotation a non-starter. But geo-political politics says no to such constitutional succession. The North believes that by power rotation, Goodluck may only complete Yar’adua’s first term tenure, while a Northerner must become President in 2011. All manner of lies, intrigues and subtleties have been deviced by government functionaries, politicians, interest groups and power-brokers for or against constitutional succession or power rotation. The truth is that there is no easy escape from power devolution and geo-political restructuring if the country is to enjoy political stability. The reason why the then Vice President was incapacitated from acting as President is not because the National Assembly, the Federal Executive Council or the ailing Yar’adua has done or failed to do one thing or the other to enable such to happen.
They failed to do what was needed to enable the then Vice-President to become acting President on the basis of the geo-political, religious and the ethnic origin of Jonathan Goodluck – the same needs or factors which rotational formula was made to serve. As important as the health of an individual is, even if that person is the President of a country, the health of a country of over 140 million people is much more important and should have been considered by power hustlers who connived to prevent Goodluck from acting as President. The truth is that Nigeria was on sick-bed with Yar’adua for those 6 months and the country’s economy, politics and governance are the worse for it. Whereas, the President was receiving adequate medical attention by competent doctors and at a hospital of his choice, Nigeria was not receiving the same attention as needed – all because the sick President is from a particular region, or of a particular religion and or from a particular ethnic group – who was taking their turn in power!
Fear is at the root of those besotted to power rotation; the fear of misuse of power in the area of resource allocation, of hire and fire and of justice, equity and fair play – all of which have been denied by past experience. But are we not experimenting with rotational vengeance in rotational presidency or governorship? Have we not seen Yar’adua reversing certain decisions of his predecessor? The Oodua nation has been complaining of Yar’adua’s lopsided appointments to executive positions against the Yoruba – and the allegation is self-evident. Other ethnic nationalities were of the same opinion. What we are left with is rotational vengeance as the cycle of offence and revenge goes full circle from South to the North, from Hausa to Igbo, or Yoruba to Fulani ad infinitum! Covetousness of power by people from certain ethnic, religious and geographical origin heightens the fear of domination, cheating and even enslavement. If this is true, it means that the answer does not lay in rotating power but in its devolution.
Rather than concentrating power in the centre to be exercised by one individual who is not only fallible but susceptible to sectional, sectarian, regional and religious influences, why not devolve power to geopolitical regions based on ethnic nationality, territorial contiguity, geographical and cultural affinity and linguistic harmony? The truth is that in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural society such as Nigeria, no individual could be so detribalized as to be trusted with the kind of power invested in the Presidency as presently constituted. In the absence of such trust – and there is no basis for it - rotational presidency or power rotation is not only a formula for offence and – revenge, it amounts to collective un-wisdom, that is, rotational tomfoolery!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
letter 2
THE MALAISE OF A MEGA PARTY
By Mas Damisa
Is there any hope that opposition parties will ever take over power or win electrons in Nigeria? That is a trillion naira question which this piece will attempt to answer or at least broach. About eighteen months ago, Chief Anthony Enahoro CFR thought aloud about how opposition parties could close ranks, come together and merge or form one big political party. The purpose was to defeat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in a clean and fair election, come 2011. Given his age, the nationalist needed others to carry out his vision and Chief Olu Falae came in handy. He it was who led other prominent opposition party chieftains in endless rounds of consultations with the view of steering them into such a big-call it Mega Party under the sobriquet of Mega Summit Movement.
How else can we describe Chief Olu Falae, Gen. Muhammed Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Alh. Attahiru Bafarawa – all presidential candidates between 1999 and 2007? Alh Balarabe Musa, a professional opposition politician and a group of others not-so-prominent but important actors were part of the process. From day one, the PRP leader announced that his party will neither dissolve into or be merged with any other party. He opted for alliance with other parties; but at the end, he let it be known that he and his party will not merge or align with the Mega Party!! Many were astounded as to what went wrong and why Balaraba Musa behaved the way he did. Someone even asked if the PRP leader was not planted in the Mega Summit Movement to destroy or frustrate it in the first place. He is entitled to his opinion.
Not long after, a group of top members of the MSM broke apart to form what they called National Democratic Initiative (NDI) which changed later to become National Democratic Movement (NDM) – purporting to have absolved the MSM by adoption of the word ‘movement’. But the NDM is a counterpoise to the MSM which was considered as too ‘southern’ by Northern leaders in the Summit. So, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Attahiru Bafarawa with a sprinkle of southerners like Tom Ikimi and Barr. Mike Ahamba went with the NDM. For sometime, most members of the MSM became also members of the NDM until-like water and oil - each went its own way.
However, and at this stage Alhaji Bola Tinubu and his team appeared on the scene on the side of the NDM and helped to finally nailed the coffin of the MSM. But the NDM was to receive the most painful shock. Atiku Abubakar whose heart was in the PDP while pretending to be in MSM/NDM dumped it after slamming accusations against Buhari and Bafarawa. And Bafarawa left, not before he accused Buhari of perfidy and betrayal. Buhari and his new party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were treated like lepers by what was left of the NDM. Soon, Tinubu’s rump of the A.C. and Bafarawa” Democratic People’s Party (DPP) became the sole legatees of the NDM who agreed to merge into-presumably a mega party.
Right from the onset, Alh. Shitta-Bey was not happy with the pace of events and was very suspicious of certain MSM leaders of northern extraction whom he described as dealing deceitfully with the MSM. He left to file in his papers with the INEC to register what he called Mega Progressive Peoples Party- which remains in process. Subsequent developments tends to justify Shitta-Bey’s action. Whatever was left of the MSM resolved to go ahead and form a new party called the Social Democratic Mega Party – which registration is also under way. The MSM still led by Chief Olu Falae still left its doors open to those who may change their minds to return to the fold; and to other progressive forces who are yet to decide.
In fact, the Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC finally wrote the NDM that they will, under no circumstances merge with any other Party-including the MSM; although they never really inform the MSM of their decision. These are the facts of the case with the ‘Mega Party’ as much as it can be recalled. If opposition Parties are going to be relevant and serve as the hope of the common voters, the failure and malaise of the ‘Mega Party’ as initially conceived must be studied and the right lessons must be learnt. What are these defects or failure?
It was very obvious that the initiators of the MSM as altruistic as they seemed, were never really trusted by many of those who pretended to embrace the idea. If Chief Olu Falae had been able to jump out of his skin to demonstrate his openness, it would still have been difficult for the doubting Thomases to believe him – and this is due to no fault of his. To those with discerning minds, there was always a ting of fear, of distrust and perhaps of superiority complex between and among the top leaders of the MSM/NDM. And the causes of these feelings are to be found in ethnic, religious and regional differences as the core factors. These factors gave birth to the NDM in the first place, even if some would disagree
The second factor that weakened the MSM was the ambition of the leading characters who formed the NDM. There is no way the presidential ambitions of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar could be hidden and at strategic points in the process, they plead against themselves to the detriments of the unity of opposition parties. The tripartite accusation of betrayal between Buhari, Atiku and Bafarawa is a testimony of their vaunting ambitions and the clashing of thereof
The third factor is the presumption on the part of the MSM initiator as if all Nigerian opposition leaders are of the same level of understanding or ideological inclination. When therefore many NDM/MSM leaders fall short of expectation, disappointment sets in, leading to the failure of the process. It is to these enumerated factors more than anything else, even far away from whatever the PDP was able to do, that disrupted the process of an emerging national ‘Mega Party’ of our dream. Before the MSM/NDM, there was the Nigerians United for Democracy, NUD first led by Chief Enahoro and now by Dr. Tunji Braithwaite. There is the fragmented Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP with Balarabe Musa, Olapade - Agoro and Maxi Okwu holding a part each. The four year old Coalition for New Nigeria, CNN is still struggling to survive. And the new entrant, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, and perhaps some others.
Now the question: Why has it been difficult to forge unity and sustain a country-wide organization that could challenge and defeat the occultist group which controls the centre? Lack of common property of nationhood; all others are subsidiary causes. To make project-Nigeria work and work well, the polity must be organized and restructured on ethno-geographical basis. To continue with the present structures and system and expect a different result is to tread on the path of insanity. Nothing wobbles to victory-nothing!
By Mas Damisa
Is there any hope that opposition parties will ever take over power or win electrons in Nigeria? That is a trillion naira question which this piece will attempt to answer or at least broach. About eighteen months ago, Chief Anthony Enahoro CFR thought aloud about how opposition parties could close ranks, come together and merge or form one big political party. The purpose was to defeat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in a clean and fair election, come 2011. Given his age, the nationalist needed others to carry out his vision and Chief Olu Falae came in handy. He it was who led other prominent opposition party chieftains in endless rounds of consultations with the view of steering them into such a big-call it Mega Party under the sobriquet of Mega Summit Movement.
How else can we describe Chief Olu Falae, Gen. Muhammed Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Alh. Attahiru Bafarawa – all presidential candidates between 1999 and 2007? Alh Balarabe Musa, a professional opposition politician and a group of others not-so-prominent but important actors were part of the process. From day one, the PRP leader announced that his party will neither dissolve into or be merged with any other party. He opted for alliance with other parties; but at the end, he let it be known that he and his party will not merge or align with the Mega Party!! Many were astounded as to what went wrong and why Balaraba Musa behaved the way he did. Someone even asked if the PRP leader was not planted in the Mega Summit Movement to destroy or frustrate it in the first place. He is entitled to his opinion.
Not long after, a group of top members of the MSM broke apart to form what they called National Democratic Initiative (NDI) which changed later to become National Democratic Movement (NDM) – purporting to have absolved the MSM by adoption of the word ‘movement’. But the NDM is a counterpoise to the MSM which was considered as too ‘southern’ by Northern leaders in the Summit. So, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Attahiru Bafarawa with a sprinkle of southerners like Tom Ikimi and Barr. Mike Ahamba went with the NDM. For sometime, most members of the MSM became also members of the NDM until-like water and oil - each went its own way.
However, and at this stage Alhaji Bola Tinubu and his team appeared on the scene on the side of the NDM and helped to finally nailed the coffin of the MSM. But the NDM was to receive the most painful shock. Atiku Abubakar whose heart was in the PDP while pretending to be in MSM/NDM dumped it after slamming accusations against Buhari and Bafarawa. And Bafarawa left, not before he accused Buhari of perfidy and betrayal. Buhari and his new party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were treated like lepers by what was left of the NDM. Soon, Tinubu’s rump of the A.C. and Bafarawa” Democratic People’s Party (DPP) became the sole legatees of the NDM who agreed to merge into-presumably a mega party.
Right from the onset, Alh. Shitta-Bey was not happy with the pace of events and was very suspicious of certain MSM leaders of northern extraction whom he described as dealing deceitfully with the MSM. He left to file in his papers with the INEC to register what he called Mega Progressive Peoples Party- which remains in process. Subsequent developments tends to justify Shitta-Bey’s action. Whatever was left of the MSM resolved to go ahead and form a new party called the Social Democratic Mega Party – which registration is also under way. The MSM still led by Chief Olu Falae still left its doors open to those who may change their minds to return to the fold; and to other progressive forces who are yet to decide.
In fact, the Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC finally wrote the NDM that they will, under no circumstances merge with any other Party-including the MSM; although they never really inform the MSM of their decision. These are the facts of the case with the ‘Mega Party’ as much as it can be recalled. If opposition Parties are going to be relevant and serve as the hope of the common voters, the failure and malaise of the ‘Mega Party’ as initially conceived must be studied and the right lessons must be learnt. What are these defects or failure?
It was very obvious that the initiators of the MSM as altruistic as they seemed, were never really trusted by many of those who pretended to embrace the idea. If Chief Olu Falae had been able to jump out of his skin to demonstrate his openness, it would still have been difficult for the doubting Thomases to believe him – and this is due to no fault of his. To those with discerning minds, there was always a ting of fear, of distrust and perhaps of superiority complex between and among the top leaders of the MSM/NDM. And the causes of these feelings are to be found in ethnic, religious and regional differences as the core factors. These factors gave birth to the NDM in the first place, even if some would disagree
The second factor that weakened the MSM was the ambition of the leading characters who formed the NDM. There is no way the presidential ambitions of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar could be hidden and at strategic points in the process, they plead against themselves to the detriments of the unity of opposition parties. The tripartite accusation of betrayal between Buhari, Atiku and Bafarawa is a testimony of their vaunting ambitions and the clashing of thereof
The third factor is the presumption on the part of the MSM initiator as if all Nigerian opposition leaders are of the same level of understanding or ideological inclination. When therefore many NDM/MSM leaders fall short of expectation, disappointment sets in, leading to the failure of the process. It is to these enumerated factors more than anything else, even far away from whatever the PDP was able to do, that disrupted the process of an emerging national ‘Mega Party’ of our dream. Before the MSM/NDM, there was the Nigerians United for Democracy, NUD first led by Chief Enahoro and now by Dr. Tunji Braithwaite. There is the fragmented Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP with Balarabe Musa, Olapade - Agoro and Maxi Okwu holding a part each. The four year old Coalition for New Nigeria, CNN is still struggling to survive. And the new entrant, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, and perhaps some others.
Now the question: Why has it been difficult to forge unity and sustain a country-wide organization that could challenge and defeat the occultist group which controls the centre? Lack of common property of nationhood; all others are subsidiary causes. To make project-Nigeria work and work well, the polity must be organized and restructured on ethno-geographical basis. To continue with the present structures and system and expect a different result is to tread on the path of insanity. Nothing wobbles to victory-nothing!
HOW TO MAKE SLAVE OF NIGERIANS
HOW TO MAKE SLAVE OF NIGERIANS
By Onesimus Enesi
Slavery is not known to be enjoyed by humans except Nigerians. Since the days of the slave trade in the 19th Century leading to British colonization of the people now called Nigerians, slavery has proved to be a good companion. Resistance has either not been considered a respectable response or freedom is too dangerous to be desired as an alternative to slavery.
During colonial administration, all institutions of state were orientated to treat Nigerians as brutes and criminals before it is proved otherwise. The coercive arms of government such as the Army, Police and Revenue inspectors were the worst culprits.
Their duty, it appeared, is to harass and roughen you up before you are informed of any offence. The standard procedure is to arrest you first, beat you to pulp, take you for dead and abandon you in the cell. If they happen to take any notice of you as still having breath in you, they may then dump you in the mogue-or hospital-since there is little or no difference between both. If in the process you give up the ghost, it will be just one other case of a wasted soul among so many. But if by any miracle you survive, you would have learnt how not to be innocent.
In the popular parlance of the Nigeria Police promo, bail is free, and here us how. As soon as you are arrested and if you are in one piece, you will be asked to apply for bail. You need biro and paper to write the bail application, these you buy, through the police. Then the person to bail you must be of a class high enough to be trusted-but that is, on paper. In real life, he who will bail must come with a fat bank account and ready to part with a hefty amount of naira, if he is going to go home with the accused. Isn’t bail so free or cheap?
To the law enforcement agents, criminals are not the problem. It is the innocents who constitutes the challenges facing the police. Because they are so many, innocent souls must be made to pay for the criminals if the police cells and prison houses must be filled up-and it must. That is why the police will not arrive the scene of crime when it is taking place. No, the best time to visit the crime scene is after the event when the criminals has vamoosed into thin air, and when innocent passers-by are going about their legitimate business and unaware of any crime or incident. The very efficient and no-nonsense Nigeria Police will burst on the scene from nowhere and arrest as many as they could cart away. That is when you will know that there is little or no difference between cell and bail and why bail is so free!
Government in Nigeria is a cult. If you are not in it, you are an outsider and will be treated as such. Because you are regarded as a slave, you are not entitled to protest in public against the evil government metes out to you. Take these.
In January 2010, the FCT Water Board woke up one day and increased their monthly water rate from N1,500.00 to N4,000.00. and faithfully and meekly, Nigerians have been paying without asking a question, because they see themselves as chattels or slaves who has no right to fair treatment.
The Federal Road Safety Corps is free to arrest you for any offence and to fine you on the spot without trial. As if that is not bad enough, you will have to pay the fine into a designated bank account-no matter how far away. Not done yet, you will return to them with a satisfactory evidence of payment and go and tow or drive your vehicle from where it is impounded. You may need to return to their office several times before your driving licence is released to you. All these for one offence - by a slave?
The leper called NEPA whose name and mandate is now to include holding power away from factories and homes knows and treat Nigerians as slave. First you must agree to pay for black-out instead of light. Then you must agree to be charged any amount, since no one cares to read your metre to ascertain your consumption.
Second, you must go to their office or any designated bank and pay your outrageous bill. After payment, you must submit it to a Clerk in their office who will record your payment and make you to sign the register of payment. Third, you must then proceed to photocopy the receipt or evidence of payment and paste it on your doors or the gate of your house as a pass-over sacrifice. If you are disobedient or arrogant enough not to paste the receipt, then the ‘lepers’ will come and disconnect your light-for an offence unknown to law and common sense. That reminds you of your status as a slave.
Even private schools have now borrowed this standard treatment from public schools. Your children school fees must be paid to designated Bank accounts; after which you take the evidence of payment to the school for official receipt. Now, you are to make a photocopy of the receipt which you must give to your child, for keeps to be produced on demand. If at any time your child misplace the receipt, the school is then free to believe that you have not paid your child’s school fees and that leads straight to suspension. Don’t remind them that they retained the duplicate copy of the receipt as well as the Bank teller, or are you not supposed to be a slave?
When the President visits a state or the governor a local council area, it is regarded as an august event for which schools, offices and markets must close down. Not even this alone, school children and their teachers, workers and market men and women must line the streets-to welcome the august visitors from the third heaven.
The man-hour loss, the missed trade, the lost teaching period and the cost of it all are unimportant to anyone. When slaves do the bidding of their masters, that is legitimate, not so?
It is said that those who don’t value freedom does not deserve it. This is probably true of Nigerians. But it failed to explain why the people are so docile, mostly cowards and work hard only at negative and illegal schemes, or is it the case that the people have been so free and treated so fairly in the past that they take slavery as an acceptable alternative to liberty? I bet that the question will not go away until someone provides a satisfactory answer. Please try!
THE MALAISE OF A MEGA PARTY
By Mas Damisa
Is there any hope that opposition parties will ever take over power or win electrons in Nigeria? That is a trillion naira question which this piece will attempt to answer or at least broach. About eighteen months ago, Chief Anthony Enahoro CFR thought aloud about how opposition parties could close ranks, come together and merge or form one big political party. The purpose was to defeat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in a clean and fair election, come 2011. Given his age, the nationalist needed others to carry out his vision and Chief Olu Falae came in handy. He it was who led other prominent opposition party chieftains in endless rounds of consultations with the view of steering them into such a big-call it Mega Party under the sobriquet of Mega Summit Movement.
How else can we describe Chief Olu Falae, Gen. Muhammed Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Alh. Attahiru Bafarawa – all presidential candidates between 1999 and 2007? Alh Balarabe Musa, a professional opposition politician and a group of others not-so-prominent but important actors were part of the process. From day one, the PRP leader announced that his party will neither dissolve into or be merged with any other party. He opted for alliance with other parties; but at the end, he let it be known that he and his party will not merge or align with the Mega Party!! Many were astounded as to what went wrong and why Balaraba Musa behaved the way he did. Someone even asked if the PRP leader was not planted in the Mega Summit Movement to destroy or frustrate it in the first place. He is entitled to his opinion.
Not long after, a group of top members of the MSM broke apart to form what they called National Democratic Initiative (NDI) which changed later to become National Democratic Movement (NDM) – purporting to have absolved the MSM by adoption of the word ‘movement’. But the NDM is a counterpoise to the MSM which was considered as too ‘southern’ by Northern leaders in the Summit. So, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Attahiru Bafarawa with a sprinkle of southerners like Tom Ikimi and Barr. Mike Ahamba went with the NDM. For sometime, most members of the MSM became also members of the NDM until-like water and oil - each went its own way.
However, and at this stage Alhaji Bola Tinubu and his team appeared on the scene on the side of the NDM and helped to finally nailed the coffin of the MSM. But the NDM was to receive the most painful shock. Atiku Abubakar whose heart was in the PDP while pretending to be in MSM/NDM dumped it after slamming accusations against Buhari and Bafarawa. And Bafarawa left, not before he accused Buhari of perfidy and betrayal. Buhari and his new party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were treated like lepers by what was left of the NDM. Soon, Tinubu’s rump of the A.C. and Bafarawa” Democratic People’s Party (DPP) became the sole legatees of the NDM who agreed to merge into-presumably a mega party.
Right from the onset, Alh. Shitta-Bey was not happy with the pace of events and was very suspicious of certain MSM leaders of northern extraction whom he described as dealing deceitfully with the MSM. He left to file in his papers with the INEC to register what he called Mega Progressive Peoples Party- which remains in process. Subsequent developments tends to justify Shitta-Bey’s action. Whatever was left of the MSM resolved to go ahead and form a new party called the Social Democratic Mega Party – which registration is also under way. The MSM still led by Chief Olu Falae still left its doors open to those who may change their minds to return to the fold; and to other progressive forces who are yet to decide.
In fact, the Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC finally wrote the NDM that they will, under no circumstances merge with any other Party-including the MSM; although they never really inform the MSM of their decision. These are the facts of the case with the ‘Mega Party’ as much as it can be recalled. If opposition Parties are going to be relevant and serve as the hope of the common voters, the failure and malaise of the ‘Mega Party’ as initially conceived must be studied and the right lessons must be learnt. What are these defects or failure?
It was very obvious that the initiators of the MSM as altruistic as they seemed, were never really trusted by many of those who pretended to embrace the idea. If Chief Olu Falae had been able to jump out of his skin to demonstrate his openness, it would still have been difficult for the doubting Thomases to believe him – and this is due to no fault of his. To those with discerning minds, there was always a ting of fear, of distrust and perhaps of superiority complex between and among the top leaders of the MSM/NDM. And the causes of these feelings are to be found in ethnic, religious and regional differences as the core factors. These factors gave birth to the NDM in the first place, even if some would disagree
The second factor that weakened the MSM was the ambition of the leading characters who formed the NDM. There is no way the presidential ambitions of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar could be hidden and at strategic points in the process, they plead against themselves to the detriments of the unity of opposition parties. The tripartite accusation of betrayal between Buhari, Atiku and Bafarawa is a testimony of their vaunting ambitions and the clashing of thereof
The third factor is the presumption on the part of the MSM initiator as if all Nigerian opposition leaders are of the same level of understanding or ideological inclination. When therefore many NDM/MSM leaders fall short of expectation, disappointment sets in, leading to the failure of the process. It is to these enumerated factors more than anything else, even far away from whatever the PDP was able to do, that disrupted the process of an emerging national ‘Mega Party’ of our dream. Before the MSM/NDM, there was the Nigerians United for Democracy, NUD first led by Chief Enahoro and now by Dr. Tunji Braithwaite. There is the fragmented Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP with Balarabe Musa, Olapade - Agoro and Maxi Okwu holding a part each. The four year old Coalition for New Nigeria, CNN is still struggling to survive. And the new entrant, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, and perhaps some others.
Now the question: Why has it been difficult to forge unity and sustain a country-wide organization that could challenge and defeat the occultist group which controls the centre? Lack of common property of nationhood; all others are subsidiary causes. To make project-Nigeria work and work well, the polity must be organized and restructured on ethno-geographical basis. To continue with the present structures and system and expect a different result is to tread on the path of insanity. Nothing wobbles to victory-nothing!
By Onesimus Enesi
Slavery is not known to be enjoyed by humans except Nigerians. Since the days of the slave trade in the 19th Century leading to British colonization of the people now called Nigerians, slavery has proved to be a good companion. Resistance has either not been considered a respectable response or freedom is too dangerous to be desired as an alternative to slavery.
During colonial administration, all institutions of state were orientated to treat Nigerians as brutes and criminals before it is proved otherwise. The coercive arms of government such as the Army, Police and Revenue inspectors were the worst culprits.
Their duty, it appeared, is to harass and roughen you up before you are informed of any offence. The standard procedure is to arrest you first, beat you to pulp, take you for dead and abandon you in the cell. If they happen to take any notice of you as still having breath in you, they may then dump you in the mogue-or hospital-since there is little or no difference between both. If in the process you give up the ghost, it will be just one other case of a wasted soul among so many. But if by any miracle you survive, you would have learnt how not to be innocent.
In the popular parlance of the Nigeria Police promo, bail is free, and here us how. As soon as you are arrested and if you are in one piece, you will be asked to apply for bail. You need biro and paper to write the bail application, these you buy, through the police. Then the person to bail you must be of a class high enough to be trusted-but that is, on paper. In real life, he who will bail must come with a fat bank account and ready to part with a hefty amount of naira, if he is going to go home with the accused. Isn’t bail so free or cheap?
To the law enforcement agents, criminals are not the problem. It is the innocents who constitutes the challenges facing the police. Because they are so many, innocent souls must be made to pay for the criminals if the police cells and prison houses must be filled up-and it must. That is why the police will not arrive the scene of crime when it is taking place. No, the best time to visit the crime scene is after the event when the criminals has vamoosed into thin air, and when innocent passers-by are going about their legitimate business and unaware of any crime or incident. The very efficient and no-nonsense Nigeria Police will burst on the scene from nowhere and arrest as many as they could cart away. That is when you will know that there is little or no difference between cell and bail and why bail is so free!
Government in Nigeria is a cult. If you are not in it, you are an outsider and will be treated as such. Because you are regarded as a slave, you are not entitled to protest in public against the evil government metes out to you. Take these.
In January 2010, the FCT Water Board woke up one day and increased their monthly water rate from N1,500.00 to N4,000.00. and faithfully and meekly, Nigerians have been paying without asking a question, because they see themselves as chattels or slaves who has no right to fair treatment.
The Federal Road Safety Corps is free to arrest you for any offence and to fine you on the spot without trial. As if that is not bad enough, you will have to pay the fine into a designated bank account-no matter how far away. Not done yet, you will return to them with a satisfactory evidence of payment and go and tow or drive your vehicle from where it is impounded. You may need to return to their office several times before your driving licence is released to you. All these for one offence - by a slave?
The leper called NEPA whose name and mandate is now to include holding power away from factories and homes knows and treat Nigerians as slave. First you must agree to pay for black-out instead of light. Then you must agree to be charged any amount, since no one cares to read your metre to ascertain your consumption.
Second, you must go to their office or any designated bank and pay your outrageous bill. After payment, you must submit it to a Clerk in their office who will record your payment and make you to sign the register of payment. Third, you must then proceed to photocopy the receipt or evidence of payment and paste it on your doors or the gate of your house as a pass-over sacrifice. If you are disobedient or arrogant enough not to paste the receipt, then the ‘lepers’ will come and disconnect your light-for an offence unknown to law and common sense. That reminds you of your status as a slave.
Even private schools have now borrowed this standard treatment from public schools. Your children school fees must be paid to designated Bank accounts; after which you take the evidence of payment to the school for official receipt. Now, you are to make a photocopy of the receipt which you must give to your child, for keeps to be produced on demand. If at any time your child misplace the receipt, the school is then free to believe that you have not paid your child’s school fees and that leads straight to suspension. Don’t remind them that they retained the duplicate copy of the receipt as well as the Bank teller, or are you not supposed to be a slave?
When the President visits a state or the governor a local council area, it is regarded as an august event for which schools, offices and markets must close down. Not even this alone, school children and their teachers, workers and market men and women must line the streets-to welcome the august visitors from the third heaven.
The man-hour loss, the missed trade, the lost teaching period and the cost of it all are unimportant to anyone. When slaves do the bidding of their masters, that is legitimate, not so?
It is said that those who don’t value freedom does not deserve it. This is probably true of Nigerians. But it failed to explain why the people are so docile, mostly cowards and work hard only at negative and illegal schemes, or is it the case that the people have been so free and treated so fairly in the past that they take slavery as an acceptable alternative to liberty? I bet that the question will not go away until someone provides a satisfactory answer. Please try!
THE MALAISE OF A MEGA PARTY
By Mas Damisa
Is there any hope that opposition parties will ever take over power or win electrons in Nigeria? That is a trillion naira question which this piece will attempt to answer or at least broach. About eighteen months ago, Chief Anthony Enahoro CFR thought aloud about how opposition parties could close ranks, come together and merge or form one big political party. The purpose was to defeat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in a clean and fair election, come 2011. Given his age, the nationalist needed others to carry out his vision and Chief Olu Falae came in handy. He it was who led other prominent opposition party chieftains in endless rounds of consultations with the view of steering them into such a big-call it Mega Party under the sobriquet of Mega Summit Movement.
How else can we describe Chief Olu Falae, Gen. Muhammed Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Alh. Attahiru Bafarawa – all presidential candidates between 1999 and 2007? Alh Balarabe Musa, a professional opposition politician and a group of others not-so-prominent but important actors were part of the process. From day one, the PRP leader announced that his party will neither dissolve into or be merged with any other party. He opted for alliance with other parties; but at the end, he let it be known that he and his party will not merge or align with the Mega Party!! Many were astounded as to what went wrong and why Balaraba Musa behaved the way he did. Someone even asked if the PRP leader was not planted in the Mega Summit Movement to destroy or frustrate it in the first place. He is entitled to his opinion.
Not long after, a group of top members of the MSM broke apart to form what they called National Democratic Initiative (NDI) which changed later to become National Democratic Movement (NDM) – purporting to have absolved the MSM by adoption of the word ‘movement’. But the NDM is a counterpoise to the MSM which was considered as too ‘southern’ by Northern leaders in the Summit. So, Muhammadu Buhari, Atiku Abubakar and Attahiru Bafarawa with a sprinkle of southerners like Tom Ikimi and Barr. Mike Ahamba went with the NDM. For sometime, most members of the MSM became also members of the NDM until-like water and oil - each went its own way.
However, and at this stage Alhaji Bola Tinubu and his team appeared on the scene on the side of the NDM and helped to finally nailed the coffin of the MSM. But the NDM was to receive the most painful shock. Atiku Abubakar whose heart was in the PDP while pretending to be in MSM/NDM dumped it after slamming accusations against Buhari and Bafarawa. And Bafarawa left, not before he accused Buhari of perfidy and betrayal. Buhari and his new party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) were treated like lepers by what was left of the NDM. Soon, Tinubu’s rump of the A.C. and Bafarawa” Democratic People’s Party (DPP) became the sole legatees of the NDM who agreed to merge into-presumably a mega party.
Right from the onset, Alh. Shitta-Bey was not happy with the pace of events and was very suspicious of certain MSM leaders of northern extraction whom he described as dealing deceitfully with the MSM. He left to file in his papers with the INEC to register what he called Mega Progressive Peoples Party- which remains in process. Subsequent developments tends to justify Shitta-Bey’s action. Whatever was left of the MSM resolved to go ahead and form a new party called the Social Democratic Mega Party – which registration is also under way. The MSM still led by Chief Olu Falae still left its doors open to those who may change their minds to return to the fold; and to other progressive forces who are yet to decide.
In fact, the Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC finally wrote the NDM that they will, under no circumstances merge with any other Party-including the MSM; although they never really inform the MSM of their decision. These are the facts of the case with the ‘Mega Party’ as much as it can be recalled. If opposition Parties are going to be relevant and serve as the hope of the common voters, the failure and malaise of the ‘Mega Party’ as initially conceived must be studied and the right lessons must be learnt. What are these defects or failure?
It was very obvious that the initiators of the MSM as altruistic as they seemed, were never really trusted by many of those who pretended to embrace the idea. If Chief Olu Falae had been able to jump out of his skin to demonstrate his openness, it would still have been difficult for the doubting Thomases to believe him – and this is due to no fault of his. To those with discerning minds, there was always a ting of fear, of distrust and perhaps of superiority complex between and among the top leaders of the MSM/NDM. And the causes of these feelings are to be found in ethnic, religious and regional differences as the core factors. These factors gave birth to the NDM in the first place, even if some would disagree
The second factor that weakened the MSM was the ambition of the leading characters who formed the NDM. There is no way the presidential ambitions of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar could be hidden and at strategic points in the process, they plead against themselves to the detriments of the unity of opposition parties. The tripartite accusation of betrayal between Buhari, Atiku and Bafarawa is a testimony of their vaunting ambitions and the clashing of thereof
The third factor is the presumption on the part of the MSM initiator as if all Nigerian opposition leaders are of the same level of understanding or ideological inclination. When therefore many NDM/MSM leaders fall short of expectation, disappointment sets in, leading to the failure of the process. It is to these enumerated factors more than anything else, even far away from whatever the PDP was able to do, that disrupted the process of an emerging national ‘Mega Party’ of our dream. Before the MSM/NDM, there was the Nigerians United for Democracy, NUD first led by Chief Enahoro and now by Dr. Tunji Braithwaite. There is the fragmented Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP with Balarabe Musa, Olapade - Agoro and Maxi Okwu holding a part each. The four year old Coalition for New Nigeria, CNN is still struggling to survive. And the new entrant, the Save Nigeria Group, SNG, and perhaps some others.
Now the question: Why has it been difficult to forge unity and sustain a country-wide organization that could challenge and defeat the occultist group which controls the centre? Lack of common property of nationhood; all others are subsidiary causes. To make project-Nigeria work and work well, the polity must be organized and restructured on ethno-geographical basis. To continue with the present structures and system and expect a different result is to tread on the path of insanity. Nothing wobbles to victory-nothing!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
LAW-MAKERS JUMBO TAKE-HOME PAY
By Sam Onimisi
The legislative arm of government consists of two chambers: the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate. While the House has 360 members, the Senate has 109. In all, the National Assembly has 469 members.
Reliable sources has it that as at May 2010, each member of the House takes home some N35,000,000 every quarter of 3 months while Senators carts home some N45,000,000 for the same period. By simple arithmetic, each House member takes home N140,000,000 per annum and each Senator, the sum of N180,000,000 per year. These does not include assorted allowances which also runs into millions of naira.
What it means is that for them agreeing to make law for us, Nigerian tax-players must cough out N50,400,000,000 billion for House members and N19,080,000,000 billion for Senators, a sum total of N69,480,000,000 billion per year! This pay regime makes the Nigerian Legislature one of the most costly in the world – in fact, it is the right place for every greedy political aspirant.
However, service delivery both in quality and quantity is about the worst in the world. Samples? Cross carpeting which was illegal and immoral is now legalized and legitimate in the wisdom of our law-makers. To them, it is not robbery to run election on the platform of one party and after being elected, you cross over to another party, thereby rubbishing the mandate given to you by a different party.
In fact, they made a futile attempt to make Nigeria a one-party State, until they were shouted out of order before they backed down. Now, while trying to decree a two-party system into existences, they placed impossible hurdles on the path of independent candidates which they pretend to have approved.
Both chambers of the National Assembly is controlled by one party with over two-third majority, which makes it easy to pass anything into law any time they so desire. Lacking in courage and principle, led by greed and gluttony, even many law-makers of opposition parties are the leading lights of these obnoxious laws. What this means is that they are ready to cross over to PDP now that cross – carpeting is made legal.
As if these iniquities are not odius enough, our law-makers now want to divest the political parties the little annual subvention of N6,000,000 million per annum. There are about 54 registered parties in Nigeria, and even if there are 60 political parties, the annual subvention to them is a paltry sum of N360,000,000 per annum. Dear readers, this amount is a miserable 0.6% of what the 469 law-makers take home per year. In the perverse wisdom of our lawmakers, the country must save N360 million naira in order to kill opposition parties and so make Nigerian a one – party state – while not saying so in words.
In comparison, a political party consists of its National Executive Committee, National Working Committee and members across the length and breath of Nigeria. By law, parties are expected to be nationally spread and to have state chapters in at least 24 states of the country. Political parties provides platform to aspirants to political offices and as such, they are agents of change to the society. They alerts the voting public of the hidden agenda of the ruling party, the defects in every proposed public policy or programme and so, puts government on their toes. They challenge unjust legislations and informs the public of their negative implications. They enlighten their members and the general public of their rights and privileges as citizens of Nigeria. They fight for their members who may fall victims of unjust laws and inhuman actions of government and its agencies. They mobilize their members for voters registration exercise and prepare them ready for elections. They publicize their manifestoes and programmes so as to convince voters of their desirability. They provide voters and aspirants with alternative choices which is a cardinal issue in multi-party democracy. Above all, they give practical expression to the universal law of freedom of association which enables individuals who are aggrieved with their parties to choose another party to give vent to their ideas and ideologies. These among many others, are what political parties stands for and does.
But the PDP as the current ruling party wants to deprive Nigerians of alternate choices while helping itself from the public treasury. If parties are deprived of subvention, the only beneficiary will be the PDP whose members in government and in parliament earns billions of naira as elected and appointed public officials. If this is not a monopoly, nothing else is. Even if the PDP only takes their funding from their appointed and elected officials who are paid from public coffers, it still amounts to using tax payers money – for their jumbo salaries are paid by the collective wealth of all Nigerians!.
So, the argument that political parties should be deprived of subvention in order to make them independent is puerile if the ruling party is funded directly or indirectly from the public treasury.
Since the days of the NRC and SDP when the government of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida fully funded the two parties, Nigerians have come to believe that political parties need not tax them as members since they receive subvention from government. And besides, what is N6 million to a political party whose members and supporters runs into millions?
Even if a party consists only of its officials and some 10,000 people, the number involved will be about 602,000 people as compared to 469 people! What we are saying is: how just is a system or law that allows 469 legislators to take home the sum of N148,145,000 million each while 602,000 Nigerians are given less than N600 per annum? And yet, this is now to be taken away from them to satisfy the greedy appetite of law-makers? Who is more deserving of public funds: the legislators or the political parties?
As if all these are not stupefying enough, the House of Representative members are now asking for a review of their allowances such that each member will go home with a minimum of N42 million per quarter, which amounts to N168 million per member per annum! And above all, our lawmakers led by the Senate President is canvassing an automatic tickets for themselves in 2011 – for which reason they started the allowance review agitation.
Can the Nigerian economy afford this jumbo salaries for less than 500 Nigerians? A job which is of a part-time nature than a full time job is not expected to attract even one-tenth of what they are currently earning.
If the legislative arm of government is paying so much to themselves, only God knows what the Presidency and the Governors are paying themselves!
It is time political parties and civil society groups on behalf of the tax payers protest and seek to halt any further increase in legislators’ allowance and enforce the continued payment of enhanced subvention to all registered political parties. That is one vital way to deepen democratic practice in Nigeria.
The legislative arm of government consists of two chambers: the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate. While the House has 360 members, the Senate has 109. In all, the National Assembly has 469 members.
Reliable sources has it that as at May 2010, each member of the House takes home some N35,000,000 every quarter of 3 months while Senators carts home some N45,000,000 for the same period. By simple arithmetic, each House member takes home N140,000,000 per annum and each Senator, the sum of N180,000,000 per year. These does not include assorted allowances which also runs into millions of naira.
What it means is that for them agreeing to make law for us, Nigerian tax-players must cough out N50,400,000,000 billion for House members and N19,080,000,000 billion for Senators, a sum total of N69,480,000,000 billion per year! This pay regime makes the Nigerian Legislature one of the most costly in the world – in fact, it is the right place for every greedy political aspirant.
However, service delivery both in quality and quantity is about the worst in the world. Samples? Cross carpeting which was illegal and immoral is now legalized and legitimate in the wisdom of our law-makers. To them, it is not robbery to run election on the platform of one party and after being elected, you cross over to another party, thereby rubbishing the mandate given to you by a different party.
In fact, they made a futile attempt to make Nigeria a one-party State, until they were shouted out of order before they backed down. Now, while trying to decree a two-party system into existences, they placed impossible hurdles on the path of independent candidates which they pretend to have approved.
Both chambers of the National Assembly is controlled by one party with over two-third majority, which makes it easy to pass anything into law any time they so desire. Lacking in courage and principle, led by greed and gluttony, even many law-makers of opposition parties are the leading lights of these obnoxious laws. What this means is that they are ready to cross over to PDP now that cross – carpeting is made legal.
As if these iniquities are not odius enough, our law-makers now want to divest the political parties the little annual subvention of N6,000,000 million per annum. There are about 54 registered parties in Nigeria, and even if there are 60 political parties, the annual subvention to them is a paltry sum of N360,000,000 per annum. Dear readers, this amount is a miserable 0.6% of what the 469 law-makers take home per year. In the perverse wisdom of our lawmakers, the country must save N360 million naira in order to kill opposition parties and so make Nigerian a one – party state – while not saying so in words.
In comparison, a political party consists of its National Executive Committee, National Working Committee and members across the length and breath of Nigeria. By law, parties are expected to be nationally spread and to have state chapters in at least 24 states of the country. Political parties provides platform to aspirants to political offices and as such, they are agents of change to the society. They alerts the voting public of the hidden agenda of the ruling party, the defects in every proposed public policy or programme and so, puts government on their toes. They challenge unjust legislations and informs the public of their negative implications. They enlighten their members and the general public of their rights and privileges as citizens of Nigeria. They fight for their members who may fall victims of unjust laws and inhuman actions of government and its agencies. They mobilize their members for voters registration exercise and prepare them ready for elections. They publicize their manifestoes and programmes so as to convince voters of their desirability. They provide voters and aspirants with alternative choices which is a cardinal issue in multi-party democracy. Above all, they give practical expression to the universal law of freedom of association which enables individuals who are aggrieved with their parties to choose another party to give vent to their ideas and ideologies. These among many others, are what political parties stands for and does.
But the PDP as the current ruling party wants to deprive Nigerians of alternate choices while helping itself from the public treasury. If parties are deprived of subvention, the only beneficiary will be the PDP whose members in government and in parliament earns billions of naira as elected and appointed public officials. If this is not a monopoly, nothing else is. Even if the PDP only takes their funding from their appointed and elected officials who are paid from public coffers, it still amounts to using tax payers money – for their jumbo salaries are paid by the collective wealth of all Nigerians!.
So, the argument that political parties should be deprived of subvention in order to make them independent is puerile if the ruling party is funded directly or indirectly from the public treasury.
Since the days of the NRC and SDP when the government of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida fully funded the two parties, Nigerians have come to believe that political parties need not tax them as members since they receive subvention from government. And besides, what is N6 million to a political party whose members and supporters runs into millions?
Even if a party consists only of its officials and some 10,000 people, the number involved will be about 602,000 people as compared to 469 people! What we are saying is: how just is a system or law that allows 469 legislators to take home the sum of N148,145,000 million each while 602,000 Nigerians are given less than N600 per annum? And yet, this is now to be taken away from them to satisfy the greedy appetite of law-makers? Who is more deserving of public funds: the legislators or the political parties?
As if all these are not stupefying enough, the House of Representative members are now asking for a review of their allowances such that each member will go home with a minimum of N42 million per quarter, which amounts to N168 million per member per annum! And above all, our lawmakers led by the Senate President is canvassing an automatic tickets for themselves in 2011 – for which reason they started the allowance review agitation.
Can the Nigerian economy afford this jumbo salaries for less than 500 Nigerians? A job which is of a part-time nature than a full time job is not expected to attract even one-tenth of what they are currently earning.
If the legislative arm of government is paying so much to themselves, only God knows what the Presidency and the Governors are paying themselves!
It is time political parties and civil society groups on behalf of the tax payers protest and seek to halt any further increase in legislators’ allowance and enforce the continued payment of enhanced subvention to all registered political parties. That is one vital way to deepen democratic practice in Nigeria.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
WILL THERE BE ELECTION IN 2011?
During his maiden visit to the United States of America as acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan promised to sanitize the Nigeria’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC as a prelude to an electoral reform. President Yar’Adua had made the same promise and in fact, set up the Justice Uwais Committee whose report government have mutilated with a White Paper.
Given the fact that Jonathan’s regime is a continuation of the P.D.P’s government initially headed by the Late President Yar’Adua, it could be said that nothing has changed both in character and contents of a regime which admitted that they rigged themselves into power. We all know that there is always a long journey between a promise and its fulfillment, depending on the integrity of he who made the promise.
No one can honestly vouch for President Jonathan’s integrity with regards to political fidelity since his track-record does not contain a national outlook. Even at the regional level, he was not a frontline leader as Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State and was made a Governor after a disgraceful impeachment process of his boss.
The implication is that we are having a President, whose ascension to power at each level was based on dubious premises, having become so on the doctrine of necessity! That he was now made so upon the death of Yar’Adua has not made his rise to power a conventional one. But this is not a commentary on his personal character.
Now, the question: will President Jonathan reform the electoral process before the 2011 election? My answer is: There will be some cosmetic reform but not good enough to give the country a free and fair election. This is because the character and behavior of the ruling People’s Democratic Party in its 12 years hold on power does not give any reasonable person the hope that they really want a reform.
Again, if President Jonathan is going to run in the race of 2011, he would not be committed to a wholistic electoral reform. And all index points to the possibility that he will run, and so no one should expect him to do anything that will not confer advantages on him and his party.
The truth is that Professor Maurice Iwu has dealt a mortal blow on the integrity of INEC, and bastardize the institution so much that it is incapable of conducting a good and acceptable election. There are three reasons for this. The first is the level of corruption which has permeated the entire commission by way of orientation of the personnel, inflation of contracts, poor quality of materials, out-right bribery and misappropriation of public funds.
The second reason is its politicization. All Commissioners and Chairman were card-carrying members of PDP. Will the senior administrative personnel be any different? Every process is influenced by, and manipulated to favour the PDP. The perception of the average Nigerian is that INEC as presently constituted can never conduct free and fair election. This perception is buttressed by INEC’s track records and therefore, unless there is a complete overhaul and reform of the process and the institution, this perception remains very correct and legitimate.
The third reason is that there can be no free and fair election in the absence of a good voters list; and there is no such thing as a voters register as what they have is a concoction of fictitious names not related to anyone that exists. INEC has four years to compile a good voter’s register but because they always want to create roadblocks, bobby traps and silly excuses to enable them rig elections in favour of their own party, nothing was done on the voters register until now. Even when they attempted to recruit registration officers in March 2010, their administrative ineptitude was on display as they aborted the exercise due to poor logistics and planning. An organization which cannot handle its own recruitment exercise, a mere routine work, can certainly not handle a massive general election!.
By the 2006 Electoral Act, registration and update of voters is expected to be a daily and routine exercise and INEC had between 2007 and 2010 to have made ready an accurate voter’s register for 2011 election. Eight months to the election, no one can say when and how a good voters list can be made by INEC. Obviously, any such register at this time will be worse than useless because it will be a product of abracadabra, as usual.
In as much as God will not come down to do voters list and conduct election for us and since those who are legally charged to do so refuses to do it, when shall we have a good election?
As usual, regional, religious and ethnic power blocks are jostling for advantage in the power calculus of 2011. Most of them do not care or mind how they secure such advantages provided they succeed. In addition, personal and group ambition gets more consideration than the general good of the people. And so, where do we go from here?
Given the foregoing scenario and realities, I am inclined to assert that there may not be a general election in 2011. If by any magic one is conducted, it will be a voodoo do-or-die election, courtesy of Obasanjo – which result would have been officially written and known months before the sham. The ruling cultists knows the docility, disunity and the legendary cowardice of Nigerians so well that they will be bold enough to foist another ‘doctrine of necessity’ on the country. Based on this, it is more reasonable to expect a campaign for a tenure extension for all public holders, or and actual elongation of tenure, than to expect any election. They will then appeal to Nigerians to take it for the sake of an all-along fake national unity, hinged on the dubious doctrine of necessity. Can we prevent this from happening? Will there be election in 2011? Lets watch, pray and see!
Given the fact that Jonathan’s regime is a continuation of the P.D.P’s government initially headed by the Late President Yar’Adua, it could be said that nothing has changed both in character and contents of a regime which admitted that they rigged themselves into power. We all know that there is always a long journey between a promise and its fulfillment, depending on the integrity of he who made the promise.
No one can honestly vouch for President Jonathan’s integrity with regards to political fidelity since his track-record does not contain a national outlook. Even at the regional level, he was not a frontline leader as Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State and was made a Governor after a disgraceful impeachment process of his boss.
The implication is that we are having a President, whose ascension to power at each level was based on dubious premises, having become so on the doctrine of necessity! That he was now made so upon the death of Yar’Adua has not made his rise to power a conventional one. But this is not a commentary on his personal character.
Now, the question: will President Jonathan reform the electoral process before the 2011 election? My answer is: There will be some cosmetic reform but not good enough to give the country a free and fair election. This is because the character and behavior of the ruling People’s Democratic Party in its 12 years hold on power does not give any reasonable person the hope that they really want a reform.
Again, if President Jonathan is going to run in the race of 2011, he would not be committed to a wholistic electoral reform. And all index points to the possibility that he will run, and so no one should expect him to do anything that will not confer advantages on him and his party.
The truth is that Professor Maurice Iwu has dealt a mortal blow on the integrity of INEC, and bastardize the institution so much that it is incapable of conducting a good and acceptable election. There are three reasons for this. The first is the level of corruption which has permeated the entire commission by way of orientation of the personnel, inflation of contracts, poor quality of materials, out-right bribery and misappropriation of public funds.
The second reason is its politicization. All Commissioners and Chairman were card-carrying members of PDP. Will the senior administrative personnel be any different? Every process is influenced by, and manipulated to favour the PDP. The perception of the average Nigerian is that INEC as presently constituted can never conduct free and fair election. This perception is buttressed by INEC’s track records and therefore, unless there is a complete overhaul and reform of the process and the institution, this perception remains very correct and legitimate.
The third reason is that there can be no free and fair election in the absence of a good voters list; and there is no such thing as a voters register as what they have is a concoction of fictitious names not related to anyone that exists. INEC has four years to compile a good voter’s register but because they always want to create roadblocks, bobby traps and silly excuses to enable them rig elections in favour of their own party, nothing was done on the voters register until now. Even when they attempted to recruit registration officers in March 2010, their administrative ineptitude was on display as they aborted the exercise due to poor logistics and planning. An organization which cannot handle its own recruitment exercise, a mere routine work, can certainly not handle a massive general election!.
By the 2006 Electoral Act, registration and update of voters is expected to be a daily and routine exercise and INEC had between 2007 and 2010 to have made ready an accurate voter’s register for 2011 election. Eight months to the election, no one can say when and how a good voters list can be made by INEC. Obviously, any such register at this time will be worse than useless because it will be a product of abracadabra, as usual.
In as much as God will not come down to do voters list and conduct election for us and since those who are legally charged to do so refuses to do it, when shall we have a good election?
As usual, regional, religious and ethnic power blocks are jostling for advantage in the power calculus of 2011. Most of them do not care or mind how they secure such advantages provided they succeed. In addition, personal and group ambition gets more consideration than the general good of the people. And so, where do we go from here?
Given the foregoing scenario and realities, I am inclined to assert that there may not be a general election in 2011. If by any magic one is conducted, it will be a voodoo do-or-die election, courtesy of Obasanjo – which result would have been officially written and known months before the sham. The ruling cultists knows the docility, disunity and the legendary cowardice of Nigerians so well that they will be bold enough to foist another ‘doctrine of necessity’ on the country. Based on this, it is more reasonable to expect a campaign for a tenure extension for all public holders, or and actual elongation of tenure, than to expect any election. They will then appeal to Nigerians to take it for the sake of an all-along fake national unity, hinged on the dubious doctrine of necessity. Can we prevent this from happening? Will there be election in 2011? Lets watch, pray and see!
Monday, June 7, 2010
SYMPTOMS OF A FAILED NATION-STATE
The symptoms of a failed Nation-State are quite evident in Nigeria. The Nigeria Airways Corporation died about 20 years ago. The Nigeria Railway Corporation is dead .The Nigeria National Shipping Line have had all its vessels seized abroad and so, is dead. The government or public universities are dead, what with entrenched quota system of admission based on differential cut off marks, giving rise to inequality, occultism, indiscipline, empty libraries and laboratories. The education system is obviously dead.
Electricity is worse. Public power supply has since given way to private generator cartel, crippling factories and supplying only black-out to the suffering masses. Public highways and major roads are in deplorable condition all the year round, making movement of people and goods a nightmare. Banks are there, not to grant credit and loans to hard working entrepreneurs, but to keep stolen money from public treasury. Nigeria ranks among the first ten oil producing countries in the world but to remain one of the poorest countries. Nigeria Port Authority is about the most inefficient in Africa, rotten by corruption and underhand practices. No general election has ever been free and fair since the military seized power, the worst being the 2007 general election that ushered in the administration of President Umaru(Turai) Yar’Adua.
Health-care delivery is a pipe dream as public hospitals have degenerated below consulting clinics into stinking morgues. Public libraries have no books and the National Archives has since stopped being the resipotary of important public records as if to completely erase history and reference.
AN ARMY OF OCCUPATION
National security is narrowed to the safety of the individual office holders. The armed forces are trained and given the orientation which makes them to see the civil populace as a threat to their own privileges. To all intents and purposes, they behave all the time as an army of occupation in an unfriendly territory. Like a colonial force, they are above the law and makes a show of it by brutalizing civilians, driving against traffic and disobeying every known law of the land. Someone said some time ago that Bakasssi was given to Cameroon not because the World Court says so, but because government was sure we cannot face Cameroon in a shooting war as we largely have a ceremonial army. But why then do Nigerian soldiers excel in peace keeping operations across Africa? Again, it is said that their motivation is the high allowances they get in hard currencies and the opportunity such operations offered in diamond deals and sundry looting.
Ati Zakki-Biam in Benue, Odi in Rivers (or is it Bayelsa State) and Ijaw in Delta, Bauchi and Maiduguri, the Nigeria Armed forces have demonstrated their prowess and speciality in suppressing brutally, every little dissent and genuine protest. Referring to the suppression in the West during ‘operation we tie‘ or the Tiv riot both of the First Republic is considered old-fashioned, but they represent the signpost of the nature and use of the Nigeria Army to kill and maim their own people for the comfort and safety of autocratic leaders. As coup detat specialists, they throw over and over-throw their own governments at will and when coup became unpopular, they help rig elections at polling stations in favour of their civilian counterparts- the mainstreamers. No wonder the Defense Industry Corporation specialize in producing furniture rather than military hardware.
PHYSICAL SECURITY-AN APOLOGY
Policing in the civilized world is first and foremast a local affair. It is about the physical security of the persons and the properties of the community. The duty and responsibility of the police is that of the local authority which is why the County council, the municipality and all tiers and levels of government maintain their police services. It was so in Nigeria from Independence in 1960 up to 1976 when the Generals Murtala Muhammed/ Obasanjo government foisted a central police force on the country.
The basic duty of the police is to prevent, detect, arrest and prosecute criminals and curtail their activities. The so-called Nigeria Police can hardly prevent the most petty of all crimes. They hardly know the terrain or territory they are posted for duty. They have no stake in the peace of the community since they are strangers there. Any financial provision made to equip the police is easily embezzled by their officers, thus the force either has obsolete or no equipment at all. Vehicles are hardly serviced and fueling is taken care of by motorists who are forced to pay a bribe-for merely passing the roads. There is hardly any difference between the Nigeria Police and the Nigeria armed robbers, because they are believed to exchange information, intelligence and weapons for their various operations. The hired assassin and the police are two sides of the same coin.
Which is why assassinations are so rampant and yet, never detected. No one is ever innocent with the Nigeria Police.The complainant and the accused are treated the same until one offers a bigger bribe-that determines who is really guilty or innocent. Corruption is the inspector general of the police in Nigeria.
ADMISSION OF A FAILED STATE
Alh. Balarabe Musa, Second Republic governor of old Kaduna State has asserted that Nigeria is a failed State.
In an interview with the Punch Newspaper published on November 20,2009, Alh. Musa said that every aspect of the country’s national life was negative, adding that “America will not allow the situation in Somalia to happen because it will be at their own expense”, and this is because “Nigeria is very strategic in many respects, in Africa and even in the world in terms of the size of the population, the size of the geographical area, the endowment in the country’s natural resources, in particular the oil and gas.” However , Alh. Balarabe Musa blamed the social economic system for the woes of the county. Said he:”We have a social economic system controlling all developments in Nigeria, which is based on narrow self interest. It is this system that is directly responsible for the disabling level of corruption, stealing and waste of public resources.”
“It is this system that is responsible for the fact that we have thieves running the affairs of this country. The only thing we can do to change the negative state of the Nation for good is to change the social economic system.” Well said! But is the social economic system the main cause of corruption in Nigeria?
In assessing the state of the nation at the 49th Independence anniversary, a retired civil servant, Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu in a press interview also asserted that public servants of this generation are thieves. Said he: “The southerners, in terms of patriotism are far better than the northerners because, when the Southerners steel money from the public funds, they go back to their communities and invest it so that their people will benefit but here in the North, when they steal the money, they would buy cars, continue marrying, build houses, go to Mecca for Hajj and the lesser Hajj every year hopping that he will die there. “ Thus, there is a general perception that corruption is endemic in public service, the difference being in the use to which stolen funds are appropriated. While one blame the social economic system, the other blame selfishness for corruption.
Isn’t there a cause, a root-cause for this corruption? Corruption appears to be a fall-out and one of the several symptoms of a wrong geopolitical structure and administrative system foisted on the country. What of the administrators who arrogated to themselves the sole knowledge of what political administration is all about? Now let us allow Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu answer a fundamental question: why did the Europeans choose to hand over power to Northerners? “Because they were the people who were groomed in administration for decades. They had been in administration before the British came, and when the British came, they saw the organization of government, they compared their running of government with that of Northern Nigeria and they found that the only difference was the integration or development of democracy and that was the only difference but all the rest were the same, the ability and everything.”
And from Independence in 1960, there had been 13 Heads of State or government out of which 9 had been Northerners! Out of 50 years of independence, Northerners ruled for 38 years. All these meant that if we are to accept the assertion of Alh. Adamu, the administration of the country has been in the hands of naturally talented and experienced people all this while. If so, then why the rot? Why has the nation failed or failing?
If blame is to be apportioned as to the failure of Nigeria, who takes the lion share? Even before answer is sought to this question, it is necessary that another question be posed and who will answer this question but Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu. The question? “But southerners then saw themselves as the most educated?.” “Well, education is a big name. When you talk about education, people will look at you as an enlightened person but if you go through its meaning, especially its practical application you will see the difference. Someone may go to school and get a certificate, he is educated but when it comes to test where he will apply what he has learnt, you will see the difference. That is why we have difference between the academics and intellectuals. The academic person is the person who, when taught, can even swallow, he may able to memorize Shakespeare and when he is blowing English, one might think he was not only taught but he even know Shakespeare practically, but he cannot use that knowledge to manage situation in terms of planning, execution, and especially in ability to propose how to solve a problem; because he is not an intellectual and that is why these people (the northerners) have wide horizon because they learnt from their parents, heard from their ancestors and travelled wide, unlike the southerners. So how can you measure the experience of such people that are widely travelled with the ones limited to their immediate environment? The northerners had about 1000 years administrative and political experience ahead of the southerners, so how can you even compare them?” Sunday Trust, Sept.27, 2009 pages 11 & 12. Based on the above claims, who then should be blamed for incompetence, maladministration, ineptitude-all of which have brought Nigeria to her knees? If it took 38 years to ruin a country by people with 1000 years experience in administration and it took some others only 12 years to do the same , who is more experienced?
Without much ado, Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu’s claims could be dismissed as baseless and of little value. Why? Because if after ten centuries of administrative experience , Northerners have failed to turn the North into an earlier or later Dubai, Doha or Riyad, then Alh.Adamu stands accused of making false claims. When the views of the two elder statesmen are taken and viewed dispassionately, what emerges as the main reason for Nigeria’s stagnation, corruption and near collapse is the absence of oneness, the prevalence of mutual distrust and the apparent hostilities or hatred between the so-called Northerners and the so-called Southerners. In fact, describing the people or any people with geographical tag alone is a sign of deep seated dichotomy that appears to be beyond redemption. With such rooted animosity, there can be no unity which is needed in managing common needs and services, and when forced to unite they do so for the wrong reason: to steal from the public purse for personal or selfish purpose!
In summary, if everyone is not paying lip service to Nigeria’s development, and if we have wasted 1000 years experience in public administration, is it not time to start all over again? This time, the best option is to allow the North run its affairs and the South run its affairs – all by themselves , except for common services. The North and South here is a cover-up for hundreds of ethnic nationalities many of which can exist as independent countries, but which needs only self determination or self rule within the confines of Nigeria. Can’t Nigeria be saved from collapse through geo-political and ethnic restructuring? No one was born a Northerner or Southerner, but people were born into ethnic groups with specific name identification. Why bury these names under the phony tags of Northerner or Southerners? Is it to cheat or to save some from themselves? Who is saving who, and who saves the Saviour? Who is cheating who and where are the gains of the cheat? Whatever is done for 1000 years without profit to anyone must be jettisoned for another way, method or means of doing things- by living beings!
Electricity is worse. Public power supply has since given way to private generator cartel, crippling factories and supplying only black-out to the suffering masses. Public highways and major roads are in deplorable condition all the year round, making movement of people and goods a nightmare. Banks are there, not to grant credit and loans to hard working entrepreneurs, but to keep stolen money from public treasury. Nigeria ranks among the first ten oil producing countries in the world but to remain one of the poorest countries. Nigeria Port Authority is about the most inefficient in Africa, rotten by corruption and underhand practices. No general election has ever been free and fair since the military seized power, the worst being the 2007 general election that ushered in the administration of President Umaru(Turai) Yar’Adua.
Health-care delivery is a pipe dream as public hospitals have degenerated below consulting clinics into stinking morgues. Public libraries have no books and the National Archives has since stopped being the resipotary of important public records as if to completely erase history and reference.
AN ARMY OF OCCUPATION
National security is narrowed to the safety of the individual office holders. The armed forces are trained and given the orientation which makes them to see the civil populace as a threat to their own privileges. To all intents and purposes, they behave all the time as an army of occupation in an unfriendly territory. Like a colonial force, they are above the law and makes a show of it by brutalizing civilians, driving against traffic and disobeying every known law of the land. Someone said some time ago that Bakasssi was given to Cameroon not because the World Court says so, but because government was sure we cannot face Cameroon in a shooting war as we largely have a ceremonial army. But why then do Nigerian soldiers excel in peace keeping operations across Africa? Again, it is said that their motivation is the high allowances they get in hard currencies and the opportunity such operations offered in diamond deals and sundry looting.
Ati Zakki-Biam in Benue, Odi in Rivers (or is it Bayelsa State) and Ijaw in Delta, Bauchi and Maiduguri, the Nigeria Armed forces have demonstrated their prowess and speciality in suppressing brutally, every little dissent and genuine protest. Referring to the suppression in the West during ‘operation we tie‘ or the Tiv riot both of the First Republic is considered old-fashioned, but they represent the signpost of the nature and use of the Nigeria Army to kill and maim their own people for the comfort and safety of autocratic leaders. As coup detat specialists, they throw over and over-throw their own governments at will and when coup became unpopular, they help rig elections at polling stations in favour of their civilian counterparts- the mainstreamers. No wonder the Defense Industry Corporation specialize in producing furniture rather than military hardware.
PHYSICAL SECURITY-AN APOLOGY
Policing in the civilized world is first and foremast a local affair. It is about the physical security of the persons and the properties of the community. The duty and responsibility of the police is that of the local authority which is why the County council, the municipality and all tiers and levels of government maintain their police services. It was so in Nigeria from Independence in 1960 up to 1976 when the Generals Murtala Muhammed/ Obasanjo government foisted a central police force on the country.
The basic duty of the police is to prevent, detect, arrest and prosecute criminals and curtail their activities. The so-called Nigeria Police can hardly prevent the most petty of all crimes. They hardly know the terrain or territory they are posted for duty. They have no stake in the peace of the community since they are strangers there. Any financial provision made to equip the police is easily embezzled by their officers, thus the force either has obsolete or no equipment at all. Vehicles are hardly serviced and fueling is taken care of by motorists who are forced to pay a bribe-for merely passing the roads. There is hardly any difference between the Nigeria Police and the Nigeria armed robbers, because they are believed to exchange information, intelligence and weapons for their various operations. The hired assassin and the police are two sides of the same coin.
Which is why assassinations are so rampant and yet, never detected. No one is ever innocent with the Nigeria Police.The complainant and the accused are treated the same until one offers a bigger bribe-that determines who is really guilty or innocent. Corruption is the inspector general of the police in Nigeria.
ADMISSION OF A FAILED STATE
Alh. Balarabe Musa, Second Republic governor of old Kaduna State has asserted that Nigeria is a failed State.
In an interview with the Punch Newspaper published on November 20,2009, Alh. Musa said that every aspect of the country’s national life was negative, adding that “America will not allow the situation in Somalia to happen because it will be at their own expense”, and this is because “Nigeria is very strategic in many respects, in Africa and even in the world in terms of the size of the population, the size of the geographical area, the endowment in the country’s natural resources, in particular the oil and gas.” However , Alh. Balarabe Musa blamed the social economic system for the woes of the county. Said he:”We have a social economic system controlling all developments in Nigeria, which is based on narrow self interest. It is this system that is directly responsible for the disabling level of corruption, stealing and waste of public resources.”
“It is this system that is responsible for the fact that we have thieves running the affairs of this country. The only thing we can do to change the negative state of the Nation for good is to change the social economic system.” Well said! But is the social economic system the main cause of corruption in Nigeria?
In assessing the state of the nation at the 49th Independence anniversary, a retired civil servant, Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu in a press interview also asserted that public servants of this generation are thieves. Said he: “The southerners, in terms of patriotism are far better than the northerners because, when the Southerners steel money from the public funds, they go back to their communities and invest it so that their people will benefit but here in the North, when they steal the money, they would buy cars, continue marrying, build houses, go to Mecca for Hajj and the lesser Hajj every year hopping that he will die there. “ Thus, there is a general perception that corruption is endemic in public service, the difference being in the use to which stolen funds are appropriated. While one blame the social economic system, the other blame selfishness for corruption.
Isn’t there a cause, a root-cause for this corruption? Corruption appears to be a fall-out and one of the several symptoms of a wrong geopolitical structure and administrative system foisted on the country. What of the administrators who arrogated to themselves the sole knowledge of what political administration is all about? Now let us allow Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu answer a fundamental question: why did the Europeans choose to hand over power to Northerners? “Because they were the people who were groomed in administration for decades. They had been in administration before the British came, and when the British came, they saw the organization of government, they compared their running of government with that of Northern Nigeria and they found that the only difference was the integration or development of democracy and that was the only difference but all the rest were the same, the ability and everything.”
And from Independence in 1960, there had been 13 Heads of State or government out of which 9 had been Northerners! Out of 50 years of independence, Northerners ruled for 38 years. All these meant that if we are to accept the assertion of Alh. Adamu, the administration of the country has been in the hands of naturally talented and experienced people all this while. If so, then why the rot? Why has the nation failed or failing?
If blame is to be apportioned as to the failure of Nigeria, who takes the lion share? Even before answer is sought to this question, it is necessary that another question be posed and who will answer this question but Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu. The question? “But southerners then saw themselves as the most educated?.” “Well, education is a big name. When you talk about education, people will look at you as an enlightened person but if you go through its meaning, especially its practical application you will see the difference. Someone may go to school and get a certificate, he is educated but when it comes to test where he will apply what he has learnt, you will see the difference. That is why we have difference between the academics and intellectuals. The academic person is the person who, when taught, can even swallow, he may able to memorize Shakespeare and when he is blowing English, one might think he was not only taught but he even know Shakespeare practically, but he cannot use that knowledge to manage situation in terms of planning, execution, and especially in ability to propose how to solve a problem; because he is not an intellectual and that is why these people (the northerners) have wide horizon because they learnt from their parents, heard from their ancestors and travelled wide, unlike the southerners. So how can you measure the experience of such people that are widely travelled with the ones limited to their immediate environment? The northerners had about 1000 years administrative and political experience ahead of the southerners, so how can you even compare them?” Sunday Trust, Sept.27, 2009 pages 11 & 12. Based on the above claims, who then should be blamed for incompetence, maladministration, ineptitude-all of which have brought Nigeria to her knees? If it took 38 years to ruin a country by people with 1000 years experience in administration and it took some others only 12 years to do the same , who is more experienced?
Without much ado, Alh. Muhammadu Uba Adamu’s claims could be dismissed as baseless and of little value. Why? Because if after ten centuries of administrative experience , Northerners have failed to turn the North into an earlier or later Dubai, Doha or Riyad, then Alh.Adamu stands accused of making false claims. When the views of the two elder statesmen are taken and viewed dispassionately, what emerges as the main reason for Nigeria’s stagnation, corruption and near collapse is the absence of oneness, the prevalence of mutual distrust and the apparent hostilities or hatred between the so-called Northerners and the so-called Southerners. In fact, describing the people or any people with geographical tag alone is a sign of deep seated dichotomy that appears to be beyond redemption. With such rooted animosity, there can be no unity which is needed in managing common needs and services, and when forced to unite they do so for the wrong reason: to steal from the public purse for personal or selfish purpose!
In summary, if everyone is not paying lip service to Nigeria’s development, and if we have wasted 1000 years experience in public administration, is it not time to start all over again? This time, the best option is to allow the North run its affairs and the South run its affairs – all by themselves , except for common services. The North and South here is a cover-up for hundreds of ethnic nationalities many of which can exist as independent countries, but which needs only self determination or self rule within the confines of Nigeria. Can’t Nigeria be saved from collapse through geo-political and ethnic restructuring? No one was born a Northerner or Southerner, but people were born into ethnic groups with specific name identification. Why bury these names under the phony tags of Northerner or Southerners? Is it to cheat or to save some from themselves? Who is saving who, and who saves the Saviour? Who is cheating who and where are the gains of the cheat? Whatever is done for 1000 years without profit to anyone must be jettisoned for another way, method or means of doing things- by living beings!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
THE LIMITS OF CITIZENSHIP
By Onesimus Enesi
The British Capital London had a taste of terror attacks by suicide bombers on July 6 and again on July 21, 2005 both days being Thursday, which left death, injuries and destruction on their trails.
The initial thought of security agents was the theory that some Osama Bin Laden’s disciples must have gained entry into the United Kingdom with false passports to perpetrate the mayhem. But this turned out to be wrong.
It was eventually discovered that the suicide bombers were citizens of the United Kingdom but of Arab descent, born and bred in Britain and not some immigrants who just banged on London for their nefarious activities.
The British policy on citizenship is that wherever your parent came from on planet earth, so long as they are resident in Britain and if during that period you were born there, then you are an automatic British citizen and will be treated like every English, Scot or Welsh man. It is this policy that made thousands of Arabs, Asians and Africans citizens of the United Kingdom.
In the light of the recent suicide bomb attacks by terrorists of Arab decent of British extraction, isn’t there the need to review the citizen by-residence concept as a necessity? What is the value or need for making a citizen of one whose ancestors are of a different nation and to whom alone the applicant owes eternal allegiance?
The London suicide bombers have proved that citizenship-by-residence or orientation is a fictitious creation that does not endure. It has proved that most human beings cannot or do not forget their ancestry easily nor do they play with it. How else do you disprove this if Britons of Arab descent could destroy “their own country” in retaliation for what they perceived the United Kingdom had done to Iraq?
In what practical way does the crisis in Iraq affects the British-born Arab suicide bombers, if not their feelings for their fellow Arab brethren? Is this not a confirmation that blood is ticker than water (fictitious citizenship)?
So far, there is no instance of an Arab-American; I mean American, born, bred and resident in an Arabian country who because of their outrage against the United States Foreign Policy, took to terrorism against the American State. Or are there no American who, by residence, orientation or neutralization, have become Arab citizen? Why have they not turned into suicide bombers in the U.S. or against U.S. targets in Arabia?
Again, on November 5, 2009 an American Army Officer/Psychiatrist shot dead 13 soldier/colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas U.S.A. Major Nidal Malik Hassan was an American by orientation and residence, of Arab descent and was said to have had contacts or connection with Yemen’s radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Here at home in Nigeria, the debate on the qualification of a Nigerian citizen is intermittently held when some sectional interests, are being pushed as national interest, or when such interests are resisted. Immigrants and nomads have assumed MOBILE CITIZENSHIP and acquired indigenous rights on the basis of their ethnic nationality and religious persuasion. When such assumed rights clashed with the interest of the real indigenes, what results is the incessant ethno-religious riots for which certain parts of the country have become so infamous.
Nigeria has, probably, as many Fulani as there are in Cameroon; just as our country has the largest numbers of Hausa, who are the dominant tribe in the neighboring republic of Niger. It is not disputable that most Fulani’s are nomads just as most Hausas are itinerant traders and farmers. The effect of our country’s proximity with Cameroon and Niger is that millions of immigrants from those countries have entered and keep entering Nigeria without relevant papers and have been granted automatic citizenship status by their host tribesmen whose numerical strength is thus enhanced.
It is arguable if Nigeria’s borders with the two countries are not deliberately made porous to allow for free entry for its obvious demographic advantage to the Hausa Fulani’s states. One disagreeable effect of this practice is that the immigrant and his host have persistently sought to make the native Nigerian into mobile citizens, just after themselves. Resistances on the part of the indigene is, most always, viciously visited with fatwa. Another embarrassing effect of their practice is exactly opposite that of mobile citizenship which is non-citizenship as in the case of the Bakassi people.
While Nigeria has ceded Bakassi to the Cameroon, the Fulani’s of Cameroon enjoy mobile or dual citizenship of both countries. History teaches that no citizen could give loyalty to two countries at the same time or on equal basis. As a result, their permanent loyalty or allegiance is to their ethnic nation. And here is where Nigeria is short-changed. And those who are actually cheated are other ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, except the Hausa Fulani.
What these mean is that citizenship-by orientation or by residence has become a device to swindle other nationalities of their natural and legal rights, even as it now poses enormous dangers to the peace and stability of modern nations. If fictitious citizens now threaten an old nation-state like Britain, how much more the dangers faced by Nigeria posed by people of dubious citizenship and loyalty?
If citizenship by birth or residence has been proved to be fictitious and a danger to stability, same cannot be said of CITIZENSHIP BY DESCENT. If your parents are Urhogbo, for example you cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, become Hausa Fulani, just because you were born and resident in Kano or Dutse! Never!
Citizenship by descent or by procreation is immutable, regardless of wherever you were born or resident. The act of procreation or descent knows no boundary in the sense that you are who you are if you must be identified by the offspring of who you are. Your loyalty or allegiance and kin-feelings, must of necessity, go to your ancestry and not to the people or the territory in which you are domicile. The Arabian-Britons have demonstrated this in the recent London suicide bombing just as the Hausa Fulani have proved in the incessant Kano riots.
Given the example of Kano Hausa Fulani rioters and the London Arabian-British suicide bombers, the question or factor of religion must be considered dissipationately, if justice must be seen to have been done to the vexatious practice of dual or mobile-citizenship. Most, if not all nomadic or itinerant ethnic groups are monotheist, who believes in one religion and are almost always intolerant of other religious views and practices. Therefore, the free admission of mobile or dual citizens propels antagonism of indigenous people in the same way as the host community is visted with contempt by the devilry of their guests.
In a multi-national and multi-religious nation-state such as Nigeria, especially where some major ethnic groups have cornered political and economic power, there is a limit to the exercise of mobile citizenship and dual indigeneity. The struggle by the oppressed natives to free themselves from their oppressors sets a limit to freeload nationalities feasting on other peoples’ territory and resources.
Two core issues defined the attitude and actions of suicide bombers and local hoodlums; ethnic nationality and religion. Yet these issues were glossed over by the so-called political reform conference, which ended in fiasco.
The orgy of violence visited on the people of Plateau State and indeed other minority ethnic groups by the Hausa Fulani Muslim terrorists since 1999 may be situated on the rickety geo-political structures and the decadent system of government put in place by successive military dictatorship. Any unit of government which has no coercive force under its control is not qualified to be a federating unit. Any federating unit which has no constitution of its own making is fundamentally deficient as a tier of government. And none of the 36 states has either a police force or a constitution and so they remain vassalage of the all powerful centre, and whoever controls the centre makes a slave of the so-called states.
Citizenship of such a polity or nation-state is one that cannot elicit patriotism nor deserve it since it holds no promise of security, justice or prosperity for the citizen. In fact citizenship in Nigeria is meaningless as there is no advantage in it for the indigenous people. Any immigrant is a citizen and has the added advantage of enjoying dual citizenship, provided he/she is Hausa Fulani from Niger, Tchad, Cameroon or Senegal. So what is in it for the native Nigerian?.
To deny that states in Nigeria are mere appendages of the artificial center is to remain a fool. To believe or assume that Nigeria can make progress with this structure and system is to be myopic. To expect that an angel would come and run the structure/system efficiently with equity and justice is to wait till Jesus come. It takes rare wisdom to admit failure. It needs rare courage to accept challenges. And the only sensible way forward is the PRONACO highway-via its Peoples National Conference proposed Constitution.
The British Capital London had a taste of terror attacks by suicide bombers on July 6 and again on July 21, 2005 both days being Thursday, which left death, injuries and destruction on their trails.
The initial thought of security agents was the theory that some Osama Bin Laden’s disciples must have gained entry into the United Kingdom with false passports to perpetrate the mayhem. But this turned out to be wrong.
It was eventually discovered that the suicide bombers were citizens of the United Kingdom but of Arab descent, born and bred in Britain and not some immigrants who just banged on London for their nefarious activities.
The British policy on citizenship is that wherever your parent came from on planet earth, so long as they are resident in Britain and if during that period you were born there, then you are an automatic British citizen and will be treated like every English, Scot or Welsh man. It is this policy that made thousands of Arabs, Asians and Africans citizens of the United Kingdom.
In the light of the recent suicide bomb attacks by terrorists of Arab decent of British extraction, isn’t there the need to review the citizen by-residence concept as a necessity? What is the value or need for making a citizen of one whose ancestors are of a different nation and to whom alone the applicant owes eternal allegiance?
The London suicide bombers have proved that citizenship-by-residence or orientation is a fictitious creation that does not endure. It has proved that most human beings cannot or do not forget their ancestry easily nor do they play with it. How else do you disprove this if Britons of Arab descent could destroy “their own country” in retaliation for what they perceived the United Kingdom had done to Iraq?
In what practical way does the crisis in Iraq affects the British-born Arab suicide bombers, if not their feelings for their fellow Arab brethren? Is this not a confirmation that blood is ticker than water (fictitious citizenship)?
So far, there is no instance of an Arab-American; I mean American, born, bred and resident in an Arabian country who because of their outrage against the United States Foreign Policy, took to terrorism against the American State. Or are there no American who, by residence, orientation or neutralization, have become Arab citizen? Why have they not turned into suicide bombers in the U.S. or against U.S. targets in Arabia?
Again, on November 5, 2009 an American Army Officer/Psychiatrist shot dead 13 soldier/colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas U.S.A. Major Nidal Malik Hassan was an American by orientation and residence, of Arab descent and was said to have had contacts or connection with Yemen’s radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Here at home in Nigeria, the debate on the qualification of a Nigerian citizen is intermittently held when some sectional interests, are being pushed as national interest, or when such interests are resisted. Immigrants and nomads have assumed MOBILE CITIZENSHIP and acquired indigenous rights on the basis of their ethnic nationality and religious persuasion. When such assumed rights clashed with the interest of the real indigenes, what results is the incessant ethno-religious riots for which certain parts of the country have become so infamous.
Nigeria has, probably, as many Fulani as there are in Cameroon; just as our country has the largest numbers of Hausa, who are the dominant tribe in the neighboring republic of Niger. It is not disputable that most Fulani’s are nomads just as most Hausas are itinerant traders and farmers. The effect of our country’s proximity with Cameroon and Niger is that millions of immigrants from those countries have entered and keep entering Nigeria without relevant papers and have been granted automatic citizenship status by their host tribesmen whose numerical strength is thus enhanced.
It is arguable if Nigeria’s borders with the two countries are not deliberately made porous to allow for free entry for its obvious demographic advantage to the Hausa Fulani’s states. One disagreeable effect of this practice is that the immigrant and his host have persistently sought to make the native Nigerian into mobile citizens, just after themselves. Resistances on the part of the indigene is, most always, viciously visited with fatwa. Another embarrassing effect of their practice is exactly opposite that of mobile citizenship which is non-citizenship as in the case of the Bakassi people.
While Nigeria has ceded Bakassi to the Cameroon, the Fulani’s of Cameroon enjoy mobile or dual citizenship of both countries. History teaches that no citizen could give loyalty to two countries at the same time or on equal basis. As a result, their permanent loyalty or allegiance is to their ethnic nation. And here is where Nigeria is short-changed. And those who are actually cheated are other ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, except the Hausa Fulani.
What these mean is that citizenship-by orientation or by residence has become a device to swindle other nationalities of their natural and legal rights, even as it now poses enormous dangers to the peace and stability of modern nations. If fictitious citizens now threaten an old nation-state like Britain, how much more the dangers faced by Nigeria posed by people of dubious citizenship and loyalty?
If citizenship by birth or residence has been proved to be fictitious and a danger to stability, same cannot be said of CITIZENSHIP BY DESCENT. If your parents are Urhogbo, for example you cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, become Hausa Fulani, just because you were born and resident in Kano or Dutse! Never!
Citizenship by descent or by procreation is immutable, regardless of wherever you were born or resident. The act of procreation or descent knows no boundary in the sense that you are who you are if you must be identified by the offspring of who you are. Your loyalty or allegiance and kin-feelings, must of necessity, go to your ancestry and not to the people or the territory in which you are domicile. The Arabian-Britons have demonstrated this in the recent London suicide bombing just as the Hausa Fulani have proved in the incessant Kano riots.
Given the example of Kano Hausa Fulani rioters and the London Arabian-British suicide bombers, the question or factor of religion must be considered dissipationately, if justice must be seen to have been done to the vexatious practice of dual or mobile-citizenship. Most, if not all nomadic or itinerant ethnic groups are monotheist, who believes in one religion and are almost always intolerant of other religious views and practices. Therefore, the free admission of mobile or dual citizens propels antagonism of indigenous people in the same way as the host community is visted with contempt by the devilry of their guests.
In a multi-national and multi-religious nation-state such as Nigeria, especially where some major ethnic groups have cornered political and economic power, there is a limit to the exercise of mobile citizenship and dual indigeneity. The struggle by the oppressed natives to free themselves from their oppressors sets a limit to freeload nationalities feasting on other peoples’ territory and resources.
Two core issues defined the attitude and actions of suicide bombers and local hoodlums; ethnic nationality and religion. Yet these issues were glossed over by the so-called political reform conference, which ended in fiasco.
The orgy of violence visited on the people of Plateau State and indeed other minority ethnic groups by the Hausa Fulani Muslim terrorists since 1999 may be situated on the rickety geo-political structures and the decadent system of government put in place by successive military dictatorship. Any unit of government which has no coercive force under its control is not qualified to be a federating unit. Any federating unit which has no constitution of its own making is fundamentally deficient as a tier of government. And none of the 36 states has either a police force or a constitution and so they remain vassalage of the all powerful centre, and whoever controls the centre makes a slave of the so-called states.
Citizenship of such a polity or nation-state is one that cannot elicit patriotism nor deserve it since it holds no promise of security, justice or prosperity for the citizen. In fact citizenship in Nigeria is meaningless as there is no advantage in it for the indigenous people. Any immigrant is a citizen and has the added advantage of enjoying dual citizenship, provided he/she is Hausa Fulani from Niger, Tchad, Cameroon or Senegal. So what is in it for the native Nigerian?.
To deny that states in Nigeria are mere appendages of the artificial center is to remain a fool. To believe or assume that Nigeria can make progress with this structure and system is to be myopic. To expect that an angel would come and run the structure/system efficiently with equity and justice is to wait till Jesus come. It takes rare wisdom to admit failure. It needs rare courage to accept challenges. And the only sensible way forward is the PRONACO highway-via its Peoples National Conference proposed Constitution.
CHALLENGES OF INTER-ETHNIC MARRIAGE IN A MULTI-NATIONAL SOCIETY
CHALLENGES OF INTER-ETHNIC MARRIAGE IN A MULTI-NATIONAL SOCIETY
By Vic Egberipou
In itself marriage is full of challenges which come at various stages and to almost every union. This can easily be explained owing to the fact that the two individuals had their different beliefs, traits, characters, orientation and interests. Most people naturally have a distinct picture of what their marriage or home would be. There is this expectation of perfect life, perfect home. Notwithstanding, family elders are always quick to warn that no marriage can be rosy all the time and advised to be patient when they encounter difficulties because they (difficulties) don’t last forever.
Conflicts come from time to time which are usually resolved by the two individuals but in some cases with the intervention of a third party which could be another member of the family, friend and sometimes a spiritual guardian. Scenarios like these are witnessed both in intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic marriages battling with certain fundamental issues that bring about the differences usually resulting in conflicts.
For the purpose of this piece, the focus shall be on inter-ethnic marriage especially in a multi-national society like Nigeria. From the very stage of courtship, often friends and family members begin to object to such union with “cogent” reasons, based on experiences they must have read, witnessed or heard about. Oftentimes such reasons tend to be scary as they accompany their claims with endless though important questions bothering on the family of your partner.
(a) These questions range from the ethnic group he/she comes from, emphasis is placed on area of weakness of people from that ethnic group. For the non-literate parents they are concerned with the medium for communication between the two families, especially the son or daughter in-law to be, most painfully, the would-be grandchildren. Sometimes they are visibly angry that questions bothering on family history, for example sicknesses, death, character, occupation, size of family, successes and failures cannot be fully or satisfactorily investigated. So, from the on set the parents see these as posing a very big challenge and issues that call for concern. Nevertheless, the intending couple tries painfully and sometimes unsatisfactorily to explain some of these concerns to them.
(b) Cultural differences: This brings a lot of strain in an inter-ethnic union. Naturally, the different ethnicities bring a lot of challenges and are worth it if the partners discuss and if possible study, by way of researching and reading books about the culture of the ethnic group the partner comes from.
It is indeed a lot of work but in the long run you are better informed, you would not be biased and could be in better position to educate the rest members of the family and friends who may have earlier expressed concerns.
By interaction, the intending couple learns what is expected of a son in-law. It could be by way of simple gestures, pleasantries, gifts and so on. On the part of the lady, tasks as simple as serving food to the in-laws which may require particular style, she may need to gesticulate. The husband too might be very down to earth or home-boy type who would always prefer local delicacies and soups from his area (village) these the woman must learn from the on set. Modern ladies do not find this interesting as sometimes, they find it not convenient to do but on the long run it affects the relationship not just between her and her husband, but even the relatives.
(c) Communication: Still on the question of cultural differences, the indigenous language is most times put aside for a rather neutral national language or worse still, a foreign language or the official language (English) in many homes in Nigeria. Although it is important to mention here that it is not peculiar to multi-ethnic homes yet it is understandable why it is so.
Younger women these days have to contend with especially sisters and mothers in-law over their style of dressing, she may find quite comfortable but to the in-laws, it may not reflect the symbol of “married woman” it could be interpreted to mean non submission or being uncultured if she does not cover her head all the time especially outside the house. It could be the issue of short dresses, trousers or make-ups. To the wife, she might not see it in this light. Yet this could be brought about by not just the culture but the religious doctrines and traditional beliefs of the ethnic group her husband comes from or even her own though the men usually do not encounter problems with their dressing or appearance.
In this case though, each person’s attitude towards the other’s cultural differences is what makes the difference; for the purpose of knowing more or well enough of the family or ethnic group you are to be joined with, do not hasten into the marriage.
(d) Mutual Respect: This to me is a very unique aspect which I appreciate in inter-ethnic marriage. As much as we know of the secret fears parents of both partners might entertain at some point, there seem to be higher degree of respect for each others family especially coming from two different ethnic groups. People from same ethnic group seem to take too many things for granted and it is discovered that in most cases after a while, the families begin to treat each other with some air of contempt, taking things for granted. I believe that would not be unconnected with the fact that they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Sometime economic, political or social stature of the two families could be accountable for this. These difference and attitudes bring about challenges and yet in some cases make the relationship stronger on the long run.
(e) Gender Roles: Some ethnic groups have it that women should work very hard, if not harder than the men to be able to cater for the needs of the family. There are others too who do not believe in women taking up white colar jobs not withstanding the level of western education she may have acquired. Yet another ethnic group believes that a woman sits at home to take care of the home, while making babies and “watch” them grow. In some areas it is believed that once a woman marries she takes one or two of her siblings with her and it becomes the responsibility of she and her husband to train them and even those left behind in the village. Consequently the man in this situation does not find it interesting but he is forced to comply, because that is what the tradition demands from the wife’s side. It may be alien to the man’s cultural practices and thus affects the smooth running of the home due to economic strain and lack of privacy in some cases.
(f) Sex: It is something out of place for the topic “sex” to be mentioned or even discussed among some races. It is considered a taboo. This goes a long way affecting a lot of things with one of the parties realizing it on time. For example, the man may come from an ethnic group where it is believed that a woman has no say when it comes to the number of children they should have. For this reason, the issue of child spacing or family planning becomes a serious burden on the woman who may not win the sympathy of her husband since it is not her’s to decide, but of the god’s or God. In such a union, the woman must cooperate all the time. This tells on her physically, psychologically and even the finances of the family might be affected which happens to be the case most of the time as the standard is brought below average. The woman is usually highly upset and may begin to question the religious or cultural beliefs that has brought her under such ‘bondage’.
(g) Child upbringing / parenting: Certain ethnic groups believe that children upbringing is a principal responsibility of the woman. Unpopular as this assertion may sound; it does to a large extent exists in the minds of those who believe it should be so. That is why you hear condemnation being passed on a woman whose child or children are found to be wayward or involved in some form of vices. Conflicts results in some of the cases and if the child is made to face the law, serious challenge is posed on the couple and sometimes lead to separation.
This all has to do with sometimes the involvement of the grandparents, where they interfere and stop parents from giving commensurate punishment to a child that errs. Sometimes the kinsmen or grandparents claim that a child is their forefather reincarnated, who should be treated with respect, or that a male child should not be involved in doing house chores, or that he is the only child or only male child. Taking decisions on the children in some ethnic groups are not done without the involvement of their approvals as the case may be. This really does not go down well with one of the couple who might not see the need but the partner insists that, that is how it is done.
(h) Polygamy: Women generally dread polygamous marriage apart from those who are bound to accept it as a religious obligation.
Circumstances varying from inability of the woman to bear male children sometimes bring about pressure from the in-laws or even the husband to take another wife who would bear them male children/grandchildren as they consider it a serious setback where male children are not born to the family. On medical advice too, it might be that a woman cannot and should not attempt to have more than two children, which may not augur well with the man who would say that where he comes from (ethnic background), it is a taboo to bear only two children. As such, he goes for a second wife.
(i) Money: This has a very important role to play in the lives of the individual as well as family and the couple. The presence of it makes life a lot easier but the lack of it poses so much threat to a marriage and this could challenge the authority of the man as the head of the house; thus challenging the marriage. Certain ethnic groups in Nigeria believe that a man must be made or financially reasonably stable, with much emphasis before he can be given a wife. If at some point their finances are threatened, the parents of the girl would almost suggest their daughter quits. Families constantly wobble and sometimes threaten to collapse, obviously many do daily. Modern ideologies are not helping to build homes and they pile up against our cultural values which on the long run affect marriages negatively.
In order not to over flog this issue, it is worthy of note that this is an exhaustive topic and equally relative to environmental orientation, religious beliefs, maturity, understanding and so on of the individuals. We will all agree that inter-ethnic marriages have their challenges but one can still say that it works very well. Where all necessary questions are asked and answered with sincerity of purpose by both parties; bothering on family background, each other’s pasts, family tradition, cultural values, religious beliefs. Then whatever comes up along the line would easily and maturely be managed with little or no frictions. Wow, if only there was a coping manual!
On the whole, political questions bothering on opposing ideologies or parties and denominational doctrines on religion and cultural practices which tend to emphasis or exacerbate the existing ethnic differences should be avoided in the home or be played down if unavoidable.
Above all, mutual respect and understanding of the two individuals in the union must be of high premium as they tend to take off the daily strains in marriage from their relationship. Praying together on challenging issues is of paramount importance as prayers nurtures hope and faith both of which deepens love between the couple. Parties to an inter-ethnic marriage should dwell more on the common attributes of humanity to build enduring relationship for a lasting union.
By Vic Egberipou
In itself marriage is full of challenges which come at various stages and to almost every union. This can easily be explained owing to the fact that the two individuals had their different beliefs, traits, characters, orientation and interests. Most people naturally have a distinct picture of what their marriage or home would be. There is this expectation of perfect life, perfect home. Notwithstanding, family elders are always quick to warn that no marriage can be rosy all the time and advised to be patient when they encounter difficulties because they (difficulties) don’t last forever.
Conflicts come from time to time which are usually resolved by the two individuals but in some cases with the intervention of a third party which could be another member of the family, friend and sometimes a spiritual guardian. Scenarios like these are witnessed both in intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic marriages battling with certain fundamental issues that bring about the differences usually resulting in conflicts.
For the purpose of this piece, the focus shall be on inter-ethnic marriage especially in a multi-national society like Nigeria. From the very stage of courtship, often friends and family members begin to object to such union with “cogent” reasons, based on experiences they must have read, witnessed or heard about. Oftentimes such reasons tend to be scary as they accompany their claims with endless though important questions bothering on the family of your partner.
(a) These questions range from the ethnic group he/she comes from, emphasis is placed on area of weakness of people from that ethnic group. For the non-literate parents they are concerned with the medium for communication between the two families, especially the son or daughter in-law to be, most painfully, the would-be grandchildren. Sometimes they are visibly angry that questions bothering on family history, for example sicknesses, death, character, occupation, size of family, successes and failures cannot be fully or satisfactorily investigated. So, from the on set the parents see these as posing a very big challenge and issues that call for concern. Nevertheless, the intending couple tries painfully and sometimes unsatisfactorily to explain some of these concerns to them.
(b) Cultural differences: This brings a lot of strain in an inter-ethnic union. Naturally, the different ethnicities bring a lot of challenges and are worth it if the partners discuss and if possible study, by way of researching and reading books about the culture of the ethnic group the partner comes from.
It is indeed a lot of work but in the long run you are better informed, you would not be biased and could be in better position to educate the rest members of the family and friends who may have earlier expressed concerns.
By interaction, the intending couple learns what is expected of a son in-law. It could be by way of simple gestures, pleasantries, gifts and so on. On the part of the lady, tasks as simple as serving food to the in-laws which may require particular style, she may need to gesticulate. The husband too might be very down to earth or home-boy type who would always prefer local delicacies and soups from his area (village) these the woman must learn from the on set. Modern ladies do not find this interesting as sometimes, they find it not convenient to do but on the long run it affects the relationship not just between her and her husband, but even the relatives.
(c) Communication: Still on the question of cultural differences, the indigenous language is most times put aside for a rather neutral national language or worse still, a foreign language or the official language (English) in many homes in Nigeria. Although it is important to mention here that it is not peculiar to multi-ethnic homes yet it is understandable why it is so.
Younger women these days have to contend with especially sisters and mothers in-law over their style of dressing, she may find quite comfortable but to the in-laws, it may not reflect the symbol of “married woman” it could be interpreted to mean non submission or being uncultured if she does not cover her head all the time especially outside the house. It could be the issue of short dresses, trousers or make-ups. To the wife, she might not see it in this light. Yet this could be brought about by not just the culture but the religious doctrines and traditional beliefs of the ethnic group her husband comes from or even her own though the men usually do not encounter problems with their dressing or appearance.
In this case though, each person’s attitude towards the other’s cultural differences is what makes the difference; for the purpose of knowing more or well enough of the family or ethnic group you are to be joined with, do not hasten into the marriage.
(d) Mutual Respect: This to me is a very unique aspect which I appreciate in inter-ethnic marriage. As much as we know of the secret fears parents of both partners might entertain at some point, there seem to be higher degree of respect for each others family especially coming from two different ethnic groups. People from same ethnic group seem to take too many things for granted and it is discovered that in most cases after a while, the families begin to treat each other with some air of contempt, taking things for granted. I believe that would not be unconnected with the fact that they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Sometime economic, political or social stature of the two families could be accountable for this. These difference and attitudes bring about challenges and yet in some cases make the relationship stronger on the long run.
(e) Gender Roles: Some ethnic groups have it that women should work very hard, if not harder than the men to be able to cater for the needs of the family. There are others too who do not believe in women taking up white colar jobs not withstanding the level of western education she may have acquired. Yet another ethnic group believes that a woman sits at home to take care of the home, while making babies and “watch” them grow. In some areas it is believed that once a woman marries she takes one or two of her siblings with her and it becomes the responsibility of she and her husband to train them and even those left behind in the village. Consequently the man in this situation does not find it interesting but he is forced to comply, because that is what the tradition demands from the wife’s side. It may be alien to the man’s cultural practices and thus affects the smooth running of the home due to economic strain and lack of privacy in some cases.
(f) Sex: It is something out of place for the topic “sex” to be mentioned or even discussed among some races. It is considered a taboo. This goes a long way affecting a lot of things with one of the parties realizing it on time. For example, the man may come from an ethnic group where it is believed that a woman has no say when it comes to the number of children they should have. For this reason, the issue of child spacing or family planning becomes a serious burden on the woman who may not win the sympathy of her husband since it is not her’s to decide, but of the god’s or God. In such a union, the woman must cooperate all the time. This tells on her physically, psychologically and even the finances of the family might be affected which happens to be the case most of the time as the standard is brought below average. The woman is usually highly upset and may begin to question the religious or cultural beliefs that has brought her under such ‘bondage’.
(g) Child upbringing / parenting: Certain ethnic groups believe that children upbringing is a principal responsibility of the woman. Unpopular as this assertion may sound; it does to a large extent exists in the minds of those who believe it should be so. That is why you hear condemnation being passed on a woman whose child or children are found to be wayward or involved in some form of vices. Conflicts results in some of the cases and if the child is made to face the law, serious challenge is posed on the couple and sometimes lead to separation.
This all has to do with sometimes the involvement of the grandparents, where they interfere and stop parents from giving commensurate punishment to a child that errs. Sometimes the kinsmen or grandparents claim that a child is their forefather reincarnated, who should be treated with respect, or that a male child should not be involved in doing house chores, or that he is the only child or only male child. Taking decisions on the children in some ethnic groups are not done without the involvement of their approvals as the case may be. This really does not go down well with one of the couple who might not see the need but the partner insists that, that is how it is done.
(h) Polygamy: Women generally dread polygamous marriage apart from those who are bound to accept it as a religious obligation.
Circumstances varying from inability of the woman to bear male children sometimes bring about pressure from the in-laws or even the husband to take another wife who would bear them male children/grandchildren as they consider it a serious setback where male children are not born to the family. On medical advice too, it might be that a woman cannot and should not attempt to have more than two children, which may not augur well with the man who would say that where he comes from (ethnic background), it is a taboo to bear only two children. As such, he goes for a second wife.
(i) Money: This has a very important role to play in the lives of the individual as well as family and the couple. The presence of it makes life a lot easier but the lack of it poses so much threat to a marriage and this could challenge the authority of the man as the head of the house; thus challenging the marriage. Certain ethnic groups in Nigeria believe that a man must be made or financially reasonably stable, with much emphasis before he can be given a wife. If at some point their finances are threatened, the parents of the girl would almost suggest their daughter quits. Families constantly wobble and sometimes threaten to collapse, obviously many do daily. Modern ideologies are not helping to build homes and they pile up against our cultural values which on the long run affect marriages negatively.
In order not to over flog this issue, it is worthy of note that this is an exhaustive topic and equally relative to environmental orientation, religious beliefs, maturity, understanding and so on of the individuals. We will all agree that inter-ethnic marriages have their challenges but one can still say that it works very well. Where all necessary questions are asked and answered with sincerity of purpose by both parties; bothering on family background, each other’s pasts, family tradition, cultural values, religious beliefs. Then whatever comes up along the line would easily and maturely be managed with little or no frictions. Wow, if only there was a coping manual!
On the whole, political questions bothering on opposing ideologies or parties and denominational doctrines on religion and cultural practices which tend to emphasis or exacerbate the existing ethnic differences should be avoided in the home or be played down if unavoidable.
Above all, mutual respect and understanding of the two individuals in the union must be of high premium as they tend to take off the daily strains in marriage from their relationship. Praying together on challenging issues is of paramount importance as prayers nurtures hope and faith both of which deepens love between the couple. Parties to an inter-ethnic marriage should dwell more on the common attributes of humanity to build enduring relationship for a lasting union.
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