Patitos Post

'and having been accepted as an indepedent state we must at once play an active part in preserving civilisation.' Tafawa Balewa, Race Course, Lagos October 1, 1960.

I know it is customary to celebrate as Nigeria hits another anniversary of her independence, but as a lover of Nigeria, the reality on the ground are so contrary to the vision of our founding fathers that it will be irresponsible of people who are aware of that vision to celebrate at this time. If you take the vision of the founding fathers of Nigeria as the goal for which we gained independence and if you take the degree to which we have attained that goal as a measure, the only conclusion to be drawn is that we have failed and the failure is principally that of leadership.

A vision is like a light house that guides a ship to land on a dark day therefore where there is a loss of vision, there will be no light and where there is no light, there is an utter darkness. So to understand why we have experienced darkness in Nigeria, we have to go back to the vision of the founding fathers of Nigeria. While there are many sources to draw on in stating this vision, in my view, the words of Alhaji Tafawa Balewa at the race course on October 1st, 1960 adequately captures the vision of the founding fathers when he said ‘But now we have acquired our rightful status, and I feel sure that history will show that the building of our nation proceeded at the wisest pace: it has been thorough, and Nigeria now stands well- built upon firm foundations…..This great country, which has now emerged without bitterness or bloodshed, finds that she must at once be ready to deal with grave international issues…..We are called upon immediately to show that our claims to responsible government are well-founded, and having been accepted as an indepedent state we must at once play an active part in preserving civilisation. I promise you, we shall not fail for want of determination. ‘

From his speech (he consulted with the premiers of the Northern,Western and Eastern Regions to get their input) we can deduce that Nigeria’s founding fathers had a vision of a country built on the firm foundations of a government that responsibly meets her citizens needs and is capable of holding her own in the committee of nations by advancing civilization.

Nothing encapsulates our failure at meeting this goal than two shocking headlines this week that we ‘celebrate’ our independence. Yesterday, as a parent I was saddened to read that the closure of our universities is to continue as we endure the longest closure of universities under a civilian administration. While we have come to accept strikes in our universities as the norm, it must be said that at Independence, our founding fathers added to the Univeristy College Ibadan four universities, The University of Nigeria, The University of Lagos, The University of Ife (now known as Obafemi Awolowo University) and The University of Northern Nigeria (now known as Ahmadu Bello University). The expectation of the founding fathers in establishing these universities was that they would be citadels of learning which would produce the knowledge workers necessary to build Nigeria up and help her play her part in ‘preserving civilization’. It was further expected that these universities will grow organically and would get better with the passage of time. But even as I feel pains over the long closure of these universities and many more which have since been added to the stable, nothing hurt me more than the headline I saw this week which screamed ‘Nigerian employers discriminate against graduates of Nigerian universities’.

This headline indicates the abysmal level that we have sunk to in Nigeria and the extent of our departure from the vision of our founding fathers who lost no time in prioritizing education upon independence. Some who are old enough will remember that foreign students including Europeans and Asians trooped to the four universities noted above during the first republic of our founding fathers. Graduates of Nigerian universities at that time were well placed to secure employment anywhere in the world but certainly in Nigeria. But here we are, fortysomething years after and our own employers of labour have so evaluated the products of our universities and now discriminate against them in favour of graduates from European, Ghanian and South African universities.

The other headline that cut me to my marrow screamed ‘Mass failure:’only 10% passed NECO exams’. As someone who has invested heavily in education in Nigeria, I can say that nothing has shocked me out of my reverie as much as this headline. Why? Let me explain. Because I am a keen advocate of the maxim that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it I have a personal library where I store Nigerian papers dating as far back as the 1950s and I have a newspaper from the first republic where the late Alvan Ikoku while he was serving on the board of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) was quoted as expressing his disappoinment at the percentage of students who passed their school leaving exams (41%) and stating that this was unacceptable. If 41% was unacceptable to Alvan Ikoku in 1965, how can 10% be endured in the year 2009!

There are many areas we can cite to show the failure of leadership in Nigeria, but nothing is as tragic as the failure of leadership in education. Nigeria is a poor nation that has the potential to be rich, but we can never become rich except we educate our people and banish ignorance from our borders. Just recently we were reminded of what ignorance can cost with the boko haram crisis where vulnerable people were taken advantage of by a charsimatic young man to take arms against the state of Nigeria and further ridicule our attempt at rebranding Nigeria to the outside world. For a week we endured a situation where the foriegners investors who are the targets of our rebranding campaign watched the orgy of violence in display in Nigeria and probably said to themselves ‘this could be me’. The only reason these people were vulnerable is because they were illiterate.

And one would expect that the state of education in Nigeria would improve now that we have a former polytechnic lecturer as president, a former university lecturer as vice president, and a former university lecturer, ex-ASUU state chairman and ex-commissioner of education as minister for education. On the surface, this arrangement would seem like a dream team which would go ahead to fulfill the vision of our founding fathers of a nation of a country whose claims ‘to responsible government are well-founded’ and is holding its own in the universal effort of ‘preserving civilisation’ and advancing it. Rather with the recent ‘boko haram’ crisis, some in the international community have openly (but inaccurately) described Nigeria as a nation where the government and some citizens seek to advance backwardness and it is hard to fault them even though I know they are wrong because in this modern age of youtube, perception is reality.

I can not at this time find it within myself to celebrate because I have disciplined myself to reserve celebrations for the achievements of set goals, but as the government of president Umaru Musa Yar’adua celebrates Nigeria’s 49th independence anniversary, I want to seize this opportunity to remind the government that as the first Nigerian administration that is headed by a graduate much is expected of it and if this administration fails to move Nigeria forward given the high education profile of its principal officers, Nigeria and Nigerians will have very little to say against the next false messiah who arises and says that ‘boko’ , book or ‘bukuru’ is haram, because he will point to this administration as the justification for the argument. As the president is well aware, the global trend, even in totalitarian regimes, is to expand education (president Yar’adua got a visual of this when he joined King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia in opening a brand new university of technology last week). President Yar’adua comes from a long line of achievers considering that his father was a first republic minister and his brother was Chief of Staff to general Obasanjo, so he is no doubt conscious of history and his place in it. Those who sorround him may want to remind him that while history will record that as at today president Yar’adua has not added to the number of Nigeria’s universities, he will however go down as the leader who presided over the longest closure of Nigerian universities during a civilian administration.

Once again, God Bless Nigeria.

PU

The Senate recently said Justice Uwais Committee’s Electoral Reform recommendations are not sacrosanct. But you and I know how necessary those recommendations are for the conduct of genuine elections. We saw what happened in Ekiti where INEC could not conduct genuine elections in just 10 Local Government Areas of one state. How then can they be expected to do so nationwide in 2011? Despite President Yar’adua’s promises, we have seen no real electoral process change since 2007. That needs to change!

If we want power in our country and truly free and fair elections, we need to demand it. Whatever your party, politics, region, or religion, we can all join together and demand that our system of government addresses the people’s needs and forges a better future for all of us.

Please sign the petition, demanding implementation of the Uwais Committee’s Electoral Reform plan. We will deliver this petition to the Senate and President.

Click here to sign the petition now. Then send it to all of your friends and family, and have them sign it too.

This past week has left me wondering whether I am really living in the coutry where I was born and which has produced such great minds as Wole Soyinka, Uthman Dan Fodio, and Chinua Achebe, or if I am existing in some parallel universe? The current state of our national leaders, their utterances and actions begins to make me wonder if somehow ‘comical Ali’ of Saddam’s Iraq has possessed those in authority in Nigeria. I say this because some of their comments and actions are so outlandish that one wonders how they can say and do these things with a straight face.

Take for instance our president. Perhaps the most important gathering of all world leaders is taking place in New York today as the United Nations General  Assembly meets. A spot has been reserved for all major world leaders to address the General Assembly and later to have audience with the U.N Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and then with U.S president Barack Obama. This meet had been planned well in advance and Nigeria being a prominent nation in Africa was expected to have a prominent slot. But the president has at the last minute canceled his appearance and sent his minister of Foreign Affairs to represent him which is not so bad. But what is troubling is that after indicating that he is unable to go to the U.N, the president  proceeded to announce that he would be visiting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the invitation of King Abdullah to (wait for it) ‘participate in the opening of the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and meet with the Nigerian community’. What is the sense in canceling the A list diplomatic event of the year which would serve to reinforce Nigeria’s claim to African leadership, more so as we aspire to a United Nations Security Council permanent seat, for a formal visit that could have been rescheduled with no harm done to Nigeria’s image and standing as a leader in Africa?

And is it not sad that while Nigerian universities are not on session because of the longest ASUU strike in a civilian administration, our ’servant leader’ is going to another country to open a university? Is the irony lost on him? Even if it is can his advisers not look him in the face and tell the truth to power? One hopes the Saudis are not mocking the president by inviting him to open a university. In diplomatic circles, a reproach is often disguised as a honour.

This was the same attitude displayed by the  president  when he took off for a routine visit to Brazil when his country Nigeria was on fire during the ‘boko haram‘ crisis. Tell me is this the level of statesmanship expected to propel Nigeria to achieve its vision of being the world’s 20th biggest economy by the year 2020?

As it is with the president, so it is with his Inspector General of Police. How could the IGP have said that Ribadu never visited Nigeria after the late Gani passed? This was such a careless statement moreso coming from the head of the police who had just unveiled his vision of a police force that is intelligence driven. Now if the head of the force is not privy to intelligence report of Ribadu’s visit which even a street trader in Lagos was aware of how are we to feel confident that things will change for the better under his watch?

Not done with confusing the public, this administration sits idly while  two of the most high profile law enforcement officials give conflicting statements leaving the public unsure of who to believe. The credibility crisis between the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and the chairperson of the EFCC actually stems from the credibility crisis which affects this administration. It however is not too surprising that since  the administration came into being via an election which the president himself publicly admitted had credibility problems the functionaries and appointees also have credibility problems because it is difficult to give out what you do not have?

For instance, we have a president who promised us electoral reforms and set up the Justice Uwais Electoral Reforms Committee, and 5 months after the committee submitted its recommendations those recommendations have been put to no better use than to gather dust. Meanwhile the senate has described the recommendations as not being sacrosanct while PDP is selling gubernatorial expression of interests forms for the princely price of 5.25 million naira.

Some may also recall the president saying to the BBC just before he was sworn in in May, 2007 that ‘if my son or my father is found to be corrupt, they will not be spared’* (Please see below for link to this quote). It is ironic that after giving this assurance the president is now in a situation in which the man who is in charge of his mail and correspondence, who watches over confidential matters of state has been alleged by the British Crown Prosecutor’s office to have been involved in money laundering. And yet nothing is done. In fact Nigerians may be forgiven if they think that this is a non issue as far as the president is concerned.

Just as I thought the week had produced enough drama, I was shockingly undeceived when the news emerged that a government which parrot’s the mantra ‘rule of law’ had denied Nasir el’Rufai a passport, which as at the last time I checked was a fundamental and automatic right of any Nigerian citizen, even where such a citizen is seen as an enemy by the powers that be.

And so Nigeria watches helplessly as the drama unfolds and some will perhaps ask what happened to their president who promised to be a ’servant leader’.

I close with this: History will forgive a leader who makes bad decisions, but can history forgive a leader who makes no decisions?

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU.

For President Yar’adua’s quote-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6692725.stm

It has been said that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. This is particularly true of the Nigerian situation. We as a people have been so caught up in the rat race of survival that we have failed to take any notice of the regular recurrence of ethnic and religious crises in the country. Some have even become used to these clashes and have accepted it as a way of life. But the truth is that most if not all of these clashes are avoidable if we will only learn the lessons from the last one. But alas, our attitude is to heave a sigh of relief as soon as the crisis is contained and make some noise in the media, then forget about it after blaming it on one or two scapegoat individuals and proceed to move on with our lives as if nothing happened. Until the next crisis.

However, if we had only taken some time to reflect on the last crisis, we would have learnt lessons that would affect our behaviour and prevent the next crisis. But time and again, our leadership has shown that it has not the consistency to sustain the the process of resolving the remote and not so remote causes of these crises.

Now for instance, it would be recalled that that there was a religious/Ethnic crisis in Kaduna in 2000, and that as a result of that crisis the government set up a commission of inquiry to determine the causes of that crisis and prevent a re occurrence. However if you recall, little or nothing was done to implement that report of this commission and most importantly those behind the crisis were never unmasked nor punished and I vividly recall one of the members of that commission stating that if the previous report of the commission of inquiry that looked into the Zangon Kataf crisis in the 80s had been implemented, it would have likely prevented the Kaduna crisis. You would expect that this type of talk would lead to some proactive action, but then we had the Jos crisis soon after.

Now Jos used to be a city known for its serene atmosphere and everyone was caught off guard by the crisis that enveloped Jos in 2001. However, when the crisis re occurred with greater casualties in 2004, the government should have had some inbuilt mechanism geared towards containing the crisis. Well the government did not and so set up another commission of inquiry to again look into the causes of that crisis. Now what steps did the government take to avoid a re occurrence of that crisis? The commission’s recommendations were again swept under the carpet and then it happened again!

This time in 2008 the orgy of violence was even worse. More people died during this crisis than the two previous crisis put together, but the most painful thing is that again this crisis was foreseeable and preventable if the government had simply implemented the recommendations from previous panels of inquiry.

But what was even worse is the amount of politics engaged in by the Federal and state government after the Jos crisis, the dilly dallying and the parallel commissions set up. What we failed to understand is that some things should be beyond politics and as the elder brother the Federal Government has to show the way by leading by example and putting national interest before politics in matters such as these.

If we had done this, then perhaps the most recent crisis, the deadly ‘boko haram‘ crisis would not have happened. But happen it did and once again Nigeria was portrayed to the outside world as a nation in turmoil with potential foreign investors watching on TV the orgy of violence as human beings were beheaded, hacked to pieces in the most barbaric manner and thinking to themselves that this could be me if I go there to invest!

So now that we have contained this latest crisis, what happens? So now what? Again, so now what?

Do we heave a sigh of relief and carry on as before and say it was all Mohammed Yusuf’s fault? Or do we do the proper thing and carry out a proper post mortem of the crisis? I am not talking about another window dressing ‘panel of inquiry’ which would again be swept under the carpet like its predecessors. No! I am talking about a fact finding effort, geared towards a level headed and sober investigation into the causes of the crisis and most important to suggest ways that MUST be implemented so that we do not have a re occurrence.

Poverty is at the root of these crises. People are feeling the pressure and the rat race is taking its toll on the masses and on top of this resources are dwindling bringing out the worst in human nature. All these may perhaps be bearable, but what is unbearable is that in the midst of such grinding poverty, with people living in sqaulor, we have a political class that is so unashamedly engaged in squandermania and an opulent lifestyle as if taunting the masses and telling them that they are in some way sub human. Little effort is made at improving the standard of life of the masses. Health care, education and power are at an abysmally poor state, while our elite access health care overseas, school themselves and also school their kids abroad and escape from darkness with generators.

It is this type of environment that empowers a Mohammed Yusuf and provides him with the arsenal to mislead desperately poor people into following his movement and engaging in acts of violence as they did. It is easy to convince an illiterate that since we did not have this level of corruption when we were not so Westernized, it must be that Western education is at the root of the corruption, so we must do away with it via bloodshed.

And what is the solution? Is the solution to be found in unleashing soldiers and police to crush these folk? No! That is a reaction and it is acceptable as an emergency measure, but afterwards we need to ease the burdens of the masses and remove some of the pressures they face by a heavy and sustained investment in social services . When we do this, we will find that we are not so vulnerable to these crisis. If we invest in education and have schools that are always in session and not on strike and we implement a compulsory and comprehensive education nation wide, youths who are usually used in these crisis would have better things to occupy their minds. If we invest in power, we will see a dramatic, steady and sustained rise in small and medium scale enterprises and the economy will start to expand and when people are at work, they will have little time to take offense at miss world pageants, newspaper articles, settlers and such like.

But perhaps most importantly if we have a political elite that is more responive to the people. That is able to curb some of its opulence. That can be less thieving and more service oriented and that is headed by a true ’servant leader’ who models behaviour for the masses to emulate, we will have a public that is well behaved, investor friendly and at peace with themselves and their neighbours.

Politicians can not keep having 300 million naira weddings, multi-million naira wedding anniversary bashes, long convoys of cars that regularly get involved in fatal crashes killing hapless pedestrians and multiple guest houses maintained at public expense. We can not be having a multi billion FIFA fiesta when we have majority of our population living on less than a dollar a day. We can not spend 523 billion naira on a legislature that has produced only 523  laws that have had little impact in bringing the people out of poverty. We would have to remember that society is like a pyramid and the top flows down. Very important it is to remember that fish starts to get rotten from the head.

Also, we can not expect to take the lid of the pressure cooker that Nigerians are living in if we do not tackle the issue of free and fair elections. We need to allow people freely choose their own leaders. Leaders can not have genuine influence over their people if they are imposed on them. This is why we continue to see this disconnect between the leadership and the led were the led are suffering from crumbling social infrastructure and the leaders are accessing their social services (health care, education, banking, insurance) abroad. We need to implement the Justice Uwais Electoral Reform Committee’s recommendations chief of which is that the board and head of the INEC  should not be appointed by the president but by the National Judicial Commission.

As it is with these crises, so it is with almost every aspect of our national life. In sports for instance, we perform woefully at a football, basket ball or volley ball tournament, or an Olympic games and the national mood is one of sadness. Everyone complains, but very soon, we forget about the let down and go about our normal activities and then the next tournament or Olympic games are around the corner and we start our usual ‘fire brigade’ preparations, always in crisis mode.

This is the same approach we took in the Niger Delta and now we have a full blown insurgency where we could have nipped this problem in the bud back in the 80s and 90s. We can not afford to have more Niger Delta crises around Nigeria.

Life is just like a farm, we can not plant a seed and refuse to water it, and go and play and make merry and just a few weeks to harvest time we come and start making hasty preparations, watering and manuring the crop at a time when it is too late to expect any yield from a farm that has been neglected for sooooooo long.

In closing I say to Nigeria’s current leaders that they have two choices. They can have a sober reflection on the ‘boko haram’ crisis and then do something tangible to address the causes of this incidence or they can bury their heads in the sand like the Ostrich ‘until the next crisis’.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU

PS: This blog piece was published on my blog www.patitospost.com, two days before reports of the recent shiite protest/clashes in Kaduna resulted in deaths.

Ribadu Being Received By The President of Liberia But Rejected By His Home Government

It is an embarrassment to Nigeria and Nigerians that our Attorney General and Minister of Justice who never ceases to remind us that ‘I am the chief legal officer of Nigeria’ could come out publicly yesterday to accuse Nuhu Ribadu of masterminding the recent criminal charges preferred against President Yar’adua’s Principal Private Secretary as well as some ex governors who are known to be very close to the president. How could an enlightened legal mind expect us to believe that one man manipulated the British police to the extent that they went to court, filed criminal charges and issued arrest warrants against these fellows? Someone in the executive has to advise Mr. President to urge his Attorney General to choose his words carefully. Nigeria will exist long after Mr. Aondoakaa, and it is not in our interests that this man makes a mockery of an office that will outlast him. The Attorney General is fond of mouthing the term ‘rule of law’ and he should be told that the rule of law is not something they say, but it is something that is done. In The United Kingdom, there is a long and established regime of the rule of law and it is not possible for an individual to manipulate their sophisticated police which has a whole department that specializes in forensic accounting and are able to trace funds to their origins.

The question may be asked of Mr. Aondoakaa that if he wants Nigerians to swallow the line that Ribadu is responsible for the charges against Mr. President’s confidantes, is he also to blame for the Haliburton scandal, or the Siemens Bribery scandal? The Americans have thrown their own citizens involved in the Haliburton bribery scandal in jail and our Attorney General had nothing more to offer on this issue than that he had released 50 million Naira for the committee to do its work but that they have been slowed down by the retirement of the former IGP, Mr. Okiro. The question is this-was Mr. Okiro’s retirement a surprise? Why should his retirement stop his committee from operating? The rest of the world listens to Mr. Aondoakaa when he say these things and he should be mindful of the ramifications of what he says as ‘the chief legal officer of Nigeria’. Need I remind my readers that the Germans who were likewise involved in the Siems bribery scandal have like the Americans being severely punished while the world awaits Nigeria’s reaction.

Nuhu Ribadu is in my view a true Nigerian hero, who has honour and acts in a very dignified manner. My readers may have observed that when Gani Fawehinmi died, Ribadu at great personal risk to himself returned to Nigeria and personally went to Gani’s home in Ikeja to condole with the family he left behind as well as going to the Ikeja mortuary to pay his last respect to this other great patriot. In the history of Nigeria, as far as my memory serves me, I know of only three men who have returned to the country when they had been accused in absentia of crimes that carried weighty sentences or faced extreme persecution. One of them is Olusegun Obasanjo who was accused of treason by the late Abacha while he was on a visit to Copenhagen, Denmark, and had been warned by then U.S Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, by phone not to return to Nigeria otherwise he would be arrested, but return he did. The second was the late Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Tunde Idiagbon who was in far away Saudi Arabia when the government of which he was the second in command was over thrown by General Babangida who promptly arrested his boss Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Buhari. Yet he returned to Nigeria to face certain arrest and persecution. The only other person to have done this to my knowledge is Nuhu Ribadu! Returning to a country where you face persecution and arrest at the hands of those who are unable to disguise the hatred they have for you is an act of courage. A person who is that courageous is not the type of person who brings about spurious allegations.

In fact the Attorney General at his press conference threatened to sue Ribadu for defamation. I will be very glad to see this come to pass. In fact we should pray that he does take Ribadu to court for defamation and let us see how this issue plays out in court!

If ‘the chief legal officer’ of Nigeria wishes to know, he can only get the attention of local news media. His comments are not taken seriously outside the shores of Nigeria. In contrast, Nuhu Ribadu is an internationally known and respected figure who has written an OP/ED piece for the New York Times, has been received by influential world leaders (leaders who are being invited to the G8 that refused to invite some leaders for their meeting) and whose advice is still being sought after by reputable law enforcement bodies. Money is not everything in life, and I would rather my kids turn out like Ribadu than those who persecute him.

Mr. Aondoakaa has to at least make some pretence to leadership. Leadership does not stem from the office you occupy, no! It stems from your character and your personality. Leadership can be summarized as your level of influence. The true test of a leader is this-take away his/her office and then see how much influence the person has without the office. Ribadu was stripped of his office as chairman of the EFCC , yet he continues to maintain and even increase his influence. He has been received by more foreign leaders, being consulted by more world bodies, has addressed more parliaments and has been more talked about now than when he had the office of EFCC chairman. This makes it clear that Ribadu’s leadership qualities were innate and not derived from the office he occupied.

Now reverse this if you would. I want my readers to ask themselves the question-how much influence will Michael Aondoakaa have if he were no longer the Attorney General? If as Attorney General he has by his own admission been unable to secure the cooperation of certain bodies overseas the question may even be asked how much of an influence does he have even while still in office? How influential can Aondoakaa be when two days after he made the ill advised statement that the EFCC has cleared those concerned the EFCC itself came out to deny his claim in a press release it circulated to media outlets stating that it had not cleared those persons. Between the EFCC and The Attorney General who is lying? In the said press release, the EFCC said inter alia that ‘it is inappropriate to input or infer that the three former governors have been exonerated’. The inappropriate statement referred to in the EFCC statement were those of the Attorney General in which he said also inter alia that ‘ at the time the request was made the EFCC had cleared the former governors’.   What does it say of a man’s leadership abilities when his subordinates publicly call him to order? What is it they said again about a house divided against itself? Not stopping at that, Mr. Aondoakaa also described Ribadu as a ‘cheap blackmailer who is trying to embarrass the federal government’. I ask the public to judge who between Ribadu and Aondoakaa is actually embarrassing the federal government. As Margaret Thatcher once said, being influential and powerful is just like being a woman, if you have to tell people that you are a woman then obviously you are not a woman because being a woman is an obvious thing. In the same vein, if you have to tell people that you are powerful (by repeatedly stating in public that you ‘are the chief legal officer of Nigeria’) then you really are not powerful.

People of influence naturally command respect, they radiate confidence, they have power over themselves, they also know and know that they know and this compels people to give them the respect they deserve. People who demand respect are only borrowing power and influence that they do not have!

I often tell people that Ribadu reminds me so much of the present Attorney General, but not for the reasons you may think. Like Ribadu, Aondoakaa also is intelligent, has passion and drive, but while these qualities displayed by Ribadu are governed by conscience, those of the Attorney General appear to be governed by ego and the need to constantly remind us of his status as though we will forget. To Michael Aondoakaa, I say this out of love for Nigeria and not to spite you. I honestly believe that your potential to do good and achieve a lot for Nigeria will be helped if you temperately have a sober reflection on your motives.

Those who are close to President Yar’adua should advise him that the buck stops at his table. It is a very dangerous thing in the eyes of our creator to persecute a good man. It is not something to be done lightly. Mr. Aondoakaa is threading a path that even angels fear to thread! Here is a young man who has in the past one year being honoured by several countries and has had the privilege of addressing the U.S Congress, The Sudanese Parliament (The U.S and Sudan being countries who can not agree diplomatically, yet have agreed to honour Ribadu) , and has recently being a guest of the Liberian Government where he helped set up their anti corruption bodies was received by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf . Yet at home he receives threats and accusations from our ‘chief legal officer’.

I knew in my mind that the powers that be were going to react to Hilary Clinton’s recent comments that ‘the EFCC has fallen off in the last two years’, but being reactionary has never helped anyone. Better to be proactive, call a spade a spade, accept that the chickens are coming home to roost and stop burying heads in the sand like the ostrich. You can fool some people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time.

The Attorney General was recently at the Valedictory Session held in honour of the late chief Gani Fawehinmi of blessed memory. He heard all the positive tributes given by friends and foes on the virtues that Gani lived and died for. My advise to the Attorney General is for him to begin with the end in mind. He should visualize that one day we will all be in Gani’s position where we will be no more and people will gather to give speeches about what we were like while we walked this earth. It is what we do, say and create while still alive that will guide what people will say when we die. Do we want to gain the whole world and the friendship of powerful villains by fighting and attacking the just or do we want to speak the truth to power. Being the ‘chief legal officer of Nigeria’ as he regularly reminds us does not consist of making intemperate statements that only serve to portray Nigeria in bad light. It consists of being the ‘chief conscience’ of Nigeria and custodian of her laws.

There are many genuine injustices occuring in Nigeria  that should rouse the anger of the Attorney General but this issue is not one of them. Mr. Aondoakaa should be angry at the injustice of the life sentence meted out to the 27 soldiers who were protesting the non payment of their allowances after serving their fatherland meritoriously on a United Nations assignment while nothing is done to those who embezzled their pay which was the root of their grievance. As the ‘chief legal officer’ he could task himself with unravelling the identity of the killers of his predecessor the late Cicero, Bola Ige. He could also direct his energies to seeing that the Justice Uwais Committee’s recommendations on electoral reform are implemented and write his name in gold. If he does this, I am sure he will not have to regularly remind us of his status.

And for the rest of Nigeria, my question to you is this-do we want to be like Nicodemus who knew who Jesus really was and believed in him, but who would only visit him at night because he loved the respect of men more than that of God? As the late Martin Luther said ‘in the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends’.

Once again, God bless Nigeria.

PU

If you are tired of things the way they are, I want to encourage you to do something. Register to vote, identify credible people at all levels, vote in 2007, and guard your votes!

1. Register to Vote
2. Encourage others to Register to Vote
3. Vote at elections
4. Encourage others to do so
5. Guard and defend your votes
6. Encourage others so to do.

Nigeria will change if we grow democratically in a continuum of maturity, from dependence, to independence, to interdependence. PU.

The headline in today’s papers which quotes the Senate Constitution Review panel as stating that the Justice  Uwais Committee on Electoral reform is not binding on it is a cause for concern because discerning members of the public will agree that the recommendations of the committee are actually what Nigeria needs if it is ever to have genuine free and fair elections.  So why is the Senate not keen on it?

Nigerians as a people and particularly the middle class has shown a remarkable apathy to politics and the way they are governed. We show more concern for European soccer than for the manner Nigeria is governed and this apathy is the reason why the Senate which ought to represent the aspirations of the members of the individual constituencies of each senator will show such disinterest in this panel whose recommendations have proved to be popular among Nigerians. They know that judging from the past, there will be no consequence in their taking this unpopular stance.

I said recently on my facebook profile that Nigerians have to insist on free and fair elections and should be willing to do everything possible including guarding their votes in the face of desperate politicians and their thugs and security forces that may assist them in the practice of rigging and I received several emails supporting my view as well as some castigating me for calling for Nigerians to be willing to pay the ultimate price to insist on genuine elections. In one of my responses to these emails, I reminded a particular young man that the obsession Nigerians have for European Premiership clubs is the attitude that they should also have for how they are governed. How many times have we heard of young Nigerians being so passionate after watching their teams lose to the extent that they engage in fights sometimes leading to loss of life which in itself is sad and condemnable. But if Nigerians are willing to physically engage themselves when their favourite European team wins or loses why shouldn’t we channel this passion to how we are governed? Moreso as our devotion to European soccer does nothing to add or diminish the status of those clubs. However, devotion, watchfulness and vigilance to how we are governed will have a direct impact on the quality of governance that Nigeria will have and definitely if we were so involved and devoted to the political process we will not have the Senate (on which Nigeria has spent 523 billion naira on since 1999 with only 523 laws passed in the same period) saying that the Uwais Committee Recommendations are not binding because they will know that such a view is unpopular and will have consequences.

I have said time and again in public that Nigeria is and will be what we make it. We can not expect Hilary Clinton to come and fix what is wrong with Nigeria even though she volunteered to say publicly that Nigeria suffers from ‘a failure of leadership at all levels’. We are the ones to solve this failure of leadership. It will not happen if we do not do it. There is no benevolent spirit that will come to break our kola nut for us. God has made us sufficient enough to stand and yet free to fal. Standing or falling then becomes a choicel and so far we have not stood up enough.

I want to encourage my readers to do something no matter how small. I want you to write to the senator representing your senatorial Zone and tell him/her that you support the Justice Uwais Committee’s recommendation. For those who do not know or who may have forgotten, the Uwais Committee was set up by president Yar’adua after he publicly acknowledged that the election which brought him to power was flawed. The committee was tasked with making recommendations as to how to reform Nigeria’s electoral practice and came out with several suggestions of which the most significant where that the president should give up the power to appoint the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its board and that this power should be ceded to the National Judicial Committee.

If this recommendation is accepted it is obvious that it will be difficult if not impossible to have a biased INEC as we have seen. Now why has the federal government which set up the committee been slack to adopt its own committee’s recommendation? Your guess is as good as mine. However we should know that everyone is presumed to intend the reasonable consequences of his actions. But one thing I want us to know is that it amounts to insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. We complained about the 2007 election held simultaneously accross the nation. We saw the fraudulent results of the election. We have not changed INEC one bit and it is still the same INEC that conducted the 2007 election nationwide that exists today. Now this same INEC held elections in just ten Local Government Areas of Ekiti and the conduct of these elections were the same as the 2007 elections and were  fraught with violence, killings, ballot stuffing and voter intimidation.

The million naira question is this. If INEC as it is presently constituted can not hold genuine free and fair elections that reflect the will of the electorate in one part of a small state, how can they conduct a free and fair election  simultaneously nationwide in 2011? The follow up question will be this-does it not amount to insanity to expect the same INEC which has performed so poorly to conduct the 2011 elections and have a different result when nothing has changed within INEC?

Once again, I urge my readers to please care enough about the future of Nigeria to write your senator and request that he/she support the Uwais recommendations. In your letter remind your senator that he/she is representing you and your community and should therefore reflect the aspirations of your community. Do not feel that this will be an exercise in futility. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Senators know that they have a smaller pool of voters than the president and the governors and that if one voter cares enough about an issue to write about it then there are many more who care about it but are unable to write. Do not think that someone else will write, remember those of us that have the ability also have the responsibility. Stand up for a better Nigeria. Address the letter to the Senator representing your senatorial zone. You can identify the senator representing your senatorial zone by visiting this site http://www.nassnig.org/senate/members.php. The letter should be addressed to your senator and sent to this address-Senate of the National Assembly, three arms Zone, Abuja FCT.

On this blog, I have written in the past that a people should not be afraid of the government but that it is the government that should be afraid of its people. But where the people have gone to sleep on their rights and display apathy towards how they are governed, how can they expect the government to be responsive. If you find your gateman always sleeping and you do not reprimand him, you do not even show any signs that you care, what motivation does your gateman have to wake up and be alive to his duty of guarding your house from armed robbers? The government is your gateman and it is sleeping, and it is up to you to wake it up!

Once again, God bless Nigeria.