Ayisha Osori

Being prepared for terrorism

2011-09-22T14:05:00.001-07:00

Last week, our National Security Adviser (NSA), Owoye Azazi said that the reason why we seem so incapable in dealing with terrorism is because we had not been prepared for terrorism. This statement is odd considering the length of time Nigerians have been dealing with the terrorism of the Niger Delta, the kidnapping enterprise, Jos & Kaduna ethno-religious crisis, the Maitastine and now Boko Haram. It is especially strange considering we have an anti-terrorism bill passed months ago in response to the Nigerian underwear bomber and the frequency of bombs going off across parts of the country over the last year. In fact, in November 2010, a new brigade was created within the Army specifically to treat the rising insecurity…yet we are still not prepared?

When does a country become prepared for terrorism and can we ever be ready to deal with the type of terrorism we have?

The issues

The reasons for terrorism are clear and well known and range from lack of transparency and accountability in governance, extreme social and economic inequality, dearth of prospects, loss of hope, desperation, illiteracy to the inability to read and interpret religious scripts/texts for ourselves. This type of terrorism is of the ‘I-have-nothing-to-loose’ strain mainly found in resource rich corruption riddled underdeveloped nations such as Nigeria.

Solutions

In the last couple of months we have seen all sorts of changes to the way we live- the bomb detecting devices which look like golf clubs to check underneath our cars, the requirement that drivers come out of their cars to open their car trunks and lately since the escalation of violence in Jos and the UN bombing on 8/26, a shoot on sight order to our already more-than-sufficiently trigger happy security forces.

We are looking for solutions and clean surfaces to paste blame in all the wrong places. Even the nature of our buildings and public facilities, according to Azazi, are cause to blame for the success of terrorism in Nigeria...could the World Trade Center buildings ever have been prepared for the terrorism they faced on 9/11?

There will be no easy solutions to the problem and it is logical to be sympathetic to any government which has to deal with terrorism but there are some things which need to start changing today in order for us to start getting a firmer grip on the wave of terrorism which threatens to drown us.

Education and literacy

An educated population will be easier to sensitise and enlighten about managing terrorism and knowing what to look for and report- especially with border control and migrant issues. Literacy helps with communicating about what to do about strange or abandoned objects and helps raise the level of discourse about the value in supporting the security agencies in protecting lives and property. The woeful state of education and literacy in Nigeria can compete for tears with any of the greatest tragedies in the world.

Improved economic & social welfare

If the lives of the average Nigerian were better, we would be more interested in the viability of our nation and thus vested in the security of property and life. When the hardships of life give existence little meaning, then we will treat life with levity. It is no secret that we have no regard for human beings – hit and run drivers are standard with pedestrians often as much to blame for accidents as drivers, dead bodies lie unreported and with the slightest provocation the machetes and matches are out. Now the importance of a national identity system is glaringly vital, but billions in resources and trillions in time have been wasted over the years from short sighted self serving governments.

Security forces

Our security forces need better education, training and increased salaries and allowances. If policemen can be enticed for as little as N100, then the terrorists will take advantage of this like everyone does. Security agencies act like Nigerians are their number one enemy – they bark, snarl at and abuse us and the daily news is filled with atrocities carried out by the men (and women) in uniform. How much more difficult could they make their work of intelligence gather? Whenever there is a report that suspects in the custody of security agents have confessed to a crime…there is always the thought which cannot be kept away no matter how hard, that the confession was extorted somehow. Today, intelligence gathering must be a lot harder than it should be considering that no sane Nigerian will willingly call the Police or venture into the police station to report a crime or suspicion because the reporter will inevitably become the prime suspect. This has to change and it needs to change immediately because as long as we distrust the security forces, managing terrorism will be that much harder.

Strengthening democracy with credible leadership

Unless we get credible leaders whose primary interest is the sustained development of Nigeriathen we will continue to be at the mercy of our biggest ills: corruption, unaccountability and oppression. If our election processes continue to be undemocratic with the support and collaboration of the last refuge of the wronged, the judiciary, then we will not be able to deal with terrorism. It is ironic and indicative of how unyielding we are in our devotion to doing things the crooked way that ex president Obasanjo would be part of a national meeting on terrorism just as Wikileaks disclosures have him fingered by former Chief Justice Uwais for meddling in the judgement of the 2003 election tribunal.

The fact that those in power never want to leave and do not want to work means that our elections will always be manipulated. If people cannot get rid of unproductive elected officials at least once every four years, then what other means are available for them to take control of their destinies? Any government which wants to deal with terrorism has to put in place the right structures to protect democracy and democracy support institutions like the judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Commission.

In conclusion, so much of what the security agencies need from Nigerians to manage terrorism is lacking. The Nigerian security agencies can continue to meet, proliferate and expand budgets, we can get bomb sniffing dogs and use road blocks to make a 20 minute journey 20 hours and import all sorts of special gadgets but we will continue to be tragically unprepared. Until the social issues are dealt with, the type of terrorism which we have become exposed too – the type most difficult to fight, where the people bringing death and destruction are prepared to die as well, we will continue to struggle to contain terrorism in Nigeria.

The stagnation of the Nigerian Character A somewhat response to The Metamorphosis of Boko Haram

2011-09-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

If we really want to understand where we are as a country today, we only need to look dispassionately at the state of our written and living laws and our discourteous attitude towards law and order. This abusive relationship we have with law has recently and publicly shoved into our faces by the actions of the Nigerian Judicial Council and all who have been involved in the sordid affair. And whether we like it or not – just as the Americans had to self reflect in the aftermath of 9/11, we too have to look inwards about the reasons for our disregard for law and order and why Nigeria, the mighty dwarf of Africa, is now leading the continent in terrorism.

Right after the bombing of the United Nations Building in Abuja on 8/26, Simon Kolawole wrote a thoughtful essay on the Metamorphosis of Boko Haram. The first thought the article provoked was of a sense of comedy – the juxtaposition of Boko Haram’s evolutionary journey against the sad stagnation of the Nigerian character and our manner of dealing with issues. The blithe tone of the article about the underlying social and economic reasons behind terrorism – whether of the Boko Haram tenet/philosophy or the Niger Delta extraction sparked a disquiet about our usual focus on the symptoms and not the cause.

In 1926, in The Dual Mandates, Lord Lugard described the type of African he had observed in the West Africa – it was not flattering. Amongst other things he says the this race-type is “full of personal vanity with little sense of veracity, excitable, lacking in self-control, discipline and foresight, his thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past”. He could be describing us today – from the degree laden professional in a pin stripe suit and a bow tie to the greased stained Ankara clad fried yam seller at the side of the road- we all carry these traits and have refused to develop our minds and our societies beyond the shallow materialism and vanity Lord Lugard noted. For those who balk at the harsh description by a foreigner and a colonialist to boot, maybe the descriptions of Anthony Enahoro in the 1966 satire “How to be a Nigerian’ will resonate better. A read through this thoroughly enjoyable and well-written book will have you crying tears of laughter and alarm about traits we like to think are ‘new’. Apparently, there is nothing new about who we are and how we behave right down to the moronic love of titles (vanity again) which has everyone appending ‘Barrister’ and ‘Engineer’ before their names.

What has this got to do with terrorism and law and order? Everything.

When a society is as unjust and unequal as ours is (Nigeria has one of the highest Gini indices in the world – a measure for inequality in society) where nothing, not even justice is without an ever escalating price tag, then terrorism is not out of place. Where people have two sets of rules, one for the rich and/or powerful and one for the poor and/or weak, then terrorism should eventually be expected.

Borno – the home of peace and the home of Boko haram is the 2^nd largest state in Nigeria in terms of land size and the 12^th in terms of population. It is also allegedly one of the easiest places to do business in Nigeria. However, Borno is in the North East, the region acknowledged by human development experts and maybe even the Federal Government as the poorest and least developed in Nigeria. This is where the rating of access to health, education, skills development, infrastructure, employment, gender development are amongst the lowest in the country and where despite billions, we are still far from achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Since it was formed in 1976, trillions of Naira have been poured into Borno and its indigenes have taken part in steering the direction of the Federal Government in line with federal character. Since then it, it has and Yobe carved out if it – which is technically supposed to mean that development would happen faster but no…Yobe and Borno are still some of the most backward places in Nigeria, with more alarming social data than much poorer countries. So what, do the people of Borno have to show for years of government and is this question not what is really at the crux of Boko Haram’s grouse?

What have years of ‘leadership’ styled on our version of democracy earned the people of Borno? Is there no iota of truth in people saying ‘if this has not worked, maybe we should try something else’? Is rigging elections over and over again and designing a quota system for leadership so that Nigerians never get good and sincere people in leadership not a recipe for disaster? Is it right that in states so impoverished by their government’s lack of financial responsibility, grand and lavish weeklong weddings/parties/celebrations can take place and even make the news? And is it really unreasonable to think that if a debtor does not open the door to the sound of knocking, then his creditor might be justified in breaking the door down?

Our disrespect for law and order – where everyone is above the law and no one can be called to account for their actions stems from our character – the traits that make us unable to visualize the future with any sense of wonder or fear – where like mindless locusts we eat up 50 years worth of harvest in advance and wonder why we suffer.

As much as we might regret President Jonathan’s choice of words when he tried to comfort us on the bombing of the UN office he is right: Nigeria is not unique. All around the world, it is natural that if people live with social and economic injustice and cannot change their circumstances peacefully, they will resort to violence. There will always be external forces which will play a role in our internal affairs - the Al-Qaeda, Libya, Somali, Sudan, CIA, Kissinger connections with our home grown terrorists and governments is scary and should be considered carefully by our security agents and all who really care about Nigeria. But we must ask ourselves too, what it is about us that makes Nigeria such a warm and fertile place to recruit and train terrorists and practice terrorism. Until we identify those issues and start changing the system so that life is fair, the situation with terrorism and all the evils that come with it is not going to get better.

Laws of success (in Nigerian Government)

2011-09-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

It’s been seventy nine days since May 29 – it does not seem like much is happening but much has happened. We have somewhat new federal and state cabinets and loads of new special advisers, special assistants and technical advisers to the president, vice president, ministers, state governors, commissioners etc. Without a doubt, government is the biggest employer in Nigeria and it means everything to get into government and stay there.

Over the years, the most inattentive observer would have noticed some things about the way people in government behave; the special traits they exhibit and the strange, unexplainable things connected to government work. There is an explanation: as diverse and disparate as we are in Nigeria, some behaviours, actions and utterances have become sacrosanct for a successful career in government - whether in appointive or elective position. As the officers of the new administration settle in here are some of the laws of success – norms so distilled and perfected from decades of practice that they have become laws – to guide the new officers on their way.

Law One – praise God for what He has done for you (not Nigeria) with a string of celebratory parties. This is really important and no matter how hard a government official tries to avoid this particular law of arriving - there is just no way out. Friends and family will host a few on your behalf and the sheer number of people who will come to your house or office to congratulate you for this new position will make it look like there is a week long party at your house – so you might as well give in and let the champagne flow.

The partying and celebrating is not to be looked upon as anything improper; indeed it sets the tone for the type of inclusive and expansive office which you will operate once you start work. It provides people with the opportunity to come close to you at least once or twice before the doors of access are firmly shut and tell you what they expect from your leadership.

Depending on how lucrative, scratch that, strategic your new position is, there will also be full-page ads congratulating you. Do not be distracted by the fact that you do not remember the names claiming to be your classmates from the set of 1970 or recognise the names of the mothers of your village who each carried you on their backs at one time or the other. Be gracious. Take out a couple of full-page ads yourself, listing each and every person who congratulated you in person, by email, SMS or Facebook and make sure you use a picture of yourself with a finger pressed into your cheek and your eyes looking into the sky for guidance – this will help those who have no clue who you are and what you look like.

Law Two – Hire as many people as you can from your clan/village or ethnic group. Your life depends on this one because there is no way you can trust anyone who does not speak the same language as you do, or who understands your culture or even likes the same foods as you do. And if they do speak the same language, sometimes that is not enough; they must be from your local government area, especially if your predecessor was from a different local government. All sorts of policy issues will become impossible to execute the minute you let other ethnic groups or outsiders into your inner circle.

It is unfortunate that the civil service rules does not allow political appointees such as ministers or commissioners to fire at will. But there are ways around that. You can transfer ‘outsiders’ to other ministries and agencies where their kind are in charge or to quiet places where they can tap their fingers on bare tables in obscurity until a change in government.

Law Three – renovate the office or start looking for alternative office space if you can. The reason why this is critical is because without moving or renovating i.e., lifting wall units and breaking down adjoining walls you will not be able to find all the hidden talismans which have been arranged for you by your predecessor or those who are resentful about the fact that yet again, there is another ‘know-nothing-about –the-way-things-work-here’ whose hand they have to hold.

Law Four – pepper the walls of your domain with pictures of the President of Nigeria and the appropriate Minister. And if you are the Minister, make sure your public relations officer gets a befitting picture of you taken for this purpose. Has anyone landed at Heathrow or JFK airports and seen a picture of David Cameron smiling into their face as they leave the steaming arrival hall two hours after they landed or the Secretary of State for Transport smirking at them over a rickety baggage conveyor belt? No? Then it is because these countries have not yet tapped into the secret industry that is official portrait manufacturing, mounting and maintenance.

Law Five – thou shall not act like you know anything. Nothing will guarantee that you will be kicked out of government faster than you can say ‘I.T.K’ than exhibiting that you know something about the sector you are supposed to be in charge of. Ask basic questions; defer to whomever you report to; and if possible, sleep at meetings and your job will be safe. A legendary career civil servant in one of the agencies charged with getting rid of government property would come in first thing in the morning, drop his jacket and briefcase in his office and go to the library where he would sleep until about noon. Then he would stroll around the offices of his seniors to remind them how loyal he was, go for lunch, then back to the library for a nap and then it was quitting time. Perfect – he threatened no one and retired only when even his adjusted birth certificate indicated that he was 5 years past retirement. Fly under the radar – let this be your motto.

Law Six – be fawning and obsequious. There are many ways you can achieve this and you have a variety of options to choose from. You may be the type who likes to cook – take food to your boss’s house everyday. Be the first to sign up for aso ebi whenever any of his children are getting married and if possible, you should be in charge of forcing the over priced aso ebi down the throats of all employees. There are also opportunities when your boss is away to prove your loyalty: meet her at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja when British Airways lands at 4.30am. And if you are still not sure if you are brown-nosing enough - find Charles Dicken’s Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, he’ll teach you a few more tricks.

And last but not the least, Law Seven – make sure you are always happy and smiling whenever your picture is taken. For instance, Ministers always look extremely happy and content at the end of their weekly federal executive council meetings. We are never sure if the merriment is because (a) they are happy they were not fired during the meeting or (b) there is nothing about Nigeria and the work they are faced with that is daunting or sobering or (c) they just cannot believe their luck at finally making it to Nirvana. Whatever the case is, make sure you have a happy grin plastered all over your face.

We the public will only know how well you did in adhering to these laws when the next round of elections or appointments are done. Until then- best of luck and we cannot wait to be you.

A lemon by any other name is still a lemon

2011-08-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a woman with 6 sons with different gifts and natural talents (in the beginning there were 2, then somehow they morphed into 3, then 19, 30, 36 but that’s another story). She coaches them about the way of the world – the natural selection of life which weeds out the weak and rewards the hardworking, the adaptable and the ever evolving. “Your special gifts are to help you manage the trials you will face and only the best of you will lead and it matters not whether you are the youngest or the oldest (think of the dreams of Joseph/Yusuf’s father in the Bible and Quran).

The sons analyse their gifts against the tests of life which have been revealed to them and decide that the easiest way to deal with the headache of leadership is to rotate the leadership between them and give everyone a single shot at a time at being leader. This meant that regardless of how lazy or unproductive the men where, it did not matter; they would still get a shot at being leader. Soon, the few who laboured to develop their talents decided it was not worth it because no matter how hard they worked, their lazy brothers – against the laws of nature still thrived and continued to demolish whatever they tried to build.

This in a nutshell sums up federal character and the single tenure proposal – one of the most asinine, half-witted, sophomoric and fatuous ideas to befall Nigeria.

Forget Nigeria’s dismal social and economic statistics on health, education, power, infrastructure, corruption, security, MDGs, poverty, unemployment and whatever indices are used globally to track development. Right now we are allegedly at crisis point, caught between Aso rock and a boulder. The fuel subsidies are rumored to be costing us between 10-13 billion dollars annually and now that money meant for the excess crude account will start going into the sovereign wealth fund…there is no money to keep up the subsidies. Hard place One. The state governors are sweating champagne bullets because they cannot pay the new minimum wage of N18,000. Most states just don’t make enough between internally generated revenue and their monthly allocations from Federal to pay up - so states are potentially bankrupt. Hard place Two. Between our three levels of government we spend 75% of our annual budget on recurrent expenses i.e., the salaries and benefits of our politicians, civil servants and their sirens and fleet of exotic cars. Let’s put this in perspective. You get N100 every year and spend N75 on food, diesel and transport and have only N25 left to invest, educate, save and conduct repairs such as fixing a leaking roof. Hard place Three. As if that is not enough, Nigeria perpetually runs a deficit budget. So although you only earn N100 and spend N75 on everyday costs, you somehow spend N200 every year because you borrow against the future and that extra N100 is spent on throwing annual birthday parties for your family. Hard place Four.

Apparently we are going to have to ease the pressure building up in all these hard places and try and reverse the trend and if people think we are suffering now…we have not seen anything yet.

Now a discussion about tenure elongation while all this is going on is so absurd and puerile that rational minds are tempted to think: “Forget it. It is such a foolish idea it must be a smokescreen for something else”; the way the Roman Emperors used man-eating lions to distract the plebs from their hunger. But the story won’t go away. The President’s spokesperson, Ruben Abati, has confirmed that a bill will be making its way to the National Assembly and newspapers have reported that President Jonathan has recruited 6 members of the National Assembly to ‘manage’ the bill within their geo political zones.

There are many reasons to oppose the bill but two especially difficult to rationalize arguments are that nothing stops the Constitution from being changed again and there are different ways to peel an orange. If the Bill is passed to provide for a single 6 year term to be rotated amongst a pre selected number of zones and after all the stress and distraction from the real work at the center which we need our government focused on…someone will hopefully just come along and change it again…then what?

If the real reasons behind President Jonathan’s proposal are in his words because he “is concerned about the acrimony which the issue of re-election, every four years, generates both at the Federal and State levels…the unrest, the desperation for power and the overheating of the polity that has attended each general election…with the concomitant unending inter and intra-party squabbles which have affected the growth of party democracy in the country, and have further undermined the country’s developmental aspirations”, then there are other ways to deal with these issues.

One, we can find a way to manage the governors powers and undo the unholy pact they apparently have that the President of Nigeria must be a former governor. Immunity for all elected officials should be removed from the Constitution with a caveat that they cannot be prosecuted while in the office where the alleged criminal activity took place. We can make it an eligibility criteria for any elective office that if you have spent two terms in any office, you are not eligible for any election until the expiration of at least eight years - this means ex Governors like Saraki and Yerima can come down to earth and live with mortals. A ceiling on how many times Nigerians can sacrifice themselves by serving the country in elective or appointive position would be something to also consider. And, abolishing the “State Joint Local Government Account” under Section 162(6) of the 1999 Constitution would free our Local Governments from the heavy boots of the governors and let the practice of true federalism take root.

Two – independent candidature during elections would deal with the intra and inter party squabbles because politicians who believe that their constituents will support their candidature will be able to throw off the umbrella of party patronage and stand for election independently. This will further reduce the power of the parties, the governors and the President.

Three, strengthen the Independent National Election Commission and do more to plug the holes which support election rigging. There is no reason why we should have party symbols and not names of candidates on our ballots. If Nigerians are smart enough to memorise the names of our national football team as well as European league footballers, we can remember the names of those we want to elect.

Four, if elective and appointive positions become less lucrative only those who really care will make the sacrifice. Slash the salaries and benefits across the legislature and executive and close the gaps which allow for extortion and corruption across the civil service and within government. If the legislators cannot secretly borrow money and inflate their allowances or give themselves ‘sitting allowances’ for committee meetings that they are bound to attend then we will reduce the number who are there to get rich quick.

Five, if the President really cares about managing the polity, he can use the Freedom of Information Act to publish line by line information on where the revenue, security votes and discretionary spend goes and use the ire of the public to drive accountability in public office and push those responsible for ‘overheating the polity’ out.

All these options and more are available and thankfully Nigerians have had the experience of battling unsavory Constitutional changes. However, 2006 and the Obansajo third term bid was five years ago and since then our moral anemia has increased, our social capital tank is almost at zero and we are a lot more religiously and ethnically divided. Perfect mental and physical condition for this type of coup.

We need to be vigilant and tireless in opposing even the thought of this distraction unless we want to stay on this path of laziness and mediocrity which will allow a bunch of men to continue mindlessly passing us around like a cob of corn. Let’s take the road a lot less travelled in Nigeria and complain loudly and persistently in public until those in positions of power know that things have to change for the better, for everyone.

The guide to a successful government career

2011-08-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

We the public will only know how well you did in adhering to these laws when the next round of elections or appointments are done. Until then- best of luck and we cannot wait to be you.

And then there were none (for change)

2011-06-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Change is one of the most popular or overused words in any political campaign and Nigeria’s 2011 elections were no different. The airwaves, paper-waves and Internet-waves made it seem like the mere deafening strength of the clamour for change would be enough to force the universe to shift in our favour. It seemed like we all wanted a change: of those who represent us in government, our electoral process and the ruling party.

The inaugurations are done, the last rounds of elections and coronations in the legislature have been discharged with and the victory party planners have hopefully collected their fees. As the haze of election fever and winner euphoria is lifting and we are beginning to see a little more clearly; where is the change?

The presidency has remained pretty much the same– a PDP president who made lots of compromises and promises to win, surrounded by purely motive based advisors and a soon to be constituted cabinet which is rumoured to be more old than new.

The judiciary of course remains untouched by elections. Apart from the whispers of personal financial gain from election petitions, something which sadly not even our latest super hero the FOI Law will be able to do anything about, there is no discernable change for the benefit of the public.

That leaves the legislature; the only arm of government that seems to have undergone serious change with over 70% of the members being new to the National Assembly. In the Senate, 73 out of 109 are brand new and in the House of Representatives 266 out of 360 have never been in the House before. There is something about new people in government that infuses the public with hope especially when we are so aware of the antecedents of the old. For the Senate though, the change seems to end there – they are firmly in the hand of the old guard and their buzz word is neither change nor the ‘transformation’ ofPresident Jonathan, it is ‘continuity’.

This leaves within the legislature, the House of Representatives, where the recent coup against PDP interference in the selection of a Speaker bolsters our hope for change. (We’ll worry about the motives of the financiers of the coup later – for now we are just pleased that ‘zoning’ is taking a beating.) And for now, the tune from the House is pleasing: that it will not be business as usual. But it is too soon to say whether the unusual business that our Representatives will be about, will be the business which is good for us or the business which will be good for them and the few they serve.

Despite the picture of self service which a ‘welfare committee’ evokes, the creation of five new committees by the House is encouraging especially since there is a Media and Public Relations committee to hopefully manage all the bad press the House has gotten recently with Dimeji Bankole and the missing billions. However, it is this story of corruption in the House that tells us more clearly than anything else, that nothing has really changed beneath the thin cover of ‘new members’ and the sudden and convenient independence from PDP.

Bankole, the former Speaker who has been a guest of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, while singing for his freedom implicated the new Speaker – Aminu Tambuwal as one of the architects who designed the need for the 10 billion Naira loan in the first place and who is a key beneficiary of the loan (Tambuwal’s allowance allegedly increased by N14 million a quarter). It turns out Tambuwal is not so new after all and it remains to be seen how much change he is going to bring to the House in the execution of its duties.

Ironically, as Bankole completed his term with the corruption charges hanging over his head, Patricia Etteh who he replaced after her impeachment for corruption was cleared of all wrong doing.

It looks like the change we can expect from our legislatures, is not iron clad and so we need to support them by being loud and clear about some of the things we expect from them. For starters, that welfare committee of the House should have a twin in the Senate and they should focus their attention on the welfare of Nigerians with a review their benefits, allowances, compensation, salary, constituency mobilisation fees – whatever names they want to call what they get - we cannot afford them. The Governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido called them out publicly on their cost to the nation and they have no defence – they need to cut their benefits now. Then they should kill, quarter, burn and bury all thoughts of creating more states – we cannot afford those either. Instead the National Assembly needs to sit with the Constitution and make changes which will empower the local governments and reduce the powers of the state governors over local government revenue. The ‘development’ we sorely need is not the development of new Governors Lodges in glorified villages, we need to give the local governments, those closest to the people, the resources to carry out their duties.

And finally, we need our representatives to portray the dignity and humility of those who are there to labour on our behalf and not flash their ostentatious and rags to riches lives in front of us. At one of the many swearing-in parties held for members of the National Assembly last week, guests at a party carelessly stepped on and broke the glass plates which were used to serve them. No one paid any mind. Those broken plates, so carelessly stepped on signify the waste and carelessness with which our elected and appointed representatives treat Nigeria’s resources and the indifference with which we, the public, encourage the waste. All in all, not a good harbinger of the change we desperately need – let us hope those nonchalantly broken plates are not a sign of what to expect from the 7^th National Assembly.

FOI Act, not just another ‘bail is free’ signpost?

2011-06-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

In the midst of the cartwheels and congratulations about the long
awaited birth of a freedom of information (FOI) Act for Nigerians, I
am wary. The hesitation comes not because the FOI law has been
allegedly watered down or because I do not believe that the FOI could
herald wonderful things; I am tempted to pull the plug on the party
because I think…so what? So what if Nigerians have access to a lot
more information than they had in the past? The real issue is; what
will change?

Today, thanks to the reach, space anonymity of the Internet we have
access to a lot more information than we did a few years ago. Granted,
it is a little harder to sift through the sheer volume of what we have
access to in order to scoop the nuggets of quality information but it
is there. We know that Dimeji Bankole and the leadership of the 6th
House of Representatives borrowed and spent 10 billion Naira that the
House did not have. What have we done with that information? Years
ago, in the early days of the Obasanjo administration, someone thought
it was a good idea to publish the allocation of electricity for each
State in the newspapers. Then it stopped because someone else was
worried that the public might notice that the states considered as
‘opposition’ where getting the least amount of electricity even when
they had the greatest industrial activity. There was a tense period
while they waited to see if anyone had picked up on it…silence. No one
noticed. Even when the information is all around, pasting itself
desperately to our eyelids and morphing into a gas which seeps into
our skin, but still we feel and do nothing.

This means that while we will technically have more access to public
information, it is doubtful if this access will magically transform
our society. There are many other things which have to co-exist with
the FOI in order for it to work effectively and unfortunately we
cannot merely legislate these things into being.

We the people have to realise that while corruption has become a way
of life for us, there is a cost and that cost is captured in all the
things we complain about – the lack of basic amenities, the absence of
accountability amongst politicians and public officers and the slow
pace of development. With the realisation, then comes the desire to do
something about it, to take the effort, individually or collectively
to challenge those who are responsible. Challenges to the injustices
and inconsistencies which float to the surface do not always have to
be made through the courts – the favoured route of lawyers and
activists such as Fawehinmi and Falana. We can protest by boycotting
those responsible by refusing to be associated with them. Already this
is happening. Recently, a former Minister of Petroleum from the north
who went to a wedding fatiha and as is custom, took of his shoes
before entering the house. However while he did his part by taking off
his shoes, none of the people participating from the outside did
theirs; apparently, someone should have offered to hold his shoes for
him. So he looks round for a minute and then tries to hand his shoes
to a man standing closest to him. The man declines to extend his hand
and instead says loudly and clearly – “what did you do for us?” The
former Governor of Nassarrawa State, Doma got a taste of what is to
come when he attempted to slink out of Doma, his village to return to
Lafia, after the results of the gubernatorial election which he lost
were announced. His people created a barricade to prevent his
departure and invited him to ‘stay and enjoy’ the haven he had helped
create during his four year tenure. The rejection of corrupt, weak,
ineffectual, lazy, selfish public officers is slowly happening but we
need to ramp up the pressure. Complete social excommunication is a
good way to challenge the people in government who misuse their
mandate. We might not be able to create our own Tarhir Square to
insist on good governance, but if we shun their weddings, parties,
dinners, talks, book launches and refuse to invite them to ours, I
promise they will wither up and die as surely as the harmattan winds
dry up plants.

We need more than lip service from the government about
transformation. Real transformation in government is going to mean a
break from the norm and the norm is corruption and impunity.
Unfortunately, there is little indication that we are serious about
doing anything about all the major obstacles to our development: a
civil service bloated with conniving and devious people who take pride
in ensuring that nothing changes and the institutionalised corruption
which has resulted in the crater in our physical and mental
development, which billions of dollars should have filled. The United
Kingdom is preparing for the launch of the UK Bribery Act on July 1
2011, a law which they are marketing as ‘tougher’ than the United
States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The UK wants to use transparency
and zero tolerance to corruption as a competitive advantage for
attracting business and investments to their country. We on the other
hand have had the Corrupt Practices Act since 2003 and as far as we
know, no one has been successfully prosecuted under this law. A few
cases have been prosecuted by the Independent Corrupt Practices
Commission but nothing has stuck…and the message remains the same –
Nigerians are not serious about reducing corruption.

The problem is familiar. Walk into a Nigerian police station and there
is a sign somewhere saying ‘BAIL IS FREE’ supposedly there to inform
the public that we do not have to bribe in order to bail anyone out.
But what happens in practice? I think this is what the FOI will end up
as – a sign post saying ‘look at us we know what we are supposed to
do’. It is not enough to just know; we need to act. As we celebrate
the passage of the FOI law, for the development in our awareness which
the law signifies, the law needs good followers to be the teeth in the
bite of the law to it does not end up as a ‘bail is free’ sign –
meaningless.

Published in Thisday Lawyer June 7 2011

The state protected abuse of Nigerian women

2011-06-03T14:27:00.000-07:00

As the preparations for the inauguration of President Jonathan in Abuja were being finalised last week, Nigeria was front page news in Kenya. The battered face and neck of Tess Wige, wife of Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Kenya, Dr. Chijoke Wilcox Wigwe were plastered all over the front of the Star newspaper. The grandmother of five who had to be operated upon after receiving a beating from her husband and who is now in danger of paralysis due to the injury to her back decided to end years of silence about the abuse she has received. As we read this we may or may not have proof of the sincerity of President Jonathan and his wife towards the real empowerment of women who can make meaningful difference to Nigeria but one thing is sure; all the pending legislation to protect Nigerian women will have been aborted and tossed out – to start all over again with the 7th Assembly - once again at the mercy of the merciless legislators who parade themselves as representatives of Nigerians. The Violence Against Persons Prohibition bill which would have provided a little shelter for battered women (and others who are regularly brutalised by those in more powerful positions) was scuttled by the 6th Assembly. The Widowhood Bill to shield women from the degrading customs required from them as they grieve for their husbands and the fathers of their children remains still born, lost in the corridors of the National Assembly as women sit covered in ash and drinking the bath water of dead corpses. What is it about us that we refuse to be civilised about the treatment of our mothers, our sisters, our wives and our daughters? Where does this scorn come from? As women struggle like ants weighed down by raw cane sugar for equity and fairness in dealings at home and space at the table to form policy which will affect the future of our children - we continue to be beaten at home and humiliated in public. As the world looks upon our shame – shame which we have become unfortunately immune to, the head of the IMF had to resign in disgrace for molesting and assaulting an African who worked in the hotel where he lodged. The mere allegation, made by a woman who might not even be a US citizen was enough for the authorities to board a plane and pick up one of the most powerful men in the world – touted to become the next President of France and put a huge spanner in his career wheel. And Dominique Strauss- Kahn is still technically innocent until proven guilty. However in Nigeria our state and its officers sanction violence against women with their inaction, their silence and their refusal to even pass laws which will still have to pass through the hurdles of enforcement. As the Kenyan and Nigerian civil society organisations have sprung into action to push through the layers of protocol required to remove Dr. Wigwe’s immunity as a representative of Nigeria – and recall him as Nigeria’s envoy, it brings it closer to home what is at stake for us. On one hand there are calls for him to be prosecuted in Kenya – the scene of the crime – because some fear that Tess Wigwe will not get justice in Nigeria especially against an elite member of government and society. From what we know about our judicial process, the case will quickly stretch out for years with Wigwe probably still enjoying the prestige of being a member of Nigeria’s diplomatic corps while his wife will remain bruised and ostracised by a brutalised society which knows only how to align with power. However, if President Jonathan and the 2015 class of administrators are serious about improving the lot of women and by extension society, then Nigeria needs to recall Dr Wigwe immediately, suspend him from service and ensure he is prosecuted fairly and quickly. And when and if found guilty, retired immediately. The reasons why Dr. Wigwe must be made an example of on Nigerian soil are very simple. One, as long as women continue to be beat up, degraded and abused in all sorts of ways in the home – with the silent complicity of society – this same society will continue to reject women in positions of power. A few weeks ago, Timipre Sylva, Governor of Bayelsa was reported to have slapped a female guest at a party – of course there are various versions of the story but there is no trail of crumbs without a cookie. As long as public figures continue to uphold the culture of abuse against women, then it will take a lot more than 15 women in the cabinet to change perceptions. Two, if Kenya successfully prosecutes Wigwe for assault, battery and causing grievous bodily harm then Nigerian men will continue to feel safe and will save the beatings for their wives for when they are on Nigerian soil. It is only when our courts and judges are encouraged to handle enough of these cases that we will begin to build the expertise and the confidence that the legal system needs to protect women from domestic and other violent crimes. All the progressive jurisdictions that we love to borrow from; places our legislators, executive and judiciary like to visit to supposedly learn from have all used the judiciary at one time or the other to handle hard social issues like this. What was Brown v Board of Education about? It was about ending segregation in American schools and someone had to be the Brown who would bring the case to court. So let Tess Wigwe be the Wigwe in Wigwe v Wigwe which will give Nigerian women the protection they so, literarily, sorely and achingly need.
If the decency of a nation is measured in the way it treats its children, then it is not far fetched to assume that for a society to be decent it must also treat the mothers of its children well. The Chinese say it is a curse to say ‘may you live in interesting times’ – I take the interesting times we live in as a blessing and it is the good luck of President Jonathan to be given this great opportunity to walk the talk of election promises and do right by Nigerian women.

Beware the monster slayer becomes the monster

2011-06-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

In order to successfully fight something, sometimes we have to embody it – to understand it and then decide how to dismantle it. Sometimes all we have to do is study it to understand its habits and manifestations. But other times, like a vaccine, we have to imbibe or take a little bit of the evil we are trying to get rid of before we can successfully overcome it. But what happens when we take too much of what we are trying to fight and we loose ourselves? The lack of social and formal justice in Nigeria is so deeply engrained in our system that it is extremely hard for us to fight the evils around us legally. This problem is especially disturbing in the battles to halt the cyclone of religious and ethnic bigotry which is engulfing the north and middle belt and to give women a firmer safer place to participate in governance. As a result, many monster slayers are becoming monsters themselves. A lot has been written and said, snarled out and spat up about the violence which followed the presidential elections and a lot of it has been reactionary as opposed to reflective. Without intent at justifying any type of violence, those who took to the streets to burn and loot and kill did so because they were allegedly upset at the results of the presidential elections. Why were they upset about the elections? Because after 12 years of PDP governance in particular and 50 years of independence, they are not satisfied with the state of affairs and their plans for a peaceful change – using the weapon of the ballot was taken from them. Arguably, the results of the presidential elections indicated the way the rest of the elections would go – with hated governors and state legislators remaining in office even when their antecedents have been woeful. The reaction may or may not have been the spontaneous rage of growing frustration with their powerlessness to be noticed, to be heard and to do anything meaningful about their lives. We are no strangers to election violence and neither are we distant cousins of religious and ethnic based rampage; but what seems to elude us is a sense of balance in looking at both sides of the equations. The newspapers are filled with statistics about how many people were killed in April (800 according to Thisday of May 17 2011) and how many churches were burnt (150) and rightly so a lot of coverage has been given to the members of the NYSC who died in the service of their country…and then silence. Muslims were killed too – there is a mother who was forced to watch her husband her 12 year old son killed before their bodies were burnt to a crisp along with their house and everything they owned. Many mosques were allegedly razed in Kafanchan and Zankowa and there are thousands on both sides displaced and living in camps in Kaduna but the media is oddly quiet about sharing these stories – so on both sides of the divide there is pain. But what hurts and keeps hurting like shards of glass imbedded in the soles of feet is the sense of abiding injustice and this is where the sense of frustration and hatred for each other grows.
Many Nigerians, both Christians and Muslims from different ethnicities– seem to agree that the Muslims in the north are the ones who always start ‘it’ and so it is only right, just, fair that the Christians give as good as they get. Fair enough – but when do you know when you are no longer defending and are now the attacker? Is fighting fire with fire the best way to handle a fireball or do you use water and/or sand? In this case the advocates for violence on both sides are thinking passionately but not logically and spurred on by angry words in the media and the anonymity of the Internet, the divisions grow. To successfully fight an evil – you have to empathise with the evil; not become the evil. You have to find the cause of the evil not just treat the symptoms. If it is generally accepted that the North has the worst and the lowest indices of development, poverty and education, then surely the frustration is understandable even when the violence is condemnable. However little public analysis has been done accepting the dismal state of affairs and what the solutions are. It is not clear what yet another investigative panel report will achieve. Like a never ending Animal Farm, the other ‘fight’ where the oppressed are taking on the characteristics of the wrong doers is in the crusade to get equitable participation of women in the public sphere. The benefits of having half of the population actively participating in governance and contributing to social policies are no longer in dispute. However, as women continue to be marginalised and kept out mainly due to custom and the unfortunately human inability to share power fairly, the injustice of this situation is spurring women to act like men in order to play and win in politics. Totally understandable especially if you think about issues practically – you can’t get into a bare knuckles kickboxing ring and expect to use gloves. But maybe there is another way. A way which does not include women joining a game where the rules are already rigged and stacked against them – by either using laws, enforcement and incentives to change the rules of the game or by starting other games which will attract other people. This way, women can get to showcase the best of their strengths and skills by using what they know about the effects of consistent marginalisation and under-representation to pull all the many divisions in our society together and campaign for a more equitable formula (than ‘zoning’) for ensuring representation. While the dynamics of power at every level from the basic social unit, the family to the most complex social unit, governance in the public sphere is complicated, women need a deliberate strategy which differentiates them from the men. It is not enough that women constantly react to the environment created by men; oppressing because they are oppressed, cheating because they are cheated and conniving and manipulating because they feel hard done by.
Until those caught up in religious and ethnic wars - either by swords or by words and until those caught up in the battles for gender representation – either by embodying the worst attributes of men or by attacking what is special about themselves, we will not resolve the issues. On the former, the Sheik Lemu led panel on election violence must culminate in at least three things in order for us to begin to close the divide – a published list of those who should be prosecuted for hate crimes; compensation for the loss of life and property suffered by all who were caught in the violence (not just families of the members of the NYSC who were killed) and a truth and reconciliation process so everyone gets to share their stories, look their tormentors in the eye and hopefully heal. On the latter issue, female politicians need to stop justifying the neglect of their duties and the cheating of their constituents and women activists need to be harder on the female politicians in holding them accountable to their office – no free passes for the women just to encourage them – let’s be hard on the men and women equitably and the support of the people will come. Women can play politics without descending to the lowest common denomination. If we all keep embodying the very same things we claim we are fighting against, we will keep paddling in one place – burning energy and going nowhere until we sink from exhaustion. As the government class of 2011-2015 prepare to take over on May 29, let us help them make a conscious effort to positively transform the way we push for change in Nigeria.

will the promise to women be the first broken promise?

2011-06-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

A lot of promises were made in the heat of the campaigns and a lot of campaign promises will broken under the magnifying glass of reality. As the fierce lobbying to alter the zoning formula of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wages and the ministerial list overflows with hundreds of funny, scary and down right outrageous names, women are battling to ensure that they are not forgotten. Voices are raised to ensure that President Jonathan does not forget that during his one-man debate on March 30 2010 he said women would make up 35% of his cabinet, something no government pre and post independence has ever done. Banners are flying to ensure that as PDP carves up the country for the most lucrative government positions, women get a relatively fair share within the executive and the legislature. And equally important, daggers are raised, poised to stab to death, the dream of increased participation of women in setting the agenda for the development of Nigeria. So to be or not to be? To be for women and 35% representation in government means to recognize at least three things. One, that Nigerian women have contributed to society for years and in this time of great need caused by the shrinking of the global network and the exponential growth of available knowledge, women need to get more publicly involved. For years their valuable contribution to society in the basic social unit – the family has been discounted and only in the private sector are they allowed to thrive and compete honestly and successfully. Two, that gender affirmative action is the fastest way to bridge the gap between men and women in positions of power and decision making. Insisting on a minimum representation for women in all arms of government is not a Nigerian invention. Within patriarchal Africa Rwanda, South Africa and Botswana lead the way with Rwanda the new poster child for development ranking as number one in the world for the most number of female legislators. In macho Latin America more than eleven countries have minimum representation for women and in resolutely Islamic Indonesia, Pakistan and Jordan, they too are acknowledging the issue and have taken the leap of faith for women. Some find the idea of gender affirmative action to be patronizing and/or unreasonable either because women should be purposefully taking 50% of all positions or because women belong to cooking pots and diapers; they refuse to acknowledge that women are at a disadvantage and the race at this point can never be fair. No matter how hard and diligently we practice, if Nigeria insists that women start running from the starting line when men are more than half way through, then we will never catch up. There has to be a concerted effort to close the gulf in fair gender representation within society. And three, there is a reason why nations are encouraged to utilize all their human resources – because having men and women actively engaged, participating and representing the different needs of various factions of society ensures sustainable development. To not be for 35% representation for women in all spheres of government, there are a few reasons. One, is that so far most of the women – especially in elective positions have been uninspiring. The mildly satisfying defense that the men are just as insipid, still wins women no points because for cultural and psychological reasons, Nigerians prefer non performance from men to non performance from women. Besides, what special edge are women bringing to the table if they are going to act just like men? Some part of the truth is that the reason elected officers achieve little is because historically they were not held accountable; not by the electorate and rarely ever by the civil society organizations. However, with the 2011 elections we caught a glimpse of what arrogant underperformers (because Nigerians will excuse failure in a humble person) will routinely face during elections – they will be voted out where our votes actually count. Two, that as far as appointive representation is concerned, women in decision making positions have no incentive to focus on development and social policies which will improve the lives of Nigerian women. This is because as Prof Pippa Norris of the Harvard Kennedy School points out, “women appointed by a president or party leader lack the democratic legitimacy that arises from an independent electoral or organizational base”. The women come to function as mere appendages of powerful men to support the party position and since the people did not vote them in – they owe the people nothing. So while women might celebrate the inclusion of these women in the cabinet and decision-making, in real terms, there is little progress in terms of policies and programs which deal with issues important to women. There are two key issues at stake: how to balance quality and quantity and how to hold elected officers – regardless of gender, accountable to their office and their constituents. We want to be fairly represented by women and men who know the issues, have probable solutions and have the will to push through with the very many reforms which Nigeria needs. There are women who have proven themselves in their fields and finding 15 of them for the cabinet is as possible and certain as finding seeds in a watermelon. We do not want party chieftain wives, governors daughters or dusty old relics who will be grateful for the chance of one last feed at the trough and this applies to the men too. A scorecard for legislators and senior members of the executive will be kept and published once the race for 2015 begins – it is only by publicly naming and shaming that those who pretend to serve will be weeded out. What President Jonathan’s cabinet is going to look like after May 29 2011 is anyone’s guess but one thing will be immediately clear – whether or not he is a man of his word. Because by the composition of his cabinet shall we know what his real plans are for 2015 and how seriously he wants to address the national debt of marginalization which Nigeria owes women.

INEC, always the defendant never the plaintiff

2011-06-03T14:20:00.000-07:00

The elections are over, the electoral petitions and lawsuits have started and lawyers and other members of the legal system will be skipping all the way to the bank. The opposition was as taken in as the electorate with the mythology of Prof. Jega and the free and fair lemon. In many areas, the opposition was unprepared to deal with elections as usual while in other parts they were armed with cameras and recorders, the better to prove their cases. The electorate also had to contend – albeit to a lesser degree if we trust the media has not been guilty of under reporting – with electoral violence, intimidation, juicy soul wrenching persuasion like N200 and a bag of maggi cubes, ballot box snatching and just plain voter fatigue from trooping out to line up and vote not once or twice, but three times within a short period of time. The remedy for those aggrieved in both scenarios rests with the legal system and the powers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to influence the two broad types of legal action that we should expect over the next few weeks and months. The first and more immediate category is where candidates who are contesting the results of the elections file a petition with the election tribunal as representatives of their constituents and themselves. Unfortunately, there are several problems for a petitioner in this type of suit. The first is that while the co-operation of INEC is critical to provide evidence such as ballot papers, results sheets and other documentation, INEC acts like a defendant in all cases. With this mindset of defending the free and fair elections it has just managed, INEC can hardly be considered an objective witness, yet it is joined as a party along side the alleged perpetrators of electoral fraud. Why is INEC automatically on the side of the defendant instead of on the side of the plaintiff, actively prosecuting those involved in thwarting the mandate of millions? The answer is between the provisions of the 2010 Electoral Act (the Act). One such provision is Section 137 of the Act which advices that instead of suing electoral or return officers who are implicated in electoral fraud, petitioners should make INEC the defendant. While on one level, it seems logical that INEC should be liable as the employer, this provision gives electoral officers and other representatives of INEC a free pass to aid and abet in cheating the electorate because they know that they will never be personally liable, and INEC will do all it can to save face by disproving the allegations. The second problem is the length of time it takes for election petitions to be heard and concluded. It is a long standing problem that Nigerians are all aware of, yet all the recommendations made in the Uwais Report on resolving this issue were ignored. Instead, like the ostrich intent on ignoring what its eyes tell it, Section 134 (Time for Presenting Election Petition) provides a timeline of 291 days within which a petition can be filed, judgment must be given and appeal concluded. This means by law, the entire process will take at least 10 months. We know that this can stretch as fluidly as a rubber band to close to a full term of office as it did in Ekiti and Osun States; very cold justice for those who are being denied the right to represent their people and vice versa. In the Bush v Gore case in 2000, the United States Supreme Court ruled on the Florida recount issue on December 9 2000, 32 days after the November 7 elections. Are there no lessons to be learnt from how other jurisdictions manage their election petitions? Third comes the unfriendly burden of proof which lies heavily on the petitioner. According to Section 139, the petitioner must prove that the fraud substantially affected the result of the election and that the election failed to substantially fulfill the principles of the Electoral Act. This means, if for example, fraud is proven in the Bauchi gubernatorial elections (with electronic evidence which we hope our Evidence Act will recognize), the judges can look at all the evidence and say: “yes there was fraud but generally the principles of the Act were complied with in terms of the processes followed such as voter verification and duly signed result sheets and the fraud did not really change the results of the election”. In other words, if the evidence tendered only reveals 419,419 dodgy ballot papers in favour of Yuguda, this means Yuguda who allegedly won by 771,503 votes will still have 352,084 votes against Tuggar’s 238,436. The argument would be ‘Yuguda would still have won, he did not even have to cheat’ and so he will remain the winner. And if by some chance the election tribunal rules that the fraud was substantial and asks Yuguda to step aside, he can appeal and the worst case scenario is that he would have illegally occupied office for close of two years and no one will prosecute him for his crime. Completely scot-free. There should be fairer burden of proof especially when the person being challenged is an incumbent. It would also be helpful if there were legal repercussions for those who illegally occupy office because of electoral fraud. Which brings us to the second category of lawsuits: where INEC is the plaintiff prosecuting those who are guilty of electoral crimes. The Act is replete with provisions prescribing the punishment for different crimes right from the registration process and through the elections but as far as we know, the prosecution of Nigerians for electoral crimes is something which takes place on another planet in complete secrecy. In order to curb the wanton display of disrespect and disregard for the Nigerian electorate, the free and fair INEC needs to start publicly prosecuting those how have been found complicit in election fraud, violence and other crimes. For instance, Heineken Lokpobiri, contesting to represent Bayelsa West Senatorial District was one of the first individuals singled out for election fraud right after the National Assembly elections. The papers reported that he was arrested by State Security Services operatives and since then, silence. If INEC wants to maintain the halo of free and fair, it cannot stop at defending itself before election tribunals; it must also prosecute. INEC cannot afford to sweep Lokpobiri’s case under the umbrella of compromise and reconciliation. The high and mighty along with the young and learning such as the National Youth Service Corps members, Arop Naomi Ebiem and Gloria Innocent who along with Ikechukwu Umezude were arrested for electoral malpractice in Enugu should all be brought before the courts by INEC. For better or worse, INEC has immense legal resources at its disposal. It has legal officers which can prosecute and defend and according to the Act it can also rely on state and federal attorneys general. It would be the first couple of steps on a thousand mile journey, the continuation of some of the precedence setting we have seen from INEC in 2011, if it can take its responsibilities as plaintiff seriously and ease up on its role as defender of the defendants who are most of the time, the most serious detractors of INEC’s somewhat well intentioned plans. Only then will we begin to see a balanced and concerted effort to tie all the lose ends which keep tripping us up in quest for really fair elections.

Credible but not ‘free and fair’

2011-06-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

“The Nigerian elections were credible, not free and fair” said a highly respected member of the African community who was head of one of the international observer missions. In other words, “it is believable that the winner won but that does not mean he won fairly”. In the aftermath of the results of the presidential elections being announced, the violence which has followed and the political ramifications and fallouts which might still occur there are several issues which remain unclear and unsaid. And if we and our government are sincere about really resolving the issues and moving forward we need to take these issues into consideration. People are questioning how free and fair the elections really were; the veracity of voter turnout; why the supporters of CPC are engaged in ‘senseless’ violence in states which CPC won; and why people cannot accept loss gracefully? These are the noisy questions. The quiet questions being whispered into the soft high bellies of diplomats, business moguls and foreign policy experts are: how stingy can we be with the truth? What would be the real impact of what we know to our source of oil, to the stability of the region and to the reputation of democracy in Nigeria, and indeed Africa?
Without a doubt, we have seen an improvement in the delivery of elections in Nigeria. There is increased transparency for parts of the process and we see some strategy going into the planning. The good news is that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has a benchmark by which future elections will be measured. INEC has set certain standards for the way elections are managed and the expectation of Nigerians is that ‘it can be done right’ and the election processes will continue to improve. The bad news is that, as everyone has pointed out – the elections were still far from perfect. If elections in Nigeria in the past have been ranked at minus 8 out of 10, then the 2011 elections have moved us to a ranking of 2 out of 10. So far only CPC is contesting the legitimacy of the presidential results; and rightly so because at the very least the voter-turn out in many parts of the country is suspicious. Of particular note were the exceptionally high turnout figures in Abia (77%), Akwa Ibom (75%), Bayelsa (85%), Bauchi (63%), Cross River (63%), Delta (68%), Edo (74%), Enugu (62%), Kaduna (65%), Imo (84%), Plateau (62%) and Rivers (76%) states. This is against the national average of 53% (which is itself inflated by the unnaturally high figures) and the historical voting patterns of Nigerians which show that high turnout is atypical. The collation process seems to be the weakest link in the election management process and INEC appears to have been ineffective in its oversight function in monitoring and controlling the collation process. This state of affairs, along with stories of fantastic sums of money being used as incentives, raises doubts about the authenticity of some of the figures arising from this process. According to one report, PDP might also have a reason to doubt the integrity of some of the votes for CPC because of the lingering question on under-aged voters in the north. But as questionable victors, who are trying to avoid scrutiny, it is not likely they will point oil stained fingers at anyone. The bottom line is that the tag ‘free and fair’ should stick in our throats the way pure water bags clog up our drains. And this is where law, order and justice come in.
Without a doubt the judiciary is complicit in where we find ourselves today. If Nigerians know that they can get comfort and redress for wrongs from the courts, then people would not feel so desperate to take matters into their own hands. No plaintiff in Nigeria, challenging a presidential election against an incumbent, has ever gotten judgement in their favour. At every turn, INEC refuses to ever see itself as neutral and instead staunchly camps for the defendants to insist before heaven and man, that the elections were free and fair; and the injustice builds up and up until it explodes. It is the same exploding injustice that has resulted from years of sweeping the killings amongst Muslims and Christians under the carpet of ‘political peace’ which continues to plague us all. Peace built on injustice is not sustainable. Since the civil war ended, killings in the name of religion have become normal; enquiry panels are set up to investigate, no one is publicly held accountable or punished but the media reports that things have returned to ‘normal’. But nothing is ever resolved and with each successive excuse to hack at each other for fraudulent elections or imposed candidates or just plain pain, both sides take it – riled up by years of being told to be patient and forgiving while injustice continues to flourish. All our elections since 1959 have been marred with fraud and violence and a cursory read through the observer reports or a search on Google will get you details. We already knew that there was going to be violence so why weren’t our security and intelligence agencies better prepared? By the evening of Saturday April 16 2011, stories of violence had started filtering in from Bauchi and as INEC started reporting the results, why didn’t we think of sending troops to areas where trouble could be anticipated? Instead we prefer to wait for order to completely break down before we start calling for peace and forgiveness: tired and empty words for those who cannot get justice from the legal system and who continue to bear the brunt of the Federal Government’s inability to secure the life and property of its citizens. Each time we hold elections we have an opportunity to let change happen peacefully or we allow ourselves to be dragged further and further away from building on our collective lessons to do better. We allow a few to make a choice about sacrificing our interests, our property and sometimes, even our lives for the sake of the larger picture. And we need to start asking, does this larger picture not have room for the peace that justice brings? Does this larger picture not have room for Nigerians to choose and reject fellow Nigerians at the polls without the interference of the incumbents and their agents? And does this larger picture not have room for a Nigeria where everyone can enjoy the benefits and services of a functioning and accountable government? The judiciary has a choice – it can try to rid itself (with our help) of the stigma of corruption and stand nobly and less financially flush, on the side of what is fair and just to restore confidence in this institution. INEC has a choice – it can take swift action to rectify the inefficiencies in its processes and ensure that today’s elections are not only seen to be credible, but more free and fair than they were on April 16. The opposition and civil society organisations have a choice – to guard the votes of the people as well and as honestly as they can and start strategising for peaceful civil disobedience if they believe the will of the people has been kidnapped and sold to the bidders with access to the excess crude account. And we the voters have one last choice to make in the 2011 elections – to play the role that the majority of us have played with grace and conviction – to go out and conduct ourselves responsibly and vote. Our vote is not only a declaration about what path we want our country to take, it is also an article of faith, that if we are consistent about our expectations, we will get free and fair elections…maybe even, today.

Diary of a first time yuppie voter (Part 2)

2011-04-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

April 9 2011

Without really thinking about it, I knew I was not going to the polling unit early. I would pace myself, deal with the household chores, eat breakfast with the family and maybe even do some work. At 11am I toyed with sending a scout ahead to find out what was happening but I decided to take a walk and see for myself. When I got there, everything was set up: the tent, the four tables and seven NYSCINEC officers. There was no queue and it took me all of 2 minutes to finish the process; I took the long route home and was back before 11.30am. I noticed from BB messages and Twitter that voter turn out was low. I called a few election buddies – friends I made from hanging out at the polling booth last Saturday – to let them know that verification was underway, and quick and easy. Most of them had already verified. So I started sending out BB messages asking people to share their impressions about the number of female voters (compared to the number of men) and to let me know the colour of their ballot papers because ballot papers are going to be colour coded to prevent ballot stuffing– or so I was informed.

At 12.30pm, I went back to the polling unit just as voting began. The sun was blazing like the bottom of a pot sitting on hot coal all day and the only hiding place apart from the polling unit tent was a huge generous tree across the road from the tent. I left my chair there and crossed the road to join one of the eight lines. It was fairly orderly because people remembered how we lined up for the verification exercise the week before. There were easily 4 men for every female voter and so our lines were shorter. As piqued as I was about the low number of women, I was partly grateful because it meant the civically responsible women would be done faster and could return home if they wished. At first the lines were hardly moving at all and the air was filled with the sound of complaints and necks stretching to see what was happening in front. We heard that there was only one stamp – to stamp each ballot paper before it was used and only one person signing each ballot paper – making the process incredibly inefficient. Twice, I had to leave the line and take a breather from the sun under the tree; thankfully it was close enough that I could see my line and could gauge when it would be my turn. The second time I left the tree to return to the line was when there was a bit of a commotion and so we rushed back to hear what it was about. Apparently a ‘big man’ had arrived and wanted to go straight to the front of the line and he was shouted down and chased away. The voters were absolutely not having it. Yay! Hurray for democracy – if only we could show this type of discipline and none preferential treatment everyday not just on voting days.

After that, I thought it wise to just stay on the line because as more people joined the queue it was getting harder to keep explaining that I was there before- especially as the person in front of me did not seem to like me leaving her as guard of my space. So I stayed in line and when it was my turn I put on the stopwatch on my phone to see how long it was taking each person to move along the processing line. I stepped forward and gave them the piece of paper they had given me in the morning when I was verified. They checked that my right thumb had been marked blue, put a red mark on my left thumb and asked me to move down to the right of the tent. As I approached the last desk, a policeman waved me to another line – this time unisex. I have a good view of two NYSCINEC officers stamping and signing the ballot papers – they have improved their efficiency. One at a time, we walk up to the desk for one last check of our thumbs and then the two precious ballot papers were handed over.

As I wait for my turn, I have cause to ask the man behind me to please leave more than just room for a strand of hair between us…he seems not to understand me until a man from the adjacent line explains to him. “She wan make you observe sharia”, he says, ‘dress back’. Incredibly, both men and women are guilty of this lack of respect for personal space…wherever there is a queue it seems like an invitation to become the slices of bread for a thinly filled sandwich.

It took me exactly 4.55minutes from the time I left my original line until I got to the ballot papers and entered one of the 4 shiny booths where I could make my selection in private. Way to go INEC. I finally look at my ballot paper and I am in complete shock. It takes me a while to digest what I am looking at. There are no names on the ballot paper? I had expected to ponder over which of the women to vote for but not in my wildest dreams did I expect that I would have only party logo symbols and acronyms to pick from. In befuddled disgust I vote for one of the major parties and wipe my thumb clean to make sure I do not smudge any part of my ballot paper. I am about to fold the paper to hide my vote, when I think to myself, what if the still fresh ink mark creates another smudge on another party? Then my ballot paper would be disqualified. I fold ‘outward’ and drop my ballot papers into the transparent ballot boxes.

My election buddies and I agree to go home and return at 4pm when we were advised that the voting would be over. When I get there, I learn that voting ended at 4.10pm – not bad at all for 594 accredited voters. However, it is almost dark before we can get our results. The counting is a tortuous process and the embrace of the polling unit by the semi circle of human beings sitting on footwear on the road keeps getting tighter. Almost every half hour, the security agents have to keep encouraging them – in a very friendly manner to move back and give the NYSCINEC some air. What took them so long? First they sorted the ballots into House and Senate. Then they counted, and counted and recounted until they found the ‘missing’ ballot paper. Phew. Then they started removing the invalid ballots, then they sorted the ballots into parties (with party agents looking on) and then they started counting.

CPC had the highest number of voter cast ballots in my unit and by 7pm all that remained was the technical aspects such as filling the result sheets, getting the signatures of the party agents and providing copies. I wanted to stay behind until the NYSCINEC posted our results and left the area but after the presiding NYSCINEC made a mistake on the result sheet at 7.30pm…I decided to call it a day.

I learnt a few things today. One, that the electorate is grossly underestimated. A person being illiterate does not mean he cannot be educated about a process. Not having names on the ballot papers aids fraud. If a PDP candidate who has done well for her constituents is cheated out of the primaries and forced to move to another party…how will her constituents know this especially with all the tight timelines? Primaries in January, petitions and lawsuits up until the last minute and elections with only party logos in April? Not fair – this is set up to help powerful parties rig.

Two, there are so many loopholes in our electoral process that we are not going to get 100% free and fair elections in the first try. It will take time but there must be a genuine will, not a will to satisfy what the eyes can see. As the results started trickling out that evening and we heard stories the next day of certain people being declared winners. I had one question. Why did Prof Jega make such a big deal out of asking voters to wait for their vote to be counted if there is no intention to publish the results in detail? Unverifiable results published in ‘bulk’ in a country known for serious electoral fraud is not free and fair. I have been informed that the party agents who signed the result sheets are the verifiers of this result. I have two observations. One, not all parties could afford to have 120,000+ agents covering all the polling units and two, unless each party has copies of all the result sheets from all the polling units – including the allegedly ‘undeclared’ ones – then the results arguably do not add up. I want to see my polling unit results in black and white.

Three, the feeling that voting gives can be addictive. The power to change the course of a nation peacefully is an intoxicating, heart pounding, gut wrenching, tears inducing and awe inspiring thing. When people cheered when the results were announced, I had goose bumps and felt proud to be part of what made so many so happy. The vote is the only peaceful weapon of change, it is the only peaceful weapon for disarming tyrants and dictators, and it is the only peaceful weapon of mass participation. The beauty of the 2011 elections, win or lose is that this knowledge is catching on and will hopefully stay with us for a long time.

Diary of a first time yuppie voter - April 2 2011

2011-04-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

From the depths of my flu and cough medicine induced sleep, I reach for the phone as instinctively as you reach for an alarm you know is about to go. It is an international call I forgot I had scheduled. 40 minutes later we are still at it and I see that in a few minutes it will be 8am. I struggle with myself for a split second; should I let this conversation take its course or end it and get ready for the verification exercise? I cut what has become a monologue, bark out a few household instructions and practically dash out of the house without a shower, wearing a dress I wont be concerned with and two under skirts… just incase.

I step out and marvel at the pleasantly cloudy and cool sky over my part of Abuja. If anyone had asked what type of weather I wanted if I was going to spend the entire day at a polling unit, I could not have picked better weather. With a travel mug of coffee in one hand and reading material in the other I stop by the mirror to make a last minute inspection. Sunshades at the ready perched on my red scarf worn Benazir Bhutto style: check. Practical flats to make sure my feet do not come back covered in dust and grime: check. One last thing: I ask the guard to follow me with a straight-backed chair with arm rests – I am determined to obey INEC’s instructions to wait behind (comfortably) until the ballots are counted.

Straight as an arrow, I make my way to the tent where a young man in the Khaki NYSC uniform and a young lady sit behind a table. The table is completely bare i.e. no papers, register, ballots…so I say ‘Hello. I see verification has not started’. I pepper them with questions such as - ‘have they heard from the INEC officials? Have they called anyone?’ ‘Yes – they are on their way’. ‘Any idea when?’ Not a clue. It is not yet 9.30am but there are at least 100 people milling around with some faces I recognize from the registration exercise.

So I sit and shoot the breeze with the people around and we soon become the center for people who want to know what is going on. Some leave their numbers and plead that we call them when verification starts. A few minutes before 10am, I get a blackberry message saying ‘Gombe senatorial elections postponed goje caught wiv ballot papers’. I tell the person off for sharing an old April fool joke and caution against sharing so that people do not believe it and stay away from the polling units. My equilibrium is totally unruffled.

At 11am, I get up to let someone older sit on my chair…while I stretch my legs. Still no sign of the officials but lots of blackberry messages reporting different things, but I am convinced it is all a ploy to deflate the enthusiasm of the voters. Then one of the election observers who drove off earlier comes back and says verification has started in other parts of the FCT and only a few areas have not started yet. The resolve returns to full tank for those around me and we all discuss the strong likelihood that the minute we leave the polling unit, the verifiers will arrive. At about 10.30am I decide to put this theory to test. I dash home to get some food and water and although I am not gone more than 10 minutes, when I arrive the scene has completely changed. There was at least 3 times the number of people I left and of course the NYSCINEC staff had arrived. (INEC representatives dressed in NYSC uniform).

It is utter chaos. At first they try to organize us according to the last 3 digits of the VIN numbers on our cards e.g., 001-549, 550-999 etc. but people refuse to budge from the 8 or more lines which had been formed. Instead there is a lot of yelling and inability to comprehend with people peering at their registration cards to decipher where they should be. Then we get told by the loudest NYSCINEC person that we should line up based on our last names. I explain to someone that this means surname. They are not sure what I mean. I promptly give up and move away from the women’s line for 001-549 to find another line for people whose last names start with O.

Everywhere people are shoving, stepping on my feet and throwing their arms across me to tap on or catch the attention of others, shouting into my ear, my face and I begin to understand why people might not want to come out to vote. Anyone who does not like crowds, who is deeply offended when strange people brush and push against them, or who gets claustrophobic when the only way to ‘get out’ is to press through a throng of people…will be reluctant to come out to vote.

Very quickly, the lines start moving and the verification exercise is taking place efficiently. But at exactly 12.49pm, as we sit and wait for others to finish their verification so we can start voting, I get a message saying ‘April 4 new date. Jega live on NTA, Channels and AIT’. I call to verify, share the news and soon everyone is huddled around those who have radios to listen for themselves.

A few of us agree to stay until the NYSCINEC people start packing up and leaving. There are heated discussions all around about Jega’s explanation about the printing of material. Announcements are made loudly in Hausa and Igbo to explain what has happened and to share the information that voting is set for Monday.

Finally, I call for the guard to come get my chair and walk back home quietly. This was supposed to be the day I cast my first vote ever in my country’s general election. The BB messages that continued to flow all day helped me decide how I would take the news. I had two options. I could take the definition of Jega:/n/je-ga as ‘the act of astutely adhering to the objectives of a laid out process by placing a demand on excellence with a view to achieving an acceptable outcome e.g., Nigeria jegaed Siasia for a football glory’ or I could choose ‘the act of stupidly wasting the time of a lot of people whilst keeping them under hot sun e.g., the groom jegaed his bride for a small Babcock girl.’ I chose the former; Aluta Continua; Victoria Acerta

Go!

2011-04-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

And may the best men and women win.

For months the news and our every discussion has centred around the elections. Like the hands of a clock moving in ceaseless circular motion, no matter where the conversation starts, it ends with the elections. Maybe it is because I am older, that I care more, or maybe it is because I have seen more, that I perceive more; may be this type of excitement, this fervour, this heart racing, adrenaline rush I feel when I think of the elections has always been there but I was just never part of it. I had never tapped into the swell of hope, of decision, of influence, of people power and mind blowing possibilities that elections give millions of people all over the world because I had never, until now, wanted so badly to cast my vote. Only now have I developed to the stage of social consciousness where I want to use my ballot to say out loud all the things I have said in private – on the dinning table, with friends, at the office, on queues at the bank with complete strangers – that one of the reasons the Nigerian experiment with democracy is developing so painfully slowly is because we are not participating the way we should.

In Nigeria it seems that the elite and the middle class have abdicated from the public sphere without more than a cursory backward glance every now and then. In other countries while the best and the brightest strive for political office as the educational and social activism profiles of the Obama’s, the Blair’s, the Cameron’s and even the Bush’s attest to, here we are okay with our Governors and other government officers: chief budgeting executors, vision champions and project managers being equipped with the equivalent of only a secondary school education. And so while the most educated and enlightened of us flock to the private sector – to the banks, the oil companies, the telecommunications companies and all the multinational companies who will have us, we leave the shaping of our destinies in the hands of those who many of us would not hire into the private sector. There are many excuses and reasons; all quite logical. ‘Politics is dirty’; ‘you have to play like them’ ‘it is not for people like us’, ‘you have to be ready to do bad things’. And so we stay away from political office and somehow convince ourselves that our decision is rational. Then we compound our sins by refusing to vote. We won’t be the candidates and we won’t vote either. We want to ensure that the very few in politics who are there to try to make a positive difference, get rigged out by those who are willing to go to any lengths to exploit us and dehumanize us…and then we sit back and complain.

So the time of decision is here and it is time to participate – to think carefully about the choices we make and to take responsibility. For many of us, it will be the first time we are taking an active part in influencing the direction in which our country is headed. We will finally be setting good examples of civic responsibility for future generations, explaining to our children the value of a vote and not just talking at them but providing the opportunity for them to witness the sacrifice it takes to be a participating citizen of a country.

So who will you vote for?

If there was a hundred naira for every time I heard someone ask that question, I would be able to pay for my local government chairperson nomination form in 2015. It is an absolutely great question to ask and to answer because it does two things. One it forces you to voice out your reasons for wanting to vote for a person…and if you have an iota of reasonableness in even one of your fingernails, most times hearing out loud the reasons why you want to vote for a person is enough to stop you right smack in the middle of your words and get you to sink your head into your chest and think deeply for at least the length of time it takes to fly from Lagos to Abuja. Two, it allows you to share and receive information which might influence you or the other person to change their minds – and make a more informed decision.

There are many who said the debates helped them make up their minds. Hearing their candidates speak – seeing how they dodged or dealt with sticky issues – acted as a microscope through which they could see things more clearly…and the change, the moment of clarity and sense of direction is amazing to behold. Personally, I have come full circle, tracing my support through almost all of the presidential candidates and taking back the baton of leadership again and again but now, finally, with the support of all the conversations taking place, I have made a decision I am comfortable with.

Many of us, even those of us who like to think of ourselves as sophisticated, enlightened and unaffected by petty loyalties to ethnicity and religion are still swayed by where the candidates come from and how they worship. But the more we discuss issues, track records, contributions, the harder it will become for us to be convinced solely on the grounds of geography or the chance of birth. And the harder it becomes for us to vote solely on base and emotional reasons, the harder it will become for those who run for office to do nothing towards the development of the country and still expect to be allowed to stay in office…and this is how our democracy will thrive, take strong roots and grow. They say the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. The road to the Promised Land we all want Nigeria to be seems broken, tortuous and rough and it might seem pointless in the face of rigging, violence, and the undue advantage that the incumbents always seem to have – but, we must have faith and belief in the power of what is ‘right’. Put one foot in front of the other until you are at the polling booth. Cast your vote and stay there until the votes are counted and announced. Repeat every Saturday until April 16. Take that first step. Go!

[published in Thisday's The Lawyer on April 5 2011]

Get. Set.

2011-04-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

The ground is set, the die is cast, and we are on our marks. In spite
of PDP’s desperate thrashing to hold on to power by ensuring that the
electoral playing field is as bumpy and uneven as possible for the
opposition parties, there are signs that the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) is trying to force the political parties
to play fair.

As Buhari, Ribadu and Shekarau – the leading presidential contestants
in the April elections deal with Emirs closing palaces to avoid their
visits, as their billboards get torn down and as their access to
public campaign venues across the country continues to be blocked, we
hear that for the first time in recent election history, our ballot
papers are ready…even though we still have no full disclosure of
candidates for the national and state assemblies. If these ballot
papers are secure and as tightly protected as something caught in the
jaws of a pit bull, then hopefully it means, ballot papers will be
distributed on schedule and verification and voting can start on time
at 8a,m. This feat by INEC – because it is an accomplishment that
despite all the hocus-pocus around the candidates who made it through
the primaries, INEC has managed to have the ballot papers printed- is
in keeping with the energy and excitement with which we, Nigerians,
are preparing for the April elections.

INEC knows, as well as we do, that a lot is at stake for these
elections. For better or for worse including the desire to manipulate
the ballots, we have had a record turn out of adults eligible to vote.
Nigerians are embracing the pillars of democracy and holding on for
dear life, we want a say in how we are governed and we want people in
office who will be accountable to us, not to political and traditional
godfathers. All we need as a safe and fair playing field where people
and parties are accountable to the same rules and procedure and where
our enforcement agencies are protect the people not the criminals.

So what are some of the things INEC is doing to level the playing field?

Last week in this column we highlighted one of the problems we could
expect during the elections: the voter verification exercise which is
supposed to be completed before voting starts. As pointed out by a
highly qualified reader: for a polling unit with 2000 registered
voters, it would take a little over 33 hours to verify all the voters
at a rate of one minute per voter. Impossible. INEC has noted this and
says voters can look forward to multiple verification points per
polling unit and they are considering the recommendation that
verification and voting happen simultaneously so that the process is
as efficient as possible. However, until we get alternative
communication from INEC, verification of voters takes place between
8am and 12 noon and voters who want to be accredited must be on the
queue for accreditation by 12 otherwise they will not be accredited.
This is very important and not enough communication is going on about
it. You cannot stroll to the polling unit at 4pm and expect to vote,
you will be told that you have missed the accreditation process and
cannot vote. There is something for concern in the guidelines on
INEC’s website which say that after the accreditation process all
accredited voters must queue up and be counted and the number of
accredited people on the line will be counted, announced loudly and
the number recorded. Does this mean if you were accredited at say 10am
and went home and maybe fell asleep and missed the ‘counting process’
that you will not be allowed to vote? I fail to see the significance
of the counting because surely the verification exercise will also be
a record of how many people were accredited to vote…if a polling unit
accredits 500 people and counts only 350 people at 12.30pm just before
voting is supposed to start does these mean only 350 ballot papers are
expected from this polling unit? This is a call on all 291 election
observers listed on INEC’s website to clarify this immediately and
share the import with us.

INEC has also announced that voters have a legal right to wait at the
polling unit after voting to see the votes counted and announced. This
is a move from the past when voters were encouraged to cast their
votes and go away. Now INEC and the election observers say it is
better for transparency if the votes in each unit are counted and
announced on the spot. That way we can all do the math together when
the ‘official’ results are announced. Since the National Orientation
Agency seems to be asleep, we have a responsibility to spread the word
everywhere – in churches, mosques, market places, salons, barbershops
because not everyone has access to or can read the papers and not
everyone will listen to the radio or watch the TV at the precise
moment when the news is being shared. Let us sacrifice a little of our
air time to share this message with those we think are most likely not
to hear it – especially those at home in the villages.

When the votes are counted, INEC’s guidelines say that the number must
of course tally with the number of voters accredited at that unit (not
the number of people counted in the line prior to the start of the
voting exercise) – if it does not i.e., if there are more ballot
papers than accredited voters, then the vote in this unit will be
nullified. All the party agents will be asked to sign the
nullification and given copies of the document. Where the vote count
corresponds to the total number accredited, the results will be
announced, recorded and party and security agents will be given copies
of the results and a copy will be posted in the polling unit.

All this is great on paper but we all know as Nigerians that our
reality is very different from what we ‘look like on paper’. On paper,
because of our vast mineral and natural resources we should be an
extremely well developed country with the infrastructure and services
to support a high standard of living…but in reality we are not. So how
do we ‘assist’ INEC during the elections to make what is on paper a
reality? Here are some things to look out for during elections.

One, watch out for the substitution of Electoral Officers and
Officials with people in the community with known political
affiliation because this is illegal according to Section 29(1) of the
2010 Electoral Act. Any person known to be politically involved in any
political party cannot act as an election official and if members of a
community see such a person acting as an official during the elections
please report it immediately. Send SMS to INEC (if they ever release
the numbers), tell a senior police officer if you are comfortable
doing so or share this information with one of the official observers
who should be at each polling unit. Political parties can send members
to observe which means to watch only but not actively verify or help
with the voting process. Do not put yourself in danger – do your
reporting discretely.

Two, it is also illegal if any local government chairperson/councilor
or commissioner interferes in the elections. These elected officials
or representatives of elected executives are not allowed to act as
party agents or do anything more than an ordinary voter on election
day. If they come there and start trying to take charge and throw
their weight around, kindly point out to an observer the illegality of
their actions under Section 45(2) of the Electoral Act and if there
are no observers, or the observers do not want to get involved –
report the matter immediately by SMS – it serves as a better record of
events than a phone call.

Three, please be generous towards the future of Nigeria and future
generations of children and grand children – bring whatever you think
the polling unit will need in the conduct of safe and fair elections.
The INEC guidelines say the polling unit officers must give copies of
Form EC 8A to party and security agents but it is safe to assume there
will be no copying machines in all 120, 000 polling booths so most
likely carbon paper will be required. Bring carbon paper. Since the
guidelines say the polling unit must stay open until the last person
on the queue has voted, then it is likely that in many centers it will
be dark before voting, counting and announcing is completed and we can
bet that PHCN and all the President’s men in the PTFP will not be able
to provide power. Please bring portable generators and diesel if the
facilities will allow for the unit to be powered in this way and if
not, please bring lots of torch lights and batteries, candles and
matches so that there are no mistakes in identifying the symbols of
the parties during the counting exercise.

INEC is doing its bit with coded ballot papers, transparent ballot
boxes and so on. But INEC can only succeed if we prove that we want it
to succeed. So ignore the naysayers who say the votes won’t count.
Believe that it can happen and it will happen. Work towards making
this belief a reality by being prepared. It is time to vote; Go.

[Published in Thisday's The Lawyer on March 29 2011

On. Our. Marks.

2011-03-22T14:20:00.001-07:00

The elections are 11 days away and instead of a sense of urgency from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), some civil society organizations say they get a sense that things are ‘slowing’ down. There are several things that INEC has to sort out, have ready and presumably communicate to the public before the elections start on April 2. And while we hope that everything will be ready, there is no question that for those worried about the massive and hopefully uncontrollable (in a good way) groundswell of public interest in the 2011 elections, slowing things down is to their advantage. This is because the more last minute the arrangements are, the more opportunity for shoddy preparations and shady dealings which will provide the platform for electoral fraud.

The most pressing issue, and the one we hope INEC is focusing most of its attention on is the question of how many registered voters INEC is preparing for at each polling unit. For some reason the number 500 keeps coming up even though the Electoral Act is silent on this issue and election process observers believe that due to the unprecedented number of registered voters – new polling units will have to be created to manage the extra numbers. For instance, during the registration process, INEC center PU 023 in Ministers Hill, Maitama Abuja, registered at least 2000 Nigerians. We know from the verification exercise that not all of those who registered at that center were captured as potential voters for that center and if indeed only 500 people are going to be accommodated at each center, where should the extra go? We need to know this now so we can make arrangements since movement is usually restricted during elections. According to the election timetable, INEC plans to publish notice of poll information on the 18^th of March which covers the dates and hours for election, those entitled to vote and the polling units. Hopefully the communication will be on multiple platforms, not just the INEC website because we need this information to be disseminated as widely as possible. Other wise, many will be disenfranchised especially in the rural areas where the most fraud is allegedly perpetuated.

Next is the issue of multiple registration. One published account says at least 800,000 people are guilty of multiple registration or is it that the number by which the total number of registered voters has been inflated due to multiple registration? We are being diverted by the story that ‘prominent figures’ have registered multiple times and the demand for these names to be released. The real question is: how does INEC intend to stop those guilty of multiple registration from voting during the elections if INEC does not intend to use the fingerprints from the registration exercise?

Another troubling issue is the story that before voting begins the polling officials will carry out a verification exercise to ensure that everyone there is entitled to vote there before, voting starts. The time allocated for this verification exercise is from 9am to 12 noon. What happens if all 2000+ people who registered turn up to vote in PU 023? Can the polling unit officials really be expected to verify ALL these people before voting begins? Opposition parties, international observers and activists need to take this issue up immediately and get clarification from INEC. A better idea would be to have the two exercises happening simultaneously: verification at one desk and voting at the next.

How can the electorate, armed with the experience of past rigging and with knowledge of all the areas where ‘trouble’ will creep, ensure that elections take place efficiently and fairly? The ball is not solely in INEC’s side of the court; we can do our best to make sure the game goes our way and our votes are made and counted.

One of the things communities around a polling unit can do to protect their mandate is to prepare the infrastructure for the polling booth officials. Let’s get at least two tables and as many chairs as possible under a shade first thing in the morning on voting day and not give the polling booth officials any excuse to waste precious time. Also where possible let’s create our own make shift voting booths to have a little privacy for voters. The ballot box should remain in the open where everyone can see it but around the table where the ballot is going to be marked we can either use tacks and heavy cardboard or even old cartons to build walls on the table by tacking the cardboard to the top of the table. Or where the location is suitable, just use a curtain and a rope to shield voters from those who want to influence them. If you create this booth early, before voting starts, it will make it harder for anyone to argue against it.

And although the Electoral Act says polling officials should not be given any ‘gifts’ – I think it is acceptable to arrange for a cooler with cold water and a few drinks and even arrange for food sometime in the afternoon to ensure the polling officials have no reason to take breaks in order to find something to eat and drink.

Another thing is to be armed with the necessary phone numbers for the resident electoral commissioner and other local INEC officials. Don’t waste too much time trying to call because many people might have the same idea and the lines might be busy – instead send SMS messages with all the required information such as the PU number, the location and what the problem is.

Above all, do not forget that we will be doing this three times (don’t know whose bright idea that was) and hopefully we’ll improve with each experience. Let’s caution each other to be patient, to be calm and to be determined to contribute to the development of democracy in Nigeria. Every vote must count in this election, let’s get set to make it happen.

When women wasted a great opportunity

2011-03-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

Exactly 100 years and 7 days ago women celebrated the centennial anniversary of international women’s day; the one day in the year dedicated to women raising awareness about issues they care about.

In 1911, the year zero of international women’s day, most women around the world did not have the right to vote (only women in New Zealand, Australia and Finland had a national right to vote); they had limited rights to property and inheritance, they could not provide evidence in certain cases, married women had no legal rights and the entry of women into certain professions was questioned or even prohibited.

Within this context, women around the world have indeed come a long way and there is a lot to celebrate. Apart from a hand full of countries in the middle east, women have the right to vote and to be voted for and women have reached not only the pinnacles of government and academia, but of science, literature, art and business. There are legal precedents and policies protecting the right of women to their own bodies, their own minds and their pursuit of happiness and wellbeing.

And celebrate we did…at least around the world. In some countries, days before the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD) the media focused on issues important to women, Air India and Air France ran female only crews on flights; Presidents and their First Ladies delivered good will messages to women and the men and children who love them; celebrities blogged and twitted on women; rockets and fireworks went off and female charities and organizations benefitted from additional funding. Most importantly, though, in the midst of all the celebrating, there was a concerted effort to focus and keep attention on the problems women and female children still encounter in their various communities.

At home, in Nigeria we all know what some of the most pressing issues are: health (maternal and infant mortalities amongst the highest in the world); education (data says two-thirds of all illiterates in the world are women); economic slavery (development experts say woman is the face of poverty); poor legal framework (global and regional conventions still not been passed into law) and even more abysmal enforcement of the few legal protections that women have. So as someone who has been aware for a long time of the developmental and social limitations placed on women but only recently realized ‘there must be something I can do to help’ other than cry and complain; I tried to find out what was going on in Nigeria.

Enquiries led to the National Women’s Development Center in Abuja where Mrs. Josephine Anenih, Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development planned to deliver a press briefing. Our theme for IWD was the UN global theme: equal access to education, training and science and technology: pathway to decent work for women. When the briefing ended with the unveiling of the newly minted UN Women logo, I was I left feeling let down and absolutely uninspired. Here is what did not happen but so easily could have.

One, there were no young women and girls of school age given a role to play. Instead we had a stream of associations such as wives of custom officers given two minutes to address the audience. If the theme was about education and training, then the audience should have been younger; the average age of all the women there was at least 40, not counting a few babies in the audience.

Two, there could have been a few minutes dedicated to the issues and the goals for Nigerian women going forward. The Federal Ministry of Women Affairs has been leading the advocacy for the adoption of two documents into Nigerian law: The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the African Unions Protocol on Human and People’s Rights of Women in Africa (2003) but continues to face opposition even though Nigeria has ratified both without reservations. It would have been nice to know what the strategy was for achieving this goal and what practical steps would be taken to ensure our alignment with the theme of the day: that our young women and girls get a quality education in science and technology.

And three, in the spirit of elections, it would have been great if the women centered organizations and civil society advocates for women’s rights, equity development, hosted a debate or dialogue session for a few politicians to share their plans for women in Nigeria. Undoubtedly, the campaign schedules for the presidential candidates are very full – but what about men and women vying for the Senate or the National House of representatives? Would they not care to share their plans for the group which constitutes half the population of the country?

The truth is while we have come far; we have farther to go. Two weeks ago the Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke appointed a seven-member board for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other related Matters (NAPTIP) and not a single member was female. Arguably if trafficking were not considered a problem predominantly faced by women and children, there would still be a need for a more balanced board to reflect the demographics of Nigeria. With this and other more recent examples of sexism and discrimination in general and party politics, should our celebration of the IWD been all about patting ourselves on the back?

If women want to make greater strides in development, politics and social issues we have to do things a little differently. We cannot rely on the government to do everything for us including advocate on our behalf. It would help a great deal if the people in government were committed to the development of women but they are not – and it is up to us to device ways to make them care. If the Ministry of Women Affairs and its agency, the National Centre for Women Development have to toe the government line, then the decades old activists and advocates should lead the way. Women need a plan to put before the next President of Nigeria and the incoming legislators and executives – and this would have been a perfect opportunity to sign off and present it to women as we head to the polls. 104 is still a great number – maybe we can learn from what we did not do and get our acts together for 2015.

Published in Thisday on March 15 2011

For God and politics

2011-03-08T13:33:00.000-08:00

Whoever said religion is the opium of the masses must have been
thinking about Nigerians. Religion is the one thing that destroys
rationality faster than an ice cube on a hot toaster and this why most
democratically inclined nations try to keep God and government apart.
Nigeria, the home of churches and mosques which sit astride side by
side, states simply and with rare precision in Section 10 of the 1999
Constitution that “the Government of the Federation or of a State
shall not adopt any religion as State Religion”.

Our federal and state governments have been repeatedly blessed by
self-acclaimed men of God, so although we have no state religion, we
supposedly have God’s chosen people working amongst us. Somehow
though, we have been exalted with being at the bottom of every human
and social development index. It is hard to imagine how much worse
things could be if these men were not so consecrated.

Slowly but surely, since the zoning argument for PDP failed, the April
elections have swung to being a little bit about religion (even though
no one will admit it). For over a year, President Jonathan has been
the acclaimed chosen one to rule Nigeria – placed against all odds in
one of the most powerful positions in the country. His story is the
stuff on which drinking myths are spun. The quiet, unknown deputy to
the only state governor impeached and removed for corruption during
the Obasanjo administration, he becomes Governor of Bayelsa. Then he
is selected out of many eager volunteers to become the unthreatening
vice president to the ailing presidential candidate, Alhaji Umaru Musa
Yar’adua. It must have been surreal to everyone close to him. What I
remember most vividly about those first few months of the Yar’adua
administration was how surprised and even startled Vice President
Goodluck Jonathan looked in all the pictures…it was almost like he
could not believe where he was. And then barely two years later,
President Yar’adua dies and against all plots, schemes and sincere
conniving, the vice president becomes the president. It is easy to
understand why people might consider him the one anointed.

However, there are several problems with self anointment and the
inclusion of religion in politics. The first is that anyone can claim
to be anointed. You do not need any specific qualifications or ideas
or even a patent – you can just say you have been chosen to lead and
there isn’t much that can be said about that. But what does it say
about us as a nation that we welcome or listen to politicians who say
they are the chosen ones? Nigeria is in such dire straits that it is
forgivable to think the solutions lie in a miracle but it is unlikely
that one man can wave a wand and solve our problems; but tell that to
the pastors, reverends and people who have proclaimed that all our
troubles will be solved once President Jonathan is re-elected.

The second is that religion dictates the acceptability and suitability
of our political candidates but not our assessment of their
capabilities. We all know that in Nigeria the winning ticket for the
presidential elections must have a Christian and a Muslim. And no,
Abiola-Kingibe is not the exception because they were never sworn in
and it was never intended that they would be. It is not about how
good the president and vice president can be or have been in their
public and private lives – it matters more if they are the right
religion.

The third problem is that religion provides ‘winning’ candidates with
the cloak of inevitability and prevents us from asking what winning
really is. The mosques and the churches are loud with discussions and
sermons about God and politics. The Pastor says ‘when God says yes,
nobody can say no’. The Imam says ‘when God says a person will achieve
something or get something, nobody, repeat, nobody can do anything to
change it’. These are messages for winners and losers alike. Even when
you cheat, steal and kill – it matters not if you win because winning
is everything and everyone, including God, loves winners. And if you
lose? Well, even if you are a saint who has done absolutely nothing
wrong other than being born a Nigerian, you are on your own because
nobody loves a loser.

Fourth, religion is an effective mask to cover up everything bad under
the sun because at the end of the day no one knows the mind of another
except they ‘display’ it with their actions. Which is why in corrupt
ministries, departments and agencies around the country, the employees
make a show of piety. Opening prayer before we share the contracts and
squander the money meant for Nigerians and closing prayers to protect
us and our loot as we ride through the electricity deprived streets
and slums that line the road to our mansions. Meanwhile mosques and
churches shamelessly reserve the front rows and seats for these same
people; making it clear that our practice of religion is not to uplift
and inspire us but to deceive us and keep us docile (except when we
are needed for so-called ‘religious crisis’).

And finally, the fifth problem is that religion as practiced in
Nigeria strips us of responsibility. We, as a people, can fold our
arms and do absolutely nothing and then we say ‘God is in control’.
God has given man reason for a purpose; he has given us great skills
and intellect to help our communities and ourselves yet we abdicate
all obligation. Months ago before the ‘God for Jonathan’ campaigns
started in earnest journalists asked the same ex-president Obasanjo
who was responsible for foisting Yar’adua on us as President, “on
2011, where do you stand? Are you for Jonathan, IBB, Atiku or Gusau?”
And Obasanjo’s response: “I stand where God stands”.
This is the man who is responsible for most of the political
dysfunction and the most criminal elections we have ever held in
Nigeria so far (2007). This is a man who is responsible for
manipulating the primaries in his home state, Ogun. And this is a man
who is using the same battle cry he used in 2007 saying the 2011
elections are a ‘do-or-die affair’. And this is a man who stands where
God stands?

Let us beware of politicians who mention God all the time when we live
in a godless society. Let us beware of pastors, priests and imams who
endorse politicians and most of all let us beware of our own
susceptibilities which might make us believe these people even against
all the evidence around us. The 2011 election is the opportunity to
make rational and logical choices about where we go as a nation and
while we pray in private for God’s guidance, we must not abdicate our
responsibility and let self proclaimed anointed ones steal the
elections and continue to rob generations of a decent future in
Nigeria.

Duped Again!

2011-03-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

“The performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), whose chairman and directors were all appointed by the President, has been so inept that some experts think it was set up to fail.”

Considering everything we have witnessed or heard so far about the voter registration process, about the verification exercise, about the sale and destruction of voters’ cards, this statement would seem fair and apt. However, it was made four years ago on April 19 2007 in an article in The Economist titled ‘How to steal yet another election’.

Nigeria is the kind of place where you are constantly being surprised. Even when you think you have heard it all…even when you think you have become blasé about the level people will stoop to or the absolutely stupefying mind racking disregard the government has for its people…something comes along which drains all understanding from your head, with the same finality as a sledgehammer coming down hard on an ant.

Last week one of the stories making the rounds was that INEC might resort to using a manual voter register for the April elections. After spending almost a trillion naira for a problematic and painful registration process then we hear manual registers are going to be used? As Governor Ngige put it a lot more eloquently than I could, INEC reverting to a manual register would amount to ‘a rape of the sensibilities of the people’. But what is new? What makes this rape any different than all the others? Excess Crude Account has been depleted from $20B to $3M in a little over a year? Entire country held hostage by terminally ill PDP president refusing to hand over to PDP vice president? Over and over again our sensibilities are abused, shredded into pieces, stomped on and then flattened with a steamroller for good measure and still we go on.

I was not worried by INEC’s silence when the stories of multiple registration broke out, because I assumed the expensive system procured to guarantee free and fair elections would ‘deal’ with the issue. Then came the stories about people buying and selling voter registration cards from as little as N100 to as much as N10,000, I was still not perturbed by INEC’s stoic stance because I assumed the system around which the registration process was built would also keep our elections relatively clean. But when I heard that the voters’ registration cards were being burnt…then I was troubled. This meant that people would not be able to vote and this would leave room for ‘fake votes’ to ‘fill up the gap’ left by those who had let hunger, apathy, or greed disenfranchise them. So I placed my ear to the hot melting tar on the ground to hear if INEC would address this urgent problem. Maybe INEC would speak to the public through full page adverts in the papers or through the radio and television – urging people not to succumb to temptation or threatening those caught with all sorts of dire consequences if they are found out…but still nothing. As I tried to wade through the meaning of this silence, the stories of manual registers began to break out. Okay. It is all beginning to make sense. INEC, who is always complicit in electoral fraud in Nigeria was merely going through the motions in order to provide good reasons for their decision to return to the manual registers and the old ways of ballot stuffing.

Now suddenly INEC says the Electoral Act does not require e-voting (only e- voter registration). So what was the point about the 10 fingerprints? Was it not to ensure that it would be impossible for a person to vote more than once? Was I alone in assuming that all the data captured from all the polling stations across Nigeria were going to be fed into one central virtual location so that people who turn up more than once on the list will be identified and eliminated by virtue of their unique fingerprints turning up more than once on the data base?

Now the story from IT experts is that collating all the data would take too long? Science can send people into space and in Nigeria we cannot borrow or buy the technology to collate the data of 60 million people in 6 weeks? How long could it possibly take and if indeed time is the issue, why didn’t we start the process earlier?

In July last year INEC Chairman Prof. Jega was emphatic that the entire foundation for credible elections in Nigeria rested on a clean voters register. As he pounded the circuit trying to convince us all, Vanguard of July 23 2010 quoted him as saying “We closely looked through the existing voters register sampling over 100 polling units from randomly selected 19 states. What we found were massive inadequacies including under age registrants, hundreds of blank or blurred photographs and multiple registrations by same persons”. Pray tell – once you substitute ‘hundreds of blank or blurred photographs’ with ‘thousands of voters with partially captured fingerprints’ would we not have the same identical register we had in 2007?

The now four year old article in The Economist concluded with saying that ‘Nigeria is going backwards’ because everyone (excluding PDP and INEC of course) was in agreement that the 2007 elections were ‘far worse than those of 1999 and 2003’. Everything is on track to ensure we do not deviate from our backward slide: we are all set to break the 2007 record for fraud and violence in the 2011 elections with INEC aiding and abetting all the way.

Still on Sarah Jubril

2011-02-23T14:36:00.000-08:00

Are Nigerian women making any real progress towards fair representation in elected offices? The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs. Josephine Anenih seems to think so. She was recently quoted as stating that the INEC lists indicate that 88 women are contesting for elective office in the April elections. She considered this a good result worthy of all the efforts, the initiatives, the time and the money spent on promoting women in politics. I am not sure if this assessment is accurate considering that in 2007 eighty eight women were sworn in as federal and state legislators and if we add the women who formed half of a ticket such as Mrs. Sosan of Lagos State, then we had more than 88 women in elected positions after the last elections. What the results of the primaries means is that it is likely that on May 29 2011, we will have fewer women being sworn in than we did in 2007 (not counting those contesting in the local government elections later in the year).

How come the increased awareness, the concerted efforts of civil society and donors, the rallies, workshops and campaigns have resulted in less representation for women than before? What are we doing wrong?

Mrs. Sarah Jubril has been very vocal about the role women have played or not played in scuttling her ambition for political ascendancy to the highest office in Nigeria and it is clear she blames them, at least partially, for the failure. Many reasons and excuses have been given why Mrs. Jubril did not make an impact during the Peoples Democratic Party primaries: she was not the right candidate, women cannot vote for another woman just because of gender; she was not prepared, she did not campaign, she did not spend money…the list is endless. There is also the allegation that women are just jealous of each other and so will never support the ambitions of another woman. Many people would want to dismiss this last argument, because, advertising or no advertising, a woman’s best friend is not a diamond, but her best friend…which is usually another woman. However, news that a group of female advocates recently held a protest against the candidacy of another woman who had been nominated as the CPC candidate for the Bauchi Federal Constituency, makes it difficult to ignore the allegation of jealousy or that women find it hard to support other woman.

There is an explanation for the relationship between women, men and politics which has been elegantly and succinctly summed up by Rosemary O’Grady, a lawyer from Australia. She says ‘because women’s liberation (substitute participation, emancipation or whatever word is applicable) is a movement of the powerless for the powerless, its attraction is not immediately clear to the powerless, who feel they need alliance with the powerful to survive’.

There are several reasons why in Nigeria women are finding it hard to press forward in politics and they are all tied to O’Grady’s statement. One, the majority of the small number of women who make it into political nirvana and get the positions of their choice, get there because they are ‘somebody’s’ wife, daughter, not-so-secret mistress or sister. As such they are already aligned with power and do not owe their position to any women’s group. For instance, at a Women and Power seminar at the Kennedy School of Government in April 2010, a current female Senator who is vying for re-election in 2011 told a listening audience from different parts of the world that she resented being asked questions related to gender issues such as the Yerima Child Bride case and that she was not for anyone but herself. Go figure. Two, for those who are not affiliated by blood to power but who make it into the men’s club, they soon realize that the way to survive is to be quiet about ‘women’s issues’ and play by the exclusionary rules of the club. Three, women have been socialized for centuries to be contemptuous of themselves…the oppressed never like each other because they can smell the stench of shame and abuse on each other and would rather be far away from it. Oppressed men, oppress weaker men, women or children and oppressed women, oppress weaker women, men and children- it’s the law of the jungle. When you bring this structure to politics, women are unable to see each other as ‘leaders’ or authority figures and so they willing and some would say logically choose men over women. And, four, women have less practice than men at bungling things up and wielding power and as such when some of us that are not used to power get a taste of power, we often, like men, misuse it…but we get greater publicity for our gaffs than men do…because men control the media and want to reinforce the message to the public that ‘women cannot be trusted’.

But women are the sole breadwinners in many families. They juggle work or business with raising happy children and even find time volunteer. They are the best friends to each other and their sisters and can be relied on to share their last dime. They can manage money and stretch a budget tighter than any Central Bank Governor has ever done and they navigate the world of in-laws with the finesse of the most savvy political strategists…yet when it comes to the public arena things constantly fall apart for women and we cannot get our act together. Could it be our strategy of ‘aligning’ with power – the men who scorn and mock us is not the best strategy? How successful was the 100 Women Group at lobbying for increased femal participation? Could it be we need to stop stooping to conquer in every aspect of our lives? While stooping might work in certain areas, it is doubtful if it is the panacea to every ill. Besides, Stooping to conquer is not a sustainable strategy. If a person’s self-esteem is constantly rubbed into the ground when they finally get the upper hand they are more likely to go berserk.

Noble as it is for money, time and resources to be expended to promote women in politics and to attain the goal of 35% political representation maybe we need to try some ‘re-socialisation’ of the public, especially focused at women and young people.

Women have many wonderful qualities that would be of great benefit to society and they should be allowed to contribute without being made to feel they are inferior or are being ‘allowed’ to humour them or their men. The sooner women themselves realize that our lack of collaboration benefits only the men and that the men are never going to invite us to the table to ‘eat’ with them, the sooner we will realize that since most of the time, we cook the food, we have a bargaining chip. Let’s use it.

Only the Lawyers - and a few politicians -win

2011-02-16T14:52:00.001-08:00

Between the primaries, the registration process and the judiciary’s self-induced implosion we are set for what will undoubtedly be historical elections in April 2011, at least for lawyers.

The registration process has come and gone – massively expensive, extremely tiresome and plagued with problems, both technical and political. Save for those who did not manage to register at all or who did not get to register as many times as they wanted to, we are all sighing with relief that it is over. But there are implications.

During the registration exercise there were stories of those who registered more than once and who were found with multiple voter registration cards on them and although INEC kept quiet about this issue, we would like to believe that when all the data ‘captured’ during the registration exercise is collected, those who registered more than once will be automatically flagged – since fingerprints do not lie (at least in most places). However what would be most reassuring is for INEC to publish the name/names of those found to have registered more than once – along with its publication of the 2011 the voter list – and make it clear that they are disqualified from voting during the 2011 elections. This way, political parties and the public can put at least this particular issue of multiple registrations firmly away and focus on other election irregularities. For instance…what is going to be done and what can be done about the under-aged voters who got away with registering? Unfortunately finger prints cannot tell us how old a person is so how is this particular problem going to be resolved? Section 10(2) of the Electoral Act clearly requires that people to be registered must come with identification which proves ‘identity, age and nationality’ but no one asked me for this when I was registering and all the times I went to the registration centers to monitor the process, no one was ever asked - understandably. To ask for identification would have resulted in the disenfranchisement of millions of Nigerians who have nothing to prove who they say they are. What a nation. And what a potential opportunity for a lawsuit questioning the legality of the almost 1 trillion Naira registration process.

The primaries have also come and gone but we are still talking about it. The list of parties’ candidates to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) changes as often as women in the market reach into their bras for change. Here today and gone tomorrow; maybe this is where some of the hidden costs of running for elections come in; you must have money to ensure your name remains on the list of candidates. So who is gaining from these changes? How are these changes magically happening? Maybe each party should publish the list they have given to INEC so that INEC will not be able to ‘change’ some of the names as alleged for instance in the case of the CPC gubernatorial candidate for Kano State? The flood of problems with irregularities in INEC’s execution prove that we were wrong to think democracy had scored a goal when Prof. Jega was appointed as the Chairman of INEC. We are always so concerned with the head and not with the body. The much celebrated Prof Jega is in …but what about the people he ‘inherited’? The real experts on electoral matters who have survived various chairmen of INEC? Can one person oversee everything that is happening in one place, across the nation? No – and that is why jubilation on his appointment was premature and actually a bit infantile. Nothing has really changed.

At the most recent count there are at least 64 lawsuits filed by aggrieved contestants who disagree with their parties' approved candidate lists for the April elections following disputed party primaries. The elections are barely two months away – how many of these cases are going to be resolved within this time frame? For those who think the lawsuits will make a difference, Section 87(11) of the Electoral Act takes away what Section 87(10) gives. While subsection 10 says aspirants with complaints may go to the Federal or State High Courts to seek redress, subsection 11 says the courts will not be able to stop the general election pending the determination of the lawsuits.

This is the cue for where the judiciary rushes in on a white horse to save the day – maybe by fast tracking the lawsuits or by dedicating specific courts to handle the cases arising from the primaries. No? They are not coming? Why not? Because they are neck deep in their own controversy arising from the 2007 election petitions which have only recently been resolved and their own alleged positioning in anticipation of all the lawsuits coming in 2011.

So who will save the elections and the electorate and ensure it does not get mired in endless litigation? No one. Lawyers will have a field day with fees; those who do not deserve to win the elections will ‘enjoy’ power for close to a full term before the judiciary ‘saves the day’; Prof Jega will be vilified and calls for his removal will reverberate around the world and the rest of us will look forward with hope to… 2015.

Published in Thisday's Lawyer on February 15 2011

If you could get away with breaking the law...

2011-02-03T21:29:00.000-08:00

At first I thought of this as a jurisprudential question which only lawyers would be interested in; then I realized that it is also a moral question which most Nigerians would be able to identify with. Because if you are a Nigerian living in Nigeria, then almost daily, you find yourself either observing or facing this dilemma…maybe we face it so often that we no longer recognize it as a dilemma. Maybe our response to this dilemma has been repeated so often that we no longer see that our response has become our character.

What am I talking about? I am talking about a lawless society. Not in our case knowingly lawless, but evolving slowly and taking on a defined shape which will be as hard to change as separating hair from chewing gum.

For most it starts gradually, not with big things but little seemingly insignificant ones…like throwing rubbish out of a car and onto the streets. Maybe you are going so fast you think no one will actually see you do it. Or better still you think, ‘the streets are already dirty so it makes no difference what else I add to it’. And so you do and it becomes a habit that you rarely think about.

Then on the way to or from work for those who live in the big cities, you watch fellow commuters speed past you driving against traffic while you stay in your –watching paint dry slow moving lane. You shake your head at them feeling superior but day after day, maybe even year after year…nothing changes. You obey the rules of traffic and stay on your lane and get to your destination late, and people who breeze past, powered by wrong, get home faster. Then one day, maybe you have had a hard day where anything that could go wrong, goes wrong and as you sit in stand still traffic you think to yourself…’just this once, I’ll drive headlong into oncoming traffic with my hazard lights on and get home early for a change’. It’s exhilarating. You cut out of your lane just as the person two cars in front of you is doing so and together you form your little convoy of brigands and soon you are home. After that, you never sit still in traffic again and it becomes second nature to do so. And so it continues with sir luck shining his beacon on you. You graduate to ‘borrowing’ company funds for a sister’s funeral (surely a good cause) especially since you shared part of it with your religious association and taking that thank-you-in-anticipation-of-the-contract-being-awarded gift and you never even notice that you have stopped having the ‘should I or shouldn’t I discussion with yourself.

At the other end of town is someone who is in a battle with his chi because despite what Chinua Achebe says, no matter how strongly he exerts himself to do something wrong, he just cannot get away with it. He puts one toe out of line and immediately gets a firm slap in the face. The day after his motorcycle license expires and he convinces himself that the odds are for him getting away with it until the next pay day…barely two intersections away from his home, the Vehicle Inspection Officers are all over him, he has to pay a fine, appear in court, and eventually looses his job because his boss wants no excuses and is tired of all the stories about motorcycle licenses.

When this person was younger and was preparing for his school-leaving certificate, many spoke confidently about facilitating their success in the exams. He decided to use this information wisely and prepared his exam aids carefully but unfortunately, only a few including him became the scapegoats for exam malpractice. His paper was cancelled and he was expelled and that was the end of a family’s dreams of finally joining the ranks of the educated.

It is easy to understand why some would think they were born to ‘escape the law’ and that no matter how many laws they deliberately and willfully break, they will never be brought to justice. However, they understand that this entitlement is only valuable and secure if those who were born not to ‘escape the law’ rarely transcend to the other side. And so they speak passionately about justice, law and order and equity but only for the benefit of giving those born not to escape the law with someone thing to look forward to. And it works.

Everyday, he who was born not to escape the law watches enviously as others go scot free for the very same thing he tries to do and gets punished for. Ironically, their invincibility gives him hope. Maybe one day, just one day he will be able to get away with what others get away with so easily.

Published in Thisday's The Lawyer on Feb 1 2011

t’s not just the judiciary; it’s the entire legal system

2011-02-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

A lot has been said and written lately about the Nigerian judiciary:
its issues, challenges and what needs to be done to fix things and
make things better. Just last week, in the editorial of Ms. Funke
Aboyade, We All Stand to Lose, she wrote in defense of the judiciary
in the wake of the missiles directed at it from Senator Omisore.
Everything she said is true but as she called on the Bar to ‘defend
the integrity of the Judiciary AS AN INSTITUTION’ I have two
questions. One, why do lawyers and Nigerians think that, in light of
the pervasive rot and consistent degradation of almost every thread of
our social and political fabric, the Judiciary would remain untouched,
pristine, the glowing beacon of hope, justice and integrity? And two,
do institutions make the men or do the men make the institution?

If you have never had cause to have any interaction with the legal
system (which I define for this purpose as the judiciary, the lawyers
and the administrative process of law including court administrators,
rules of procedure, law, enforcement etc.) then you are extremely
fortunate. Never mind if you have had to swallow a lot of pain and
inequity to avoid dealings with the legal system, you might still be
technically better of for it. As a lawyer and a party to a child
custody suit I have been curious enough to find out about the
experience of others within the Nigerian legal system and as such I
can speak about our collective experiences which can be adequately
captured in three truisms/sayings.

In Nigeria, justice delayed is not justice denied. Indeed we take
great pride in the fact that cases can take over 20 years to resolve
and we are not concerned that this practice is one of the reasons why
Nigeria remains at the bottom of the international ‘ease of doing
business’ index. A lawyer recently explained to me that because the
rules of procedure allow a defendant who has been served with a claim
42 days to file a defense, this means before the court can even begin
to look at the case, there is already a built in delay. And if the
defendant asks for more time, of course it will be granted because it
is necessary to be fair, never mind the plaintiff who has to wait.
This way, a matter which can be adjudicated within a week can take
years as the party who wants to avoid ‘justice’ just keeps taking the
maximum time offered and keeps asking for adjournments. As litigants
we hear about how over worked the judiciary is but I can’t help
wondering; if judges got through their cases a little faster maybe
they would not be overwhelmed with what are actually a backlog of
cases?

Two, the Nigerian legal system believes that we are all guilty until
proven innocent. That can be the only explanation for some of the
absolutely amazing court rules that we have. I’ll take just one
example: parties to a suit have to apply in writing for an order of a
court made specifically for them. Let me explain. Imagine you have a
child custody case which is taking the usual course of time a case
takes in Nigeria. So you request that since the party withholding the
child is comfortable with the length of time the case is taking, the
child be allowed to spend the voter registration imposed holiday with
the party who is seeking a more equitable situation. The court grants
the order on a Wednesday and says it is effective from Saturday
January 15 to Thursday January 27th. Saturday rolls around and the
order is not complied with. So you contact your lawyers and proceed to
having the following conversation.
‘How do we enforce this order that the court delivered?’
‘Hmmm, you have to wait because we have to apply on our law firm
letterhead paper for a signed copy of the order.’
‘Really why? The order was granted for my benefit, why do I have to
apply for it? ‘Those are the rules, we will apply on Monday.’

When the written application on letterhead is finally ready, what do
you know; the judge is unavailable to sign the order and will remain
unavailable for a week, thus making the order meaningless for its
purpose. Still trying to understand the reason for this rule that
parties have to apply for an order which the court granted them, a
judge explains that it is to ‘prevent fraudulent people from being
able to fake orders’. How about automatically preparing two copies of
the order, signed and dated, and asking the lawyers to pick up these
orders and sign a log book acknowledging receipt? Better still, how
about scanning the order and emailing it only to the parties to the
suit? Oh, our rules of evidence do no accept electronically generated
data so it is unlikely that it would want to use the medium that
everyone in the 21st Century use to communicate, thus effectively
shutting us in the dark ages as far as email, sms or God forbid the
information out there on the Internet is concerned. This means that
the system is so convinced that all Nigerians are fraudulent that it
will rather let an injustice happen over and over again than let one
person abuse the system.

And the third thing is our own special slant on attorney client
relationship – you can never be sure who your lawyer is really working
for (especially in child custody cases). We are a patriarchal society.
Fact. Children are considered the property of the father. Fact. The
preponderance of child custody cases are brought by women who have
been unlawfully denied custody of/access to their children. Fact.
Women are generally economically and socially disadvantaged – at least
in comparison to men. Fact. By deduction, this means men in child
custody suits can afford to pay off the women’s lawyers to stall, give
bad advice or just be plain negligent and unavailable. I have heard
this complaint in at least two different cases and I am sure there are
more but as Ms Aboyede quoted in the article ‘it is hard to prove
corruption’…maybe because paper receipts are not required for the
transaction and electronic transfers are not admissible.

The point is, it is not the judiciary alone which should be beaten up
and scrutinized (to no recognizable results one might be tempted to
add); the lawyers, the rules of procedure, the court administrators,
everyone and everything must come under the microscope. Other than the
judiciary however, only a few other parts of the legal system are
periodically in the news. A few months ago, right on schedule, we got
the annual ‘law school exam paper leak’ stories, then it was former AG
Aondoakaa being stripped of his ranking as a senior advocate of
Nigeria (a welcome rarity) but rarely do lawyers and court
administrators and their practices come under scrutiny.

Judges come from lawyers, lawyers come from students and students come
from society, bringing us to the issue of men and institutions. If
there are no honorable men can or will the institutions be honorable?
And can the institutions be honorable if the men within it are not?

The answer to me is clear – the judiciary and the entire legal system
cannot be in isolation of the state of the nation. If the state of the
nation is good, then the state of the judiciary and the legal system
will be good. What we have is a reflection of the society we live
in…we can’t all be covered in smut, violence and oppression and
somehow the legal system remains lily white. We need a total overhaul
of the technical aspects of the legal system and a re-education on the
essence and ethics of the system: to provide real justice, to be fair
and to be open and transparent. One of the first things you hear as a
student of law in the United States is that the American judicial
system would rather nine guilty people go scot free than to let one
innocent person suffer. We like to say justice is blind because it
means that justice does not recognize class, power, status, race,
ethnicity, religion – just right or wrong or what is fair and
equitable. In Nigeria we need justice and the entire legal system to
be blind to anything which will influence its decisions and at the
same time, we need eyes, binoculars and magnifying glasses to ensure
that the administration of justice is real and practical not a fairy
tale which hardly anyone (but the most die hard romantics including
myself) believes in anymore.

Published as Letter to the Editor of The Lawyer on February 1 2011

Election Madness

2011-02-03T21:24:00.000-08:00

“Shambolic and a mockery” – those are the words used to describe the recently concluded PDP primaries for the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Yes, no need to ask, it was the losers who described it as a sham and I am pretty sure that those who won think it was a wonderfully managed process. So far the news from the other parties is the same – chaotic, badly organized, not enough materials, holding delegates hostage, using fake delegates and on and on…and this is only the primaries. Some of the primaries went on through out the night and into the morning; no wonder there are not more women involved in politics. And this is not taking the violence, the assassinations, the bomb blasts and the maiming into consideration. Does the Minister of Foreign Affairs want to take back his indignation over Ambassador John Campbell’s prognosis that Nigeria’s democracy is not likely to survive the 2011 elections?

No one needs to be a prophet or a seer to tell that these elections are heading straight for the edge of a cliff and unless something changes quickly, we are all going to topple over and fall. My first inkling that these elections were not going to be different from past elections was the decision of INEC to ‘delegate’ the voter education campaign to the National Orientation Agency. Who? Exactly. Never heard of or from them before.

Every election is about administration. It is about keeping tracking, monitoring, accounting, checking and cross checking, timing, counting, verifying, delivering, checking and cross checking; it is about project management and somehow we just can’t seem to get elections right on any level. One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Sort of like the way people in Kwara State keep selling their votes to the Sarakis’ for the short term gain of filling their stomachs for a few months (or however long a bag of rice lasts) and wondering why their State is barely developed save a few roundabouts and lots of banks.

It is this type of madness that keeps the Nigerian executive arm in the reiterative trap of hiring judges or academics as Chairmen of the Independent National Electoral Commission despite the sad track record of past chairmen in managing elections. Section 14 of the Third Schedule of the old 1999 Constitution is silent on any requirement apart from insisting that the Chairman must be no younger than 50 years old. So what is it about the responsibilities of the Chairman of INEC that makes judges and professors the ideal match? Are judges good at mobilizing? At keeping track of minute details such as the large number of polling booths and matching this to the voter registration centers and the number of people registered at each center and how that translates into the number of ballot papers each center needs? Are professors skilled at managing the political process? (Okay, there is so much rivalry and backbiting in academia that they just might be suited for this part of the job) Can a professor manage a large field force of over 1000 employees not including the contractors vying for jobs, the civil servants in his employment who are bent on doing things their ‘own way’ and the hundreds of volunteers and civil society organisations? I don’t think so. So why do we keep getting them to manage our electoral process? Because corruption is so engrained in our psyche we think the key to efficient and fair elections are so-called incorruptible men. Not so. Everyone is corruptible; we just need those who hold an extremely non negotiable high premium to their conscience. We need Field Marshalls and Generals, trained in the art of war campaigns and strategy, who know how to mobilize their battalions and make sure the ammunition is where it is supposed to be and the troops have their equipment and are primed to go.

This time last week, with only five days to the start of the voters’ registration process, the same registration process we are sacrificing a month of our children’s education for, we still had no idea where we were to go to get registered. The radio airways were silent, the newspapers bereft of any relevant information and not even a flyer was bobbing aimlessly in the wind. What are the arrangements? How long, approximately, would it take each person to register? What was the average wait time at each center? Did we need any identification to get registered?

On INEC’s website, under the menu on the left, ‘Publications’ has a link to “Registration Areas Nationwide’. The title is misleading. The link takes you to a Portable Document Format (PDF) file which lists the Wards under each Local Government without providing any addresses e.g., for Abia North Local Government some of the Wards are Osusu I, Osusu II etc. Let me put this in perspective using Eti Osa Local Government which has Victoria Island I and Victoria Island II. Now where on earth is the actual registration taking place within VI? Is it at Bar Beach? Or at Bonny Camp? Way to go INEC, now let’s see how long it will take to break down this information and actually provide addresses. In the meantime…wasn’t one of the reasons primary and secondary schools were closed because school buildings were going to be used? Then why is it so hard to share the address of these schools with us?

Professor Jega insisted that Nigeria needed to compile a new voters register because the entire basis of a free and fair election rested on this. If the preparations for the registration so far are anything to go by, with missing, stolen, now not stolen data capturing machines and the lack of basic information about the registration process then we can expect a shambolic mockery of elections in 2011.

We need to stop being so disorganised in our affairs and accept that if we do not stop doing things the ‘Nigerian’ way we are never going to move forward. There is still a little time to pull things around and stop acting mad – doing the same things over and over again and insanely thinking ‘e go better’. It is never going to get better if something does not change…so we are hopeful, waiting and watching.

Published in Thisday's The Lawyer on January 18 2011

Sarah Jibrin: One vote against the world

2011-02-03T21:19:00.000-08:00

I did not watch Sarah Jibrin’s address to the PDP delegates on Thursday January 14 2011 but when I first heard about it, it was being spoken about derogatively. The women talking about it said her lack of political astuteness embarrassed them. They expected her to have the sense to ‘declare’ for Jonathan (not Atiku) and thus align herself with power. Instead she sang about overcoming and secured only one vote; the vote she cast for herself.

My first and enduring thought about this was ‘were there no female PDP delegates’? Then other questions tumbled out. Did she not campaign (what match could she possibly be for the dollars allegedly disbursed by President Jonathan and Atiku Abubakar)? Would it have made a difference if in her address she spoke powerfully about the plight of Nigerian women in our society today? Did the female delegates not empathize with what Sarah Jibrin was trying to do? Did the delegates not know that since it was a secret ballot nobody would know how they had voted after they had safely collected their share of the dollars? (Apparently, there is honor amongst thieves).

Although women officially make up almost half (49%) of the Nigerian population, they constitute only a small fraction of the decision making process. Nigeria’s National Gender Policy of 2006 recommends a minimum of 35% representation of women in public office and I believe the wording ‘public office’ is deliberate. It is to make it easier for government to support this policy if they really wanted to by skipping the hurdles and prejudices of political participation and appointing women to positions where they can influence gender friendly policies. Today, generally accepted data says women make up only 7% of those appointed. Five years after the policy was finalised President Jonathan has 6 women in his cabinet - 15 percent of the Federal Executive Council; need we say more?

In politics, women do not fare any better and although some of the political parties pay lip service to keeping 30-35% of electable positions for women, this rarely translates into reality. Today, on the eve of the 2011 elections, only 8 out of 100 elected representatives are women. And if the recently concluded party primaries are any indication, the number of women in elected positions might be even lower after the April elections.

Why should women care about politics and representation?

We should care because what happens in our domestic lives is what translates into public life. Women and men say ‘when a woman runs for office, she is considered immoral’. News flash – whether we participate in public office or not we are still considered immoral. However, if we will not care for ourselves, if we are not tired of the disempowerment, discrimination and deprivation on every social, economic and political facet of our lives, then let us care for the sake of our children.

What future do we want for our daughters? Why must their education, inheritance, right to property, domestic rights all be subject to the whim of men even when the law favours them? What future do we want to leave for our sons? Why should they be used for political mayhem and destruction and yet be incarcerated for years without trial for flimsy reasons? Shot at by police at every turn, scoffed at by old politicians who never want to go away and sacrificed by a society which values an uneasy peace over the growth and development of its young? Why must our children struggle to get the questionable quality of education most Nigerians are condemned to and then spend years trying to get employed?

There is no better place on earth for us than here in Nigeria. There is growing unrest around the world and immigrants are finding it harder to settle and belong. We need to make Nigeria the haven we seek out in other parts of the world and women have a big role to play in making this happen.

Sarah Jibrin stood up to be counted to encourage women, young girls and even young men who have not fully swallowed the misogynist pill, to participate and aspire. It was not about winning but it should not have been such an absolute loss. We have more than 60 political parties and had only one female presidential aspirant. She should have received more votes to trigger the understanding that women who constitute the larger number of voters can vote as a block for politicians who care about the issues women care about. Just imagine…what if Sarah Jibrin had locked enough votes to be the tiebreaker between President Jonathan and Atiku Abubakar? Then she would have been in a more strategic position to negotiate for herself and for women. And for those who understand only Naira and Kobo, just think…maybe female delegates might have commanded a higher ‘fee’ for their vote. We need to start thinking more strategically. Should we vote for a person just because she is a woman? Not particularly. Should we vote for a person because she symbolizes something bigger than ourselves, a stand against oppression and a hope for the future? Yes, we should.

Published in ThisDay's The Lawyer Jan 25 2011

Battle for supremacy: Indigenes v Settlers

2011-01-04T18:52:00.000-08:00

Am I a Nigerian first or am I from my state of origin/local government first? As a Nigerian am I free to settle and develop where I like or am I forced to ‘belong’ to the place my father is from even if he has never lived there? What does it mean to be from a place and why is it so important to our identity?

In Jos, Plateau State, it has been nine years since the issues around these questions have been begging, with the blood of innocents, for a resolution but neither the State nor the Federal Government have the will to do anything to improve the situation.

According to political historian, Dr. Abimbola Adesoji in his paper, Indigeneship and Citizenship in Nigeria: Myth and Reality, one of the underlying reasons for the conflict which refuses to go away in Jos is the belief that no matter how many years a person lives in a place where he ‘does not come’ from; that person remains a ‘settler’ and not an indigene. And there lies the crux of the problem between the Hausa-Fulani settlers and the indigenes of Plateau, the Birom, Amo, Buji etc. who incidentally or coincidentally happen to be Muslim and Christian respectively. One story is that the Hausa Fulani have dominated politics and seek to have their own leadership within the communities where they have lived as far back as 1902; another story is that the indigenes want to protect their interests against the intrusion of ‘settlers’ who threaten the indigenous institutions. The real position lies somewhere in between but while we get distracted with pinning down the elusive truth, people are dying, loosing their entire identity, along with all their property while we the onlookers worry about the ‘problem’ spreading to where we live because no one is safe from this issue.

Unfortunately, the 1999 Constitution is silent on this issue and as usual our legislators are busy with important issues. If they were not too busy, maybe the constitutional revisions might have included something to resolve – at least within the law – the issues around settlers, indigenes, residents and citizenship.

The roots as always go back to our ‘federal character’ principle which makes it really important to define where we are from because as politicians and civil servants, our access to wealth and juicy positions is based mostly on what state we represent. Now if a Yourba man from Ogbomosho has lived and worked in Sokoto for over twenty years and married a woman from Sokoto and had all his children from Sokoto , when it comes to political appointment…he cannot be from Sokoto. And further down the timeline, the same ‘rule’ applies to his children even if the only home they have ever known is Sokoto. Does this make sense? Many might say yes it does. But let’s look at it from another perspective.

If a Lebanese man settled in Kano in 1980, according to Section 27(2)(g)(i) of the 1999 Constitution, by 1995 after fifteen years of living in Nigeria, he would be eligible to become a citizen of Nigeria and very likely he will choose Kano as his state of origin when he needs to apply for a passport, driver’s license etc. So does the situation of the Yoruba settler in Sokoto still make sense?

In the United States of America, President Obama, half Kenyan, half America was born and raised in Hawaii. As an adult he moved to Chicago, Illinois where neither of his parents or grandparents were from and decided to run for congress to represent the people of Illinois…and he could because of the constitutional provisions which made this possible.

We need to change our constitution to define what it means to be an indigene of a place and we need to do it immediately before we find ourselves in an even more ridiculous and tragic position. There are people who have had their homes – not rented property - in Jos burnt, not once but twice and yet they rebuild. Why? Because this is home to them. They have roots there, they have family buried there, they have invested their sweat and blood there…is it right to force them to leave because they are not ‘from Jos’? There are others who have had their houses burnt just once – they were asked what their names were and once it did not sound like a name which belonged to Jos, they were asked to turn their backs on their houses only with what was on their backs and leave with the heat of their burning belongings following them. They have left Jos and yes, they will probably never go back. And there are those who have not waited for the violence to reach them personally; they have abandoned their property or sold it for what they can, and left quietly. So what next? When they get to back to their states, should they chase out those from Jos who live there to make room for them? Where will it end? If as a Nigerian, I cannot live anywhere I want, develop roots and invest with a sense of belonging and security, then what hope is there of Nigeria ever truly becoming a united entity? What hope is there that as Nigerians we can complement our skills and talents and blend in the best of our cultures while blurring the lines of difference?

Over thirty years ago, Group Captain Dan Sulaiman, as military administrator for Plateau State, “proposed that any Nigerian born in Plateau State or from any other state who has lived in Plateau state for twenty years should enjoy all the rights and privileges of a native of Plateau State” (Adesoji 2009). Of course this was not adopted or considered on any government level and now we are suffering from our inability to project into the future or take long-term decisions.

If Lagos State, which continues to lead as the most progressive state in Nigeria not only in terms of development but inclusion, decides it wants to pass a state law granting ‘unrestricted indigeneship rights’ to Nigerians who have lived and paid taxes to Lagos state for twenty years or more, can it do that or will the Federal Government play big brother and prevent it from doing so? These are the federalism issues the public and polity should spend time debating not zoning and the forced membership of political party executive committees.

For indigenes of Plateau State and other states dealing with indigene versus settler issues don’t get lulled into thinking you are safe. Once the predominantly Berom indigenes of Jos town get rid of the easily recognizable settlers, they will come for you non-indigenes of Jos and push you back to Pankshin, Wase, Shandam etc. where according to them, you belong. As we begin 2011, think of offshoots of the Golden Rule which are applicable to all of us; ‘ Do not do to others that which you do not want them to do to you. ’ (Confucius) ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ (Matthew 7:12). ‘Woe to those…who when they have to receive by measure from men, exact full measure, but when they have to give by measure or weight to men, give less than due. (Qur’an 83:1-4)

(Published in ThisDay's The Lawyer on January 4 2011)

Fighting Words (2)

2011-01-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

The 2010 Electoral Act explicitly provides that political campaigns or slogans must not be ‘tainted with abusive language directly or indirectly likely to injure religious, ethnic, tribal or sectional feelings’ and asks politicians not to use ‘abusive, intemperate, slanderous or base language or insinuations’ which can ‘provoke violent reaction or emotions’. We are four months away from the 2011 elections and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the self-acclaimed biggest party in Africa, is leading the way in the use of threats to mobilize.

Lately much has been made of the allegedly inflammatory rhetoric of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, President Goodluck Jonathan’s rival for the PDP nomination as presidential candidate. At a National Stakeholders Conference in Abuja a few weeks ago, Alhaji Abubakar reportedly said to the audience in the context of a message to the leadership of the country and his political party, that ‘those who make peaceful changeimpossible make violent change inevitable.’ This rephrased popular quote of President John F Kennedy immediately raised the temperature of an all too receptive atmosphere by several degrees and President Jonathan responded by warning Alhaji Abubakar about straying into the realms of treason. Now considering that many, including me, have used this phrase in varying contexts, do these words constitute treason?

According to Sections 37 and 38 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, treason is when a person wages war against Nigeria in order to intimidate or overawe the President or Governor; or conspires with citizens and/or non-citizens inside or outside Nigeria to wage war against the State; or does anything which is considered treason in England.

Since it would be a stretch to hold that Alhaji Atiku’s words, which he concluded with ‘violent change is not what we want for Nigeria’ (still arguably a veiled threat) can be considered as waging war, maybe we need to look to English law to see what their definition of treason is. The English still use the foundations of the Treason Act of 1351 as the basis of their treason laws and treason so far has not extended to public utterances. The crime of treason in England is almost exclusively linked to the Crown and includes plotting to murder the Queen, having sex with the Queen’s consort or her eldest unmarried daughter or the wife to the heir to the throne or levying war against the Sovereign etc.

So unless we have some other law –customary or otherwise, it seems unlikely that Alhaji Abubakar’s words constitute a treasonable offence. But this is where the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) comes in. INEC has the powers to enforce the provision which forbids incitement around election campaigns and the Chairman, Prof. Jega should be the one to speak against Alhaji Abubakar’s utterances. The problem is one of inconsistency and double standards and also maybe one of reach. If Alhaji Abubakar’s words are deemed treasonous, what of the constant spew of fighting words from Chief Edwin Clark? What of the priests, pastors and imams who scatter hatred and intolerance from right within ‘God’s house’? Can they too be charged for election related campaign violence if their messages are relayed in the context of who to vote for and why?

Whatever the context, we should not let politicians and influencers, bent on securing their relevancy or twisting facts to suit their plans, off the hook. When people in the position of influence and leadership use certain rhetoric, then we should be able to hold them accountable if their words are capable of galvanizing the public to disorder. There are even mediums such as the radio where those inciting hatred are not recognized as influencers, but because they have the means of broadcast and an audience which might be all too ready to receive such messages, they too should not be left out of the reach of INEC. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 and indeed many other wars, have proven that the radio can be a power medium for propaganda and inciting violence – who says what where and how matters especially during elections.

Considering our history of civil war and the constant inter-ethnic and religious warfare, Nigeria really should take fighting words more seriously. The entire hypocritical premise of zoning is supposedly to maintain a balance but this has not changed anything; people are still dying because of their religion and their ethnicity 30 odd years after the war. We think we are so complex, yet countries much more complex than ours have managed to navigate multi ethnicity and religion and be democratic and develop their nation. In India, a country with a population almost 9 times ours; with 14 official languages, 4 major religions and 700constitutionally recognized tribes – they take fighting words seriously. If the Indian Director General of Police, K Aravind Rao had his way saying things like ‘waging a civil war” or “State will become a battle field” will be banned on the basis of being inflammatory. We need to get serious too.

It is encouraging that the State Security Services have come out to condemn the ‘unguarded, reckless and divisive utterances of some prominent politicians’ but as pointed out above – they need to be consistent about their reprimands and not speak out only when the President’s opponents are being inflammatory.Maybe our Criminal Code cannot support criminalization of hate inciting speech as treason but the Electoral Act provides an avenue to do so. INEC needs to take control of the powers it has been given and it will have the backing of the public and the government security agencies. We sympathise with the logistical and security nightmare of getting DDC machines where they belong on time but if things go up in smoke, no one will be registering or even voting. INEC can use its legal or communications departments and the Police Force (thus helping us reduce the number of police tax check points on our roads) to monitor and report fighting words. And the rest of us…we can do our bit too. Let’s tell off those in our circles of influence: chiefs, professors, imams, pastors etc.; we do not want violence mongering rhetoric – our weapons are our ballots. Let’s use them strategically.

(Published in ThisDay's 'The Lawyer' on 28th December 2010)

Stop: no human rights here

2011-01-04T18:48:00.000-08:00

I am never quite sure if my thoughts are the magnets for the stories or if the stories that find me fuel my thoughts – but human rights has definitely been a recent theme. I am sure the predominance of human rights violation stories is not unconnected to Human Rights Day (December 10 2010) but the connection between power and the contempt with which man treats man is scary. A few days before, as if to welcome human rights day, a police officer shot and killed Oluwafemi Olaiywola (Femi Best) in cold blood, in front of witnesses. That seemed to open the flood gates of human rights abuse stories and sadly, two out of the three stories I heard thereafter involved the police. And even though the police had no active role in one of the cases, if the police really were our friends then they would have a stronger role to play as protectors of our rights.

The first case is filled with comic irony worthy of a television show. According to the woman who was traumatized, her entire ordeal started because she dared to say ‘human rights’ within the walls of a police station. The woman was having a not-so-private conversation with a constable and when she said those words a policeman standing close by, told her off for being foolish enough to mention those words. ‘Don’t you know policemen do not like hearing ‘human rights’? he admonished and when she was fool hardy enough to respond, the issue escalated until she was chased out of the police station in a volley of abuse and scorn for her bad leg. She limped out as fast as she could leaving behind some items and taking along scars from the encounter.

The second story, involved the sexual, physical and psychological abuse of an employee by her foreign employer. Not once in her ordeal and her search for intervention did she mention a discussion with the police to come to her aid. As she sobbed out the facts of the case, the radio presenter kept telling her how God was enough for her and she should not worry. Feeling saddened by this stories, I wondered I am sure like many who listened in, what I would do under these circumstances. Would I take the passive route of crying and trust that the future wrath and punishment of God was enough or would I try to exercise my right as a person and as a citizen of Nigeria to see that those who abused me would be held accountable for their actions so that the risks of someone else suffering like me would be reduced? The thought of going through the judicial process is daunting for any Nigerian especially when there is no certainty that after years of litigation, money and time, one would get justice. How do people who are not formally educated and who have little means even begin to navigate the system?

As I carried these heavy thoughts around in my head, I came upon a post on Facebook where someone shared a report by Daily Trust about a teenage girl in Kano who was forcibly held for weeks by policemen and repeatedly gang raped. This was the final straw for me, I had to find out what support is available for people who don’t just want to cry when their rights, dignity and person have been smashed, stomped on and spat on.

Legal Aid Council of Nigeria has been in existence since 1976 and this is where most Nigerians who cannot afford the services of a lawyer would go for legal services. This is where the serial rape victim went because thankfully there are Legal Aid offices in all the 36 states. However, after thirty-four years of existence, it is not clear how effective the legal aid council is. We do not know their success rate in getting justice for their clients and how well they act as a fierce deterrent for people who commit crimes or cheat others. It is great that there are legal aid offices all over the country, but what is their exact location in each state? This information is not on the website and even if it was, how accessible is the Internet for most Nigerians? Are they open twenty-four hours? Are there hotline numbers which a victim can call at no cost in order to seek advice or help? What are they doing about publicizing their work and highlighting successes?

The Nigerian Human Rights Commission is younger, more active and more visible – maybe because its mandate is unambiguous, unlike the legal aid council whose reach is wider and encompasses all wrongs including human rights. But all the questions asked of the Legal Aid Council can be asked of the NHRC and its website too provides few answers. The NHRC has sponsored awareness campaigns on gender violence, rights of children etc. but has it prosecuted any cases successfully? Has it made an example of anyone? That is what is completely and utterly lacking in Nigeria today and that is why the police and anyone with power over another person can abuse that power with impunity; because no one has been made to pay.

On December 10, the NHRC called on all Nigerians to ‘be defenders’ of human rights. But what does it mean in Nigeria to have human rights when the police seek to prevent you from even verbalizing the words? What does it mean, when the rape victim in the case above is being pressured to ‘drop’ the case instead of being encouraged to punish those who violated her? These questions are even more poignant in the context of the 2011 elections and the call on all Nigerians to protect their votes. History books are peppered with mortals who have struggled to uphold the rights of others; Gandhi, Mandela and most recently Liu Xiabo who is challenging, China the boogey monster of international diplomacy and economic power for the right of Chinese people to elect their leaders. Will any Nigerian(s) keep company with such exalted people?

Yes, we are thankful for the NHRC, Legal Aid Council and human rights crusaders who fight big cases involving the federal and state governments but who is fighting the small cases; the ones which have immediate impact and which make people feel they belong and are cared for by the communities in which they live?

We have to get creative. There is enough donor aid going around to increase the strategic support for the protection of humans rights. Can we get bold about supporting the work of the Legal Aid Council and the NHRC? Will the media donate ‘free’ airtime and pages to the cause just like Kiss FM in Abuja are highlighting issues? Can NYSC make it mandatory for lawyers to spend at least 6 months of their one-year service with the Legal Aid Council? And, can we stop leaving injustice up to God alone? We need to do our part on earth to protect the meek, the weak and the disadvantaged – God has given us all the tools we need – let’s use them instead of watching idly and waiting on the Lord.

If the words ‘human rights’ are banned by our police and we cannot protect our most basic and fundamental right to dignity as human beings then all the talk about protecting our votes, maternal mortality, free education is just that: talk.

(Published in ThisDay's 'The Lawyer' on December 21 2010)

3 laws we need right away

2011-01-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

There is an intensely exciting phenomenon going on – our political campaigns are becoming more sophisticated - politicians are being held accountable for their utterances. No longer the easy pass which politicians had to say one thing today and a totally different and opposing thing the next day. The pronouncements of General IBB and President Jonathan on June 12 and MEND’s involvement in the October 1^st bomb blasts respectively, have been used against them over and over again. And lately, since he emerged as the PDP consensus candidate for the north, Presidential aspirant Atiku is getting a good dose of this medicine. Last week there was a full page advert in one of the daily newspapers reminding us of Atiku’s lacerating words in 2006 when he shredded PDP for being a lawless party. Now four years later, those words are following him around like bees on honey and he will have to account for them.

Wonderful. How can we maintain this momentum and ensure that we continue along this track to keep politicians and those in positions of authority on the tips of their Italian made shoes? I think we should legislate. There must be a few laws which our National Assembly can enact which will help regulate the behaviour of office holders as well as the behaviour of the public as we act as ‘accountability officers’. However, these laws have to start as bills before they become laws and since there are hundreds of bills in the National Assembly, to make life even easier for our overworked legislators maybe we can replace some of the existing bills with new bills which will help foster accountability.

One of the very first laws we need in order to hold the politicians accountable is the Bill to Ensure that Nigerians Remind Politicians of Past Promises. This can safely replace the Witness Protection Programme Bill of 2008 because with the track record of our police and law enforcement agencies, I doubt if any Nigerian would want to risk being part of this programme. This new bill which will make it compulsory for all Nigerians to carefully record the utterances of politicians and use it against them at the right time. This is something the public can easily participate in and it would be fun too. Just think: sometime in 2014 when politicians remember that they are supposed to owe their positions to their constituencies and they hop onto the media wagon, we can call into a program and remind them of their failures and repeat to them verbatim what they said in the past. Then we can sit back and watch or listen to them as they squirm and try to wriggle their way out of their words.

Next I think we should replace the Transportation of Animals (Prohibition of Undue Pain and Suffering) Bill, 2008 with the Receipt of Money, Food, Assistance or Favours from Politicians (Prohibition) Bill. This replacement does not mean that I do not care about animals, on the contrary. It is just that as long as the major means of transportation in Nigeria remains ‘okada/achaba’ and buses built for 20 but packed with 40; then it is hypocritical for the suffering of humans to be ignored for the suffering of animals. This bill would make it a grievous offence for any Nigerian to collect money, food, assistance or any favours from politicians; this way we will never owe them and we can hold them accountable for what rightfully belongs to us without feeling bad. This will mean that we change our orientation from one where we go to them expecting them to solve our financial or procedural problems to one where we expect them to build institutions and processes where we do not need them to personally deal with our issues. The current practice is that when the unexpected happens e.g., we cannot meet financial obligations, we run to the government officials we know and beg them for money. The question we should ask is ‘how are these civil servants able to carry our unexpected costs as well as theirs and everybody else that they know?’ When we get into trouble in the office and our employment is threatened and someone we know in a position of authority ‘sorts it out’ for us, we should ask ‘have they abused their position in working out this deal for us?’ Because every time we ask those in power to compromise themselves to meet needs which should be met not just for us, but for all Nigerians, then we compromise ourselves too. There are hidden costs to expecting our brothers, aunts, grandmothers, fathers, in-laws or friends to use their office for our benefit. One such cost is that when they start we cannot ask them to stop and then the system breaks down and suddenly we can no longer look our friends or family in positions of authority in the face and say ‘you are cheating us’.

Another bill that might be controversial but which all well meaning Nigerians should support is the Prohibition of Politicians, Ministers, Civil Servants and other Officers of Government (including those who have retired) from Acting as Chairpersons of Weddings, Burials and other Ceremonies Bill. Just think of it – this would be a heavy blow and would serve three purposes. The first purpose is that this Bill will help us to become accountable to ourselves and then we become more effective accountability officers. Once we no longer owe these chairpersons for gracing our occasions and giving us expensive gifts such as cars and houses, then we have freed ourselves from the hypocrisy of always defending ‘our own’ government officials from the stain of corruption and mismanagement but constantly pointing at others. In the end every single government official has someone who will defend him/her until the bitter end – so who is guilty of corruption? The second purpose of this bill will be to deflate the egos of these office holders and thus reduce their desire to take so much from government coffers. Face it; what would be the point of that new bulletproof jeep or those five million dollar diamonds if you cannot show off at a party? And the third purpose of the bill would be to replace the National Automotive Design and Development Council Bill, 2008…because if we are still importing toothpicks, then a bill to force people to design a car is simply, pointless.

(Published in ThisDay's 'The Lawyer' December 7 2010)

The Greatest Good for the Smallest Group

2010-11-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

There is a belief that societies should make decisions or policy based on the greatest good for the greatest number. In Nigeria, going by our antecedents, we can argue that those in positions of authority, the elite and/or the educated do not subscribe to this.

Five years after the Electric Power Sector Reform Act (the Act) was signed into law and after billions of dollars have disappeared into a bottomless sinkhole, we are not any closer to implementing the Act or solving the acute electricity problem.

The lack of power is one of the hottest presidential campaign issues and every time there is an opportunity for people to speak about the issues which need the attention of the man who will be president in 2011 – electricity is on the list. All the pressure to resolve the problem seems focused on the president and the presidential aspirants and how we need them to fix our power problems.

But what about us? What is our role in assisting the implementation of the Power Act? If there are only six degrees of separation between people, then we all know one or more of the 50,000 employees of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) who are partnering with other alleged enemies of electricity such as the generator and diesel importers to ensure we stay off the track to sustainable and consistent power.

These 50,000 Nigerians together with the NLC and other ‘comrades’ who jettison socialist thinking when it suits them think that their fears about job security should hold the rest of us to ransom. Has anyone tried to quantify how much revenue and value Nigeria and Nigerians have lost from our abysmal power supply? The lives lost in hospitals during surgery or the death of premature babies in incubators with no power? The lives lost to generator fumes and malfunctions? The loss to our productivity and industry? Is it right for Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the House of Representatives to say, five years after the Act was passed that ‘he is worried about 50,000 jobs which will be lost’ as a result of the implementation of the Act? What did the legislature think would happen as a result of privatization and why is the loss of jobs accepted as a fait accompli? Across many sectors in different parts of the world, privatization has frequently resulted in job creation and skill development.

So what are the fears of the national union of electricity employees (NUEE) and their agents who see the privatization of PHCN as a tragedy?

The first is that they will loose jobs. And the quick answer to this is that privatization could (i) increase jobs because there will be competition and power companies will need people with the skills to manage our archaic equipment and infrastructure and (ii) we could see an increase in compensation for electricity sector employees because the competition will drive the power companies to pay more in order to attract and retain the best. Instead of thinking positively and creatively, these 50,0000 people prefer to scuttle the privatization of PHCN in order to cripple the future of 150,000,000 people so they can secure jobs which are only guaranteed until retirement. Then what? They retire to sitting outside in the dark or inhaling the carbon monoxide from their generators with the rest of us.

Another argument that labour and the NUEE make in “Power Reform: Labour Moves Against Privatization” (published in Thisday, November 9 2010) is that corruption is a larger obstacle to electricity reform than government ownership. I say corruption and government ownership go hand in hand. We know from all the failed enterprises the Federal Government is involved in (steel manufacturing, refining petroleum products, making fertilizer, manufacturing sugar, telecommunications etc.) that our government is inefficient and should not be concerned with managing businesses. The best role for government is as regulator and provider of an enabling environment for business.

Privatizing power is the reason why countries like India, Chile and Ghana to name a few are no longer suffering the embarrassing power cuts we have in Nigeria. Those opposed to the privatisation of PHCN routinely hold up Enron and the 2002 California black outs as an example of a failed privatisation. But Enron is an example of corporate greed not isolated to privatized entities and the dangers of government slacking off on its role as regulator.

The NUEE and labour groups are also worried that PHCN will be bought by corrupt Nigerians but since PHCN has been broken up into several companies, it is unlikely that all will be purchased by Nigerians. I am not condoning corruption but isn’t it better for those who appropriate our wealth to spend it in Nigeria instead of buying up real estate abroad? Besides, employees of PHCN allegedly have their own corrupt racket going on – from the executives who divert funds meant for investing in infrastructure to the mystery of the disappearing transformers and technicians who extort money from ‘optionless’ customers during the holidays and special occasions.

Whether privatization opponents like it or not, the telecom sector has made the benefits of privatisation glaring because despite the growing number of GSM subscribers, NITEL cannot get its act together because it is still managed by government. Should we hold on to decaying assets merely to keep a few thousands ‘ungainfully’ employed?

Finally, there is a tenuous argument made by counsel to the NUEE, that the privatization of PHCN is ‘illegal’ because the 1999 Constitution ‘imposes a duty on the Federal Government to manage and operate the main sector of the economy…which undeniably includes the power sector’. This is why according to him, Nigerians have a duty to resist the privatisation of PHCN.

But in the Part II of the 1999 Constitution – the Concurrent Legislative List expressly gives States the authority to make laws with respect to electricity and the establishment of electric power stations; generation, transmission and distribution of electricity to areas not covered by the grid; and the promotion and management of State electric power stations. This means States can manage electricity for themselves…if this is so, how can power generation be considered the exclusive right of the FG? Even without this provision, how can the duty to manage the economy mean that government must remain in the business of providing electricity especially when it has proven to be completely inept at it?

I sympathise with NUEE. They see our legislators, executives and politicians amassing private wealth and bending policy to benefit themselves – why shouldn’t they want to protect themselves as well? But Nigeria is in desperate need of electricity. We should not support this bid to stop the privatisation of PHCN for sentimental reasons. All our development needs, aspirations and visions for the future are tied to power and the short term value of jobs for 50,000 people masquerading as concern for corruption and legality should not trump the long term value for the entire country. The greatest good for the greatest number; that is what should guide us.

The legislative coup against democracy

2010-11-16T14:49:00.000-08:00

With stealth powered by effrontery, the Nigerian federal legislators have been and are doing their best to erode the foundations of democracy which Nigerians are trying to build on.

Quietly within the cyclone of noise about zoning, election dates, the back and forth between the National Assembly and the INEC chairman and governors who were not supposed to be governors and whatever else is being thrown at the public, the legislators have been chipping away at the Constitution and the Electoral Act to ensure they find a way to entrench themselves in power.

A few weeks ago they wanted a quid pro quo; to have a ‘right of first refusal’ to their positions as legislators in return for giving the President of Nigeria the right to use his assistants as ‘delegates’ during the party convention. Because legislators have no term limits, this right of first refusal means that once a person has been granted the God (since everything in Nigeria is done in the name of God) given right to ‘win’ then as long as he wants to contest that seat, no one in his/her party can contest for that seat. The American’s we ‘borrowed’ our presidential system from do not have this clause in their constitution or electoral laws but when it comes to mangling the democratic process, no one can beat Nigerians on innovation. Somehow, that story died down and no one is quite sure why or how. Did the story die because the legislators realized this was something they would not be allowed to get away with, or did the story fizzle back into the crack it came from because it was already a fait accompli?

Now they are back again with another trick. This time, they have tinkered with Section 87(4) of the 2010 Electoral Act to secure the opportunity to blackmail their parties into giving in to their demands. According to the new provision, all political parties must have a national executive committee which the legislators are automatic members to (along with former presidents, vice presidents, presiding officers of the National Assembly etc.). How is it that the nation’s Electoral Act is so concerned with the internal workings of political parties that it goes into detail about the quorum for decision making at these party national executive committees which of course give our legislators an advantage? This is a round about way of getting their ‘rights of first refusal’ because on the party level they can always vote as a block to ensure that they get ‘re-nominated’ even if members of their own party do not want them. How is that for democracy?

To be fair, they have a rational explanation for this inclusion: it is about time they did something to checkmate the president and the governors who use appointees as delegates during party primaries. If you have ever wondered why presidents and governors have so many special assistants and advisers – the mystery is solved – these special assistants and advisers turn into delegates who usually vote exclusively for their benefactors at party primaries. For these well meaning legislators, the fact that they will be able to vote to secure their candidacy is secondary – the realobjective is to strengthen democracy by protecting her from god-fatherism.

The Legislators also want to insert a clause in the 1999 Constitution in order to compel the executive to implement allmotions passed by the National Assembly. All. Absolutely no qualifications regarding the number of legislators who passed the motion or any review as to the practicality of the motion. This means that if the legislators in their wisdom decide to pass a motion to ensure women are dressed ‘decently’ and our upright policemen are given enforcement powers, the executive would have to execute. With their well-deserved reputation, earned with their utterances, shenanigans and antecedents, do we feel safe letting our legislators wield these types of powers? Apparently the reason behind this particular insertion is to counter the problem created by the fact that the executive often ignores motions from the legislators. For instance, the National Assembly says its motion regarding a landslide in Kwande Local Council of Benue State was ignored until some of the communities in the area were affected by a volcanic eruption. So there is a legitimate sense of frustration that their initiatives are ignored…but our legislators and indeed all arms of government should realize that the checks and balances in our system of government are meant to ‘slow’ certain things down and ensure that policy, directives, regulations are well thought out before they are implemented.

So the question for us regarding our legislators is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ‘Who will guard the guardians’? A key purpose of the presidential system of governance, with three separate arms of government, is to get all three to check each other and balance out the powers that they have. However, as legislators grant themselves all sorts of powers – who will check them? This is no idle question because in addition to these amendments and insertions the legislators have again, devoid of the drums and whistles which usually accompany their work, recently increased their powers by giving themselves a direct line in the budget so that they no longer have to go through the executive arm for funds…even the judiciary –whose independence should be the most fiercely protected as the last hope for the common man, does not have this privilege. What have our legislators done to deserve this?

Like many Nigerians, I am tired of the excruciatingly snail-like pace at which we are developing positively especially when we leapfrog into sophistication when it comes to detrimental actions such as kidnapping, smuggling and corruption, however I would rather institutions and processes are designed properly to provide the necessary restraint than have our legislators take on so much power. They are barely controllable as they are. Where is civil society when you need them? Where are those who have sworn to act as guardians of the guardians when powers are being concentrated in one place? We need to call attention to this silent, deadly coup on democracy being waged by our not so honorable legislators.

Poor little Muslim girls and the lawmakers from Zamfara

2010-11-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

Zamafara is in the news again as another lawmaker; Senator Sahabi Ya'u tries to marry a young girl without her consent. Why is this news? Because it is wrong to force someone into marriage with another person and we would like to presume that lawmakers know this. Because the High Court to which the reluctant bride took her case refused to hear the case on the grounds that hers was a matrimonial case for an Islamic court. Because, yet again the courts are refusing to look into the subjugation of a Muslim woman despite the protections given to all Nigerians under the 1999 Constitution. Considering the uproar that followed Senator Ahmed Yerima’s marriage to a thirteen year old earlier this year, it is tragic that there is still no sense of urgency about protecting the basic personal freedoms of Muslim women and girls in the north of Nigeria.

Unfortunately, the infringement of the basic personal rights of the female in the name of Islam or custom, is nothing new. According to UN statistics, in 2005 there were at least 60 million women in forced marriages across the developing countries. I think law and society are culprits in the continued refusal to be fair in the application of Islamic personal law to women and girls.

The problem with the law is manifold. The first is ignorance. Islam is a way of life and Muslims are steered by several authorities the most important ones being the Holy Quran, the Hadith, which are the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the Sunnah which is the way of life prescribed for Muslims based on the teachings and practice of Prophet Muhammad. Maybe not enough people know that when it comes to the question of the consent of a female to marriage, the Quran says, “Don’t prevent them from marrying their husbands when they agree between themselves in a lawful manner.” (Q2:32) And there are many Hadiths authenticated by renowned collectors of hadith such as Sahih Buhari and Ibn Majah which indicate that Prophet Muhammad sanctioned the dissolution of any marriage which was contracted without the consent of the bride. Therefore, it is contrary to Islam to marry off any female without her consent and in this case, the reluctant bride’s father was wrong to marry her off to the Senator. On the issue of human rights, the court said “her human rights had not been violated…” But the United Nations views forced marriage as a form of human rights abuse because it violates the principle of the freedom and autonomy of individuals. So where does this leave us?

Which brings us to the second problem with law – patriarchal impunity which results in disregard for the law. Here society also plays a role because it permits men to think they are above the law and can do whatever they like regardless of what the law, any law provides. The third problem with the law is ambiguity or interpretation. Where fundamental human rights and the jurisdiction of courts are in question, the 1999 Constitution is a good place to start. The 1999 Constitution is not ambiguous about fundamental human rights and who they are applicable to and neither is it worded in anyway to suggest that the religion of a Nigerian may preclude that person from such fundamental human rights. Yet, the interpreters of law are starting a trend when they say to Muslim women – “if you marry in accordance with your religion, then we cannot guarantee your fundamental human rights”. There are two problems here. One, if a Muslim woman is trying to enforce her rights either under Islam or under the Constitution, research carried out byWomen's Right Advancement & Protection Alternative (WRAPA) indicates that the last place she would want to go is the Sharia courts because of the patriarchal impunity problem. So where else can she go? The high courts. But the high courts have refused jurisdiction on the ground that they are constitutionally prevented from hearing cases involving Islamic personal law.

Some believe that Section 262 of the 1999 Constitution which provides the Sharia Court of Appeal with jurisdiction over Islamic personal law matters, is the reason why state high courts and the federal high court will not accept any cases on Islamic personal law. However, it is not clear why the provisions of Section 262 are being interpreted so narrowly especially when there is nothing in the wordings to suggest that this jurisdiction is excusive and cannot be exercised by any other court. In fact the word used is ‘competent’ i.e., The Sharia Court of Appeal shall…be competent to decide. If, according to the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules 2009, “The Constitution shall be expansively and purposely interpreted and applied, with a view to advancing and realising the rights and freedoms contained in them and affording the protections intended by them” then why are sharia and common law courts refusing to interpret forced marriage as an infringement of fundamental human rights?

As for society, its mildest sin is complacency. By staring mutely into our tea cups whilst Muslim men marry children or marry off their daughters without their consent or marry and divorce ten, twelve or seventeen times, we are all culpable.

There are several things those concerned can do. One, encourage Muslim women forced into marriage as adults or children to challenge this by going to court even at personal risk to themselves because the future and well being of our daughters, sisters and nieces is dependent on our action. Two, lawyers should take this issue all the way to the Supreme Court and get the judicial pronouncement we need on aspects of customary/Islamic law which touch on fundamental human rights and the so called exclusivity which sharia/customary courts have over personal law matters to the detriment of justice and equity. Three, a major education campaign on Islamic personal law needs to be launched for the benefit of academia, the judiciary, and religious instructors. Finally, women need to make the regulation of marriage and the protection of personal rights a campaign issue for the 2011 elections. Muslim women in Nigeria need marriage contracts the same way Muslim sisters in Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Muslim countries do. In the United Arab Emirates where our lawmakers and elite love to go on holiday, the law is that a man with more than one wife must provide separate houses for each wife. In Nigeria a man can keep two wives in a two-bedroom house with one bathroom and kitchen between them.

All the fancy goals and pronouncements about female empowerment, women participating in politics and even girl child education projects are meaningless as long as the most basic and fundamental rights of women remain unprotected and personal laws are at the very heart of a woman’s fundamental human rights.

Voter Beware

2010-10-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

INEC’s request to extend the timetable for the 2011 elections from January to April has turned up the heat underneath our already simmering political environment. As right as INEC was to disclose that it is already 6 weeks behind schedule, it should also get pummeled for giving us a time line 3 weeks ago which it must have known it could not keep. Now in addition to the endless discussions and sniping about zoning, we have to add amendments to the 2010 electoral act (the Act) and another attempt at amending the 1999 constitution.

If the newspapers are anything to go by, the focus of attention is on the electoral provisions dealing with the ‘election of governor’ and ‘election of the president’ which provide that elections for governors and the president should take place not earlier than 150 days and no later than 90 days before ‘the expiration of the term of office of the last holder of that office’. This means that elections have to be slated at the latest for February 28 – if we presume that the expiration of term is May 27 (since May 29 is a Sunday).

However as the National Assembly rushes to amend these particular provisions in order to give INEC more time to hold credible elections; they might want to look at other provisions in the Act which are sure to frustrate the plans for credible elections.

One: when is INEC going to tell us where the registration centers are and why isn’t there a statutory time frame within which INEC must do this? The issue here is that while all the energy is focused on the election timetable – the major component of credible elections – the voters’ register has been given scant attention apart from the issue of finance and suppliers. If INEC does not give us enough notice about where, when and how we are to register, then it is unlikely that the registration process will be as successful as we all want it to be.

Two, it is not clear from the Act if the place where we register is the place where we also vote. From experience elections are usually on a Saturday and movement is restricted, which means if we register where we work and election happens to be on a Saturday and there is ‘no movement’ – how do we get to our polling stations?

INEC will respond by asking us to look at another provision which says we can apply to the resident electoral commissioner in the state where we reside and get him/her to transfer our names to the Transferred Voters List. This is not a practical solution. Apart from the expected bureaucracy which eats up time, anyone who wants to transfer his or her name has to provide proof of residency. Which means, millions of people who have no written leases with their names on it, or who don’t get billed for water and/or electricity and who subscribe to pay as you go telephone services might find it hard to prove where they live. (This might be a good opportunity for the NCC to show us how efficiently they have ‘captured’ the data they have forced us to provide). It is advisable that we avoid relying on this provision. In a nutshell: register where you mean to vote. In other words, ‘employers please do your share for democracy and allow for countless hours where we will away from work because of the registration process.’

Three, after we avoid the mines associated with where we register, we still have to qualify to register. There are different requirements but particularly interesting is that the registration officer has a right to demand any information necessary to ascertain if you are qualified to vote. Since one of the qualifications is that voters must not be legally incapacitated to vote, good luck proving that you are qualified to vote if the registration officer decides you ‘look’ like someone legally incapacitated.

Four, Section 18 says if we lose or damage our voter’s card we can request for a duplicate but only if the elections are more that 30 days away. However…if we lose or damage the voter’s card the day before elections…it seems INEC has no solution for us.

Five, we should also be worried about INEC’s discretion to publish notice of the elections ‘in such manner as it may deem fit’. Why? Because if INEC decides to publish the day, time and location of the polling units on its website only and it crashes because everyone is trying to get on at the same time, INEC is acting within the law. Besides, if INEC decides to publish only in Mandarin, it seems this is also fine.

Six, the Act makes it a punishable offence if the day before elections anyone uses “print or electronic medium” to “broadcast, publish, advertise or circulate any material for the purpose of promoting or opposing a particular political party or the election of a particular candidate”. Does this mean that if my Facebook status update says “hey remember IBB was not nicknamed Maradona for nothing” or “say no to ‘army arrangement’ PDP” I will be guilty of a crime? Why? Isn’t this in conflict with my right to freedom of speech guaranteed under the Constitution? As long as I am not inciting hatred against any group or promoting violence why should a reminder to help people select their candidates wisely be considered a threat to peace and stability?

The Electoral Act is littered with many more ambiguous & mischievous provisions, ripe for abuse. As CSOs rev up to mobilize Nigerians’ to register and vote, they need to keep their eyes on those provisions in the Act which can be used to disenfranchise or discourage voter participation. Since INEC and the National Assembly are not paying any attention to these provisions – we need to guard against abuse by putting a spotlight on tricky provisions. If we cannot get these provisions revised before the elections, we should be able to get INEC to clarify the provisions to prevent that the abuse which will come from arbitrary interpretation. It is only Professor Jega’s integrity that has been applauded – INEC still has most of the employees which managed the 2003 and 2007 elections – we need to help him ensure the 2011 elections have a fighting chance of actually being credible.

Zoning for mediocrity

2010-10-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

Nigeria can no longer afford to keep sacrificing good governance for ethnic considerations.

For months Nigerians have been distracted by the entertainment provided by the zoning issue – the same way the early Romans were dulled by the spectacle of gladiators fighting to the death. The Nigerian polity is fragile, held hostage to Section 14 of the 1999 Constitution and the supremacy of ethnic considerations.

Our Federal Character policy – the constitutional backing for ‘zoning’, is breaking us. Its roots tear into our chances for unity and keep us divided and this is the heart of our problems. Our Constitution insists that the Federal Government and its agencies are composed of all ethnic groups in order to “reflect the federal character of Nigeria.” Unwittingly this guarantees that we see ourselves as Nigerians only for visa application purposes and football even though Section 14 of the 1999 Constitution explains that the objective of the policy is to “promote national unity and command national loyalty”.

The debate for and against PDP’s zoning rules has been fierce. Most recently Olisa Agbakoba SAN advised us to take care to hold on to the essence of zoning i.e., federal character as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution while Minister of Foreign Affairs, Odein Ajumogobia advised that we ‘outgrow’ zoning. I agree with Mr. Ajumogobia and not because I want President Jonathan as a candidate for President.

We mark our fiftieth year of independence with ethnic strife, constant supposed religious insurgence, terrorism and near anarchy in the Niger Delta. Our history is ravaged with a civil war fought along ethnic lines; five coups and chronic corruption which has left the country crippled by the lack of investment in infrastructure and human development.

As we lead from the bottom on all development indicators, we need to ask ourselves: ‘how did we get here?’

I recognize the need for balance and representation. When we consider the civil war and the strong feelings of marginalization claimed by all 250 ethnic groups, it is easy to appreciate the sentiments behind federal character - it is one way to appease and ensure representation.

But it is not working and this is why.

Government participation based on ethnicity not qualification guarantees that it will always be more beneficial to hammer on our differences instead of our similarities. This is why we have 35 economically dependent states, with Lagos as the exception, and the clamor for more grows louder. It is also why we have 36 federal ministers we cannot afford – most of who are not qualified to handle their jobs. Our representatives are corrupt and numb to our interests – but they are safe in the knowledge that we will remain loyal to ethnic considerations. Does it stop only when we have 250 States and 250 federal ministers?

Federal character is blind to educational qualifications or experience, which means there is little incentive to be educated or to improve education. Instead, we accuse each other of being beneficiaries of the ‘quota system’ – and continue to promote mediocrity at all levels.

It gets worse. Who is representing Nigeria when each person is there for someplace else? Everyone is so concerned with their slice of the country that no one notices that the cake is getting smaller and smaller. The false unity promoted by ‘federal character zoning’ prevents us from realizing that no one is making long-term plans for Nigeria. Thus we are unable to invest in a future which grows more complicated and competitive with globalization.

Nigeria is not alone in its desire to address marginalization. America’s affirmative action policy has evolved from just racial discrimination to other types of discrimination. This change did not happen overnight. For 48 years, America, in a battle involving all arms of government, has revised, reviewed, and reframed affirmative action because they recognize that circumstances change and the policy must adjust.

Federal Character needs reform. The first step is to implement a 15-year strategic plan to improve access to and quality of education in every state. This will allow states considered educationally disadvantaged to catch up. Next, we must expand the definition of federal character to include women and other historically marginalized groups and we must restrict the application of the policy to specific areas such as education and defense, no longer politics or the civil service. Finally, we need a sustained national unification program to build a unique Nigerian identity and help foster real unity. And this is where I really disagree with Mr. Agbakoba in his ‘Misconceptions about zoning, power rotation’ in Thisday last week. He seems to think it is a fait accompli that we will never be united and that being a ‘divided federation’ can somehow benefit us. If we have practiced this version of diversity under ‘quota system’, ‘federal character’, and now ‘zoning’ and fifty years later we are still where we are (a Newsweek study shows Nigeria as being the second worst in the world on quality of living, below even Zimbabwe) then should we not change our practice?

National loyalty as envisioned in the Constitution means we see ourselves first as Nigerians before we see Ijaw, Kanuri or Nupe. However, the spirit behind this ideal has been mangled by Section 14; we cannot continue to sacrifice performance and progress for a dysfunctional diversity; we are all Nigerians and the best and most qualified of us should be allowed to lead regardless of where we are from.

Seeing things in north and south

2010-10-23T04:36:00.000-07:00

Many years ago as an undergraduate, I got the first of many tastes of the depth of the Nigerian north south divide. The plans to move the Nigerian Law School to Abuja were in motion and my set, the 1997 graduates of law would be the first to be called in Abuja. My letter to the editor of the Guardian questioned the rational. I spoke for tradition, consistency and the prudent use of resources in defense of maintaining Lagos as the site of the venerable Nigerian Law School; some who read it saw that I spoke for the south as opposed to the north. The rest is history – the site was moved to Abuja, people say quality has fallen and billions have been spent on five sub-standard law schools (one geo political zone is being ‘cheated’) when we could have one glorious well funded Nigerian Law School.

Since then I have used my writing to try to understand, like other Nigerians, the utility of federal character in our constitution and I continue to attract comments relating to our suffocating mind set on maintaining the north south dichotomy. Now there is a word we throw around when we talk of maintaining a balance but ‘dichotomy’ also means ‘to divide into two mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities’. Seeing things in north and south is the direct root for the zoning formula being championed by the Peoples’ Democratic Party and to be fair – maybe any other party in power would use this ruse too.

Yes, this is yet another article on zoning because as we do what we do best (dinner table analysis and sitting down and looking) our politicians and wise men drum up the specter of war with fighting words.

Last week as Nigerians dealt with the pain of sacrificed innocents and the humiliation of very publicly staking our claim to selfishness and instability on the same day we capped a frenzy of meaningless celebration of 50 years of independence, the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) lead by Adamu Ciroma called for the resignation of President Goodluck. In a statement peppered with prayers, NPLF said they were not satisfied with how the President was handling the bomb blasts which they believed to be politically motivated. According to NPLF “he is desperate enough to want to hang mass murder around the neck of unnamed Northerners to achieve his second term”. They plan to ask the National Assembly to impeach him because “as Northerners and as citizens of this country, we no longer feel safe and secure under his leadership”.

Some of the arguments and sentiments expressed in the NPLF statement are understandable, but on so many levels they are misleading. There is no doubt that sentiments are frayed and we are worried about the stability of the country especially after the bombs and the missiles of counter accusations flying around.

However, it is hard to see how starting impeachment proceedings six months to the elections is the right thing to do for the country. Rightly so, it is not an easy task to impeach a president and Section 143 of the Constitution provides several steps and layers of obligations for the National Assembly and the Supreme Court to comply with. First, the allegation calling for impeachment must be signed by at least 156 Senators and Representatives. Then at least 312 out of our 469 legislators must agree to the allegation being investigated; then the Chief Justice will recommend a panel of 7 people of ‘unquestionable character’ (did I hear ‘good luck with that’) to investigate and write a report which must then be adopted by 312 legislators. And, the President has the right to defend himself at some stage. Is it likely that we can go through this process and still hold credible elections in April?

I think NPLF is making a mistake when it lays the blame of instability, grim political rivalry and quest for power solely on the President’s feet; all the PDP candidates, all of whom have been in power before are equally guilty. NPLF is culpable of taking advantage of the situation to whip up sentiments and make a bad situation worse by calling for the impeachment of the President. We do not need experienced political analysts to tell us that a handover could delay the electoral process and increase tensions across the country.

NPLF is right when it says the bombs were calculated to humiliate and to show the world that the Niger Delta militants have the ability “to influence political outcomes beyond their traditional area of influence”. But the question is, humiliate and influence whom? NPLF remind us of their warning to Nigerians to be vigilant about President Goodluck’s ‘desperate agenda to run’ and say they have been vindicated by the bombs. This means we can ask a few more questions: who benefits most from the chaos, fear and uncertainty being created and who loses more in the short and long term from the events of October 1? Maybe when we attempt to answer these questions, we can begin to analyze without the fog of sentiments.

True patriotism and leadership does not use the type of divisive rhetoric contained in NPLF’s statement nor the careless utterances coming from the Presidency, no matter how provoked both sides feel by the situation. We should be tired of being used by the political elite in strengthening the potency of this over 50 year old boogeyman of ethnic and religious marginalization and domination. It is a smokescreen to protect their real interests: themselves. There are probably members of the NPLF who have, in one capacity or another, served in every single government Nigeria has had since 1960 regardless of any ideological preferences for north, south, Muslim, Christian, dictatorship or democracy – so what exactly do they stand for and why do they want the rest of us to stand for north vs. south and Muslim vs. Christian?

There is no doubt that balancing the interests of perceived marginalization and ethnic and religious dominance is a delicate issue requiring extra creativity to manage especially since inexplicably, Nigerians seem to be more comfortable when ‘their own’ is representing them in government and PDP’s zoning formula was probably made, with the best of intentions, to manage this desire. But it is not working.

So no – impeachment is not the answer and we should all start writing to our legislators and telling them not to threaten the elections and waste our time and resources. I wish there was a provision of the Electoral Act to disqualify PDP from the presidential elections on the basis of overheating the polity and causing unrest. But there isn’t. There might be an out in Section 227 of the Constitution which might indirectly help us get rid of PDP – it says ‘No association shall retain, organise, train or equip any person or group of persons for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force or coercion in promoting any political objective or interest...” Isn’t PDP and the zoning formula guilty of this? That way the rest of the country can carry on and PDP can take the next four years to revise its constitution and come back to us when they have something better than ‘zoning’. Until then, we continue on our polarized march towards a firm north south dichotomy.

US Supreme Court Says Money = Speech

2010-01-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Could things get any worse for the Obama administration? With all the atrocities which have taken place and continue to take place in the US Congress regarding the amount of money spent by lobbyists to influence policy - how can the Supreme Court make this decision? This is icing on the cake after Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the rickety Health Care Reform bill.

As expected, Harvard Law School Professor, Larry Lessig, founder of Change Congress is livid. He says:

"The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FECallows corporations and unions to pour unprecedented amounts of money into elections. From this moment on, when Congress acts, we won't be able to know whether it was because of reason or judgment... or only because of the need for campaign money. The system is broken, and we need to act."

For more on the implication of the decision click on the link attached.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=30&article_id=111149

What will it take to get proportional representation in Nigeria?

2009-12-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

As I listened in on the discussions of a committee of Harvard Law School students planning for an African Law conference in April 2010, I was surprised to hear that apparently there are some who are of the view that law plays little or no role in development. I volunteered that it would be interesting to have a debate about that. But I kept thinking about the role of law to ‘develop’ a society, community or country or even the role of law in influencing and changing culture – such as the way Mary Slessor’s work in Nigeria made it illegal to murder twins. The way we now practically worship twins and multiple births, and pray ‘ibeji’ and ‘ibeta’ for brides, no one would guess that less than one hundred years ago we rejected this as a blessing.

Nigeria does badly in many indices: our democracy and press under the Freedom House list; our corruption under Transparency International, the ease of doing business by the World Bank, our ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, our literacy rates, our infant mortality, our maternal mortality, on and on ad infinitum.

When asked what holds us back many people say corruption, however, and not in any way to trivialize corruption, politics in the United States is highly corrupt (it is just effectively isolated from the provision of basic services and development policies) and there are other parts of the world such as South Africa and Italy, where there is corruption, but things still work and they are not lagging behind on almost every development index.

There are other things that hold us back, including our laws. What the laws say, what they are about (National Assembly do we really need: HB. 182 A Bill for an Act to Establish the National Institute of Nigerian Philosophers and to Make Provisions for Determining the Standard of Knowledge and Skill to Be Attained by Persons Seeking to Become Professional Philosophers and for Other Connected Purposes?) and whether the laws are practical and enforceable and if there is the will to ever enforce them.

As we prepare for the 2011 elections and discuss the changes to our Constitution and the Electoral Act one thing that keeps coming up is having a system of proportional representation – for women, the physically challenged and other unrepresented minorities. Think of a better more realistic version of ‘federal character’ where we would make sure that our legislature actually reflects the ‘Nigerian character’ – which is almost 50% women. Today, women make up only 7.0% of the House of Representatives (hardly representative) and 8.3% in the Senate, making us 116^th out of 136 on yet another index. (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm).

To put this in perspective we are only a few points above Somalia in terms of women representation in parliament and below, the Congo and Sao Tome & Principe. Two out of the first three countries in the world with the highest female representation are African: Rwanda has overtaken Sweden as number one with 56.3% and 34.6% in its lower and upper house respectively and South Africa is third highest in the world with 44.5% and 29.6% respectively.

Apparently, part of the Uwais Report on electoral reform, which to my knowledge has never been made public in its entirety, recommends that we adopt the proportional representation system which is designed to ensure that the legislative body reflects the voting strength of the electorate. However, the recommendation is not to amend the constitution but to amend the Electoral Act to force parties to reserve 30% of their seats for women (and 2% for those with physical disabilities), without prejudice to the right to also compete for representation outside this reserved seats- so that arguably, women could have more than 30% representation. This is the election law quota option.

There are two other avenues to using law to improve female representation. One is with constitutional quotas – where the constitution expressly reserves seats for women in the national law making body, as is the case in Burkina Faso, Uganda and Rwanda. After the genocide in Rwanda, women’s participation in the drafting of the new constitution resulted in a provision which reserves 24 out of 80 in the lower house and 6 out of 20 in the Senate. This means 30% of the seats is firmly held for women and they can vie for more.

The other is through political parties which is the system used in South Africa, where after years of apartheid, the ANC reserves 50% of its candidate lists for women and now they are ahead of us on this and many development curves, even though we arguably have more experience as a democracy give or take a few coups. In the political parties quota system, the political parties adopt internal laws which reserve a certain percentage of positions for female candidates – and with the ANC being the most popular party, this has resulted in increased women representation across the country.

It is widely acknowledged amongst development specialists that the inclusion of women, who usually make up half or more of the population, in decision making and their involvement in public and private enterprise improves the development indices of a country. This is the major thesis behind the push to educate females, provide financial independence through micro financing and provide platforms for greater participation.

The practice of proportional representation is not without its drawbacks. In Pakistan, where local government reform mandates 33% representation of women, most of the women elected, when interviewed, confessed to being mere proxies for husbands, male relatives, heads of clans or even landlords and forced to vote based on instructions from these people. And there are rich countries like the United States with only 10% female representation or some, like Nepal, with high female participation who continue to struggle with development.

Proponents of proportional representation are not saying that increased women representation will lead to immediate improvement in our physical, mental and cultural development. It took Sweden thirty years of practicing proportional representation to get where they are – but today Sweden has one of the best standards of living in the world according to the Human Development Report and some of the reasons are their high levels of education, democracy, income and public health.

Nigeria has nothing to lose if we legally adopt proportional representation in any one of the three available options. The same way we now see value in multiple births is the same way we will see the value in increased participation of women in governance.

Can we decentralize Power generation?

2009-12-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

I read with glee that last week between 5000 -10,000 people in Lagos marched to the Lagos State Secretariat to peacefully protest the crippling lack of power in Nigeria. Just a few months ago, angry youth in Zaria had protested about electricity as well. Hopefully the manufacturing sector and private businesses will join in the clamour for something to be done about the disgraceful lack of power in the blind giant of Africa.

I read with gloom that another $4.6 billion as been allegedly spent on power generation this year – this in addition to the controversial $16B which we are told is really $3.6 billion, spent by the Obasanjo administration on the same power sector.

And yet, by all indications it is doubtful if we will get as much as 4000 megawatts by the end of 2009.

As I pointed out in a previous article – ‘PHCN get rid of your freeloaders’; apart from the all pervading selfish interests of a few Nigerians, the problem lies with the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005 (the ‘EPSR Act’), the 1999 Constitution and the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

States have a right under the Section 14 of the Concurrent List of the 1999 Constitution to generate electricity for areas not covered by the national grid but Section 63(1) of the EPSR Act deliberately restricts this right by requiring State power projects to be licensed by NERC.

Why? Why is it so important for the Federal Government to maintain control over State production of electricity? Why did the Obasanjo administration scuttle the efforts of Lagos State to independently power the State? Could it be because if States take control of power generation it will become glaring to Nigerians that the lack of power that we suffer from is not for lack of solutions but for lack of will?

We know that the Federal Government does not have a monopoly over the process of power generation, so why do the executives act like it does? The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Bonny Utility Company funded with only $5million dollars in 2001 by Shell, Total, Eni and NNPC has managed to provide its customers with power 95% of the time. According to the article: “clients get power free of charge, up to a certain limit…and now has over 8000 paying customers. The revenue from paying customers covers half of the company’s costs and has created previously impossible public service and commercial opportunities, including a doubling of operations at a hospital”. Since 2005, a similar arrangement is supposedly benefiting the forty thousand people who live in Onelga, in Delta State and more and more of these independent power projects are being executed – badly when government is involved and successfully when managed privately.

The crux: decentralize power generation in Nigeria. As the National Assembly gears up to finally tackle the issue of constitutional reform, at the top of their list should be to give States more constitutional powers. The Federal Government has had close to fifty years to get power (and many other things) right and has failed.

Instead of the ridiculous collaborative arrangement where the Federal Government, States and Local Governments are to contribute billions of dollars from their Excess Crude allocations revenue accounts to the rehabilitation of existing power plants and new power projects under the National Integrated Power Programme (NIPP), why don’t the States get a chance to manage power generation instead of the constant excuses we get from the FG, its Ministry of Power, PHCN and most recently, NERC? Are the States and Local Governments also going to be involved in awarding the contracts and appointing the people who are going to be responsible for executing the projects?

One of the reasons for federalism is to aid development, yet our Constitution has helped to cripple the States so that they are ineffective. From all indications, one of the main issues for consideration for the constitutional review is the creation of more states. Arguably at least one reason why the clamour for more States is so loud is because people are frustrated with the lack of development and think that if every hamlet was a capital and every chief a governor, development will magically appear. What we need is States with more powers – ironically since we model ourselves on the American presidential system, why are we not considering the United States Constitution, which gives the States a lot more power and independence than our States have?

Competition within the States and most critically, at least for now, within the power sector is absolutely vital for the development of Nigeria and Pastor Sam Adeyemi, the organizer of the protests in Lagos sums it up nicely: "We call on the Federal Government to break the monopoly of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria and allow private investors and state governments to generate and distribute electricity. The strategy that worked for telecommunications should be made to work for power supply."

If we amend the Constitution to allow States to generate electricity, we can also simultaneously privatize PHCN and reduce the bureaucracies of having NERC and a Federal Ministry of Power. The difference under this scenario is that Nigerians will not be held to ransom if the usual privatisation process results in the NITEL or petroleum refinery scenarios.

Like anything there are disadvantages to providing the States with more power but the benefits outweigh the risks and at this point in our history, shouldn’t we be ready to try something different? I can predict the naysayers who will talk about uneven development but this is just an excuse for mediocrity – our development is uneven, both within and outside the country. If competition between the States and within the power sector will result in more electricity for consumers, most Nigerians will support this – after all, the majority of us are not benefiting from the inefficiencies of our power sector.

Creativity in Communication - Dora borrow a page

2009-09-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

'Tings Dey Happen' is a story about the Niger Delta oil politics - and is set to be performed in Lagos, Calabar, Abuja, Jos and Bauchi. Ironically, it is not being sponsored by our re-branding and miscommunication guru in the Ministry of Information but by the US State Department. So much for being in control of our content.

Please go and see it and let me know what you think - I am hoping it will come and show in Boston.

To find out more Google 'Dan Hoyle + Tings dey happen'

Are our child custody laws up-to-date?

2009-09-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

When Asabe left her husband for her father’s house with her eighteen-month-old son, she did not realize that leaving her marriage meant she would have to give up her baby. One late afternoon, a few days after she left, her mother –in –law came to visit. After the usual pleasantries, and as she held her grandson in her arms, Asabe’s mother in law informed her that it was okay for her to leave her husband, but she could not take their son away. She walked out the door with the baby and it was many years before Asabe would see her son again.

In March, hidden away on the pages of a little known newspaper was a story of a Nigerian woman who died while struggling to retain physical possession of her four-year-old son. According to eyewitnesses, the child cried as both parents tugged at him, until the father won with one final push and walked away with the child and the woman’s life. This couple had four children, two had died and the husband had possession of the third.

How many women in Nigeria have illegally lost possession of their children just because their marriages have ended either by them or for them? How many of these cases are ever reported? And in how many of these cases, even when civil and customary laws dictate that these children are better of with their mothers, does the social structure support this?

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1970 is applicable to all child custody cases including children borne out of civil, customary and Islamic marriages and provides that in all custody matters, ‘the interests of the child shall be paramount’. This predominance of the child’s right is also echoed in the Children’s Right Act 2003, but how do we decide in a patriarchal society what the ‘interest of the child’ is, especially when that child is a minor? This becomes even harder when the Matrimonial Act is silent on what the interests of a child are, does not define the word ‘minor’ nor take into consideration the special treatment that minors need.

So who gets custody of the child where both parents are fit, willing and capable?

In Nigerian case law, we see judgments where the courts try to make the interest of the child paramount, however, what is in the best interest is sometimes subjective and personalised. In Odogwu v. Odogwu, Justice Belgore, JSC (as he then was) said, ‘the welfare of the child is not in material provisions of the home such as…food and air conditioners…it is psychologically detrimental to his (the child) welfare and ultimate happiness and psychological development if maternal care, is denied him’. In this case each time the father, who had illegally abducted the children, was asked by the lower courts to return the children, he would use the legal process to stall by filing for a stay of execution. The problems with going the legal route in child custody cases are; the time it takes, the inability of most women to afford the cost and the unenforceability of judgement. So most women just walk away with no recourse to justice or equity.

Islamic jurisprudence is more detailed in custody issues because the injunctions are relatively clear with several categories for determining minors. However, and this is a big however, the clarity ends when the different schools of interpretation are taken into consideration. Under Maliki Islamic jurisprudence, which is what majority of Nigerian Muslims adhere to, children under the age of puberty stay with their mother. In fact, female children stay with their mother until the time of the child’s marriage while male children stay with their mothers until puberty. Going further in attesting to the importance of the mother in a child’s life, even when a Muslim woman cannot be granted custody, seven variations of custody lie with her family before the father’s family comes into the equation – again something that rarely happens. Again the subjectivity of man comes into play in the male led Sharia courts, so that the reputation of these courts is that the Alkalis are often unwilling to apply the law of the Quran ‘against’ our patriarchal culture.

Apart from the culture of patriarchy, the other reasons why women lose possession of their children is because they are economically disempowered and lack access to information about their rights under either customary (Islamic) or civil law.

Unfortunately there is little under Igbo and Yoruba customary law that supports a mother’s right to her children. Amongst the Yoruba the children belong with the father and custody will usually be granted to him. According to research, within a certain group of the Yoruba, the paternal grandmother names the children, setting the stage for ‘ownership’ of the children. Ironically, in a society where all the failings of a child are ‘blamed’ on the mother, a tacit admission of the importance of the role, our society insists on separating young children from their mothers.

With thirty seven ‘ministries of women’s affairs’ and countless non governmental organisations all focused on promoting the welfare of women and children, information on child custody issues and where to go for help and advice is sadly lacking. Baobab, a women’s human rights organization, has some relevant information but this is hidden inside annual reports and there is no information on the website on the legal position on child custody. Collating custody cases and judgments is the ideal place for law, data and public policy to merge; with the judiciary and NGOs’ feeding the information into the ministries and the ministries using this data to ensure the right policy is implemented.

As usual, the Nigerian legal and political system is not set up to protect the rights of women and children. We missed the opportunity to use the Children Rights Act to close the gaps in the Matrimonial Causes Act. Now women, not only in the judiciary and legal profession, must begin taking collective and individual responsibility for protecting one of the most fundamental rights of a child – the right to a mother’s love.

Using 'law' to prevent change

2009-07-16T05:37:00.000-07:00

Recent debate in the media, following Dr. Chudi Nwike’s report on corruption in the civil service masks a deeper malaise. There are several things wrong with our civil service and corruption is only one of them.

Imagine you have just been appointed a minister. Nigeria is lucky to have you, a technocrat from the private sector with the relevant experience for that particular ministry. You start full of lofty but realistic plans; maybe you have even written a couple of papers on reforming this sector or worked as a consultant providing expertise to governments at home and abroad. Six months later nothing has happened. One year later still nothing has happened. Why?

Many things happen to people when they assume leadership positions but one particular and consistent thing which ensues to most well meaning Ministers in Nigeria is the ‘civil service’. Apparently a common tactic of civil servants to destabilise a new minister is to bombard them with useless information and all sorts of imaginary or exaggerated emergencies. Of course when you start running around trying to douse phantom fires and get a grip on the convoluted rules and procedures, you begin to loose focus of your goal. All this while, the most relevant information is kept from you by these career civil servants who are supposed to be there to provide administrative support in the implementation of the Ministry’s strategy.

For too long we have presumed that leadership was the major problem in Nigeria. Fortunately, a Presidency characterised by an absence of leadership is allowing us to focus on where our problems lie. We, the ‘followership’ are a clog in the wheel of development. Everyone knows a civil servant – our fathers, mothers, siblings and friends are all in the civil service…and these are the same people who are holding us back.
This problem, of course, is something we should be well acquainted with from the Udoji Commission’s recommendations in 1974, to the Onosode Report of 1981, to the Dotun Phillips-led work in 1988 and, more recently with the public service reform work of el-Rufai, we have been repeatedly told that the federal and state civil service is fundamentally politicized, corrupt, demoralized, inefficient and pays scant regard to notions of service delivery.
The common factor over the years, as soldiers come and soldiers go; PDP comes and NPN goes, is a woeful civil service remarkably resistant to change.

The Civil Service

Civil servants are traditionally considered as neutral bastions of administrative efficiency meant to provide support to governments. The idea is to maintain a level of permanence and expertise in any political system so that despite the changes in government or government ideology, stability in implementation remains. All over the world however, the civil service has become the butt of jokes about mediocrity and the use of bureaucracy in the worst sense of the word to obstinately resist change.

As bad as the civil service is generally considered to be, Nigeria must have one of the worst in the world. There are several things wrong with our civil service and corruption is only one of them. In 2005, as el-Rufai attempted to kick start the reform of the public service using the FCT Ministry as a pilot case he listed the problems of the civil service as: poor service delivery, bloated service with duplication of functions, manual processes, poor compensation, inadequate skills and absence of training. I think we can add another one: attitudinal and functional bankruptcy.

Because only attitudinal and functional bankruptcy would explain the years of civil servants systematically scuttling all attempts to make things work in Nigeria. Every time a discussion about civil service reform starts, the civil service preservation army begins its tactical manoeuvres to ensure things stay the same. They constantly raise concerns over Murtala Mohammed’s attempts in the 70s to whittle the civil service: it resulted in the corruption we see today because those who were compulsorily retired were not prepared. In other words, civil servants now help themselves to public funds because they can be retired at any time. While this may to some extent be true, a more systemic problem exists: the rules that guide civil service operation often serve to entrench the dysfunction that prevails. One case in point: the civil service rules make it almost impossible to fire a civil servant even when a minister finds the person incompetent or deliberately obstructive.

According to a member of the service ‘civil servants cannot be sacked’. ‘First the person needs to have at least four queries (which obviously cannot all happen within a week). After four queries, the issue goes to the Head of Service for an investigative and hearing process which can take months and even then the civil servant does not leave the service but is redeployed to another ministry and…even worse, you have no say on who replaces the civil servant you have just managed to get rid off.’ Section 171 of the 1999 Constitution specifically provides that only the President can appoint or remove civil servants ranking from permanent secretaries and above. An anecdote which might be more indicative to emphasise what is wrong with the civil service as opposed to being the truth is that a head chef in the staff canteen of one of the ministries which moved to Abuja was left behind in Lagos. Despite years of doing nothing in Lagos, he gradually rose to the grade of a director and was then posted to the Ministry of Justice…hopefully to the canteen.

Conclusion

The reason why a strong and efficient civil service is so important is because when we have a bad government or ‘no government’ as it seems like in the case of our current Servant Sleeper, then the business of managing the day to day governance of the country will continue. Ironically, these masters of self preservation have set up another civil service agency: the Bureau of Public Service Reform with an impressive website and a long list of achievements including the establishment of EFCC, ICPC, and budget and financial management reform. However the review of the Service in 2002 posted on the BPSR website, indicates that some of the issues were: (i) an aging population with 60% at 40 years old and above; (ii) 70% of the staff are unskilled (iii) a prevalence of “ghost” workers and (iv) 60% of Federal Government spending deployed to servicing this bureaucracy.

None of the listed achievements of reform so far have tackled these issues and Section 171(3) of the Constitution compounds the problem by insisting that the Head of the Civil Service must be appointed from the civil service pool. If over 70% of the civil servants are unskilled then what are the probabilities that the Head of Service will be fit for purpose?

While we struggle to get good leaders elected we also need to work harder to ensure these leaders have the support they need to succeed. We need to totally overhaul our civil service and rewrite the rules that underpin it.

How can we use the law to create change?

2009-06-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

John F. Kennedy said ‘those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable’. If Nigerians continue to be passive about changing the affairs of State, change will come violently.

A few weeks ago the youth in Zaria protested the fact that they had not had electricity for weeks and what started as a peaceful protest turned violent. According to news reports, their anger and frustration spilled over to their conditions in Sabon Gari Local Council and they attacked the convoy of Governor Sambo of Kaduna State who was there to commission some projects.

Earlier, in May, the citizens of Borno State showed their displeasure at the governance of their State by throwing stones and sand at the Governor’s father who is alleged to be a strong influence on him.

Now we are embroiled in a full scale war in the Niger Delta which has been a long time coming, with years of litigation, Oil Mineral Producing Area Development Commission (OMPADEC), petitions, executions, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), protests, the vandalisation of pipelines and oil producing equipment, kidnappings, Ministry of the Niger Delta, murders and now the end…after all it cannot get worse than this. Or can it?

For over six months, the Pedestrian Lawyer has tracked some of the atrocities done in the name of law, by lawyers, law makers and law enforcers and the impact on Nigeria’s socio – economic and political pulse. Slowly a consistent pattern has emerged from the response. Many readers say, “Thanks for the information, entertaining as well as enlightening but now what? What would you like us to do?” Good question but no one answer. Law is not magic…law cannot change the way people behave and create change but people can use the law to change the way people behave and create change.

I think if things are going to change in Nigeria, then the leadership has to change. If the leadership is going to change in Nigeria then the quality of those who participate in elections and serve in public office has to change. If the quality of those who participate in elections is going to improve then the electoral process has to improve. For the electoral process to improve we have to have people in the executive and legislature who have the will to make changes to the electoral law and process. If we are going to have executives and legislators with the will and decency to make the necessary changes to our electoral law and process then we have to have the right people in these positions of leadership…which brings us back where I started: for leadership to change, the quality of those who participate in elections has to improve.

So my response, to those who want to know what we can do, is: if you think you have what it takes and mean well, then run for political office. 2011 is around the corner and our newspapers are filled with reports of the preparations of those who currently have the controls of the bus and are driving the country closer to a precipice to retain their hold on the steering wheel.

The first step in the journey to gain some control over our country is to register a political party under the provisions of the 2006 Electoral Act.

First incorporate a limited company in the name of the political party and register the party at the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission (INEC) at least six months before elections. Since we do not have the 2011 election timetable, register at the latest by June 2010. Upon submission of all the documentation and fees required you will receive a letter of acknowledgement; keep it safe. If thirty days after you submitted the registration application you have not been registered by INEC, Section 78(3) says if the party meets all the conditions of the 1999 Constitution (Sections 221-229) and the Electoral Act, then the party shall be considered as registered. This is tricky – look out for INEC using this presumption to trip you up later. Some of the constitutionally provided conditions to party registration include adhering to federal character in the composition of the party officials and having the head quarters of the party in Abuja. If INEC refuses to register the party, party promoters have only thirty days from the receipt of the letter of notification to challenge the decision in court.

Avoid those who come late in the game to preach consolidation of resources because a potential landmine could be a merger with another party which INEC must approve and must be notified of at least six months before elections.

Once registered there are other rules for political parties to adhere to such as not holding funds or assets outside Nigeria and providing INEC with records of election expenses and twenty one days notice of any party conventions for either the election of party officials or the nomination of candidates.

On party financing it is interesting that the Electoral Act recommends the maximum amount to be spent by candidates in the elections: five hundred million naira for presidential elections, one hundred million for gubernatorial elections, twenty million for Senators and ten million for members of the House of Representatives. No wonder politics is a duel to the death in Nigeria, anyone who has ‘invested’ this much in winning an election will want to secure the investment and ensure it yields competitive dividends. Parties are also supposed to refuse anonymous donations and disclose donations of one million naira and above.

Once registered, you can start campaigning, raising campaign funds and trying to raise the awareness of your constituents and your target audience. A million and one underdog stories abound, most recently and amazingly, the story of Obama.

A sad truth is that getting involved in elections is risky, especially if you want to do it the right way; without political godfathers and dancing in shrines. Apart from possible financial ruin, mental and physical upheaval and the strain it will place on your relationship with family and friends, there is the very real danger of paying the ultimate price as Funsho Williams and many other Nigerians have done.

However, the alternative which is to do nothing but keep grumbling to ourselves and prepare our children for a future outside their country is not acceptable. Why? Because all those risks and dangers listed above are already being lived by those in the Niger Delta. Because the violence we fear for getting involved, might still probably come because we did not get involved.

Despite Ekiti and the lip service being paid to electoral reform by the current government, I feel encouraged by the judiciary to think the 2011 elections could be the start of the change we all want. If the judicial renaissance and independence we have witnessed over the last two years, starting with the Supreme Court decisions in the Ladoja impeachment case and Amaechi vs. PDP, continues, then there is hope. But this hope lies not only with the judiciary but with believing individuals who start this journey and who must continue to the identified destination. The Supreme Court judgement would not have been possible if Amaechi had given up his mandate and knowing Nigeria, the pressure must have been immense for him to do so. We have to keep working within the law and the processes which guide us and then, only then can we truly understand the limitations, appreciate the weaknesses and then make the changes that we need before change is forced on us.

Why Would Obama Come Here When Doing Business is getting harder?

2009-06-02T04:41:00.001-07:00

The discussions about why President Obama is visiting Ghana in July and not Nigeria are quite amusing, almost as amusing as President Yar’adua’s bewilderment about Nigeria not being invited to the G20 Summit. Wole Soyinka reasonably irked by the discussion, and when asked about it recently, said that he could stone President Obama if he graced Nigeria with his presence. A few days later there was a public response from the Presidency regarding Soyinka’s remarks. According to Ambassador Jibrin Chinade, Special Adviser to the President on Foreign Affairs, “It’s most unfortunate that a prominent citizen like Soyinka seized the opportunity…to attack his country…for somebody to speak at an art exhibition to say nothing else than to denigrate himself and his country that has done a lot for him is unfortunate and highly embarrassing.”

Apart from being slightly amused at the thought that Soyinka’s comments would have been okay if Nigeria had not done anything for him, I was more interested in understanding if Chinade deliberately missed the real issue behind Soyinka’s comment, or if he was pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

The issue is: why is Soyinka angry at the thought of President Obama coming to Nigeria? What is the reason for this outburst from a man who, while we acknowledge is no fan of most of our leaders, we can presume, like most of the world is a fan of Obama?

Because coming to Nigeria would be tantamount to a stamp of approval for the Nigerian government and the direction in which they are steering the country. Because coming to Nigeria would be like saying, Nigeria is doing well and this is a country to be associated with. Because coming to Nigeria would validate the state in which we find ourselves: total collapse of infrastructure and social services, war in the Niger Delta, rampant corruption amongst public officers and consistent violation of the electorate and electoral process.

But that is not the end of the story. If this story was unique to Nigeria which it is not – we only need to look at Zimbabwe and other war torn countries such as Angola and Sudan to find similarities with the situation we are in, then it makes sense that Obama would want to go to Ghana. Because Ghana is everything we are not. Ghana is a shiny example of a West African country which has turned itself around and is doing well.

Forget the more recent examples of Ghana outshining us with their free and fair elections or even the fact that more and more Nigerians are moving there or going there for their holidays, let’s use just one measure of comparison: doing business.

For the past six years, IFC and the World Bank have conducted and published a global survey ‘Doing Business’ on the regulatory reforms that make it easier to do business around the world. The Doing Business project is based on the efforts of thousands of local business consultants, lawyers, accountants, and government officials along with leading academics around the world that provided methodological support and review.

On May 21st 2009, Business Day ran an article with the heading ‘Again, Ghana Beats Nigeria in Business Competitiveness. The first line in the article was: ‘Once again, Nigeria could not earn a mention in the 2009 global survey on regulatory reforms…Ghana adjudged the best place to do business in West Africa.’

This could end the discussion on why Obama would be more interested in Ghana than Nigeria: Ghana is doing better. Out of 181 countries surveyed for the 2009 report, Ghana ranked 87th while Nigeria ranked 118th. For the past three successive years Ghana was one of the worlds’ best reformers of business and the best in West Africa. This year, three African countries, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Botswana were amongst the world’s best 10 reformers. Senegal which moved nineteen places in a year to rank 149th in 2009 made reforms in starting a business, registering a property and trading across borders. In starting a business, Senegal started a one-stop shop that merged seven start-up procedures into one and the time required to start a business fell from fifty eight days to eight.

The ten things which are considered in the ease of Doing Business are: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business.

So where does Nigeria lie? Although the average income of Nigerian citizens (GNI per capita) at $930.00 is higher than Ghana at $590.00, our business processes are not better. When it comes to registering property, Nigeria holds the dubious position of being one of the most expensive and being one of the most regulated at 176th. We are also at the bottom of the list when it comes to paying taxes (120th), trading across borders (144th) and dealing with construction permits (151st).

One of the reasons why we are doing so badly with registering property is the outlandish Land Use Act of 1978 which requires Governor’s consent for property transfer. Some states have been smart enough to delegate this requirement while others hold on to it for reasons that most likely cannot be held up to scrutiny.

Unfortunately, most of these criteria used in ranking the ease of doing business are linked to the legal profession. Lawyers, judges and regulators have the power to do something about how long it takes to do business in Nigeria. For example with enforcing contracts, courts which have implemented the new High Court rules such as Abuja, Kaduna and Lagos are doing better already.

The solutions to these challenges lie with our laws and regulations. Was Nigeria’s ‘doing business’ rating a topic at the Section for Business Law conference in April? If it wasn’t then it should have been and if it was, what are the next steps?

Equatorial Guinea, a small country of only 700,000 people opened a liquefied natural gas facility two years ago which already exports over 3.7.million tonnes of LNG while Nigeria with a capacity to do a lot more, continues to flare and waste its gas. Considering the importance of energy to global politics and economy, if President Obama decides that his next visit to Africa will be to this small country, I hope no one will wonder why.

Cadbury, AP, Dangote….Time to Up Our Corporate Governance Game

2009-06-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

The ex Director General of the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Al-Faki announced last month that a new corporate governance code for quoted companies would soon be released; and not a moment too soon. Considering that the Cadbury scandal happened in 2005, it is a disquieting that regulators did not do more to put a stronger corporate governance structure in place for Nigerian companies and their investors. Not long after the Enron and Worldcom scandals the United States enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 to block the loopholes in company reporting standards and improve corporate governance by amongst other things, enhancing conflict of interest provisions for directors and managers and asking directors, officers and 10% owners to report transactions within two days.
However, here we are, embroiled in another corporate scandal with the alleged manipulation of the AP share price and the Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria screaming blue murder because according to it “the management of the truth of the AP insiders trading by both SEC and NSE calls to question the moral latitude and commitment of the, board/council to the overall interest of more than10 million shareholders in the Nigerian Capital market who have been and continue to be short-changed”.
Maybe a more robust corporate governance framework would have helped in mitigating the losses being incurred by the shareholders of AP and possibly other shareholders we are not aware of. Ideally, the share price of Dangote Flour and Sugar should fall too considering the shenanigans of its chairman who has fingers and toes in too many pies.
Prior to 2003, the standards of corporate governance for public companies in Nigeria were set by SEC which is charged with monitoring and controlling the issuance of securities in Nigeria under the Investment and Securities Act 1999; the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) which regulates all companies incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 1990; and the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which regulates and monitors the trading of securities in the Nigerian capital markets.

Publicly listed banks have additional requirements being under the supervision of the Central Bank of Nigeria by virtue of the CBN Act 1991 and the Banks and other Financial Institutions Act 1991. Informally, the board of directors of banks are also monitored and regulated to a lesser extent by the Nigerian Institute of Directors.

In 2003, one more layer of corporate governance compliance was added when the Code of Corporate Governance was published: a joint initiative of SEC and CAC to improve corporate governance practices because they realized ‘the need to align with corporate governance international best practices’.
With all this regulation, investors in publicly quoted companies should be safe from the kind of manipulations Cadbury and AP have undergone. With Cadbury, it was only after an internal review by the Cadbury parent group showed that its Nigerian subsidiary had overstated its account by 13.25 billion naira that an official enquiry by SEC was launched. And with AP, it was allegedly not until Otedola took out full page ads warning shareholders of stock manipulations by his close friend Dangote that the NSE realised that something fishy was going on. Maybe this cluelessness is not unrelated to the fact that Dangote is also the first Vice President of the Council of the NSE. With our reputation for corruption, who thinks it makes good sense to have majority owners of public companies also regulating the stock market?
Obviously there were a lot of weaknesses with the 2003 Code which is why a mere five years later, a committee was inaugurated to review it. One major weakness which the new Code will hopefully address is on the composition of the board. While international best practice is to have more non executive (independent) directors on a board, our 2003 Code did not mention this but merely recommended a mix of executive and non executive directors.
For instance, South Africa’s 2001 King Report on Corporate Governance which companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange must comply with, states that ‘the board should comprise a majority of non-executive directors, preferably comprising a majority of non-executive directors”. Unfortunately neither the Investment and Securities Act, nor the listing requirements of the NSE and CAMA have anything enjoining a board to have majority non-executive directors. On the composition of the board, CAMA restricts itself to excluding those who are under 18, insane and bankrupt and, without making any distinction between public and private companies, recommends that boards have at least two directors.
The contents of the new code of corporate governance have not been released, so until then Nigerian companies continue to be held to the existing watery standards of corporate governance. It is interesting that although corporate governance has been a global buzz word within business circles, our public companies (and of course private companies) seem totally oblivious of the need to incorporate best practices. When Oando Plc was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 2005, I thought it meant Nigerian companies would start paying more attention to corporate governance because of the high standards set by other stock exchanges. Sadly this has not been the case. While in terms of business aggression and sharp tactics there would be little to differentiate Nigerians from Indians and vice versa, global companies like Infosys at least pay lip service to corporate governance best practice by providing information which proves they have more non-executive directors to ensure the independence of their board and details about their remuneration. The results of a random search of some corporate websites show that Dangote Group, Zenith Bank, and Access Bank provide no information about their corporate governance framework. GT Bank had a little more than the others but did not go far enough. Why? Is it because Nigerian shareholders are passive about enforcing their rights or because we do not have a culture of holding those in authority accountable? Between January 2005 to August 2005, the same year Cadbury’s fraud was exposed, Nigerians invested approximately Two Hundred and Forty Billion Seven Hundred and Seventy Seven Million Six Hundred and Twenty, Five Hundred and Ninety Six Naira (N240,777,620,596) in the capital market by buying shares in publicly quoted companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange...isn’t it time to ask those we invest so much in to maintain higher standards of transparency and corporate governance?

Ayoka Adebayo and the Right to Resign

2009-05-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

As the Ekiti story unravels, along with different strands of rumours and theories, one particular dangling angle has continued to alternately amuse and nag. In Guardian’s lead story on April 29 2009, following the alleged resignation of Mrs. Adebayo, the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Ekiti State, it was reported that the Federal Government had rejected Adebayo's resignation and ordered her to report to INEC office or the nearest police station. This was cause for amusement.
In the article, the Minister for Information and Communication, Prof. Dora Akunyili said that “the purported letter from all indications is intended to undermine and discredit the government, the government rejects the letter of resignation written by Mrs. Adebayo as there was no evidence that she was impeded from carrying out her statutory assignment functions". Now this was cause for alarm.
The alarm was because it just did not sound right to me that a person could not resign from a job if they wished to. What I had learned in general employment contract law was that no employer could bind an employee to labour. However, there could be conditions attached to leaving a position such as restrictions against working for competitors, requirements that an ex –employee could not work closer than a specific radius to the ex-employer or even conditions not to take ‘clients’ or ‘customers’ of the employer. The thought of an out right negation of the right to resign was just foreign and dodgy. This feeling was not helped by Prof. Maurice Iwu’s enlightenment on the legality of Mrs Adebayo’s resignation. According to him, “INEC Commissioners are appointed according to the nation's constitution and can only be removed by the President acting on an address, supported by the two-thirds majority of the Senate showing that he or she be so removed for inability to discharge the functions of the office whether arising from the infirmity of mind or body or any other cause or for misconduct”.
If by this assertion he was suggesting that the only way a person could leave a public job provided for under the Nigerian Constitution was by the literal interpretation of the removal clauses, then such thinking is scary in its deliberate intent to misconstrue. Typically such provisions are to secure the independence of the person(s) holding such public roles; to ensure that they can stand up to those in power who are prone to abuse this power and not have their jobs threatened. To turn around and use this protection against interference as the basis to deny such officers the right to resign seems so Machiavellian on one hand and simply retarded on the other.
If the President of Nigeria can resign as provided for in Section 135 of the 1999 Constitution, how can Prof. Iwu’s theory that Mrs. Adebayo cannot resign her position as a public officer in a constitutionally guaranteed role be correct?
I was so sure I would not find anything to support Iwu’s position and as I scoured my usual resource; the internet, for a copy of the INEC law, I got more confident especially after I found it on the INEC website (www.inecnigeria.org). However when at 12.30am only 9.8MB of the 51.81MB had been downloaded; I gave up – so it remains a mystery to me what the law says about national or resident commissioners resigning.
What I did learn from other jurisdictions, specifically, New York is that the resignation of a public employee is not necessarily effective immediately – depending on the terms of employment, there might have to be express or implied acceptance of the resignation. For instance, in Vinuluan v. Doyle, a US appellate case, the court had to prohibit the criminal prosecution of a group of nurses who had resigned en masse despite the fact that their employment contract said they must remain employed for three years with liquidated damages (penalties) of $25,000 if they broke the contract. The employers felt they had a right to sue but on the basis of the Thirteenth Amendment (abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude), the court denied them this right.
So the same principle (regardless of what Prof Iwu thinks and whatever provisions might be in the Electoral Act 2006) arguably applies to Mrs. Adebayo. Under Section 34 of the 1999 Constitution, no Nigerian shall be held in slavery or servitude and no Nigerian shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
Another New York law for Public Officers provides for semi automatic resignation which is expected to take effect either upon delivery to the appropriate authority or thirty days after the delivery. The latter requirement shows that a resignation by officers covered by this law would not be effective immediately. This means that if this was what the Electoral Act provided for in terms of its employment of Resident Electoral Commissioners, despite her resignation, Mrs. Adebayo would still have been bound to finalise and tidy up the elections in Ekiti (provided that the election engineering would have been completed within the applicable time).
If the law regulating the employment of RECs, was substantive and known to the parties concerned then Nigeria might have been spared the embarrassing debacle of some of Nigeria’s senior government officials (the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro, alongside the Minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili, and Iwu) blithely stating that the resignation of Mrs Adebayo had been rejected without providing proper legal reasoning for this rejection.
The important lesson for Prof Iwu, President Yar’adua and the PDP ‘machine’ is that as they should take advantage of the proposed review of the Electoral Act to ensure that the terms of employment of INEC officials includes provisions which make it hard for them to resign before their responsibilities have been executed. Their responsibilities could even be transferable to their next on kin in the case of their untimely death.
The other lesson is for draftsmen and policy makers: to remember that law can be used to help us navigate tricky and sometimes implausible situations but because our laws are rarely well drafted and even less well thought out we continuously find ourselves at the brink of anarchy – ironically, when we are supposed to be adhering to the rule of law.

Why Do We Still Hoard Information?

2009-05-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

James Garfield, the 20th US President said, ‘the truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable’. No statement could be more apt to describe what might be the struggle for those opposed to a Freedom of Information law in Nigeria. They know that the truth should prevail but they are worried about the troubles it might cause to them and the ‘Nigerian way’ of doing things.

A few weeks ago, when disturbing images of torture methods approved by the previous US government for use against inmates at Guantanamo Bay were aired, I wondered why President Obama would agree to release this information. Here was sensitive information guaranteed to increase anti-American sentiments around the world and alienate the ‘national security’ neo-cons. My curiosity led me online and a few clicks later it turns out that campaign promises (which in Nigeria can always be broken on the rare occasions when they are made) and a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on the basis of the American Freedom of Information Act were responsible for the release of this information.

That made me wonder about the Nigerian freedom of information bill. Unfortunately it was not as easy to discover the status of this Bill online. Countless clicks later, I knew a lot about the United States and United Kingdom versions but nothing about the Bill and surprisingly nothing from other African countries. Although I could have sworn I read something recently about President Yar’adua’s support for the FOI Bill, according to Google, the last few news items on the Bill were in 2003 and 2005 and I could not even gain access to those articles. I tried the National Assembly link to all Bills but after scrolling down the third page of itemised bills with seventeen more pages to go, I had to give up because there was no search option.

I am disapointed that the sponsors of this Bill have not done more to keep the debate about it raging. If there is one law that we sorely need the National Assembly to pass, at least before the “HB 106 Bill for an Act to Regulate the Transportation of Animals, Prevent Undue Pain and Suffering in Animals Used in Food Production”, it is the FOI law. It would be the step in the right direction for a country in sore need of accountable leadership. So much of what the government does is shrouded in secrecy and that is why it is easy to mismanage resources. It seems part of our rare collective culture to hoard information, one of the few things that in Nigeria transcends ethnicity and religion, is the desire to be more powerful than our neighbours. And information (knowledge) is definitely power.

Everywhere you go, it is the same thing: insufficient information or bureaucrats, technocrats, so called professionals such as doctors and academicians, all trying to keep information.

I finished my undergraduate degree, paid my tuition and all the other relevant fees required. Yet I have no right to see my transcript – my academic record from the University of Lagos. How weird is that??? Why can’t I see this information? Who on earth should have more rights to this information than I do? But no; either to keep the records department relevant or to keep me enslaved to the civil servants in charge of this department, each time I want to apply for a post graduate qualification I must pay an application fee, a processing fee and postage…and I must have someone terribly important to help me navigate the inevitable delays in getting this information across to the relevant institutions. Supposedly this is to ensure that I do not get a chance to falsify my records…but why don’t schools abroad have this problem? A large percentage of Nigerians have gained their academic qualifications in universities outside Nigeria, yet these schools manage to secure their transcripts from these Nigerians. To show how myopic this policy on transcripts is, even before I graduated from Harvard I successfully asked the records department there to give me copies of my University of Lagos and Nigerian Law School transcript, documents I could never get directly from the University Registrar. A freedom of information law would give me the basis to sue the University of Lagos and get them to rethink this completely archaic policy.

And what about doctors? Have you ever tried to get your medical file from a doctor? Or tried to look into your own file while it is at the nurses’ station waiting for your vitals to be taken? You would think you were trying to steal the secret recipe for coca cola. Meanwhile this is your own information – you’ve paid for it and you’ve accumulated it over the years and have a right to see it, read it and get a copy of it if you wish.

For the Americans, the FOIA represents their fundamental commitment to open government. On January 21 2009, a few days after his inauguration, President Obama instructed that the FOIA should be administered with a clear presumption that in the face of doubt, openness prevails. This presumption has 2 important implications.

First, an agency should not withhold information simply because it may do so legally and second, whenever an agency decides that it cannot make full disclosure of a requested record, it must consider whether it can make partial disclosure. In his instructions he asked the agencies to be mindful that the FOIA requires them to take reasonable steps to segregate and release non-exempt information.

Disclosure obligations under any FOI law are not absolute. In the US FOIA there are exemptions which cover, national security, personal privacy, privileged records and law enforcement interests. But President Obama made it clear that ‘the government should not keep information confidential merely because public officers may be embarrassed by disclosure or abstract fears’. He goes further on the basis of the Open Government Act of 2007 to urge agencies to use modern technology to inform citizens what is known and done by their government and encourage the FOIA agencies and officers to work proactively and respond to requests promptly.

In Nigeria, we have a legislative committee report on a sector so completely vital to our lives, such as the power probe and not even all the legislators can see this report, talk less of tax paying voters. If our votes really counted would this be possible?

It is the culture of secrecy that permeates our entire society that makes it easy for our leaders and those in trusted positions to abuse their positions. Some of those involved in the Guantanamo torture cases must feel embarrassed and some might also admirably stick to their guns – what is important is that the discussion and debate that follows, allows things to evolve and improve. In Nigeria however, we are so concerned with appearances that we would rather cover up the faults and indiscretions of our leaders, helping to sustain the rotten, festering wounds that keep us from moving forward.

What do the opponents of the FOI Bill think was the essence of the South African truth and reconciliation exercise that marked the end of formal apartheid? It is because, no matter how bitter or painful to hear, truth and openness makes things better – the pain of apartheid is a lot more recent for South Africans than the Biafran war yet while they have been open up we are still holding on tight to records, if any.

Secrecy only breeds conspiracy theories and misinformation which is inimical to growth and development. I listened in distress while a friend who is fellow of the 2009 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship Programme commended African delegates in his group for being able to have informed arguments on the issues related to their government policies, reasoned discussions which he felt were lacking in similar discussions by Nigerians. But we do not have this information, I heard myself lamely defending, feeling slightly ashamed for not knowing the issues and having to rely on the (mis)information fed to me by journalists, who like most Nigerians, cannot claim to be completely removed from the corruption and ‘price tag’ mentality which pervades our society.

So, I remain, like my leaders, largely uninformed about the governing of my country but haplessly hopeful that even if I do not know the facts or understand the issue, things will get better.

Any alternatives to gas generated power?

2009-04-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

As we struggle towards the vision of 6000 megawatts of power for 140 million people by the end of 2009, (South Africa produces more than 43,000 megawatts of electricity for a third of our population), a few weeks ago we lost over 700 megawatts of power due to disruption in gas supplies.

The importance of gas to the implementation of our power strategy is not in debate and neither is the recent news about the progress being made with our Gas Master Plan even though it focused only briefly on plans to make Nigeria the world’s second largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) producer after Qatar by 2011. Most of the article in question, published in Business Day online on March 24 2009, focused on the benefits to our power plans and all the power stations expected to spring up along the route of the gas transmission lines.

However, what should be in debate is how long we intend to ignore the possibility of using other sources of energy. Our gas problems are not going to be solved in the near future, especially with the oil producers’ reluctance to stop flaring and the extremely lucrative export market for gas. If our gas problems are not solved, then most likely our power problems will not be solved either. So what should we be doing?
We should be seriously considering alternative energy sources to address climate change and working on updating the 2003 National Energy Policy (NEP).We should also be figuring out how to make money from renewable energy or energy conservation either through carbon credits or other devices. This is what is happening everywhere else in the world and just like we thought we were immune to the global economic recession, we probably think we are immune to climate change and declining world oil reserves.

As usual policy and regulation are in abundance; apart from the 2003 NEP we also have a Renewable Energy Master Plan (2005), a Renewable Energy Action Plan (2006) and the Renewable Energy Policy (2006). We have several energy and environmental agencies that should be concerned with driving policy and plans on renewable energy, one because it is a cleaner source of energy and will do less harm to our environment and two because we should not be entirely dependent on fossil fuel for energy. However we have little to show for it.

Germany, a country not known for its sunshine, is in the forefront of solar energy generation, mainly through the use of legislation. A few years ago the German government passed the Renewable Energy Act to boost the switch to renewable energy sources. The renewable energy sector was aided especially by the provison that required businesses to buy energy generated from renewable sources first before buying energy from non-renewable sources. People who produce energy in their own homes have a guarantee by the government that they can sell their 'product' at fixed prices for a period of 20 years. As if that was not enough, last year, the German town of Marburg made history by becoming the first city in Germany to require solar power for newly built or renovated buildings. The aim is to encourage the use of solar thermal systems to displace the use of non-renewable energy sources for heating.

According to research, Nigeria has an annual average daily sunshine of 6.25 hours, and a feasibility study carried out in 2004 found out that on solar energy is the most efficient and economical way to electrify villages in this region. Indeed, solar photovoltaic technologies are allegedly currently being used for small-scale power supply in some rural electrification programs of some States of the federation. So my question is: must our power generation plans be solely hinged on hydrocarbons? Can the Ministry of Power say ‘I am going to diversify our power generation so that we are not 100% dependent on gas’, or does this have to be part of the nation’s energy policy?

To start, the NEP definitely acknowledges that we should work on generating more electricity through renewable sources of energy ‘in order to conserve our fossil fuels’. However it does not say what agency or organisation should be responsible for driving this development of alternative energy sources. Unfortunately, the eighty nine paged policy document does not set out clearly what agency or agencies are responsible for driving or implementing the policy. The mandate of the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), established in 1988, is for the strategic planning and co-ordination of national policies in the field of Energy and does not include generating and distributing energy, so we find a convenient vacuum which allows everyone to abdicate responsibility.

A major problem, the curse of oil, is that it is just easier to rely on oil and gas for energy and we prefer not to plan for the future or think of alternatives to the way we live. Britain is talking about profound changes to the way they build - with ‘new homes built of mud or straw’ as one vision of the future to futher the Government's declared quest for zero carbon homes by 2016. Even America, notorious for energy inefficiencies and constantly derided for their fuel guzzling cars, recently passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) with Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Provisions to provide tax incentives and over $16B to support renewable energy programs.

If the mandate of our Ministry of Power is to simply ‘generate electricity’ as opposed to ‘generate electricity through the use of hydrocarbons’, then we need a power plan that takes into consideration alternatives which do not require gas. There are also simple energy policy changes to be introduced such as banning 60 to 100watt bulbs in favour of 20 to 40 watt bulbs to save energy and providing incentives to new buildings which are built to conserve energy. It is not ‘backwardness’ that resulted in the mud huts and beautiful works of mud based architecture all around West Africa – these structures are built for our hot climate to ensure insulation against the heat. Now, on the altar of sophistication and progress we build with expensive cement and concrete and all our houses, offices, hotels, schools have to be powered with air conditioners and fans. Ironically, in a country where energy is so sorely lacking, we are inefficient and wasteful with the little we have and no one but the cement and generator companies are benefitting from this.

A Tribute to Readers: For and Against

2009-04-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

Personally, there is no better accolade for me as a writer than readers who not only spend their time reading what I write but who also take time to respond and share their views. So many people from within and outside Nigeria have written about one Pedestrian Lawyer article or another and after six months of writing this column, I have no better way of saying thanks to the readers who make it worth while than giving up the page to some of their thoughts, albeit with a little editing.

RE: CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED DISCRIMINATION (for)

“It is quite true and an undisputable fact that our legislators at state and national level have displayed all kinds of reluctance towards legislative proposals that have to do with discrimination against women and women empowerment. Unfortunately, the judiciary and the law enforcement agents have not displayed enough commitment to the existing sketchy laws for protection of women. We hear cases of rape, child prostitution, and young girls forced into marriage and most times the culprits of these inhuman crimes are found freely walking our streets with the clear zeal to commit more of such offences.

It is very painful, the way and manner most men, and some women, due to their cultural beliefs, react to write-ups on protection of the rights of women such as yours. You hear things like: ‘These women have started again’, ‘these women should better go back to the kitchen where they belong’, ‘these women think they can be equal to men’, ‘they better stay where God placed them’. Misconceptions such as these are made by even people who are supposed to know better. Imagine in a family where the parents were faced with financial challenges and had to decide to withdraw some of the children from school. The first thing the head of the family (father) said was that all the girls would remain at home while the boys, as the future bread-winners of the family, would continue. This is despite the fact that the girls are doing better in their academics than their brothers. I think our legislators and people in government think this way too.

Finally, I want to assure you that all the campaign, protest and write-ups on the protection of the right of women such as yours will not go down the drain. It will impact on the way we think. Several people and families have witnessed one type of disaster or the other due to the failure to uphold the rights of their womenfolk; and some have changed for good.”
Umar Abubakar

“A friend and I read your article "Constitutionally Guaranteed Discrimination" last Tuesday in This Day. I am an American male and she is a Nigerian female. We both found the content of the article disturbing although viewing it from different perspectives. The callousness and smug hypocrisy of bureaucrats in Nigeria is scary. For a Nigerian male in power to dismiss the problem because they say it doesn't exist indicates that the issue of discrimination and abuse will not be solved easily or soon. We both applaud your exposure of these officials and beg you to continue to publicize the issue until it is brought under control.”
Ag & Ti

Thanks Umar, Ag & Ti for sharing your thoughts, please do everything in your personal lives to address whatever wrongs you can against women, children and all the disempowered.

RE: CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED DISCRIMINATION (against)
“Dear Ayisha,I read your article in today’s Thisday newspaper about section 26 of the 1999 Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria. You said it is discriminatory against women. I totally disagree with you.
Sometimes these laws are made for specific reasons and there is nothing inequitable about it.For example, in the UK, If an unmarried British woman gives birth to a child and the Father is Not British the Child born has British citizenship but if an unmarried British Man has a child from a woman who is not British the child does not have British citizenship.
Also, a British man cannot simply apply for a British passport without the consent of the British Mother, the passport officials will want to verify the documents of the British mother before issuing the passport.
Should the British men start writing that the laws are biased?” Abraham Zika

Dear Abraham, I think you’ve answered your own question. Isn’t it possible that this particular protection for women has been granted to address a situation where women are historically disadvantaged?

RE: ARE OUR LEGISLATOR’S SERIOUS? (for)
“Good day Ayisha,
I find your editorial as to whether our Legislature are serious very interesting, although I must confess I have always overlooked your column until two weeks ago and I regretted that because against my erroneous presumption I find them very concise. “Them” because a review of your past write-up reveals consistency. Please keep this up. I will like to ask you if there is something within the sphere of law that an ordinary citizen like myself can do to challenge the irresponsible decision of our Legislature. It is one thing for you to write about it and it is another for us to read it but it is altogether a different thing to take it up with them, I believe it is our duty as citizens to demand good governance from our leaders and the lack of it is due to our individual selfish desires, in some countries there would have been a peaceful protest against such a sabotage on our future, union leaders and workers from different field would have marched to the street - the recent AIG bonus decision in the US is a good example- to challenge them. But while selfish ambitions pervade the society those of us not yet infected and still sober can pursue the mission of injecting some sanity into our society, but how do we go about it without violating the law?

Personally I am getting tired of just reading about the atrocities of our leaders and doing nothing and I wish the likes of Gani Fawehinmi still have health on their side-although the old man has paid his dues and whether we like it or not we owe him and his ilk a lot – he would at least know how to go about it within the confines of the law, since any unlawful approach to correcting the Legislature would only exacerbate the situation. That I am a graduate and a working class citizen of this country with few months to three decade of existence and I know nothing about our basic law tells you a lot about our woes in this country. But for how long shall we continue to lament our woes? I think it is time for us to raise our voice and cry out against bad governance until every one gets caught in the frenzy of demand for good governance otherwise these avarice-ridden politician turn Legislature will not only destroy our future but when they have finished they will start selling us into slavery once again, but come to think of it Ayisha are we not indirectly their slaves already? We toil till we become worn out, pay our tax all along and what do we get in return? Please Ayisha let me know if there is anything that can be done.
John Onibiyo

Thanks John. Apart from being happy with your response, you made me feel a bit sad that all I am doing is ‘writing’…but that is my method for trying to precipitate change, to share and try to precipitate outrage or action. Please act.
PS not surprisingly, there were no contributions ‘against’ the article ‘Are our legislators’ serious?’

Published April 14 2009