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'Black people more likely to be in prison than at a top university'- David Cameron

Universities will be forced by law to disclose what proportion of ethnic minority applicants get places, David Cameron has announced as part of a concerted Government anti-discrimination drive. 

The Prime Minister said the transparency rules should prompt institutions such as Oxford to work harder to broaden their intake and warned the police, the courts and the armed forces they also had to act.

Education chiefs have been summoned to Downing Street on Monday for talks with Business Secretary Sajid Javid to discuss why young black men are more likely to be in prison than studying at a top university.

 

It comes as Mr Cameron has hired a leading black Labour MP to investigate whether the police and court system is racially biased.

 

David Lammy will lead a sweeping review into why black people are more likely to be in prison than at a top university, and why black criminals are given harsher sentences than white offenders. Mr Lammy’s review is expected to report on his findings and recommend reforms to the Ministry of Justice in the spring of next year.

 

Mr Cameron said:

“If you’re black, you’re more likely to be in a prison cell than studying at a top university. And if you’re black, it seems you’re more likely to be sentenced to custody for a crime than if you’re white. We should investigate why this is and how we can end this possible discrimination.

"Only one in 10 of the poorest white boys go into higher education at all.

"There are no black generals in our armed forces and just 4 per cent of chief executives in the FTSE 100 are from ethnic minorities.

"What does this say about modern Britain? Are these just the symptoms of class divisions or a lack of equal opportunity? Or is it something worse - something more ingrained, institutional and insidious?"

The UK had come a long way, he added, "but there is much more to do, and these examples I mention should shame our country and jolt us to action".

"I don't care whether it's overt, unconscious or institutional - we've got to stamp it out," he added, warning it would otherwise only "feed those who preach a message of grievance and victimhood".

Mr Cameron rejected what he called "politically correct, contrived and unfair solutions" such as quotas but said it was "striking" that Oxford's 2014 intake of more than 2,500 included only 27 black students.

"I know the reasons are complex, including poor schooling, but I worry that the university I was so proud to attend is not doing enough to attract talent from across our country," he said.

The new rules will require routine publication of data on applicants, broken down by course, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background.

His intervention is likely to further fuel protests by some students at Oxford over the refusal to remove a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes from the front of Oriel college they say represents racism and oppression.

Mr Cameron said public institutions needed to "dig deeper", warning he also intended action to eradicate "the stubborn problem of under-representation in our police and armed forces".

"It's not enough to simply say you are open to all. Ask yourselves: are you going that extra mile to really show people that yours can be a place for everyone, regardless of background?"

Mr Lammy, who wrote a book on the 2011 riots that were sparked by the killing of a black man by the police in his Tottenham constituency, has been tasked with rooting out the causes of "disgraceful" gulfs in sentencing treatment.

"It's disgraceful that if you're black, it seems you're more likely to be sentenced to custody for a crime than if you're white," the PM said.

"We should investigate why this is and how we can end this possible discrimination. That's why I have asked David Lammy MP to lead a review of the over-representation of BME communities in the criminal justice system.

"And this will include possible sentencing and prosecutorial disparity."

Copied from Linda Ikeji Blog.

Olisa Metuh and the British: Between the Colonized and the Postcolonized By Pius Adesanmi

If you look across Africa today, the postcolonized African often sees himself as an improvement on his colonized ancestors. In 2016, the postcolonized African looks at archetypes of the colonized African which Chinua Achebe has secured for eternity in the persons of Ogbuefi Okonkwo and Ogbuefi Ezeulu and says to himself: “we have come a long way”. The postcolonized thinks he is better than the colonized.

This, of course, is pure delusion for the postcolonized is quite frankly a fool and a butterfly who thinks himself a bird – apologies to Ola Rotimi.

True, Africa was conquered on the watch of the colonized. But we now know his history of resistance; of subtle, overt, sly, and brazen undermining of the colonizer at every turn. He fought wars where necessary, negotiated where necessary, mistranslated the colonizer where necessary, became a nationalist when necessary – and eventually achieved decolonization.

Eventually, the colonized handed over a free continent to today’s postcolonized. The choice before the postcolonized was to add substance to that freedom and take the continent to the mountain top. We know where this character has taken the continent in fifty years of freedom. The least said of the postcolonized African, the better. 

One other thing I like about the colonized, what conferred on him superior moral and ethical mettle vis-à-vis today’s postcolonized African, is the fact that the colonizer’s lies hardly ever worked on him. You see, colonialism was not just violence and conquest. Colonialism was also lies. The colonizer daily had to tell lies and tell other lies to nurture the initial lies. You lied to the colonized about himself and his society in order for divide and rule to work.

You must remember that Ezeulu’s tragedy was not all self-inflicted. You must remember that he paid a heavy price for resisting the colonizer’s lies about himself and his society. The white man tried to lie to him that he is the stuff of kings. The white man tried to tell him that he is royalty. The flattering lies were meant to achieve the white man’s dream of social engineering in Igbo land: create a supreme central authority to make life easier for indirect rule. But Ezeulu refuses to buy the colonizer’s patronizing lies about himself and his society. I will not be king. There is no such thing in my society. You know the rest of the story.

All over Africa, the former colonizer, who now calls himself “Africa’s development partner”,  has never quit the habit of trying to tell patronizing lies to Ezeulu’s postcolonized descendants in order to butter their ego and make life a little better for neocolonialism. Unfortunately, the postcolonized African is not cut from the same moral and ethical stone as his colonized ancestor.

The postcolonized African is a fool who laps up the patronizing lies that his “development partners” from Europe and America tell him about himself and his society.

Surely, you remember Baroness Lynda Chalker? Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and the early 2000s, the Baroness, bless her soul, pretty much functioned as the foster mother of the Nigerian political class. She held court over Nigerian affairs from London. Her children in the Nigerian political class ran to consult her over every issue. By the time we arrived at Obasanjo and Yar’Adua, Lynda Chalker had pretty much become the Queen of Nigeria. 

Some of our worst and most corrupt elections happened in this era. Even some of the beneficiaries of those egregiously corrupt elections grudgingly acknowledged the farce they conducted and benefited from. Not Baroness Chalker. She would not hear or tolerate any talk of corruption and rigged elections in Nigeria. She justified and excused every evil she encountered in Nigeria. She assured Obasanjo, then Yar’Adua, that those elections were not as bad as people were making them out to be, patronizingly adding that there are no perfect elections anywhere. 

Of course the postcolonized fools in Nigeria’s leadership, whose ego she was buttering, never stopped to ask themselves if the lies she was telling them about Nigeria were valid for her own country. They never once asked her if what she was justifying and rationalizing for Nigeria was acceptable in Britain.

 Since she said that Nigerian elections were okay because there are no perfect elections anywhere, they never asked her if hundreds of Londoners are shot and macheted by touts working for politicians during elections. They never asked her how many snatched ballot papers she had ever seen in a British election. These are questions that the colonized Ezeulu would have asked her to her face, even at the risk of imprisonment.

Truth is that Baroness Lynda Chalker was raking in millions as a “consultant” from the corrupt Nigerian establishment and was prepared to tell them any lies about themselves and their society to keep the funds flowing. She is British – she knows how to benefit from the inferiority complex of the postcolonized African. After all, she is from the country which manufactured that inferiority complex.

Enter Olisa Metuh, the indicted National Publicity Secretary of PDP who has just been released on bail. The crimes Olisa Metuh and his fellow elder statesgoats in Dasukigate stand accused of would long have seen them facing the firing squad in China or South Korea. For much less in Europe and America, you will not face the firing squad but that would signal the end of your public career. The first order of business in Europe and America is to immediately resign from your present post, keep a low profile, while defending yourself in court.

In those societies, it is impossible to keep your job in the face of such a huge indictment. Yet, Mr. Metuh’s first order of business as soon as the handcuffs were removed from his hands was to undertake the mandatory victory lap of thieves and the indicted – which Nigerian society condones and promotes – before heading out to his office to welcome a delegation of British parliamentarians.

What the visiting British parliamentarians had to tell Olisa Metuh should make every Nigerian overcome their ethnic, religious, and political differences for once and think. They advised Olisa Metuh and his party, PDP, to “protect your brand” in the face of challenges and difficulties. A man stands accused of massive looting of his country’s funds, funds meant to fight terrorism, even giving two million dollars to a lady friend “for investment”, and a bunch of patronizing British parliamentarians go to Abuja to talk about his brand and the brand of his party?

How many times do the members of this British delegation get to visit British politicians indicted for theft and massive corruption to discuss their brand? How often does a British politician get indicted for massive fraud, arrested, jailed, released on bail, only to stroll casually back to office and begin to welcome international delegations like nothing happened?

But I do not blame the British who have gone to Abuja to tell the usual ego-massaging and patronizing lies to the postcolonized about himself and his society. I blame Nigerians for the kind of postcolonial monstrosity they have created and called a society. A society of no consequence. A society where a man waltzes back to office from jail, a hero under the weight of indictment. A society where a Senator illegally goes around in a convoy in the nation’s capital, breaks traffic rules, gets into an accident, and travels abroad for treatment at public expense in broad daylight and has yet to face consequences till today. A society whose National Assembly is a bazaar of former indictees, current indictees, and aspiring indictees.

The British know this about you. That is why they come to you frequently to encourage and rationalize what they will never accept in their own society. That is why they come to pat you patronizingly on the head for creating a 17th-century nightmare that is completely antithetical to 21st-century civilization. I shudder to think of what that British delegation was thinking of us even as they mouthed lies to Olisa Metuh.

Ezeulu would never have tolerated the lies the British told Olisa Metuh.

The Nigeria of 2016 is inferior to the Nigeria before 1960.

I miss Ezeulu.

Mr Falana SAN and his ICC

"The claim that I am unfamiliar with the mandate of the ICC shows that Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala has not been following the practice of the court and its active and robust approach to its mandates, in particular with regard to the investigation of crimes in Darfur, the warrant of arrest for Joseph Kony (Uganda), and the warrant of arrest for Ahmad Harun, (Sudan).

In many decided cases, the ICC has expanded its mandate to humanitarian issues, aimed at forestalling and impeding the perpetration of crimes which cause gross human rights abuse. There is absolutely nothing in the Rome Statute of the ICC to suggest that the court cannot address impunity for enormous financial crimes (and its crippling impact) which took place while Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala was the Finance Minister and the Coordinating Minister of the economy."

Falana SAN

Mr Falana is a senior and high ranking Barrister in Nigeria. He is wrong on his opinion on the ICC and its mandate. 

What is the ICC. The International Criminal Court is an organ of the United Nations. The process by which cases are processed by the ICC are through two main routes. The UN Security Council refers matters, including countries and non state actors to the ICC it believes threatens world peace. Sudan (country), Joseph Kony (non state actor) referred to the ICC for criminal prosecution. 

The ICC can instigate cases against countries and non state actors if in it's opinion such matters are of international consequence and no other body is able, capable or willing to attend to these matters. 

The above guidelines do not apply to current Nigeria. The current Nigeria is not a failed state like Somalia. The allegations alleged by Mr Falana has no direct international security impact. Mr Falana is not a signatory to the Rome treaty creating the ICC. The Nigeria in which Mr Falana is a player is able and willing to attend to his complaints. He is therefore bringing his profession in Nigeria to disrepute. He is also guilty of futile grandstanding, creating newspapers headlines without a story. 

This rejoinder is not a comment of the allegations but the avenue Mr Falana is purporting to settle a purely Nigerian domestic palaver.

Where Are The Public Intellectuals? By Reuben Abati

Something sad has happened and is happening, and is getting worse in our society: the decline of public intellectualism.  And so I ask, where are the public intellectuals? Once upon a time in this country, the public arena was dominated by a ferment of ideas, ideas that pushed boundaries, destroyed illusions, questioned orthodoxies and enabled societal progress.

Those were the days when intellectuals exerted great influence on public policy, and their input into the governance process could not be ignored. Ideas are strong elements of nation building, and even where interests are at play, you know the quality of a country by the manner in which a taste for good thinking propels the leadership process. 

 

Public intellectuals are at the centre of this phenomenon: they include academics who go beyond their narrow specializations and university-based scholarship to take a keen interest in public affairs and who use their expertise and exposure to shed light on a broad range of issues. They also include journalists, writers and other professionals who question society’s direction, and offer alternative ideas. The beauty of public intellectualism is that the intellectual at work is a disinterested party, he is interested in ideas not for his own benefit, but for the overall good of society, and he does not assume that his opinions are the best or that he alone understands the best way to run society and its organs. The product of this attitude is that discourse, a culture of debate, is encouraged and in the cross-pollination of ideas, a good current of thought is created; truth is spoken to power.

 

We have had glimpses of this in Nigeria, and without trying to sketch a history of public intellectualism in our country or attempt a ranking of public intellectuals, let me just say that between the 60s and the 90s, there was so much fascination with ideas in this same country, it was as if the public mind was on fire. Academics from various disciplines took a keen interest in the prospects of the new Nigeria, and they went to the public arena to project ideas. Journalists became revered as sages, so much that certain newspaper columnists almost single-handedly sold newspapers. 

 

Public lectures were organized which attracted persons who were just interested in ideas. Writers did a lot more than the professional task of producing novels, poems and plays and wrote public essays. The vendor’s stand every morning attracted not just buyers and free readers, but also young Nigerians who every morning debated major topics of concern. On television also, there were debates and those in the corridors of power also took ideas seriously.  So influential were intellectuals in the public space that they soon got invited to be part of government and although the military had always opposed intellectualism, at least one government, the Babangida government had the largest collection of intellectuals in office since independence. Many who lived during that era will remember the debates over the IMF/Structural adjustment Programme. 

 

As the years went by however, public intellectualism began to decline. In 2006, Jimanze Ego-Alowes published a book titled How Intellectuals Underdeveloped Nigeria and Other Essays, an allusion to the complicity of intellectuals in the crisis that had by then engulfed the country.  Four years later, Rudolf Okonkwo in an article titled  “The Comedy of Our Public Intellectuals” observed as follows:  “the world of the Nigerian public intellectual is a zoo. It is a zoo full of nihilists. Some are sectarian in their outlook and others are humorless. Some are eccentric while others are comical. But one thing they all have in common is an over-inflated ego of their importance in the scheme of things.” 

 

I don’t know about over-inflated ego, but I do know that the flame of public intellectualism in Nigeria is now almost a flicker. There are extremely few new significant voices, saying anything of consequence, the soldiers of old have become old, the fire in their belly, now subdued.  It is as if our academics have lost interest in public affairs, as only a few of them maintain a column or write an occasional piece or take on public issues in the manner of the likes of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Segun Osoba, Claude Ake, Bade Onimode, Ola Oni, Mokwugo Okoye, Mahmud Tukur, Yusuf Bala Usman, Ayodele Awojobi, Biodun Jeyifo, Femi Osofisan, Stanley Macebuh, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Chinweizu, Kole Omotoso, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Bode Sowande, Patrick Wilmot…The opinion pages of the newspapers are no longer vibrant. There is so much “opinionitis”, but debate is rare and rejoinders are always self-serving. 

 

What has happened is that politically neutral intellectuals have now become scarce; the typical intellectual of today is not public in the sense in which that word is used; he is in reality affiliated to partisan and sectional interests.  The intellectual influence in Nigeria’s affairs is thus diminished because of obsession with individual interests: academics are now at best “acadapreneurs”: the intellectual as an entrepreneur. Business and partisan interests have compromised media houses; those once vibrant platforms are no longer offering vibrant ideas. Within the cultural sphere, there is a total dumbing down. Where are the creative writers?  They are still writing, but few want to get involved in the issues of the day and offer ideas. 

 

The effect is that we are in the age of clichés, of jargon writing, of mundane, unimaginative commentary. Whatever appears intellectual is written off as arrogant and there is no quality debate on anything because people have resorted to making fashionable statements that suit the moment and every one is locked in their own little corner, not willing to listen to the other side of the story.  The reading public, whatever is left of it, is also not interested in ideas or anything that requires rigorous thinking. We have thus lost a critical element of public intellectualism: an audience. The people are interested in easy stuff, in fashionable opinions that align with their own partisan interests. Nobody wants to read any long commentary; there is an obsession with short thinking, and whereas brevity may be a good technique, there are certain ideas that just cannot be reduced to a tweet.  It is really sad that today, intellectualism is seen as a threat.  

 

Even when corporations and politicians in power draw intellectuals close; they end up usurping the powers of the intellectual, compelling him to hold his intelligence within the scope of the definition of his assignment. Intellectuals can be inside or outside, and there are classical cases of intellectuals in power making a difference, but that age appears ended, the disdain of intellectualism has turned politicians and corporate gurus into wise men that they are not, and the intellectual into an organic element of power. The greatest power of the intellectual lies in his freedom; when he is denied that under any circumstance, society turns off its energy source and gradually, it is the self-imposed wisdom of clowns that prevails. 

 

The gap that has been created seems to have been easily filled by internet gladiators who spend the day shuffling from Instagram to Facebook to Twitter and other social media threads. These new culture activists project a democratic impression of public intellectualism - and yes, there is a sense in which everyone is an intellectual, from the village priest to the village idiot-  but I don’t see the rigour, the breadth and depth and the aesthetic alienation that can elevate this genre and its promoters to the grade of public intellectualism. For the most part, social media in Nigeria is predominantly at the level of tabloid sensationalism, and it accommodates and offers the same degree of freedom to the ignorant and the mischievous, as well as the entrepreneur and the uncouth.  There is no doubt however that its content and the quality can be raised, but that will require innovation, the intervention of thinkers and the creation of new audiences that will be interested in something more than the quick and formulaic. 

 

What we have lost is not the intellectual, as there are many educated Nigerians who are experts in their narrow fields, what we have lost is active intelligence as a tool for social progress. The rub is in the intelligence part of being intellectual. Being intellectual is about living a life of ideas and using those ideas to engage society intelligently in a committed manner. 

 

In addition to other reasons, it may well be that our intellectuals are tired of engaging Nigeria.  Having tried over the years to engage the governance elite with ideas and to show that only good ideas should govern society and having been spurned by the politicians, Nigeria’s intellectual elite seems to have become so frustrated, it has retired largely into a state of indifference and inertia. What is the point knocking one’s head against a wall? But intellectuals in society cannot take such a stand. That will amount to an abdication of responsibility: when intellectuals do no more than make righteous noises, the harvest in the long run, is counter-productive. 

 

Another factor is the emergence of a “climate of fear,” and a culture of silence/co-optation/acquiescence. Politicians distrust intellectuals; they can’t tolerate anyone around them speaking truth to power or raising disturbing questions.  The intellectual is expected to keep his ideas to himself and respect constituted authority. He is expected to enjoy his freedom in his head and dare not go public with it.  Ideas cannot thrive if the man of ideas is afraid to think, and whisper or speak. Rather than insist on the freedom to differ, many academics, journalists, writers and thinkers have since dropped the baton, and surrendered the public space. 

 

But that is unhelpful cowardice.  Those who know better must continue to engage the public vigorously with ideas about governance and public policy, and encourage open debates, for the good of the entire society.  Those ideas must however, be relevant for them to be of any value; they must not be abstract theories that disconnect with the people’s realities, but ideas that offer intelligent solutions to practical problems. 

 

Right now, there are critical areas where such intervention is needed: budgets, economic planning, handling a currency crisis that is fast turning into a nightmare (France has declared an economic emergency and yet was not in as bad a position as we are in…Argentina made changes to its export taxes to address its own dilemma…).

 

We have had schizophrenic interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria and yet where are the intellectuals to come up with analysis and desired alternative views, beyond bellyaching? Where are the inorganic public intellectuals to guide public thought?  Who are those thinking for government, the opposition and indeed the public space?

The Thing at Dambazau’s Feet is You!

By Pius Adesanmi

Nigerian, you have by now seen a viral video of Nigeria’s interior Minister, Abdulrahman Dambazau, turning “a DSS officer” into a sobata during a public function. If you do not know who or what a sobata is, it means you are too young and you came to adulthood on Facebook and Twitter. Sobata was the ambulant Ghanaian shoemaker, shoe repairer, or shoe shiner who took care of my “back to school” bata shoes during my primary and secondary school days.  If you were an ajebutter whose hand writing was cursive, you called those shoes “cortiner”. A Ghanaian sobata is a significant element in the social history of Nigeria in the 1970s and the 1980s.

The dust of Kaduna was unfriendly to Dambazau’s loafers. He sits down and the world is treated to yet another tragic spectacle of the dehumanization of a Nigerian citizen by a member of Nigeria’s contemptible power elite. “The DSS officer” cleans one shoe, Dambazau stretches his second leg for the same cleaning operation to be performed on his second shoe. He does not spare even a glance for the “thing” bent at his feet, cleaning his shoe.

That thing at Dambazau’s feet, that thing wiping Dambazau’s shoes to a mirror shine in full public glare, has an identity. That thing is called the Nigerian citizen. Unfortunately, that is the only part of this sordid affair that has transcendental validity: the fact that the Nigerian is a thing, an inconsequential thing in the presence of the men and women of power we generally throw into the patriarchal category of the “big man” in Nigeria. 

The dehumanizing power of this Nigerian big man was made evident when the mere evocation of his existence by a junior officer on national TV led to Nigeria’s most celebrated assault on cyber language: dawbliyu dawbliyu dawbliyu sneeze dot sneeze dot NSCDC dot sneeze dot dazzol. 

To evoke the existence of your Oga at the top in Nigeria is to lose the capacity for speech and coherence and that is the first step to becoming a thing cleaning his or her shoes in public.

It bears repeating: the fact that the Nigerian is a thing thingified by Oga at the top is the only certain aspect of the Dambazau scenario. After this fact, every other thing is sadly and tragically…Nigerian!

Let me explain. You would have noticed that I am putting “DSS officer” in quote when describing the thing wiping Dambazau’s shoes. I am doing that because this is Nigeria. And the first thing to learn about Nigeria is that illegality, abnormality, or illogicality is never an only child. Nigeria is not one to sire illogicality in isolation. Illogicality is always born as one of quintuplets or sextuplets in Nigeria.

For instance, everyone thinks they see a DSS officer because the thing in suit wiping Dambazau’s shoes has a revolver bulging from his side pocket. But nothing confirms that the thing is a DSS officer. This is Nigeria. Any range of illegalities is possible.

He could be a DSS officer indeed.

He could be a police officer not in uniform

He could be an overzealous Dambazau aide carrying that weapon illegally.

He could be Dambazzau’s brother in-law carrying that weapon illegally.

He could be the nephew of Dambazau’s cousin’s uncle carrying that weapon illegally.

Whoever, sorry, whatever that thing is, it has opened our eyes to the trouble with you, Nigerian. We already know the trouble with Dambazau and his ilk – the Nigerian big man. It is true that Dambazau and people like him are arrogant jackasses. Their psychology is atrocious. They treat Nigerians like shit; their wives treat Nigerians like dung; their girlfriends, concubines, and assorted pre-pubescent mistresses treat Nigerians like garbage. 

We know all of that already. What you often do not admit is that Dambazau’s psychology of dehumanization is a function of your own psychology of self-abnegation. I have been laughing bitterly since I first encountered mass reactions to Dambazau’s savagery. 

My first point of contact with it was on the wall of a brother who is a close aide to Ekitigate Governor, Ayo Fayose. Supremely blind to the irony of it all, this aide takes umbrage at the situation and condemns the sordid spectacle. An aide, who would gladly wipe Fayose’s anus in public, is condemning another aide for wiping the shoe of his principal in public? Which Nigerian serving a man of power as a political aide would consider such tasks undignifying and beyond the call of duty?

That Nigerian wiping Dambazau’s shoes is you. That is how you, Nigerian, behave in the presence of your men and women of power. Obscene self-nullification because of your men of power is second nature to you. Given the chance to wipe Dambazau’s shoes, practically all of you forming indignation in public will do it to gain access to “those who matter”. This is self-abnegation beyond compare.

 

More than our struggle against corruption, the most daunting struggle we have is the struggle to restore the human dignity of the Nigerian – with the said Nigerian in the driver’s seat of that process. You cannot restore human dignity to a man whose every instinct is to dehumanize himself in the presence of the big man. You cannot restore human dignity to a woman whose every instinct is to dehumanize herself in the presence of the big man.

If you have ever been in the company of a Governor, of a Minister, of Senator, etc, and see what Nigerians reduce themselves to – no matter how humble and humane the said man of power is – you will understand what I am talking about. I wince in pain all the time in such situations – to see what my countrymen and women reduce themselves to in the presence of His or Her Excellency.

The day I left Ake Festival, I couldn’t wait for Lola Shoneyin’s arrangements to get me to Lagos. I was in a hurry. I had appointments in Lagos before catching my flight back to Ottawa. Lola had wanted me to remain in Abeokuta to help her host a certain mutual friend who was on his way to Ake from Kaduna that day. I had other plans for Lagos. 

As I tried to make arrangements to get to Lagos behind Lola’s back, my friend, Kadaria Ahmed, and I spoke back and forth about my trip to Lagos. Then Kadaria had a bright idea: “why don’t you kuku just wait and hitch a ride to Lagos with your friend?” I thought about it and we phoned “my friend’s” protocol people to let them know that I’d be hitching a ride back to Lagos with him. Arrangement concluded. 

Then I thought about all I needed to do in Lagos and decided I couldn’t wait for “my friend” to finish his own session at Ake. I told Professor Rem Raj and Remy Binte Oge to drive me to the motor park in Abeokuta where I chartered a car to take me to Lagos.

I had just shunned a free ride to Lagos in the car of a Nigerian state Governor because our schedules were incompatible that day. When I got to Lagos and told the folks I had rushed to meet that I couldn’t afford to wait for the Governor’s lift because of the things we had to do, they all looked at me in horror, convinced that I needed urgent intervention by the combined deliverance offices of Pastors Enoch Adeboye, David Oyedepo, T.B. Joshua, and Chris Oyakhilome. 

When he finally caught his breath, one of the friends I had rushed to meet – I had given them an airport appointment – screamed, “Pius I’ve always known that you’re crazy but I didn’t know that you crossed the market already! What is so important about us that you couldn’t wait for the ride of a state Governor? In Nigeria? Ori ogbeni yi ti daru o!” The consensus was that I would have served them better by “connecting them” than rushing to Lagos for my appointment with them.

I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know how to start telling them that a state Governor’s human dignity is not more equal than their own human dignity. In fact, to the extent that they occupy the office of citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, they should consider their time more precious than the time of the public servant whose ride I did not wait to take. Do you think that if given the chance, those guys would not wipe Dambazau’s shoes in public?

I thought I was alone in this business of believing that my time as an ordinary citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is more important than the time of those elected to serve me as public servants; I thought I was alone in believing that President Buhari’s human dignity is not more equal than Forganaisa Lamidi’s human dignity; I thought I was alone in thinking that Forganaisa Lamidi should not be driven off the roadside just because President Buhari is in the neighbourhood until I encountered the ultimate teachable moment in the action of Citizen Tope Fasua.

Citizen Tope Fasua is a Nigerian patriot after my heart. I have been working with him on the pan-Nigerian project for a very long time. He is an exemplary citizen. Like many who supported President Buhari’s election, he also got an invitation to the dinner party that was said to have been organized by folks close to Mrs Aisha Buhari to thank social media supporters of her husband. 

When citizen Tope Fasua got to the designated pick-off venue where invitees had been instructed to assemble for the bus trip to the Villa, he discovered, as usual, that the Nigerian state had made arrangements that were beneath the dignity of a citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Because of the Nigerian government’s irredeemable culture of contempt for the Nigerian citizen, they had provided only one bus to ferry the invitees, all important ordinary Nigerians, to the Villa. Tope would have none of that treatment – not even from the Presidency. He exchanged banter with those waiting for the single bus and drove away. In his account of this incident, Tope Fasua also indicated that he had very important things to do.

My admiration of this Nigerian shot through the roof. At every instance of your contact with power, you must always remember that your dignity is paramount. You human dignity as citizen is the number one reason Nigeria exists.

If the Villa can get away with it, she will ask hundreds of you to gather at a point and send just one bus several hours late to fetch you. That is the nature of power. You have to insist on your dignity so that she behaves better.

If Dambazau can get away with it, you will always clean his shoes. Let’s face it, one aide or a handful of aides will never be able to confront Dambazau and tell him to his face that he is the jackass I believe he is. He is probably using his domestic staff for duties that could make him a candidate for The Hague – violating their dignity and human rights. They will never be able to confront him. 

Only a mass culture of hostility to their psychology of dehumanization will make the Dambazaus of this world wake up and smell the coffee. We have to grow such a mass culture in our daily encounters with the actors of the Nigerian state.

You and I know that Dambazau should be sacked from President Buhari’s cabinet immediately for that scandalous video. But you and I also know that no Nigerian Presidency has ever respected the Nigerian people enough to act on things like this unless it becomes a national scandal they can no longer ignore.

You and I know that Dambazau and the Villa will ignore this video for as long as they are able to ignore it.

Nigerian, the path to your dignity starts with making this issue impossible for President Buhari and Dambazau to ignore.

Until Dambazau is sacked, you, Nigerian, are the thing beneath his feet.

A Visit To FRSC By Reuben Abati

One of the things I have had to do in recent times was to renew my driver’s licence. This took me to the headquarters of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Abuja. The procedure requires the applicant’s presence: forms to be filled, fees to be paid, fingerprinting to be done, and so, that was how I found myself in the expansive and impressive premises of the FRSC Headquarters.  It turned to be a memorable experience. In-between the processing of my papers, I was handed over to a young officer in the digitalized command centre at the Headquarters, to give me a brief overview of the operations of the FRSC. I considered this a special privilege, but it turned out that the FRSC opens its doors to visitors seeking information, because just as I was stepping out of the room after almost 45 minutes of briefing, another group of visitors including journalists, were led into the command centre for their own briefing session. I could not fail to notice the fact that the operations of the FRSC are highly modernized and digitalized.

       This is a sign of progress and growth because that was not always the case. When the idea of the creation of a special unit for road safety, separate from the Police Department, gained ground in the 70s, this was in response to the enormous carnage on Nigerian roads. Professor Wole Soyinka who suggested the idea to the Oyo State Government has written about how the Ibadan-Ife road had become a death trap for the students and lecturers at the then University of Ife. He would later take on the leadership role of sensitizing the Nigerian public to the evil of road rage, mobilizing volunteers to go onto the road to check drivers, or to assist accident victims.  In later years, he became the pioneer Chairman of the Federal Road Safety Corps. In those early days, road safety officers relied on their raw courage, and few equipment, but they were a truly inspired group.

     The need for road safety in Nigeria cannot be overstated. Over the years, so many lives and limbs have been lost on the roads. Today, Nigeria has a network of 204, 000 kilometres of paved and unpaved roads, with 12.76 million registered motor vehicles and motorcycles at the ratio of 57% and 43% respectively.  Between 1960 and 2015, a total of 1,521, 601 casualties were recorded on our roads. Road traffic cases were particularly most serious between 1976 and 1993, with casualty figures consistently exceeding 30, 000 per annum. Established in 1988, FRSC claims in its annual reports that casualty figures on Nigerian roads have been on a downward trend.  This conclusion must be in terms of relative figures in direct proportion to population. For, whereas total casualty figure as reported was 11,299 in 1960, it was 38, 059 in 2014 and 32, 826 in 2015.  In 1960 Nigeria’s population was 45.2 million; today, it is about 183.5 million, with more vehicles on the roads.

     No one can question the wisdom behind the setting up of this strategic agency and due credit must be given to the founding fathers, the successive administrations that have built up the agency and international organisations like the World Bank, which have provided necessary support. In 1988, the FRSC had a staff strength of just about 300, today it has over 19, 000 workers on its payroll, and it is able to make its presence felt on all Nigerian roads. It is better equipped; its staff are better motivated, and it has attracted a large number of volunteers, also known as Special Marshals who at critical moments step in to act as traffic control officials. According to the FRSC, deaths on Nigerian roads per 100, 000 was 9.0 in 1990; over the next 15 years, this was reduced to 3.62.

       Whereas a total number of 8, 154 persons were killed on Nigerian roads in 1990, the number had reduced to 5, 044 in 2015. But perhaps the biggest area of achievement has been in the fact that more people today are apprehended for traffic offences. Between January and June 2014, about 258, 538 traffic offenders were apprehended nationwide; and for the same period in 2015 - 254, 203 persons.  In the various reports, the states with the highest cases of traffic offences and fatalities are Kaduna, FCT, Ogun, Kogi, Oyo, Nasarawa, and Edo in that order while the states with the least incidents are Borno, Bayelsa, Yobe, Ekiti, Taraba, Abia, and Akwa Ibom. 

      It is refreshing that over the years the FRSC has been able to generate such significant data on road safety and fatalities in Nigeria. When I visited the control centre, many uniformed officers were busy behind telephones and computers, receiving information from the public and satellite command centres across Nigeria. Two large screens in the room provided real live indication of  accident cases in all the six traffic corridors into which the country has been divided. I was told, and a live demonstration was used to illustrate the claim, that once there is a reported accident in any part of the country, the information is relayed to the nearest FRSC Command for immediate action, all the way up to the National Headquarters which monitors the dispatch of the nearest FRSC patrol team in that corridor on a rescue mission. The officer told me that the FRSC has the capacity to get to the scene of any road accident within minutes, because its men are all over Nigerian roads.  I didn’t expect him to say anything otherwise. He was marketing his organization and he would of course tell me all the good things. But I wondered: how many Nigerians know the toll free emergency numbers to call in the event of an accident?

   I completed the processing of my driver’s licence. And when it was time to take my leave, I was given some reading materials.  A careful perusal would offer more information: the FRSC Call centre receives on the average a total of 258 calls per month on road traffic crashes, and most of these calls are made between June and December.  It is as if Nigerians get more reckless on the roads as the year comes to an end. Then the vehicles mostly involved in road crashes are cars, followed by motorcycles, minibuses and trucks, while the principal causes are over-speeding, loss of control and dangerous driving.     

       On the whole, a lot still needs to be done to curtail road traffic crashes in Nigeria and to check the menace of dangerous driving; the area of challenge is in deepening the prevention strategies of the FRSC and similar organisations that have been set up by state governments such as LASTMA in Lagos and TRACE in Ogun state. A team of Road Safety experts from Nigeria are scheduled to proceed on a two-year deployment to Sierra Leone, which is encouraging, but before we begin to do Father Christmas across Africa with what has been achieved so far, we must never lose sight of the fact that the quoted statistics of persons killed or injured on Nigerian roads is not just cold data, but human lives. Nigerian motorists need to be constantly reminded that they cannot be allowed to either commit suicide or kill others.

    It is certainly not surprising that over-speeding is the major cause of accidents on our roads. The FRSC and similar organisations at the state level must insist on the observance of speed limits and impose the stiffest penalties on offenders. It is always very scary driving on any road in Nigeria. Most of our motorists, commercial or private, behave as if the best way to handle a vehicle is to exhaust the speedometer. Speed bumps on inner city roads have made little or no difference.  Even when persons are not driving under the influence, they just like to speed. Each time I see any major road being dualized, I immediately think in terms of the number of lives that will be claimed by the road once it is completed. Every person behind the wheels on our roads is a potential Formula One participant.

      The commercial drivers are worse. They drive dangerously and lose control, because in any case, they are half of the time, completely drunk. Every motor park has a nearby section where alcohol is openly sold. In between trips, the drivers worship at theparaga and ogogoro shrine, and get thoroughly inebriated before they jump behind the wheels. State governments and the FRSC must liaise with the Nigerian Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) to enforce the ban on the sale of alcohol at motor parks across the country; pro-active steps should also be taken to check drunk driving. In some other parts of the world, motorists are routinely stopped and asked to take a breath or sobriety test. We need that here.

       Nigerians like to break the law, or test it. When the compulsory use of seat belts was introduced, it was quite a battle getting people to comply.  In the same manner, they may resist the observance of speed limits, but this must be strictly enforced.  Loss of control while driving, is caused not only by drunkenness, but also the abuse of cell phones.  The way some people treat cell phones like a toy is unbelievable. Even while driving, they use one hand to hold a phone; the other hand is on the steering, while their mouth is engaged in animated conversation and their ears in a listening mode. Engaged in such a delicate task as driving, they are nevertheless distracted. I have seen many suicidal drivers on our highways, chatting on phone and going at top speed.  This must be addressed.

      The various FRSC reports didn’t dwell much on the roadworthiness of vehicles on Nigerian roads.  Half of the vehicles out there are imported, used vehicles with broken down parts and bad tyres. Nigerian motorists are not likely to change tyres until the tyres burst, and of course, very few buy new tyres. Roadworthiness checks must not be voluntary or optional but compulsory. The roads are also bad. Bad roads don’t make for safe driving. And to worsen it all: many motorists don’t bother to go to driving schools or take driving tests, and they have no driver’s license. They learn to drive by accident; they have no knowledge of road signs and traffic rules. They drive all the same and cause accidents. The FRSC should seek the enabling powers to ensure that certain traffic offenders are banned for life from driving on our roads. That is the surest way to reduce road carnage.

Nigeria's Future Hinges on Its States

Decisions made by Nigeria’s state governors have over the years caused global oil prices to fluctuate, fueled the rise of Boko Haram, and arrested the spread of Ebola in Nigeria. Governors are the preeminent political figures in their respective states, but are also national power brokers and political party kingpins. They try to ameliorate, though at times they aggravate, insecurity in their states, even coopting federal security officials when necessary.

Economic workhorses or wastrels?

Economically speaking, Nigeria’s states are split between “haves” and “have-nots.”  Petroleum production accounts for 75 percent of Nigerian government revenue and is concentrated in the states of Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, and River states in the Niger Delta region. A handful of southwestern states, anchored by Lagos, dominate the country’s non-oil economy. Outside these areas, state economies revolve around two stagnant sectors: subsistence agriculture and public-sector spending.

As President Buhari tries to put Nigeria’s public finances back in order, the balance sheets of all thirty-six states are sinking deeper into the red. States’ borrowing trends are risky and need to be addressed, according to a recent report (PDF) by the African Development Bank. Most states generate minimal revenue outside of their monthly allocation (royalty check) from the country’s diminishing oil income. Buhari has already bailed out twenty-seven cash-strapped states to the tune of $2.1 billion, roughly 10 percent of 2015 federal expenditures and almost as much as the country’s education budget.

Each of Nigeria’s thirty-six states have populations, economic profiles, and budgets comparable to small countries.

State governments nevertheless can play a central role in facilitating much-needed economic growth. The recent transformation of Lagos—one of the world’s fastest-growing megacities—from dystopia to regional economic hub is largely a result of good state governance. Adjacent Ogun state, home to several big industrial facilities, has benefited from Lagos’s economic development. (Note: Hard data is lacking on GDP of individual states because a Nigerian government effort to recalculate it in the wake of the country’s 2014 rebasing exercise has stalled).

But more often poor state governance is impeding the country’s growth.  In the World Bank’s ease of doing business index, Nigeria ranks 169th out of 189 countries, below economic basket case Zimbabwe and only one step above war-torn Yemen.

One illustrative example is the experience of U.S. agribusiness Dominion Farms’ attempt to establish an industrial-scale rice farm in Taraba, one of Nigeria’s poorest states. Lured to the state in 2011 by promises of government support and community cooperation, Dominion abandoned the project in early 2015 in the face of negative press coverage, parochial disputes, petty corruption, and bureaucratic backbiting. Lacking top cover or outside help, Dominion was unable to convince bureaucrats, state officials, civil society, and local communities to support its investment, which it expected to create as many as fifteen thousand jobs. The company’s exit dealt a significant blow to an agrarian state where youth unemployment and interethnic conflict are high. It is also a bad omen for the country’s underutilized agriculture sector. Nigeria has few large-scale commercial farms and, with modern techniques, its agricultural sector could produce more.

All Politics Is Local

State governors propel presidents, ministers, legislators, and top officials into power by controlling the country’s political grassroots. Governors can also play a spoiler role, undermining and toppling Abuja-based politicians who antagonize them. One of the main reasons President Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 reelection bid failed was the defection of five governors from his party.

Governors are not all-powerful, however. They must deftly manage their relationships with the president and his coterie, as well as co-opt state legislators, civil servants, traditional leaders, local government chairmen, and security officials to hold on to power. Failure to do so can mean losing a bid for reelection or impeachment. One of the five governors who turned against Jonathan was impeached after disgruntled state legislators allegedly accepted bribes to unseat him. Similarly, four outgoing governors who mismanaged their political relationships failed to make the customary transition to the Senate during the recent election.

Unlike past presidents, Buhari does not appear interested in using federal appointments and government contracts to build political patronage networks aimed at weakening the influence of governors. On the contrary, governors are increasingly cash-strapped and beholden to Buhari to bail their states out. Buhari has also given a free hand to Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies, which are reportedly investigating several former governors.

State Sheriffs?

Unlike the federal government, states have no formal security powers and thus few tools with which to address insecurity. Nigeria’s myriad security challenges—the Boko Haram insurgency, Niger Delta militancy, communal conflict, banditry—challenge state governments as much as they do the central government. Many governors resort to donating fuel and vehicles to local police and military units that are otherwise neglected.

State officials sometimes, however, exacerbate local conflicts by sponsoring political thugs, showing ethnic bias, or neglecting simmering community disputes. This is most notable in the state of Plateau, the epicenter of communal conflict in Nigeria. During 2008 ethnoreligious clashes in the state capital Jos, then-governor Jonah Jang ordered security forces to “shoot on sight,” according to Human Rights Watch. Following his decree, soldiers and police allegedly carried out a wave of extrajudicial killings, bringing the two-day crisis’s death toll to over seven hundred.

Several states have armed local civilians to serve as vigilantes, with mixed results. Some observers credit these vigilantes with expelling Boko Haram from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno. Human rights watchdogs, meanwhile, claim these groups routinely commit extrajudicial killings and torture, pointing to gruesome web videos and interviews with vigilante leaders. In 2015, the United States for the first time listed Nigeria as a country that supports militias who use child soldiers, but later waived sanctions on national security grounds.

Decisions made by governors have over the years caused global oil prices to fluctuate, fueled the rise of Boko Haram, and arrested the spread of Ebola throughout Nigeria.

Governors may become even more important security actors if Buhari presses ahead with sweeping police reforms. In his manifesto issued prior to elections, Buhari mooted breaking up Nigeria’s predatory and ineffective federal police force, and empowered states to form their own police constabularies. Skeptics argue that governors could use state police forces as private armies, tools to rig elections and intimidate opponents.

Harnessing the States

Crafting lasting solutions to the country’s many challenges requires energizing state-level actors. To harness the states, federal officials, diplomats, businesspeople, and development professionals must leave their comfort zone to cultivate relationships outside Lagos and Abuja.

Beyond oil extraction, states’ economic potential is mostly unrealized. Most possess large consumer markets, untapped potential for commercial agriculture and livestock raising, as well as underemployed labor pools. The city of Onitsha in Abia embodies this potential: despite being 280 miles away from both Abuja and Lagos, it is home to one of the world’s largest marketplaces. Although up to three million people shop there daily, only a handful of Western companies are investing there.

States are also on the front lines of Nigeria’s many security crises. State-level actors are assuming new roles in combating insecurity and addressing post-conflict needs like reestablishing rule of law, rebuilding communities, and resettling displaced populations. In northeastern Nigeria, state officials in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe have had to step up to compensate for anemic federal government security and reconstruction efforts.

To advance his political reform agenda, President Buhari must strike a balance between collegiality and coercion in his dealings with state governors. Buhari could, for example, offer governors financial incentives if they made much-needed reforms. In exchange for allowing full transparency of state spending and accounts, he could convert high-interest state debt into less-expensive sovereign debt. Conversely, Buhari could withhold financial bailouts from governors who shun needed reforms, thereby leaving them cash strapped and politically vulnerable as long as national oil revenues remain low. Regardless of his tactics, Buhari will need to work closely with the governors to succeed.

PDP and anti corruption drive of the APC

It's not in our national interest for the PDP to die. This government needs to have its feet held to fire for the good governance of the country. The country must be provided an alternative route to development. The country is too complex and big to have a single narrative. All parts of the country must be represented in our national dialogue. The government of the day can not take steps to decapitate PDP under whatever guise. While there must not be no go areas for law enforcement, particular care needs to be taken in the political sphere. 

PDP has no right to survive unless and until it reforms itself. Anybody who has had their fingers in the cookie jar during the last and or previous PDP administrations must step aside to save the party. The party must devoid itself of those who by their selfish actions brought disrepute to the party. They should be expelled from the party. The party must be seen to be driving the anti corruption drive with in house clear out while also holding the government of disguised thieves to account. The disclosure that the current transport minister used N83M to host a private citizen's birthday should be shouted from the hilltop. The revelation that the super minister used N73M for his private website should not be whispered but put on an announcement loop. The daughter of the self righteous president daughter spending $1000 on a shoe must not reside in social media but every villager should be so aware. While APC is pointing it's stained fingers at PDP, PDP should point out the stark hypocrisy of a Tinubu led party. Anytime PMB opens his mouth, PDP should ask what happened to the missing NNPC$2.8B during his stewardship of NNPC. 

It's a good start that people like Nwobodo are leaving to APC, tie him to APC and all his past misdeeds now belong to APC. Let it be known that it's good riddance to bad rubbish for people like Nwobodo to leave and go to their natural home of APC. 

Promote Rabidu as chair of the BOT, produce alternative economic recovery program. Finally rename PDP to New PDP.