State Police: APC Has Sold Our Security for 2019

Listening to the Senate Majority Leader, Alhaji Ahmed Lawal, on BBC Hausa Service this morning where he hinted the readiness of the Senate to toe the line of APC Restructuring Committee, the Presidency and Governors’ Forum, I am left with the certainty that the ruling party has traded the security of lives and property of many Nigerians for 2019 elections. It is a great tragedy that the temptation that was resisted by the PDP for sixteen years could not be avoided by a party that came to power on a popular mandate.

Before we discuss the matter in detail, first, let us listen to Lawal, who can be heard on the audio attached to this post, saying:

“We Senators have no opinion in this meeting except what people came up with. The President, who was represented by the Vice President, has said that Nigeria has reached a stage where it is imperative for states to own their police.

“Again, the Chairman of Governors Forum - the Governor of Zamfara, Abdulaziz Yari - spoke at this meeting on behalf of Nigerian Governors. He said they are supporting the statement made by the Vice President that states should also form their own police.”

Asked whether it could be adduced from the inclination of the Federal Government and Governors on the matter that the Senate will also bring up the matter for legislation, the Majority Leader replied:

“Our view is to do what the people want. If the matter is brought before the Assembly, we will work hard to ensure that it is passed. But there are some who complain that governors will use state police to persecute their political opponents. Here, measures can be taken to ensure that the chance is not given to anyone.”

Mhmm. Do we need more than the supporting statements from the party, governors, presidency and now leadership of the National Assembly to understand where APC is heading to on this matter?

Some may argue that the President has expressed his disapproval to state police. I ask: how many times was he made to swallow his words on suggestions he feels strongly against? Remembering his acquiescence to Naira devaluation, fuel price increase and external loans leaves no room to doubt that he is just a lamb surrounded by wolves. More so, with the dismal performance he has registered so far and with his eye and that of his party now fixated on 2019, swallowing the restructuring bait becomes irresistible.

The restructuring bait, especially its state police portion, tempting as it is to politicians, is a poison that will shutdown the nervous system of the the Nigerian body. The three misgivings are real. We have been there before.

  

Discrimination

The first is fear of discrimination. To a person like me who lives and moves around the country for business and advocacy, the fear of ethnic persecution readily comes to mind. My Fulani/Muslim/Northerner identity makes me the most vulnerable in Nigeria today. I will face three levels of persecution. As a Fulani alone, some states will be no go areas for me, including Zamfara, Benue, Taraba and, one day, Plateau. 

State police will definitely be ready tools for executing ethnic cleansing plans of governors like Darius Ishaku, Jonah Jang and Samuel Ortom against citizens they harbour an inherent, insatiable hate. States like Plateau, Benue and Taraba will definitely be inhabitable to Muslims, where they are an oppressed minority in the first two and a suppressed majority in the third. The ethnic cleansing campaigns that we have seen in these states since 2001 attest to this fact. 

Just five days ago, Alhaji Saleh Bayari, former National Secretary of Mi Yetti Allah, reminded the nation at the All Fulani Groups Conference in Minna of how Governor Jang used elements in the Police to carryout an all out massacre of Muslims including babies and children in Kuru Karama in 2008. Before the Governor left office, not less than forty-two towns and villages in Plateau State were cleansed of their Muslim populations. Today, a pacifist Lalong is the Governor there and the killings have stopped. But the likelihood of other Jangs winning elections in the future is high. Also, allow Ortom of Benue State the power of state police and no Muslim will remain in Benue. Sure.

Beyond the three volatile northern states, Northerners in general may not find life easy in the south. From their utterances and practice, most southern intelligentsia and leaders exhibit unbridled hate for northerners. Remember Bola Ige (SAN), in spite of his education, was publicly inciting Nigerians against Fulani calling them Tutsis of Nigeria after the Rwandan genocide. And Ige was among the ‘finest’ that southern Nigeria could produce. Recently, Ben Nwabueze (SAN) has been equally hateful in speech. You will not be mistaken if you say hate speech is invented in southern Nigeria. It is there in the region’s mainstream media and social media as well, tonnes and tonnes of it is churned year in year out since 1957.

Nothing has driven northerners to Buhari as the possibility of relief from this persecution. This fear remains his support lever among us. Even under him, hundreds were killed in Ige recently not to mention the invented Farmer/Herdsmen crisis. Harassment of travelers, daily killings of northerners especially in Eastern Nigeria, extortion by gangs, vigilantes and state revenue officials and activities of organizations like OPC leave northerners with the fear that a stamp of approval for state police will further heighten their vulnerability in the south.

In the contrary, southerners do not have much to fear in the North because they have been shown a good degree of tolerance. They run their businesses without hindrance and I doubt if the situation will change. The North has been accommodating to everyone.

Political Persecution

The second is the fear of political persecution by incumbent governors as it happened during the First Republic. The persecution that NEPU and Tijjaniyya elements suffered in the hands of NPC in the defunct Northern Region is a sad commentary that no well meaning Nigerian would like to see repeated.

Contemporary governors in the country have not behaved better. They go to every length to buy the services of the Police in repressing their opponents. The recent shameful complicity of Kano State Commissioner of Police in preventing Senator Kwankwaso from visiting Kano testifies to this desire for tyranny among our governors. With a police gang under direct command of the governors, hell will be let loose on anyone that may oppose the governor or his policies.

Apart from opposition party politicians, even politicians of the ruling party, like the legislators who always like to cultivate parallel loyalties in states, will come under the direct fire of the governors. Absolute control is what governors crave for and acquiescing to the idea of state police feeds directly into their plan.

The same governors will have hell waiting for them after their tenures for it is the tradition of our governors to persecute their predecessors even where the latter were their benefactors. Space will not allow me cite so many examples here but Goje, Bafarawa, Muazu know what I am taking about. Suffice it to say that the present governors should know that what goes around will come around one day. For them, in fact, that day is near. They are digging their own graves.

Finally, with state police let us also forget about free and fair elections. These glorified gangs of criminals in the name state police will readily do everything to serve their masters and there cannot be a more patronizing duty for them than to arm-twist the election process and pollute its atmosphere with their coercive force.  INEC national elections will follow the format of our state electoral commission’s. 

Insecurity

Instead of reducing insecurity, state police will only increase crime in the states and aggravate corruption and poverty.

Experts have said that apart from Lagos State, no state can stand on its own financially. Add state policing to their destitution, governors who already can hardly pay salaries will superintendent a force that is underpaid and which as a result will resort to extortion of citizens and crime.

We already have a bad example in Benue State. The State owes its workers 11 months salary. The implementation plan of the anti-Fulani law there provides for the training of not less than 800 Livestock Guards in policing and handling of firearms. AK-47 rifles were supplied to not less than 700 of them with each guard promised a monthly salary of N15,000.

The salary promise, little as it looks for a person armed with AK-47 assault rifle, was not kept by Governor Ortom. So the Guards engaged in crimes like extortion of pastoralists, cattle rustling, kidnapping and ransacking villages in Benue and neighboring Taraba and Nasarawa States. When some of them were arrested last January at Arufi in Taraba State, they confessed to the military that the Benue State Governor owes them five months salary arrears. Only N15,000 per month, just $40 dollars! During the month, a kidnapped member of Taraba State House of Assembly was reported killed. The Guards are still on the loose, terrorizing citizens as they wish and out of control of the Governor.

The incumbent governors too can become hostage to the police gangs they will create. Governor Ortom is already one in the hands of the leader of the Guards, whom the Governor sacked after the January 1st incident but was forced by fear to reinstate recently. The Guards leader is a person who boasts of the capacity to determine Benue future elections! What can be more intimidating to Ortom than this? This is not to mention threats from his rival gang leader, Ghana, who is perpetrating mayhem in Benue villages for being sacked by the Governor as head of Internal Revenue Committee of three local governments in the state. He has vowed to continue his rampage unless he is reinstated. This is a classical personification of Mutanabbi’s thesis:

ومن يجعل اضرعام للصيد بأزه

   تصيده الضرغام فيما تصيدا

‏"Whoever makes the the lion his hunting bird will one day be a prey to the lion. 

‏So not only the Fulani pastoralists or

‏ Northerners but also ordinary Nigerian citizens have a rough ride ahead. A group of them especially should be worried: the civil servants, who would suffer the most. Why? Well, the governors will conveniently use security as an excuse for their theft and for not paying salaries. With monsters in the form of armed thugs that are glorified as State Police, nobody can counter their claim. After all it will be argued that security is the most fundamental responsibility of government. I have a painful example to cite here and it perfectly demonstrates what governors in Nigeria means by security.

By the time an audit was made of the ‘security’ expenditure of my state between 2007 and 2015, it was found that the Governor Yuguda has spent N102billion on that head. 😳 Bauchi State is not Borno, Yobe or Adamawa. Yet, the then governor found it expedient to ‘spend’ an average of N35million daily on security for eight years - daily, yes, daily, on the average. And he left office owing workers two months salary and a debt of over N80billion. In December 2014 he withdrew over N4billion OFR ‘security’ and N2billion in May 2015, according to documents signed by his  top official. 

This was a governor that reported his predecessor to EFCC for spending (what we may now term only) N5billion on security for eight years! The predecessor was only let off the hook on the matter when Yuguda’s scandalous expenditure during the first two years was shown to the then NSA in 2010 and Farida kept the file aside. Kai! That regime was fantastically corrupt. Yet, Yuguda is a free man in this era of change, not even subjected to the charge-and-bail charade of the administration.

If the above would happen to a state that received N935billion in eight years, what will happen if it is burdened with state policing under a tenure that earns a far lesser revenue?

Conclusion

I am sorry for this long essay and I have more regret for the condition Nigeria finds itself today where it is led by a government which against all hopes and promises has displayed unashamed degree of ineptitude. We all thought it would use the popular mandate that shove it to power for reforms that will especially secure the nation further. However, it has now shown that it will stop at nothing to perpetuate its tenure even if it means making the citizens less secure. This is bad. Very bad.

Members of the ruling party and their supporters, and those that may not feel our vulnerability, along with those that time without number have expressed their desire for the dissolution of the Nigerian nation or penchant for confederation, can all hail the APC for this move. While they continue to take the last steps toward achieving their goal, we will not relent in telling all citizens that state police will be a monster that will consume this democracy.

We believe that in a multiethnic developing nation like Nigeria it is better to work on the path of reforming the Nigeria Police by cleansing it of bad eggs and equipping it for 21st Century policing no matter what that will demand of will and resources. Anything short of this will be a recipe for disaster.

Therefore, the assurance of the Majority Leader that legislation on state police will be designed to avert these fears is as assuring as any other APC promise: Good for hoodwinking the masses at election but impossible for implementation: the Naira:dollar parity, N42/liter of petrol, N5,000 for each unemployed, functional refineries, stable electricity, single-tenure Presidency, internal democracy, smooth roads, better education, name it - all empty and in many cases worse than the PDP.

Well, 2019 will come and pass, with or without APC in power, but Nigerians will remain.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

14 February 2018

Discourse 305 NIgeria at 50: Primitivity or Civilization?

Discourse 305
By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

Nigeria at 50: Primitivism or Civilization?

Apple launched its latest Ipad last April for which over 140,000 applications have been developed so far. These applications, many of which are free, are accessed through its Itunes store. A week ago I tried to buy an application, ContactP HD, that will enable me send emails in bulk to thousands of my readers across the world. I discovered that almost every country is listed on the store except Nigeria, meaning you cannot purchase anything from Nigeria in that store. Though the application is just $1.95 dollars, there I stood helpless in spite of my Visa card. Someone told me that a Nigerian customer could access the stores if he claims Niger Republic instead of Nigeria. Niger! Itunes is not the only cyberstore that does not have Nigeria on its list. I have encountered many others before.

Last May, the German Foreign Office invited me to participate in a blogger tour in Berlin. One of the other fourteen participants from China, Michael, alerted me that my emails containing the word Nigeria may not reach him because they will be classified as spam and blocked. On a different occasion, another participant, Mahmud from Egypt, remarked, perhaps with a bit of exaggeration, that when the world learn about Nigeria in the international media “is either when you are killing one another on the streets or kidnapping oil workers and businessmen.” (I just hope Mahmud has not heard the latest kidnapping involving dozens of primary school children.)

The import of the above is clear. Over the years, the world has learnt not to trust us. It is not saying that we are a bunch of fraudsters. Certainly, they know that the average Nigerians is as good as any good citizen of another country. But there are just too many unrestrained fraudsters among us that make the risk of dealing with us too high for many business managers across the world to take. As international business becomes increasingly run on the credit card, I doubt if we will go far in selling our goods to the world as the chances of citizens of other countries divulging their credit card details to us cannot even be contemplated. We must limit ourselves to bank transfers. That is why, long before 9/11, when we apply for their visa we are made to undergo extra-scrutiny, worse than the citizens of Arab countries. In the end, the visa to US, Canada, Europe and Britain is hardly issued to us. Thus, the ‘Mutallab’ case was quickly used to install body scanners in our airport while they are still not in use in Saudi Arabia, the country from where fifteen out of the nineteen 8/11 bombers allegedly originate and nine years since the sad even took place.

Stories like these about Nigeria are conspicuously absent from its 50th Independence Anniversary narrative. They describe the bad reputation and moral liability we are handing over to our children, a legacy so different from the one we inherited from leaders of the First Republic when neither Niger nor Egypt was ahead of us in development as well as in character. I wonder what further denigration the future has for us in the Information Age. I also wonder what language the world needs to speak before we institute rule of law to appreciably tolerable level.

On my facebook, www.facebook.com/aliyu.tilde, I sought the opinion of my cyber friends on how they would rate our leaders, past and present, in quantitative terms. A plot of their response clearly depicts an inverse line; that is to say the respondents are unanimous in holding that quality of leadership has deteriorated progressively in the past 50 years. The last respondent, Umaru Samaila, generously gave leaders of the first republic 98% but went on to become increasingly economical until he reached Jonathan, whom he rated 20%, thirty percent less than IBB and Abacha. The only time the curve managed to show an increase is during the tenures of Murtala and Buhari, two leaders who unquestionably have genuinely endeavoured to make Nigeria a better country.

The issue is not whether Nigerians are quantitatively better of in terms of infrastructure and social services today than at independence in 1960. It makes a very sad reading that some writers would point out that progress has indeed been made because our GSM today works better than the analogue lines of 1970; that our roads are double-lane and asphalt rendered, wider and smoother than the single-lane collar surface roads of the 1960s. In the end, according to the authors, the fact that we can communicate better and travel faster means progress has been made. That is missing the point. That is growth in absolute terms, which the scientist often rejects. Growth is a natural process but it is usually measured relative to time and, in a competitive environment, relative to the progress of other competing entities. If we compare our rate of development during the First Republic with that of today relative to the human and material resources available to each period we would fully appreciate the folly of the absolutists. In fact things like GSM are global phenomena, not something that any Nigerian leader would claim a credit for, as Obasanjo apologists often do. Even within the GSM realm, why did MTEL, the national GSM career, woefully failed where private ones like Celtel, MTN and Glo succeeded? Does the average Nigerian child today stand a better chance to acquire a good standard of education as did his father in the 1960s? Is the average Nigerian adult better trusted today by citizens of other countries, nay by his own fellow countrymen, than was his father in the 1960s?

Yet, Nigerians, generally, are not ready for change. Everyone comes to television and preach against corruption when he is a beneficiary and perpetrator of corruption. Followers or leaders, we are reluctant to change. Would Nigerians, to bring my point home, vote for Murtala as a President today seeing how they are unanimous in acclaiming his nationalist credentials? No. Many mouthpieces of corruption or trumpeters of ethnicity in the press would accuse him of being a Muslim, a Hausa, a northerner, a military, and a lot of other rubbish just to jettison the chances of a success that would check corruption. On election day, the elite, from the Commander-in-Chief to the constable, would gang up to ensure that he does not win. I am not surprised that neither him nor Buhari are listed among the awardees at our 50th Anniversary by a regime that is increasingly becoming an offshoot of the corrupt Obasanjo dictatorship.

Would Alvan Ikoku or Zik win elections in Abia or Anambra State today? Equally, would Balewa or Sardauna be given the gubernatorial tickets of PDP or CPC in Bauchi or Sokoto States today? They, like many people of integrity today, cannot even aspire for a party ticket because they do not have the money that would earn them our reckoning or the dishonest bent that would permit our yearning to ransack pubic coffers. But we sing their praises today because they are dead, who, according to Machiavelli, pose no threat to our interest today. If they were alive, we would have opposed them as we oppose their likes today.

The case of Buhari is indicting to the conscience of this country. He will remain a pebble in the shoe of the Nigerian elite. We are not avoiding Buhari when we question his democratic credentials; we are rejecting the principle that makes him different among our political class. That is why since 2002 when he joined politics, I have held that his goal, like that of Aminu Kano before him, may be limited to serving as the symbol of conscience in a political world perverted by deceit and corruption. The good will support him or for someone better than him in that sense while those whose conscience is less pricked by corruption will oppose him and go for candidates with a lesser commitment to tackling the menace. Many vultures that have sufficiently devoured our public treasury are joining his CPC in many states today precisely because they want to exploit the goodwill and hoodwink the masses into giving them the necessary votes they need to steal further
from the public treasury. The party itself so far reckons only with the wealthy, unfortunately.

So if we believe that our leaders are so bad and the country is declining to a brink, what informs our reluctance for change? What is responsible for our deliberate choice for decay instead of growth when citizens of other nations and their leaders could tame their passions and live to a standard that earns them the confidence of other nations and business partners?

Questions like these that depict our sad reality continue to preoccupy my mind since I started public commentary in 1999. I have heard many theories. Some blame the European colonialist who amalgamated us into one country, as if we are the only colonized nation before. Some have accused our oil wealth, as if we are the only oil producing country in the world. Some blame western education, as if we are the only nation into which it was introduced. Some blame the size of our country any time we point at the success of small countries like Ghana, Niger and Guinea in, say, conducting free and fair elections, forgetting that we are just one-eighth the population of India, the largest democracy in the world, which often conducts free and fair elections. Some blame our multi-ethnic composition claiming that we have over 500 tribes and two different religions, forgetting that India, again, has three big religions – Hindu, Buddism and Islam – and over 1,400
tribes. If only every ethnic nationality would be allowed to govern themselves in a federation, the ethnic jingoists would claim, Nigeria would be a great country. The excuses are infinite and mostly half-truths.

A deeper look at our problem however will not fail to ascribe our inability to manage our affairs creditably to a more intrinsic factor. And my conviction of that factor is becoming stronger by the day. We have before us a civilization challenge, along with many other Africans because most of the problems we have are not limited to Nigeria. Some are even worse than us, particularly in terms of instability. It is the complicity of other factors – the size of the country, its multiple ethnicities, oil wealth, strategic importance, etc – that have worsened our situation. The crux remains the question of civilization. We have failed, like most of our ancestors, to overcome the excruciating primordial factors and launch ourselves on the plane of civilisation, as others have done before and as some leaders of the First Republic attempted.

We still succumb to individualism at the expense of the collective, as did our primitive ancestors. The education acquired from other civilisations – Arab and European of recent – have failed to moderate the influence of the crude ‘selfish gene’ in most Africans. This was confirmed to me by the veteran journalist, Magaji Danbatta, who told me in 2004 that leaders of the First Republic hoped that with mass education Nigerians in various regions will produce the crop of citizens required to put the country among developed nations one day. However, Danbatta continued in his lamentation, that hope was dashed in spite of the panoply of educational institutions and degrees of all sorts. “We are sort of jinxed or cursed”, he concluded. Richard Dawkins will dismiss the superstition and argue that we are under the spell of the selfish gene, which must be moderated by altruistic refinement of culture before civilisation would be rooted. “Our genes
may instruct us to be selfish,” Dawkins said in The Selfish Gene, “but we are not necessarily compelled to obey them all our lives.” In Nigeria, we find the epitome of Dawkins’ fear: “My own feeling”, he warned, “is that a human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true.”

I am not the first author to employ the civilisation theory – which essentially is a cultural theme – to explain our decay. One Nigerian scholar, Malam Ibraheem Suleiman of the Institute of Law, Ahmadu Bello University, has eloquently expressed it in the 1980s. I cannot now lay my hands on those writings that were then published weekly in the New Nigerian. It was through him I was introduced to the writings of Sir Arnold J. Toynbee, particularly his magna corpus, A Study of History. There has long been scepticism among Victorian scholars over the fecundity of western concepts like liberty and democracy among ‘savage’ populations of the ‘uncivilized’ nations. The insult in the words ‘savage’ and ‘uncivilized’ by even progressives like Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, John Bright, Thomas Huxley and Hebert Spencer who fought for the emancipation of blacks may tempt us to dismiss Toynbee’s mid-Twentieth Century assessment. However, the
simple truth is that, though some of our ancestors built empires that were affiliated to some civilizations as many Western scholars would later discover and propagate, many of them were indeed savage during the Victorian era and beyond; some tribes practiced cannibalism up until the beginning of the last Century, the worst savage behaviour humanity could witness. And if western scholars of today do not call most of our leaders savage, I guess they are restrained only by diplomatic considerations.

And though Toynbee’s disheartening appraisal that “the black races alone have not contributed positively to any civilization, as yet” may be dismissed by Afro-centric scholars, we cannot deny that we have not been at the right places, at the right times. It is either we did not have the sufficient of the requisite five stimuli – “of hard countries, new ground, blows, pressures and penalizations” – or we had an overdose of some of them, like the impact of slavery that was most grossly perpetrated by Arabs and Europeans with the connivance of African leaders. So while other nations were compelled by severity of their circumstances to develop, Mother Africa overindulged us with its bountiful resources and unrivalled geography.

In the comfort of her arms, the copiousness of her milk and the benevolence of her climate, ‘the custom rules and society’ of our ancestors ‘remained static’. Like other primitive people, they directed their mimation, in the words of Toynbee’s abridger, D. C. Somervell, “towards the older generation and towards dead ancestors who stand, unseen but not unfelt, at the back of the living elders, reinforcing their prestige.” By contrast, in societies in the process of civilisation, “mimesis is directed towards creative personalities who command a following because they are pioneers. In such societies…‘the cake of custom’ is broken and society is in dynamic motion along a course of change and growth.” As a caveat, Toynbee did hold that primitive societies are static only “as we know them”, from their anthropological state.

Does Toynbee’s thesis provide any insight into the present state of our selfish, unmitigated individualism that has defied the moderation of learning and the refinement of custom? Does not our ineptitude incline us to the worship of past, dead heroes, instead of living ones – nations and individuals – whom we will endeavour to imitate without any excuse? The entire 50th Anniversary celebration is preoccupied by hero-worship of our ‘nationalist struggle’. Does not the abundance of Africa’s bounties – its diamonds, gold, copper and food – create in us the docility to tolerate blatant abuse by our leaders and encourage us to partake in, or aspire to, the destructive vanity of primitive acquisition? Does not our interethnic intolerance denote a residue of the clannish orientation of primitive demography as against the more accommodating nature of civilizations?
Managing a modern country poses a civilization challenge to us. Within a hundred years we are called upon by an ever-shrinking world to uphold the etiquettes, virtues and principles developed by other nations for which many of us are hurried to undertake. Our sojourn in that course has revealed our reluctance to depart from our ancestral terminal of primitive accumulation. We see ourselves as individuals first before locating our coordinates in the community, a trait that invites us to decimate into our personal estate whatever public property is entrusted in us, thence the collapse of every public institution and corporation in the country.

I disagree that this unfortunate station is reserved for our leaders. The followers too aspire to it. Taking the North for example, all its present and past governors are from very humble backgrounds, children of the talakawa, if you like, except Sardauna who came from the aristocracy. The same students sons of talakawa who walked the distance of 140 km from Zaria to Kano in 1976 when Murtala was assassinated to commemorate with his family are the same leaders who are ransacking our public treasury today. The universities they passed through were unable to bridle their primitive penchant to accumulate illegal wealth at the expense of the society. Also, communities all over the country accord traditional titles only to such looters. I have not heard anyone ever so honoured because of his accomplishments in scholarship, integrity or good governance. The problem is endemic.

Many writers and commentators have made public their views of what we and other similar African nations need to do. On this, I subscribe to the theory that individuals determine the course of their societies. Social progress, in the words of Bergson, whom Toynbee was generous in quoting on this issue, “…is really a leap forward which is only taken when the society has made up its mind to try an experiment; this means that the society must have allowed itself to be convinced, or at any rate allowed itself to be shaken; and the shake is always given by somebody.” We need to discover the seed of our progress that is ingrained in the living Nigerian or African personality that carries the genome of our salvation, whom Toynbee aptly called ‘genius’, and who would be the subject of the concluding half of this topic next week.

I admit that this discourse is unusually long. I indulged in the space considering that we are on holiday with plenty of time at our disposal. I, nevertheless, dedicate it to Sumpo and to many others who always prefer the essays when they are long.

Tilde
1 October 2010

The Rotting Republic

The Rotting Republic
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com

Mohammed Haruna, a renowned journalist and columnist with Gamji.com and Daily Trust has in last Wednesday’s edition of the paper correctly captured the direction of our nation. In concluding his article titled “The Awka Whirlwind” that dwelled on the role that Chris Uba, the chief coupist of July 10 against the governor of Anambra State, Haruna said: “What happened is that in April, the ruling party sowed the wind by thinking it could use the foulest means possible to fix the general elections in its own favour and can get away with it. But then, as the saying goes, he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind. Awka, I dare say, is probably the first harvest those who sowed the wind of April are starting to reap.”
How I wished that the PDP would reap it alone! But it would not. We living in Nigeria must be prepared to pay the price of our complicity in one way or the other for allowing the party to go Scot-free after “sowing the wind” in April. The truth of the matter is that we should lose all hope in making any progress in nation building. Instead, we have to contend with increasing degeneration into a lawless society.
The happenings at Awka on July 10 could hardly be imagined before. We thought the President and the ruling party would cease the opportunity, if not as a consolation for the 419 elections, to show some signs of commitment to sanity in these early days of his second tenure. Unfortunately, that they did not. Instead, they are conspiring to evade justice. The president claims ignorance over the July 10 coup while the party is insisting that abducting the governor and forcing him to resign is a family affair for the party to settle in-house using its constitution and without resorting to prosecution.
If the party and Obasanjo have surprised us, the judiciary has proved to be most insensitive to its duty. After Nigerians were partially consoled by the failure of the coup and the governor was already back on his seat carrying out his functions, the Federal High Court in Abuja asked the governor, as captured by last Wednesday’s Daily Trust, to stop parading himself as governor. Goodness! The judiciary is stripping itself naked in public.
As usual, the party and the culprit have taken refuge in the court, seeking to hide behind orders that will shield their ‘lover-boy’ from the law. In a civilized society, Chris Uba should have been under arrest and trial for treason. In Nigeria, the 38-year-old now with strong connections with the Presidency is roaming the streets and the presidency free. He even has the audacity to employ the judiciary to achieve his goal of removing the governor after the failure of his putsch The court has restrained the governor from occupying his position as an executive governor of Anambra. It has restrained the PDP from expelling Uba from the party and the Inspector General and Attorney General from prosecuting him. To crown his success, Uba has used the court to legally install the deputy governor as the governor of the state! It appears that the last has not been heard about the July 10 saga.
Leaving behind the unfolding drama, I am more interested in gauging the significance of the whole episode that exposes the bad side of our society today. First, it points at government’s lack of commitment to the rule of law, putting aside whatever rhetoric the president and the Inspector General of Police would speak. This administration will go in our history as the most lawless we have ever had. A governor was abducted from office and nobody is arrested for it. The only ‘punishment’ meted on the gang was the retirement of an Assistant Inspector General who, in any case, already had less than a month to retire by the time he participated in the crime. Now even the court is giving a legal cover to the shameful act.
Certainly, this is a nation that has been reluctant to punish. And for that reason crime will continue spreading like a virus, unabated. If Uba were convicted for killing over 20 Nigerians when a story building he was constructing collapsed for using inferior materials, he would not have had the chance to commit treason today. The same thing is true with all the crooks now parading themselves as our leaders. Each of them has committed one crime or the other in the past for which the society failed to apply the recommended sanctions. Today here we are living under their spell.
Two, the episode has also shown the extent to which merit is relegated in preference for mediocrity and sycophancy. Otherwise, how could a doctor with a long history in the civil service find it imperative to depend on a secondary school dropout, who about ten years ago was just a car washer and later a houseboy and driver to a contractor? While the society shuts its door to those committed to decency, it hands over the keys of success to the hooligans who are ready to commit any crime to satisfy their quest for power and wealth.
Third, the police have proved further that their service is for the highest bidder. Only this can explain how an AIG could commit himself to the cause of a 38-year old criminal, desiring to wreck the boat of democracy. The masses would say that the elite are learning this wisdom too late. The law, the masses would argue, has always been for the highest bidder in Nigeria. At no time has the police force in the country made itself a fanatical accomplice to high profile crime as it does today under Tafa Balogun. This was an Inspector General of Police who publicly presented fake evidence regarding the political assassination of Chief Marshall Harry. The following day, the world was shocked when the ANPP Chairman told it that Tafa was lying. The N20 million cheque the IG produced, explained the chairman, was never retrieved from the robbers but from the chairman by the police a day after the assassination. No role could be more awkward for the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the country.
Four, in the stories emerging regarding the episode is the detailed evidence that the opposition was right to claim that elections did not hold in some states in the Southeast and South-south zones. With people like Chris Uba in charge, and the willingness of the police to use whatever force is necessary to play foul, the free and fair atmosphere necessary for the conduct of the election must have only been a dream guaranteed on paper. It is not surprising therefore that a former Justice of the Supreme Court, Emeka Aniagolu, decried the elections as lacking credibility and went ahead to strip the government of any legitimacy.
Five, the affair has exposed the craze of our political elite for money. Once you are rich, by whatever means, even the president will be ready to dine with you. I cannot understand how Chris Uba, for his sheer wealth and his connection with the president, would gather governors, ministers and party chairmen to his village just to commission his palatial house built amidst the poverty of his people. Nobody, not even the president, is questioning the source of his wealth, his background or the profession he belongs to. He could gather the cream of our leadership and boast that he is “the godfather of godfathers” in the country.
Now the judiciary is also under his armpit. He dished out a senatorial seat to his brother, Ugochukwu, who never contested the election. He got the high court to grant an order forcing INEC to issue a certificate to a loser of an election –Wabara – who went ahead, few hours later, to become the senate president. Finally, the same boy was able to get the same court to sanction his action of deposing the governor of his state.
Five, it is not enough to blame the godfathers. The ‘sons’ themselves are guilty especially when they have the training to resist the humiliation and live decently. It beats the imagination of the sane to see how a doctor, for sheer political experience, subordinating himself to an illiterate chap who in civilized societies is qualified to be nothing better than his houseboy. Such elite have abused scholarship, their training and their profession. Once the possibility of a political office is at sight, knowledge, training and profession are thrown into the dustbin and the doctor or professor will be ready to go down on his knees pleading before an illiterate to connect him with the “top”. What a shame!
I could not believe that even as a governor-elect, Ngige was slapped and kicked several times by Chris Uche and his gang. They tore his shirt and humiliated him tremendously. Yet, there he was, with an MBBS, fellowships or PhD, keeping mute until when later, as governor, he was abducted and locked in a toilet of a hotel for hours. The truth is that people like Ngige do not deserve to be governors.
And so on. Would this be the last assault on democracy in Nigeria? No. We do not expect to see any change so long as Obasanjo is in power. The PDP, in its quest to win the last elections has raised many Ubas throughout the country. Anybody who played their role deserves to be treated as a sacred cow. That is why neither Obasanjo nor the PDP could touch him, just like Senator Omisore. The boy-syndrome has been there since the military days of Babangida and Abacha. The difference is that while Babangida and Abacha were recruiting their boys from the military and few educated civilians, Obasanjo is recruiting houseboys and area boys and subverting the rule of law. These were the boys who won him the presidency during the last 4-19 election. You can imagine by what means they did that. By the “foulest means possible”, Haruna would answer.
In addition to a police that is notorious for its connivance, there will also be the elite who will be willing to sacrifice their conscience and become the houseboys of the Ubas in our society, as long as the society is contemptuous of merit and shows preference for anarchy instead of law.
One can therefore understand the lamentation of Justice Aniagolu when Vanguard (Mon. July 21, 2003) reported him saying, “All I can tell is that I feel ashamed, totally ashamed. I did not know that I will live to see what is happening in Nigeria today. I did not know that Nigeria we loved so much would turn to be what it is today. It is a tragedy. It is a tragedy of monumental proportion.”
The nation is fast rotting. The eighty-year old former Justice of the Supreme Court may be lucky to have reached advanced age before his lamentation. For those of us that are in their thirties and forties, without a saviour in the glare and without intention to become houseboys of the Ubas in our society, we have to learn how to live and die in the rot called Nigeria.

The Problem of Moon Sighting in Nigeria By Dr. U. H. Dukku

The Problem of Moon Sighting in Nigeria: The Way Out
By
Usman H Dukku
[GUEST OF DR. ALIYU TILDE]
udukku@yahoo.com

Introduction
Muslims in Nigeria start the Ramadan fast or celebrate the Eids on different dates in spite of the official announcement of the sighting of the crescent. Details of the problem include the following:
· Most Nigerians do not go by the official announcements.
· An organised system of monitoring the moon is wanting.
· Sha'ban and Ramadan have had 29 days each in the past 40 years while Shawwal and Dhul-Qi'dah have had 30 days each but only in Nigeria.
· Nigeria leads the world in moon sighting.
This has led to a dichotomy, that is, there are those that follow the announcements with absolute loyalty; and those that totally reject such announcements. Whereas the former maintain that they are following their leaders, as dictated by the Shari'a, the latter believe that the leaders are wrong and, therefore, should not be followed.
According to them the announcements made often contradict common knowledge, that is
· The old moon should disappear before reappearing as a crescent moon.
· Full moon should be on the 14th day of the month.
· The crescent is not popularly sighted, one or two days after the announcement.
The Way Out
The Qur’an has commanded us to refer to God and his messenger in matters of dispute (4:59; 26:10) and to ask “those who possess knowledge” where we do not know (16:43)
Allah, the Almighty said: "They ask you concerning the crescent moons. Say: They are but signs to mark fixed periods of time in (the affairs of) men and for Pilgrimage." (2:189)
“It is He who made the sun to be a shining glory and the moon to be a light (of beauty), and measured out stages for it, that you might know the number of years and the count (of time)."(10:5)
"And the Moon We have measured for it stations (to traverse) till it returns like the old (and withered) lower part of a date-stalk. It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up the Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day: Each (just) swims along in (its own) orbit." (36:39-40)
"The sun and the moon follow courses (exactly computed."(55:5)
The Messenger of Allah (SAWS) has said:
Abu Hurayrah (RA) reported that the Prophet (SAWS) said: "Start fasting upon sighting it (the crescent) and terminate the fast upon sighting it (the crescent) and if it is hidden to you (by clouds), then count the month of Sha'ban to thirty days." (Bukhari and Muslim)
Narrator Abdullah ibn Umar in Al-Muwatta: The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, once mentioned Ramadan and said, "Do not begin the fast until you see the new moon, and do not break the fast (at the end of Ramadan) until you see it. If the new moon is obscured from you, then work out (when it should be)."
Abdullah Ibn Umar (RA) reported that the Prophet (SAWS) said: "We are an uneducated community: We neither write nor calculate. A month is so and so days; meaning sometimes twenty nine and sometimes thirty." (Bukhari)
Disappearance
Commentators on the Holy Qur'an, jurists and astronomers agree that the stations are twenty-eight and that the moon passes through one station daily as it revolves around the earth in its orbit. This means that the moon spends twenty-eight days to complete one revolution. In fact this period, known as the orbital period, is twenty-seven days, seven hours and forty three minutes.
Remember that as the moon revolves around the earth the latter revolves around the sun and at a certain time the three objects align, with the moon in the middle. This moment, termed conjugation, marks the end of a lunar month and the beginning of another. The length of a lunar month, also called synodic period, is the period between two successive conjugations and is twenty-nine days, twelve hours and forty-four minutes (i.e., 29.53 days)
Abdullah Ibn Fodiyo, commenting on the verse (10:5), in his book Kifayatu dua'fa us-Sudan said: "It (the moon) has twenty-eight stations in twenty-eight days in every month. Thereafter it disappears for two days in the case of a thirty-day month or one day in the case of a twenty-nine-day month."
Ibn Rushd said, in his book Bidayatul mujtahid: “The jurists agree that the Arabic (lunar) month has twenty nine or thirty days and that the only valid way to determine the month of Ramadan is through sighting of the crescent due to his (the Prophet (SAWS)) saying: 'Fast upon sighting it and terminate the fast upon sighting it.' What is meant by sighting is the first appearance of the crescent after its disappearance."
John Caldwell and David Laney, of the South African Astronomical Observatory, said: "…At this moment (conjugation) the moon is always invisible from the earth. When the moon first becomes visible again (always more than half a day after astronomical New Moon), observers see a Young Crescent Moon."
Mohammed Odeh, of the Jordanian Astronomical Society, said: "…So during the moon's orbit if the moon, earth and the sun lie exactly in the same line and the moon in the middle, the sun will illuminate half of the moon that faces it and the other half which faces us will be dark because it does not reflect rays of the sun. However… according to my information no observer yet reported seeing such crescent."
Abdurrazak Ebrahim Snr said: "For approximately fifteen hours on either side of the instant of conjugation, the moon is completely hidden from view. Consequent to the first appearance of the lunar crescent on the western horizon after sunset the moon waxes (increased illumination) until the fourteenth night when it appears as the full moon. After this the moon wanes (diminishing illumination) until it disappears over the eastern horizon before sunrise on the twenty-eighth day of the month."
New and Old Moon
It is not possible to see a new moon in the evening of the same day the old one was seen in the morning. No! What is meant by the disappearance of the moon is its invisibility at any time, in the east or in the west, even under the best of weather conditions, due to the reasons given above. Also remember that for the moon to be sighted in the morning it ought to have risen well before sunrise and, therefore, would set before sunset: Then how can it be seen? Please refer to the commentary of Suratush Shams verse 2,viz, 'By the moon when it follows it (the sun)', by Ibn Kathir where he said: "Qatada has said: 'The time when it (the moon) follows it (the sun) in the night preceding the beginning of a lunar month; when the sun sets, the crescent is then sighted."
Solar and Lunar Eclipses
A solar eclipse occurs only at the time of conjugation when the earth moon and the sun lie in a straight line (with the moon in the middle) whence the moon obstructs the sun. A lunar eclipse, on the other hand, occurs at full moon, i.e., when the three bodies again lie in a straight line, but with the earth in the middle. The shadow of the earth falls on the moon which then appears dark to us, since it does not produce its own light (It reflects sunlight). Since full moon occurs midway between two successive conjugations, a lunar eclipse can occur only between the thirteenth and fifteenth day of a lunar month.
Size and Altitude
The size and altitude of the crescent is not an accurate measure of its age because it depends on the following factors:
1) The age of the moon. That is the period between conjugation and local sunset when the crescent is sighted. The minimum time required is about seventeen hours for sighting with naked eyes, fifteen with binoculars and twelve with a telescope. Since conjugation can take place at any time of the day, the age of the moon at sunset varies from month to month and the older it is the bigger. Here is an example, assuming naked-eye sighting. Suppose conjugation takes place at 1:00am in a lunar month A and the sun sets at 6:00pm: The moon is 17 hours old at sunset and can, therefore, be sighted. Now in another lunar month B conjugation takes place at 6:00am: The moon is 12 hours at sunset and, therefore, cannot be sighted until the following evening when it is 36 hours old. Other factors being constant, crescent B will certainly be bigger than crescent A.
2) Distance. As the moon revolves in its orbit its distance from the earth varies, due to the shape of the orbit. The moon is said to be at perigee when it is closest (356,410 km) to the earth and at apigee when it is furthest (406,740 km). Other factors being constant a perigee crescent is larger.
3) Season. Summer crescents are larger than winter crescents because the moon (being in the same hemisphere as the observer) is nearer to the observer. Thus, here in Nigeria, the crescent observed during the hot season (late spring to early autumn) is larger than the one observed during the cool season (late autumn to early spring).
From the foregoing, it is clear that size and altitude alone are not sufficient in determining the age of the crescent. Now let us conclude our explanation with the following hadith, reported by Muslim and Ahmad: Abul Bakhtari reported: "We went out to perform Umrah and when we encamped in the valley of Nakhlah, we tried to see the new moon. Some of the people said: It was three nights old, and others (said) that it was two nights old. We then met Ibn Abbas and told him we had seen the new moon, but that some of the people said it was three nights old and others that it was two nights old. He asked on which night we had seen it; and when we told him we had seen it on such and such night, he said the Prophet of Allah (peace be upon him) had said Verily Allah deferred it till the time it is seen, so it is to be reckoned from the night you saw it."
Astronomical calculations
Though these calculations can predict exactly when a new moon will be born, they cannot predict precisely (the accuracy is 85%) when it can be seen. In other words, these calculations can tell you when it is impossible to sight the moon and when it is most likely to sight it.
The popular view among Muslim jurists regarding the meaning of the hadith "Fast upon sighting it (the crescent)…" is actual sighting of the crescent
Therefore astronomy should compliment actual sighting rather than replace it. In other words astronomy should be used to check sighting errors.
Sighting of other countries
There are two views regarding using the sighting of other countries: 1) The single horizon view: favours global sighting and is based on the hadith "Fast when you sight it…" and 2) The multiple horizon view: favours local sighting and is based on this Hadith:
Kurayb said: Umm Fadl, daughter of Harith, sent him to Mu'awiyah in Syria. I arrived in Syria, and did the needful for her. It was there in Syria that the month of Ramadan commenced. I saw the new moon (of Ramadan) on Friday. I then came back to Medina at the end of the month. Abdullah ibn Abbas asked me (about the new moon of Ramadan) and said: When did you see it? I said: We saw it on Friday. He said: (Did) you see it yourself? I said: Yes, and the people also saw it so they observed fast and Mu'awiyah also observed fast. Thereupon he said: But we saw it on Saturday . So we shall continue to observe the fast until we complete thirty (fasts) or we see it (the new moon of Shawwal). I said: Is the sighting of the moon by Mu'awiyah not valid for you? He said: No; this is how the Messenger of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) has commanded us. Yahya ibn Yahya was in doubt (whether the word used in the narration by Kurayb) was Naktafi or Taktafi. (Muslim, Attirmidhiy, Abu Dawud, An-Nasa'iy and Ahmad)
Change?
No, in fact this is one of the worst, but interesting, years we are witnessing. Worst because the month was started wrongly; and interesting because Allah has provided us with a rare opportunity to check ourselves.
Only Nigeria claimed sighting the crescent on this planet on Monday 4 November 2002.
The moon set before the sun on the said day: Not only in Nigeria but even in countries west of it such as Senegal. In fact, the moon set nine minutes before the sun in Kaduna and Port Harcourt while it set eight minutes before the sun in Sokoto, the three places where claims of sighting were made.
Conjugation took place on the day in question at 9:34 pm local time (Yes, more than three hours after sunset). How then could someone have sighted the moon before conjugation, that is, when it was still before the sun? Please refer to the commentary of Suratush Shams verse 2 ('By the moon when it follows it (the sun)') by Ibn Kathir where he said: "Qatada said: 'The time when it (the moon) follows it (the sun) in the night preceding the beginning of a lunar month; when the sun sets the crescent is then sighted."
Based on actual sighting of the crescent, and not speculation or pre-prepared calendars, Monday 4 November 2002 was equivalent to 28 Sha’ban 1423 throughout the world, Nigeria (the common people, most of whom live in rural areas, and others that care to monitor the moon) inclusive. Then did Sha'ban have 28 days or did we start fasting on 29 Sha'ban?
Before I conclude the answer to this question, I wish to draw your attention to this fact: The majority of Muslims, locally and globally, started fasting on Wednesday 6 November. Only two countries declared Tuesday 5 November the beginning of Ramadan, and these are Nigeria and Libya. However, the latter did not claim sighting the crescent they rather declared Ramadan based on their official criterion for determining the beginning of lunar months, that is conjugation before dawn. Since it is not the Libyan issue we are discussing, I will conclude with the following Hadith, reported by Attirmidhy:
Abu Huraira reported that the Prophet (SAWS) said: "Fasting is when you fast and Fitr (termination of fasting) is when you celebrate Fitr and Adha is when you celebrate Adha." Abu Isa (ie Attirmidhy) said: "This hadith is sound and rare and that some authorities have explained it to mean that fasting and Fitr should be with the majority."
Opportunity
Two eclipses will occur this month (Ramadan): A lunar eclipse on Wednesday 20 November (around 3:00am) and a solar eclipse on Wednesday 4 December (at sunrise). Since these events take place at specific times they are very useful in checking the authenticity of a lunar date: Whereas a solar eclipse takes place at the time of conjugation (i.e., at the expiry of an old lunar month and the beginning of a new one when the earth, moon and sun lie in a straight line, with the moon in the middle) a lunar eclipse occurs at full moon (i.e., about midway between successive conjugations when again the three objects lie in a straight line, but with the earth in the middle) that is between 13th and 15th day of the month.
Now let us use these two events to check our beginning of Ramadan. The lunar eclipse will take place on the 16th day! This is a divine proof that we started Ramadan at least a day earlier. Now the solar eclipse: Going by the Nigerian standard the moon will be sighted on Tuesday 3 December, after 29 days of fasting, and Wednesday 4 December (the day of the eclipse) will be declared Eid al-Fitr day. However, as we get ready to go to the prayer ground, the sun will rise with the moon. What we are witnessing is a solar eclipse and the dark portion of the solar disc is nothing but the moon approaching conjugation. Then how could anybody have sighted it the previous evening? In fact on 3 December the moon will set before the sun throughout the country. For example, it will set thirty and forty minutes before the sun in Sokoto and Lagos, respectively. Even in the evening of 4 December the moon cannot be sighted since it will be only a little over 9 hours old (the minimum requirement for naked-eye sighting being 17 hours). However, on Thursday 5 December the moon can be sighted and it is going to be big and high above the horizon: Enough to mislead a layman to believe that the crescent is more than a day old. It is big because it is about 34 hours old and near perigee (closest to the earth).
Recommendation
We should make it an obligation upon ourselves to be going out en masse to search for the crescent at the end of each month, and throughout the year. In particular, the Supreme Council For Islamic Affairs should, as a matter of urgency, evolve a system of monitoring the moon throughout the year and throughout the country. The beginning of every month should be announced for public consumption. This is the path of the Prophet (SAWS), his companions and those that followed them, as shown by the following hadith:
Abdullah Ibn Abi Qais (RA) said: "I heard A'isha (RA) saying: 'The Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to keep track of Sha'ban more than any other month. Then he would fast the month of Ramadan when the crescent was sighted; and if it was hidden he would count thirty days and then fast." (al-Bayhaqiy)
__________________________
Kindly send your comments to the author at Biological Sciences Programme. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi.
E-mail: udukku@yahoo.com

Discourse 190 Our Most Corrupt Government

Monday Discourse 190

Our Most Corrupt Government

Let me start this article from the bottom, by putting its conclusion first: That when the history of this country will be written at any date after 2007, I do not entertain any doubt that objective historians will find no difficulty at all in labelling the present regime the worst government in the history of Nigeria.
I think with barely two years to the end of the administration and with impossibility of the messiah to perform miracles, hardly would anyone accuse people holding an opinion similar to mine of rush judgement. To build a premise that will justify it is the easiest job that could be assigned any bricklayer of logic. Governance has many aspects; in building our premise we are limiting ourselves to corruption and incompetence. Rule of law does not exist. I heard Bola Ige, Okadigbo, Marshall Harry and many others say so from their graves.
I am writing this article before 2007 because some people, many of whom I hold at high regard, are beginning to be fooled by Obasanjo’s recent camouflage as a crusader against corruption. The most corrupt police boss, Tafa Balogun, is brought to court in handcuffs and tears; a minister of education is sacked over the TV screen, and arraigned in court along with him former Senate President, some senators and members of the House of Representatives; another minister is fired, this time without the salad of TV broadcast, over auctioning at dismal rates properties of the government to highly placed individuals in government such as the Vice President and Minister of Finance (I wonder what happened to her World Bank gospel, perhaps she forgot it in New York); also to come in some few weeks are some ministers, the culpability of whom was tipped by the President. With all this, who will deny this regime the credit of orchestrating the best theatrical display since 1984?
We enjoy watching the show, no doubt, and we are always excited if the thieves at the helm of our affairs throw one of their own into the ocean for the sharks to swallow. However, we fail to be gullible and be carried away by something that is coming too late, too abrupt, and too baseless to qualify for our support or to serve as the fountain that will quench our thirst for good governance. A donkey cannot race as a horse could do.
No regime in our history has squandered opportunities and resources as did this government. There is none whatsoever. Looking back at previous governments, did any of them come to power when the country was so hungry of good leadership, so much so that the country decided to abandon its traditional balance of power for the sake of progress and stability, so much so that it brought a convict directly out of prison and handed to him the saddle of leadership? Who, other than Obasanjo, ever got the leadership of his country, twice in his life without working for it, or putting it more precisely, who harvested twice a crop he has not planted? In the 1976 he came to power after the assassination of his superior who nearly sacked him if it were not for the timely intervention of Awoniyi; and in 1999 he again came to power after the assassination of another Head of State?
It is interesting to note how he characteristically handled both opportunities, especially as it regards corruption. In 1976 not long after assuming office as Head of State he reversed the anti-corruption campaign of Murtala and laid the foundation for building the greediest and the most corrupt crop of military officers. At the end of the regime, not less than three generals have amassed colossal amounts of wealth that will become to target of their immediate and distant juniors and set the looting of public treasury an enviable style of governance. The three are Obasanjo himself, Danjuma his Chief of Army Staff and Shehu Yaradua, the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters. For the first time, we had a group of leaders who will die stinking rich. They retired from the army with business estates that could only be matched by only one or two civilian surrogates, people like Abiola. The above are people who tutored the likes of Babangida and Abacha in the art of “don’t cry for Nigeria.”
This is the true history of Nigeria. These are the multi-billionaire generals. Sometimes, I wonder what this country would have become if these names had used their talents to promote Nigeria, rather than their pockets. But it will never be. They have firmly gripped the throat of this country, suffocating it for thirty years. And it appears that they are not ready to let it free until it drops dead or death overtakes them.
Even at their death, as men, the evil they do will live after them. They have, in the course of those three decades, admitted into the academy of corruption thousands of younger Nigerians who will perpetuate their legacy. Such disciples have been filling their bellies of greed with whatever stuff will cross their way while in office. Think of the thousands of military officers and civilians who served as governors and ministers from 1976 to date, the majority of whom served to steal. They are still active and influential. Then think of the future, is there any basis of hope in it? The source of this predicament will easily be traced to the derailment of Obasanjo in 1976.
In 1999 when he became President, we thought, in our usual naivety, he will constitute a government of redemption, since he has confessed to be a born again. He failed us right from the start by constituting his team from the old rotten vanguard. Some people then suggested that they brought him to power, so he needed some time and reason to flush them out. Unfortunately, most of them remained with him throughout his first tenure. Some, like the Minister of Works, Tony Anenih, who spent over N400 billion on invisible roads, are very much around him.
Thus he promised to fight corruption but failed to take a single step throughout his first tenure to actualise it. That tenure ended with no parallel in our history in areas of incompetence, corruption and degeneration. Transparency International then rated Nigeria as the second most corrupt country in the World and said 56% of the corruption was taking place in the Presidency, i.e. on the desk of Obasanjo and his subordinates!
One can hardly compare Obasanjo’s government with that of Shehu Shagari, its immediate kin in comparative politics. Looking at the projects which Shagari’s government executed in every state of the federation, one wonders why in most states not a single substantial project of the federal government could be cited. Yet, never did Nigeria earn higher than what it earned in the last six years when actual earnings have always exceeded budgetary projections. It is clear, from the absence of projects, that the money end up swindled.
Someone may contend that Babangida and Abacha regimes were corrupt. Yes. No one doubts that. In fact an element of corruption could be found in every kingdom except that of God. The issue here is comparative, it is that of degree. Babangida in the first place has never fired a word against corruption. Here I found him to be the most honest leader. He made no pretence, unlike Obasanjo. Did Babangida promote it? Many would say yes, and I agree with them. The same thing with Abacha, whom we are told has stolen nothing less than $9billion. Yet, if we scan the records we will find out that those governments have earned far less than what this government is earning and, more importantly, they have numerous projects which their lieutenants will be quick to point at. After all, Obasanjo, like Abacha, needs to leave the scene first before we know the degree of wealth he and his family have stolen. It is then that Nigerians will subject him to a litmus test. The Americans are not playing the game the Nigerian way. Let them leave Obasanjo’s son alone. The time for investigation and revelations is coming.
The performance of Obasanjo should better not be mentioned. In fact Obasanjo and performance are standing at the two most distant poles in the universe. Take for instance the only dual carriageway in North, the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano highway. While Babangida built it in almost a twinkle of an eye, Obasanjo could not repair it even in six years. When his government made up its mind to undertake the repairs, as it did for many other roads, it threw away due process and gave the contracts to contractors, majority of whom have only three tools: digger, shovels and wheel barrow, having absolutely no experience in road construction. The roads, by so doing, are further dilapidated and wobbled. Where is Obasanjo’s equivalent of DFFRI or PTF, if I may ask, which though not without their pitfalls, nevertheless left behind motorable roads and facilities that Nigerians continue to enjoy nationwide?
And how many hundreds of billions has the government been sinking into NEPA without any success in sight? Is it not a shame that in spite of this, the output has dwindled to levels never experienced in the history of this government? Obasanjo’s incompetence syndrome is simply endless.
Moreover, who among our past leaders was ever caught bribing the National Assembly, or forging electoral law, or appointing one of the biggest thieves in the country as Inspector General of Police? In whose government have we heard of bunkering ships disappearing? Who among them entered a nolle proseque to free his uncle standing trial for theft of over N400 million? Whose son was put under surveillance by American authorities? Who arranged and supervised the most corrupt election in our history, in desperation to remain in power for additional four years? Who among them declared to the world that he is making N30million profit out of an agricultural outfit that was in shamble when he assumed power? And who asked him to make the declaration public? And what else is he making from other outfits? Or was the declaration made in preparation for the present campaign against corruption, now that the regime is coming to an end? Well, it is not time yet for revelations. We are not in a hurry.
In line with what many writers have advised before, that Obasanjo has never kept a promise, I strongly doubt his commitment to carry his anti-corruption campaign beyond vendetta and political expedience. I am increasingly coming to believe that what we have seen recently is a light shower, as al-Hariri would say in the epilogue to his Assemblies, which precedes a heavy downpour. The downpour will be Atiku and, likely, Babangida, with more certainty placed on the former. The two must prepare for an eminent consumption by the monster they created: Babangida sold him to the Nigerian ruling elite in 1999, while Atiku and Anenih masterminded the rigging of April 2003 elections. If they are rewarded by emasculation, it will be to the delight of Nigerians who were deprived the voice of their votes.
In conclusion, I pray that this period become the peak of our corruption after which a sharp decline will be witnessed. That though the storm has been heavy in the last six years, we will be most grateful if God stops it instantly in 2007. May there be no government in future that will compete with the present one in being our worst government.

Discourse 185 The King Must Do No Wrong

Monday Discourse (185)


The King Must Do No Wrong

The ongoing debate regarding the immunity granted to the President and his Vice as well as Governors and their deputies has once more reiterated the need to reform the laws we inherited from our colonial masters. We are now in the 21st century and it is over a forty years since the colonialists were sent packing from this country. We celebrate their departure every October 1st, but daily allow their extinct laws to dictate the form and content of our society. What an irony!
In this article, I tried to trace the origins of immunity and suggesting that it is high time to dispense with it by de-constitutionalizing it and, instead, strengthening other provisions of common law to protect the executive from unnecessary flood of litigations.
Actually, immunity is an old common law doctrine that is rooted in the dictum the King can do no wrong. In a book widely read by students of administrative law, Nigerian Administrative Law, P. A. Oluyede located the relevance of the dictum in the feudal structure of old England, saying:
“Under feudal system no lord could be sued in the court which he held to try the cases of his tenants. Similarly, the King of England as the apex of the feudal pyramid was not subject to the jurisdiction of any Court in the realm. The basis of the concept is clear. It is simply not that the King could do no wrong, but that no action could be brought against him in his Court without his consent. Ironically however, the oft cited expression that ‘the King can do no wrong’ has been completely misunderstood…
“Another reason for the development is that the true meaning of ‘the King can do no wrong’ is that the King has no legal power to do wrong. The King’s legal position, the powers and prerogatives which distinguish him from an ordinary citizen, is given to him by law, and the law gives him no authority to commit wrong. Much too often it was not appreciated that the King as a human being had a personal as well as a political capacity. In his personal capacity he was just as capable of acting illegally as was any one else.”
In other words, the immunity of the King arose from two reasons: one, the fact that the Court was his and so he cannot issue a writ against himself without him permitting the Court to do so through his endorsement of petitions; two, the society does not expect him to do a wrong, so he did not have the legal capacity to do a wrong. Following this, a civil servant in those days can only nominally be a defendant in an action brought against him, the government is responsible for fulfilling any obligation arising therefrom.
Things changed in 1947 when the Crown Proceedings Act was promulgated. Under this law, the King became a subject of private law, though not in his personal capacity, and a citizen can seek redress against the injustices committed against a state or its official by ordinary court procedure.
“It is noteworthy at this juncture, Oluyede wrote, to point out that the practice which had been in operation in England up to January 1948 was imported to Nigeria and the practice is still in existence in this country even after attain republican status. It is on record that Britain has, since the Crown Proceedings Act, 1947, came into operation, made it possible to sue the Crown in the Courts by the ordinary process of law in all cases where a Petition of Right or a special statutory procedure had hitherto been the practice. In sum, civil actions by and against public authorities and officials in connection with acts or omissions which normally give rise to cause of action between two citizens are now on the same footing. There is no difference in procedure adopted.”
From the immunity of the Crown, let us move to the immunity of its inheritors. In Nigeria the rights of the crown are vested in our Heads of Governments by provisions of the Republican constitution in 1963. In 1979, following the adoption of a presidential system of government, section 276 of the constitution stated that “without prejudice to the generality of section 274 of this constitution, any property, right, privilege, liability and obligation which immediately before the date when the section comes into force was vested in, exercisable or enforceable by or against (a) the former authority of the Federation representative or trustee for the benefit of the Federation; or (b) any former authority of a state as representative or trustee for the benefit of the state, shall on the date when this section comes into force and without further assurance than the provisions hereof vest in or become exercisable or enforceable by or against the President and Government of the Federation, and the Governor and Government of the State, as the case may be.”
It must be noted here that the Crown Proceedings Act did not strip the Crown of his immunity in private and personal capacity. The immunity provision of section 267 of the 1979 constitution was a logical flow of the above quoted provision of section 276. “The section (267),” wrote Oluyede, “provides that no civil or criminal proceedings shall be instituted or continued against the president, Vice-President, Governor or Deputy-Governor during their period of office. They can neither be arrested nor imprisoned during that period in pursuance of the process of any Court or otherwise. While they hold office no process of any Court requiring or compelling their appearance shall be applied for or issued. This is not to say that they are not liable for any civil or criminal act or omission done in their personal capacity while in office. It only means that action cannot be taken against them at that material time.” This provision is replicated in our 1999 constitution.
That is law. It did not envisage that a King can do wrong. It never foresaw a situation where criminals will become kings or kings becoming criminals. The old philosophy is that a king lives well above his servants in his display of majesty and pride; hence, he will not condescend to the level of criminality. Thus we have never heard, until recently in Nigeria and other developing countries, that a President of a nation or a governor of a state can reduce himself to the level of a thief. What a terrible human being would he then be in the contemplation of our grandparents?
In the relationship between a king and wrongdoing, three situations can be discerned. The first is that he lives above the level of wrong, and remains free of the consequences of wrongdoing. In this dimension, the provision of immunity makes a lot of sense. But what happens if the king does wrong? That is where the remaining two options come into operation.
When he does wrong, it means the immunity granted him has failed. Under the presidential system of government, the constitution provides for an impeachment clause which could be invoked by the legislature after a procedure that ascertains his guilt is duly followed. Remembering Clinton, that is when the king becomes demystified; he loses his majesty and looks like a cock beaten by rain, as the Hausa will put it.
In Nigeria too the constitution relies on the impeachment clause to guard the executive against doing wrong or in removing him when he commits one. Unfortunately in this country it is used to settle scores between the executive and the legislature or in the quest of the latter to extort money from the former. A case to recall here is that of former Governor of Kaduna State during the Second Republic, Alhaji Balarabe Musa who was impeached not for reasons related to theft or any misdemeanour but ideological difference between him and the legislature. The impeachment clause here has been used negatively. The impeachment clause was also used to remove many deputy governors thereafter who could not dance to the tune of their governors.
Today, the impeachment clause is used by the legislature to extort money from a wrong doing king, and almost all the kings in Nigeria are wrongdoers. Whenever they learn about a wrong committed by the governor or the President, they raise the card against him and, behold, Ghana must go begin to roll out. Then they drop it. I wish Balarabe Musa were so wise. That is how Baba Iyabo has been able to navigate on the turbulent water of the politics of the second, sorry third, most corrupt nation on earth. During the first term of this administration, the House of Representatives listed over thirty offences committed by President Obasanjo, including forgery. They would have impeached him, if it were not for the power of Ghana must go. Here, impeachment has failed to secure justice for Nigerians due to the susceptibility of the legislature to corruption.
It is the case of Dariye that brought the immobilizing effect of the immunity clause to public glare. He is a good specimen of where the king became a thief. He is allegedly guilty of negligence of duty that has caused the lives of thousands of people in the ‘home of peace and tourism.’ In addition, records have shown that he has stolen billions from the public treasury. The President, we learnt, tried to persuade the Plateau State legislature to impeach Dariye or else face the imposition of State of Emergency as a consequence. They chose the latter over the removal of their benefactor.
While away during the state of emergency, the presidency and M15 exposed the corrupt practices of Dariye. He was arrested in Britain and granted bail on charges of money laundering. A case was brought before the Court and his immunity right as a governor was upheld. While the law allows him to go free, for now, his collaborators in the same crime are standing trial. Meanwhile, no one can assure us that Dariye has not resumed the perpetration of his corrupt practices which will go on, unfortunately, until 2007. Other corrupt governors are also temporarily relieved by that verdict of the fear of prosecution; they can continue filling their Ghana must go jus qua 2007. We can only wait for the end of their tenure and think of how to drag them to court thereafter for the offences they committed with impunity before our eyes. It is clear, therefore, that we cannot rely on the impeachment clause, just as we feel the immunity clause is archaic and unjust ab initio. Here, again, the law has failed to secure justice.
It is when a judicial system fails to check the excesses of the king that citizens resort to solutions outside the law. Where the law ends, anarchy takes over. In the realm of anarchy, people have found various ways of dealing with the problem. Civil war is one, often ending with the king as the loser, as it happened to Charles I in 17th Century England. Revolution is another, as it happened in France in 1789 against feudalism and Charles XVI to usher in Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen which guaranteed “liberty, equality, the inviolability of property and the right to resist oppression.” The same thing happened to the Russian Tsar in March 1917 leading the takeover by Bolsheviks in November. Recently, the revolution of 1978 in Iran saw the final exit of the Pehlavi Monarchy and substituted it with a questionable marriage between democracy and theocracy. On the African continent we have seen the fall of Haile Selassie in 1974. I wonder if the ruling houses in the Middle Eastern kingdoms will survive the end of this century.
Military coups have been popular means of getting rid of corrupt governments in Africa. The Second Republic in Nigeria was brought to an end because the legislature could not simply recognize that the country was collapsing, hence the need to impeach the President. Some say that the era of coup is over. I will prefer to advise the king that he should not take chances; he should do no wrong…
Finally, in the debate over the immunity of the executive, supporters of the provision have dubiously avoided mentioning its actual (historical) reasons; rather, they simply tell us that the executive need to be protected against the flood of litigations that will distract them from performing their duties. However, given the risk of corruption and the consequent overthrow of the government that the immunity provision engenders, I will rather prefer the we remove the immunity and, in its place, strengthen the law of defamation with special provisions that will raise the stake of unjustifiably accusing the President, Vice President, Governors and their Deputies of wrongdoing.
While deterring people with evil intention the law will thus make it possible for citizens with evidences of wrongdoing against and the President or any governor to come forward and present them before the court of law. Once found guilty, the executive can be removed, imprisoned or executed as the law would require. The impeachment clause will then be redundant and removed. The ultimate power of removing the President, Governor or their Deputies will thus lie with the judiciary. Let us try this.
Other than this, the continuity of immunity and impeachment clauses in a corrupt environment like ours will only open a gateway to coups and other non-constitutional means of changing the situation, unless the king learns to do no wrong…

Discourse 184 The House of Lugard

Monday Discourse (184)

The House of Lugard

What really would have happened had the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria been allowed to remain separate and evolve as different countries? Would the South – stretching from Lagos to Calabar – have been one of the best countries in the World and North one of the poorest, like its Northern neighbours – Chad and Niger?
The answer from many Southerners is that they would have been far better of without the North. Since the South is richer, the North can only have a dilution effect on the quality of life of the South, holding it back from attaining economic prosperity. Moreover, in terms of human development the North is lagging fifity years behind the South. Added to this is the difficulty of covering its expanse of land with modern infrastructure. The discovery of oil has aggravated this belief. Imagine if all our oil revenues were invested in the South alone and combine that with the nature of its people who love hard work and industry. It would have been, undoubtedly, one of the richest areas in the world. This is the predominant thinking in the South if one is to go by the content of its media and utterances of many of its scholars.
The fate of Northern Nigeria in the above scenario would have been a complete mess. As a landlocked country the North would not have prospered without the South; it would not have gone beyond a peasant economy; it would have had the education and infrastructure it enjoys now; it would have remained entrenched in tradition, feudalism and Islam, none of which would have served to advance its economy. Economy, economy. Ratatatatata.
In addition to this economic calculation there is another one, ethnicity, expounded by scholars of disintegration, a product of primitivism. I cannot imagine how a renowned scholar from the Southwest became so reckless to say that he is ashamed of sharing a passport with the Sultan of Sokoto. This level of unguarded stupidity can only be accommodated by a mind heavily infested by primitive evil of ethnic and racial hatred. Here, the scholar did not rise above the level of the uncivilized elite who featured as a guest on AIT and who degenerated into asking what contribution does a cow make to the economy of this country. That illiterate was saying, “let us hold our oil and let them go with their cows.” Something, certainly foolish and evil, continues to tell this species of Southerners that they have a right to insult others who are simply not their kind in tribe or region.
I find it too shallow for anyone, given our experience since independence, to think that the South would have been better of as a separate country. What guarantee can such people give us that the evil of corruption and ethnicity that have crushed Nigeria today would not have featured in their dream Republic of Southern Nigeria? Would they have used their cocoa, cassava and oil intelligibly to harness their lives or would their wealth have been a major source of corruption and instability? In fact, would they have been allowed to decide their fate with many agents of imperialism in their midst? What affinity binds the Yoruba with the man in Niger-Delta? Would not have led a parasitic life on the wealth of the Niger-Delta as he is presently doing in Nigeria?
Southern Nigeria is not the only place in Africa that is rich. There are many parts of Africa that are richer but still living poorer for the simple reason that wealth has often led to disaster than to the progress of humanity. In fact the existence of cheap wealth, like oil, is the more reason why imperialism will be interested in the republic, dividing its people and looting its treasures. Zaire and Sierra Leone are not poor, neither is Iraq; but forces of imperialism are interested in their instability in order to exploit their resources. I doubt if the Niger-Delta would have been different. In fact, in the dream country of Southern Nigeria, the peoples of the Niger-Delta will be under intense pressure to surrender their resources to the Igbo and the Yoruba. The peoples of the Niger-Delta need not be reminded about the inevitable dominance of Igbo in Eastern Nigeria; for the Yoruba, if we must remind them, the risk of instability is very high because they are people who fought themselves almost to the point of extinction few centuries ago on nothing but a market quarrel over a piece of alligator pepper. I wonder what their zeal would be when they are involved in a disagreement over oil, as it will certainly happen, in the Republic of Southern Nigeria.
No, someone would say. The Yoruba are not interested in a Republic of Southern Nigeria; they want a nation of their own. Their population is over 25 million, and have an almost total control of the Nigerian economy: industries, banks, insurance houses, port, stock market, law, etc. Moreover, Baba Aremu has done his best to patronize them in the past six years such that they will have enough to live with only marginal pain in a re-structured Nigeria. This stupidity of this prevalent thought in the Southwest is not far-fetched. One, I do not know of any time in history when a Yoruba nation existed. Yoruba did not even have a common name as a tribe. When the Hausa first came in contact with them, he must have found enormous difficulty in dealing with a nameless mass of people. Thus he gave them a name, Yarba, which they started to pronounce as Yoruba. I feel the Hausa should claim propriety over that name and demand a fee for the good service of his grand parents.
Two, what will the citizens of the Oduduwa Republic do with the fratricidal instinct that has been the hallmark of their history? Or do they think there will not be reasons to disagree over issues bigger than alligator pepper? What form of constitution will they adopt and modus of power sharing? Again, they are betrayed by their history. A recent review done by one of their scholars shows no harmony among their various clans in their conception of leadership throughout their history.
Three, I quite agree that they have cornered the largest part of our industries. Oduduwa-centred intellectuals think that these industries alone can sustain a republic and satiate the appetite of one of the most aggrandizing elite in Africa. But that is forgetting that the banks, insurance houses, stock market, industries and the large cities that they boast of may be flourishing today only because of two reasons: the presence of oil commission and, two, the immediate market of over 120 million people who are ready, or have no choice but, to receive their sub-standard products. They have forgotten that at de-amalgamation they will bid farewell to that unfettered access and be forced to compete with cheaper and better products from Asia. The city of Lagos, we are often told, generates hundreds of millions of naira every month. How much will it generate when other Nigerians withdraw their capital at the inception of the Oduduwa Republic? What will its yield be reduced to in the absence of monthly allocation from the centre which now stands in billions of naira? Will that yield be enough to sustain the city’s roads and supply of water, electricity, security and other services essential to the survival of the dream Oduduwa Republic? What will the market look like for the sub-standard Nigerian products of the Southwest industries if their outreach is reduced from 120 million people to only 25 million descendants of Oduduwa, the greatest of all races?
No. Another would say, we neither mean Republic of Southern Nigeria nor of Oduduwa. What we mean is a return to regional governments with each region controlling its resources. Aha. You are only clever by half. You want a monopoly over your resources while enjoying the security and market of other Nigerians. The Niger-Delta man wants to control his oil resources but while enjoying the security of a united Nigeria which he expects to protect him against the avarice of his immediate neighbours. The Yoruba wants to control his VAT and service driven economy that is patronized by over of 120 million people, sustained by an oil economy and a large peasantry. Wayo.
The Igbo has always depended on his enterprising acumen. He has mastered the art of commerce without reading The Wealth of Nations. He has reasserted his position in the Nigerian economy in spite of the Civil War. Unfortunately, he lends his ear, once again, to the voice of disintegration. That is the same voice that instigated him to commit the sincere blunder of declaring Biafra. Immediately afterwards, the voice turned round against him and advised that he could be subjected to hunger as a weapon of war. At the end of the war it recommended a paltry £20 as the only equitable compensation for his loss. He did not realize until it was too late that the same voice has always seen him as a most veritable competitor in grabbing the resources of post-independence Nigeria. War would only alienate him and set him backwards. That goal has been achieved.
He might also be tempted to think that, like before or during the civil war, he can dominate the Niger-Delta and appropriate its resources. This is illusory. I doubt if the markets in Onitcha and Aba will flourish when their customers are reduced only to citizens of Biafra which I am not sure the Niger-Delta will be ready to belong. And if they are forcefully annexed, as it happened before the war, modern warfare, especially with the abundance of oil money, will empower them to raise thousands Asaris to precipitate a mayhem in which no non-Deltan will benefit from its oil resources.
Then, lastly, here come the Malam and his other northern brothers. Where does he fit in the equation of a disintegrated Nigeria? He does not mine oil like the Niger-Deltan; he is not in control of the economy like the Yoruba; and he does not share the commercial shrewdness of the Igbo. He is regarded a parasite. What does he do when he becomes detached from his host?
Sometimes, I feel his best bet is not in a restructured Nigeria but in what I call a de-amalgamated one. When the line of statutory allocations is cut, certainly, the elite in the North will suffer a decade of despair while his peasant brother will remain relatively untouched, enjoying the bounty of rain on which he has survived for centuries. The elite will be forced to use his knowledge to boost the productivity of the region through the adoption of modern agricultural techniques and exploitation of the natural resources – both human and material – in the expanse of land and of the variety of people who surrounds him. The stability of his Arewa nation will derive principally from three sources: the poor state of his economy that will fail to attract the attention of gluttons and imperialists; his long standing traditional institutions of governance that will subsidize the cost of security and prevent conflict; and his bent for religion, both Christianity and Islam, which will be used to expel the insidious culture of corruption that devastated the defunct Nigeria.
It is then, instigated by his deprivation and expulsion from Nigeria, he will start a true journey to nationhood. His petty quarrels will dissolve and never will they return until he is comfortable enough to be the fool that will be lured into killing his brother. After walking alone for a decade or two, free from the encumbrance of national politics that has impeded his progress in the Nigeria of the past, he will stumble on the heap of prosperity that he abandoned for a century or so. Then, he will realize that the parasitic life he led and the abuses he earned as a result were colonial creations perpetuated by the corrupt Nigerian state. It may not be his intention now to walk this path; but if forced to do so he will tread it with the courage and perseverance it deserves.
The future of Nigeria remains uncertain, if not bleak. The vision of Lugard of a united Nigeria, therefore, still remains a dream waiting to be realized by the prudence of our elite or abandoned by the stupidity of their sentiments. Ask for my opinion and I will say, head or tail, I will survive. Duk mijin Iya baba ne.

Tribute to Malam Ibrahim Bakane

Friday Discourse (93)

A Tribute to Malam Ibrahim Bakane

This piece is a tribute to Malam Ibrahim Bakane, an Islamic traditional scholar (malamin zaure) in the great city of Sokoto who passed away some months ago. The news of his death reached me a month ago and I felt compelled to say a word of appreciation to the service he rendered to our community in Sokoto as well as to the honour which the custodians of the hubbare granted the deceased.
Underneath the personal account of my relationship with him, the careful reader will easily discern the nature of the institution that Malam Ibrahim represented, the type of profession he practised. I wish I were permitted to call him ‘Sheikh’, for certainly he was one, but it appears that the highest title any scholar can attain in Sokoto is ‘Malam’ while Sheikh is reserved in reverence to Sheikh Usmanu Danfodio (May God grant him His Mercy). Thus even Balaraben Kasar Hausa, Sheikh Abdullahi Danfodio, is referred to as ‘Malam Abdullahi’ in Sokoto. I would not like to breach that protocol after the honour which the great city granted our Malam.
Contact
My contact with Malam started in 1986 when I was introduced to him by one of his students, Alhaji Sani Adamu. I went there to specifically recite the Qur’an to his hearing. That was as a result of the advise of a lecturer colleague at the University, Malam Usman Hayatu Dukku, to whom I complained of my poor retention. He had just returned from Kano, where he started his memorization program with Malam Nasiru during a Masters degree program. A friend of Malam Nasiru once had a similar problem and the Malam advised him to find someone before whom he would recite the Quran. The advise was effective because what was missing, was the link in chain of transmission back to the Prophet (SAW) and Jibril (A.S).
This made me to look for such a teacher in the town, assured that I have found the medicine to my then three-year old problem. But Sokoto, like Zaria, Bauchi and many other cities dominated by ‘Fulbe’ scholars, does not, perhaps until the last fifteen years, normally engage in memorization of the Holy Quran beyond what is necessary for the conduct of Salat and other rituals. So my choice was actually limited. Alhaji Sani Adamu eased my difficulty with the immediate suggestion of Malam Ibrahim. Malam was lucky to have arrived Sokoto with his hadda as a teenager, fresh, after completing it around 1945, according to his account.
We reached the school of Malam Ibrahim which was nothing more than the reception room of his house usually referred to as zaure. The zaure that was not more than a 4m x 5m doubled as the passage in and out of his house not only for members of his household but also for his one or two cows, which he kept as is common with most households in Sokoto city.
There was no furniture in the zaure. In one corner was his collection of Islamic literature. The collection was purely within the range covered by his students. Just near the collection was his buzu and the rest of the floor was covered with mats. With this simple provision, hundreds and possibly thousands of students were turned out over the past four decades, each competent to handle issues on Islamic law and culture. Of course there were always children learning the recitation of the Quran outside, under a shade (rumfa). They were in hundreds and under the control and guidance of some of Malam’s pupils, headed by Mustapha, a son of Malam. The school was therefore complete, with only one room and a shade, from primary to university level.
Malam received us warmly. After exchanging pleasantries, Alhaji Sani introduced me and mentioned my request to him. He agreed and went further on to generously appoint for me Thursday, his leisure day. Other days were not suitable because of the crowd of students of “ilm”, their number, the need for rapt attention during the recitation and the time it would take to recite two hizbs (sections or parts) on each sitting. We planned that in thirty weeks the recitation would be completed. It however extended to fifty, and perhaps more, not for any fault on our part, but due to a lousy Masters degree that dragged on at Ahmadu Bello University for four years.
Hafs and Warsh
I kept my appointments and Malam kept his words. Every Thursday we will cover the agreed portions. Our first station was sayakulu, then tilkar rusulu, then lantana, then walmuhsanatu, and so on. It was the first time, since my graduation from our Qur’anic school, to be introduced to the differences between hafs and warsh, the two most popular forms of recitations in Nigeria. Malam was of course conversant with warsh, while I was reciting from the hafs I learnt from Sheikh Suleiman, the Egyptian that once lived at College of Arabic Studies, Sokoto.
As we passed through the various portions of the Holy book, I would fall here, err there and many times go ‘blank’. Malam would lift me wherever I fell; he would correct me whenever I erred; and would reawaken my brain whenever I went blank. As we moved from one form of narration to another, like the narrations on Adam and Moses (AS) that come in a variety of shapes and sizes, I would on many occasions mix up one with another. Malam would clarify the resemblances in shapes and distinguish the subtle differences in the forms. Sometimes the difference would be due to an addition of a word or an alphabet; another time due to their subtraction or their substitution with another; other times, facts are regrouped or their sequence altered to meet the emphasis intended in theme or the poetic structure of the portion; etc. It is lovely.
As we went on, Malam would show me, using his fingers, the frequencies at which certain expressions or words appeared in the Qur’an, as do other professional memorizers (allarammomi) in Hausaland. Sometimes, instead of the fingers, he would speak, saying farda for a single occurrence, yindi for two, wande for three, dewu for four, and so on. With this ease and informality, Malam opened my eyes to the vast knowledge of tashbih (similarities) in the Quran long before my coming across the al-Itkan of Imam Jalaluddin al-Suyudi, or al-Burhan of Imam Badruddin al-Zarkashi, or still when I would later sit amidst allarammomi who have perfected the memorization of the Holy Book to astonishing degrees.
One other thing was of interest to me, i.e. how our traditional students of the Qur’an named its various parts, fractions and chapters. I was to realize that any verse in the Qur’an, according to their taxonomy, could only be either in Baqarah (first half, named after the second chapter in the Qur’an) or Nasi (named after the last). Strange to my ears also, they would always locate a verse by the name of the section, izu, in which it appeared, not by its chapter as we do in hafs. They would say, “The verse is in kulawallau, or lillazi, or ittaku, or kadsami.”
That aside, even the differences in stations generated interest in variety between the warsh of Malam and my hafs. Thus, while in hafs we stop at ata’muruna, they will stop two verses earlier at wala talbisu; while we stop at afatadma’una, they go on to stop a verse later at wa’iza lakullazina; while they stop at lantana, we will stop at kullud da’ami. Sometimes the differences could be greater: for example, we stop at the beginning of A’araf, they stop later at da’awe, a difference of four verses; we stop at wa lau basada, they stop at au yubikuhunna, a difference of seven verses.
These differences were appealing to both Malam and his student as they helped to drive away fatigue and offer the student a rest, whenever a break is taken to discuss them. Malam was full of cheers and humour. I always remember an incidence involving one Malam Ahidjo, an elder Cameroonian student of Malam who appeared to have memorized a substantial portion of the Qur’an during his childhood. He used to attend my recitation sessions. One day when we started jawaba and shortly reached the five repeated questions – a’ilahum ma’allah? – while we were at the second, Ahidjo mistakenly jumped the gun and said ta’alallahu amma yushrikuna, which is the fourth. Malam could not help moving his head sideways and smiling widely. He politely turned to Ahidjo, whose interruption appeared to have confused my memory, saying, Malam Ahijo, kai taka haddar ta zube tuntuni, ka hakura da saurare mana… (Your memorization has since faded, be content with listening.)
I wondered how Malam retained his memory of the Holy Book for over forty years then since he left Borno and Kano and despite his preoccupation with ilm thereafter. As I later on interacted with other students of the Qur’an that graduated from the traditional schools, first in Kaduna, then in Jos and finally now here in my home village, I realized the sharp difference between their method of memorization and our ‘modern’ one. Under the traditional form, memorization has so much been perfected that a student would require only a little effort to retain it throughout his lifespan. The allarammas also have an advantage over us, in that they have made the Quran their profession, learning and teaching it daily, while our attachment to it is, if I am allowed to put it sincerely, only casual. We are involved in many other things that tend to distract us from giving it the attention it deserves. Taura biyu ba ta tauno. May God overlook our shortcomings and forgive us.
I cannot quantify the immense benefit I derived from my recitation sessions with Malam. It gave me the hope of reaching a city of my dream in scholarship where I will be able to bring, with ease, any portion of the Holy Book anytime without the ta’ta’ah (hiccups), like the ones of Sahibuna in al-Ayyam. He showed me the path to that great city, and I tried, within what my secular activities would permit, to keep focussed within the beam he lit fifteen years ago. Alhamdu lillah. With the small distance I have covered in that journey so far, I now feel highly indebted to him. May God reward him abundantly!
Sacrifice
It is difficult to describe the dedication of Malam to his students. Many times, one would see the sign of fatigue in him but he would not relent in his teaching. Dozens of students will come on days of their appointments, each will individually learn from the books of his choice or of his level. Whichever book you brought, Malam was equal to the task.
Almost all the students were adults of different vocations, coming on days of their convenience. Everyday, except Thursdays, they would start trooping in to the school as early as eight. The first session would vacate before zuhr, around 1.00pm. After ‘asr, as the day cools, the second session will start with different sets of students.
The features of the school of Malam Ibrahim are similar to those of others like it, found in almost every settlement in Northern Nigeria. They are the schools that have for centuries provided for the literacy and other educational demands of the society at the barest minimum running cost and bureaucracy-free. The schools are set up and run privately, individually, informally and voluntarily. Enrolment is also voluntary so that no one is deprived as a result of his position in society; fees are not charged; salaries are not paid, so teachers have no basis for strikes; there are no holidays, except during Ramadan; there are no examinations taken, so the desire to cheat is completely absent; certificates are not issued, so the case of ‘Toronto’ or ‘Chicago’ does not arise. Knowledge is sought for the true value it represents. The evil of paper qualification is exempted from visiting such schools. What a beauty!
All the above has helped to make education in such schools affordable, from structures to management. This is undoubtedly enviable. Perhaps, for this reason, they have remained resilient, despite the attempt by colonialists, as a matter of policy, to alienate them from serving the society in the wider perspective they used to do. The principal means through which this objective was achieved was the abolition of Arabic language as a medium of administration or official language and the imposition of secularism and English.
One thing that caught my attention is that Malam is not among those that vie for material gains of this world. He surprisingly lived comfortably. Perhaps it is for his ascetic disposition and his commitment to service that God eased the means of his livelihood. Long before his children would be involved in commerce, students of Malam have tried to cater for him whenever an opportunity presents itself as a sign of appreciation of the services he offered them. Whenever he has a naming ceremony for example, there will be a competition for delivery of rams and other items.
Malam does not beg for anything, big or small, from anybody, at the top or the bottom. Neither was he among those that visit traditional rulers or government houses looking for one favour or another. On invitation from the Palace, he would humbly present himself; otherwise, he remained at home. He hardly visited others, perhaps due to his teaching engagement at home. These habits have put Malam on a pedestal different from that of many in his position.
Farewell
The people of Sokoto would certainly know about Malam Ibrahim better than I do. Nevertheless, I hereby express my appreciation to them, and to the Sultan in particular, for the great honour they gave Malam, who left his hometown, Kiru, in Kano State, as a teenager in 1945 and lived throughout in Sokoto, with a life dedicated to scholarship. We appreciate how he has been accommodated as a full citizen for fifty-six years or so, with no discrimination whatsoever.
This is the type of treatment we expect to find in the nearby Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto (UDU). When other places in the country degenerate into politics of local representation in the federal institutions in their locality, we expect that in UDUS, the principles of Shehu Danfodio, after whom the university was named, would be upheld. There would have been no reason to consider its VCs who came at different times from Kano, Yauri, Gwandu and now Zaria as non-indegenes of Sokoto. Sokoto, we must remember, is a fountain from which all other Hausa States drunk to satisfaction when no other fountain was running. It is the mother or a commonwealth; we expect it to accommodate all as it accommodated Malam.
It is important to note that such differences are only generated by some selfish and lazy elite who cannot get things through merit. There is no better evidence to this fact other than the burial of Malam Ibrahim. Apart from his funeral prayer which was massively attended at the Mosque of Shehu Usmanu Danfodio, his corpse also was taken directly into the hubbare (tomb) for burial. No other person in the Caliphate who was not a descendant of Shehu Danfodio was buried in the hubbare before. Malam was the first. It is a record set not by an indigene of Sokoto, but by that of Kano (bakane). “The believers are but a single brotherhood.” (49:10) In this, there is a lesson for our brothers in UDUS and elsewhere in the North to contemplate. May God reward the Sultanate and the entire people of Sokoto on this noble example! We appreciate the honour given.
Finally, may God forgive and reward Malam Ibrahim Bakane the best he would reward a teacher from his students. May a commission reach him out of every good deed that we his students would perform out of the knowledge we have acquired from him! May God keep custody of whatever Malam left behind! Certainly, God is the Custodian in whose hands no deposit is missed. As Mustapha takes over the position of his father, may God give him the capacity required to shoulder the enormous family and scholastic responsibilities that rested once on the shoulders of Malam.
For me, a visit, as soon as possible, to his grave in the hubbare at Sokoto has become necessary, after two years of absence. It will be a tribute, like our discourse today, to the gentle soul that once received me warmly, listened to me patiently and corrected me gently. Gone is the warmth, and with it also are the patience and the gentleness! But the memory of his service remains.
“As for the Righteous, they will be in the midst of Gardens and Rivers, in Assembly of Truth, in the Presence of a Sovereign Omnipotent.”(54:55)

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8 July 2001