By Suyi Ayodele

The Benin people have long ago embraced the concept of ogieriakhi, which holds that an elder does not revenge an insult. This native wisdom is to ensure that the elders, who are the pillars holding the community, don’t engage in anything that would make anyone question their wisdom. The Oba of Benin is one of the most respected monarchs in the country. His subjects treat him like a deity. If for instance, the Omo N’Oba is annoyed by an act of anyone, he is expected to maintain his stoic disposition. He cannot betray emotions in the public; he cannot lose his cool before mere mortals. He has those who avenge insults for him. The best he could do, if provoked, is to make the traditional pronouncement, evbin ni tai mayewe, ya riukoror, which means, if you don’t like what I say, go and hang yourself. That is a command from the throne. The one so commanded must carry out the instruction. But that rarely happens. In the last two centuries, or so, there is no record to show that an Omo N’Oba made such a pronouncement. That is the dignity of the throne, which translates to the dignity, wisdom and maturity of the elders.

But Edo appears to have lost that in recent times. Elders no longer behave as elders. What used to be commonplace among guttersnipes is what grey hairs now do. My mind raced to the recent outburst by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole against the first lady of Edo State, Mrs. Betsy Obaseki. Madam Betsy had, while campaigning for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the forthcoming gubernatorial election in the state, Asue Ighodalo, among some women in Ubiaja, urged the womenfolk to vote for a candidate who has a wife, positing that he would appreciate women and give them more recognition. She then quipped that of all the candidates in the race, only the PDP candidate “has a wife”. Here is how she put it:

“Let’s campaign and vote for the best candidate in this forthcoming election. I want to introduce his wife. Incidentally, out of all the candidates contesting this election, only one has a wife. That is our own party candidate, Asue Ighodalo. This is his wife, Ifeyinwa Ighodalo.” Hardly had she dropped the microphone, when Oshiomhole reacted. And he was brutal in his reaction. The former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), took Madam Besty’s comment to mean a reference to the APC candidate, Senator Monday Okpebholo. The Comrade’s outburst was egregious! Hear him: 

“I was shocked yesterday to see Mrs. Obaseki, the first lady, saying that our candidate has no wife. I’m sorry she had to say that because here is a woman who has no child. Between him (sic) and Obaseki, they are childless. They are not even ready to adopt. I don’t blame anybody who doesn’t have a child but people who have love for children go to a motherless home and adopt. They have not adopted. They are both in their sixties. So, your marriage, I don’t know whether it is a contract one or whatever it is, but they have no child….” Both parties missed the point. But in my own judgement, Oshiomhole’s response was the most infelicitous! I will explain.

Marriage is a permissible will of God. We all make choices. And like our elders say, marriage is like a market that is set up in darkness (ojà òkùnkùn), it is only when the light shines that one knows what one has bought. Some are lucky to get good partners. Many are not that lucky.

However, individuals have control over what they make of their marriages. Sustaining a home requires a lot of things: temperance, accommodation, wisdom, love and many more. If a man married two wives and threw the two of them away, we should look at his character alongside those of the two women. A man who says every firewood in his cooking spot brings out smoke instead of flame should be studied very well before a higher responsibility is added to him. Most good managers of homes are likely to be good managers of a collective destiny. That is what I think Madam Betsy alluded to.

Even at that, a simple stylistic study of her statements at the campaign rally shows that she is a better student of communication. She mentioned no names. She mentioned no political parties. That is what my Stylistics teachers called “Avoidance Strategy”, a principle that allows the communicator to extricate himself from the web of controversy. I still don’t get how Oshiomhole equates “Incidentally, out of all the candidates contesting this election, only one has a wife”, to require an indecorous response deriding the childlessness of a couple! The only explanation that is close to the equation is the saying of our elders that when dry bone is mentioned in a proverb, the old woman thinks that she is being referred to.

If, for instance, Madam Betsy had mentioned Okpebholo’s marital condition, knowing that the man lost his wife or wives to the cold hands of death, she would have stood condemned before God and man. But is that the case here?  No. Okpebholo’s two wives are alive but might not be under his roof. That also does not mean it is right for Madam Besty or anyone else to deride another on account of a failed marriage. We all do our best to keep our homes going. If her jab is to say that those who threw away two women in quick succession, or those who could not sustain a marriage for just one year have no business running a state, since charity begins at home, she might be making a seemingly valid argument except that nobody knows the circumstances surrounding those failed relationships. Honestly, our politics has not grown beyond banal issues. That is sad enough.

Childlessness in a marriage, on the other hand, is beyond any mortal. Every man or woman desires to procreate. If it doesn’t happen, it becomes a problem. And it is not a problem anyone should use as a point of attack. That will be most stone-hearted to do. Africans have different euphemisms to describe a woman who suffers such a fate. In my Yoruba environment, we don’t just call a woman barren. We call her Ìyá olómo púpò (the woman with many children). If, during an interrogation, you ask a woman without a child the number of her children, her response will be Omo pò lówó mi (I have numerous children). You don’t mock a woman with her childlessness. We use “àpón” to abuse someone, especially a man who is of age but refuses to marry, but not “àgàn” (barrenness).

It is also not in the place of Oshiomhole to say that couples in their 60s don’t have a child must adopt. Comrade as a Christian must have been told in his Catholic Catechism that Abraham and Sarah did not have Isaac until they were 100 and 90 years. Isaac had to beg God for Rebecca to have Esau and Jacob. Jacob’s favourite wife, Racheal waited on the Lord for long before she had children for Jacob. In our African Traditional Religion (ATR), Ifa, in Ogbè Òyèkú, tells us the Lapetun, the mother of Adan (Bat), waited for so long before she had her only child, Adan. Incidentally, Adan is our traditional symbol of fertility because if one opens the bowel of a Bat, one finds another Bat inside, and if that one is opened, another Bat is also found. This is why a good Babalowo prays for the woman trusting Eledua for a child thus: àtolè dolè ni ti Àdán, bí wón bá yèdí re wò omo ni (from foetus to foetus is the lot of the Bat; if they open your bosom, it is a child they will see).

I don’t know if Oshiomhole plays our local game, Ayo, the 48-seed game of 24 seeds in each row. Those who play that game very well are not known to have the capacity to keep secrets. If you want to know the latest gist in town, just go over to an Ayo spot. There, nothing is hidden. The beauty of it is that nobody takes any offence even when the topmost secret is laid bare in the public. Our elders warn those who have something to hide not to participate in Ayo game. They say àsírí ò bò lénu aláyò (Ayo players do not keep secrets). That is what Oshiomhole did when in the video, he alluded to the relationship between Betsy and Godwin Obaseki being a “contract” marriage.

If Oshiomhole had limited his tirades to his allusion that whatever marriage arrangement between Madam Besty and her husband, Godwin Obaseki, is merely contractual, one would have understood, though that is also belittling of his status in the society. This is also why Mrs. Obaseki should have known that anyone living in a glass house should learn not to throw stones. Oshiomhole, no doubt, knows, more than any other person, how the Obaseki couple came to be before the 2016 governorship election that produced the Governor Obaseki.

If Oshiomhole knows anything about the “contract” marriage between the Edo State first family, and he is bringing that to the public because of politics, it tells more about his personality. There should be decency in one’s utterances, especially at that age. Our elders are not wrong when they say an elder talks more in his stomach than in his mouth (inú ni àgbà ńyá, àgbà kìí yá enu). How many other ‘secrets’ does Oshiomhole know? How many will he reveal whenever he is provoked? I used to think that they say age and wisdom are siblings. Why do we have the contrary now?

Mrs. Obaseki on her part should know that marriages break down for several reasons, and it is a worthy credit for those who navigate the odds and keep their marriages. However, asking Edo voters, especially the women, to put into consideration the ability of any of the candidates to manage his home before entrusting the entire state to him is not entirely out of place. It takes a lot to run and sustain a marriage. This however does not approve the tendency of any man to change wives the way a nursing mother changes the baby’s diapers. If such a man comes knocking to ask to rule a state, there is nothing bad in interrogating his managerial abilities to see how he has fared in life, especially in the little assignment of a home manager. Afterall, the Holy Writ, the Bible, enjoins that he who is faithful in little things should be given bigger and higher responsibilities (Luke 16:10)

Those statements by Oshiomhole are, to me, most inconsiderate and hare-brained considering his age, and absolutely unstatesmanlike going by his status as a former Labour leader, a former governor, a former National Chairman of a political party, and now a serving senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The devil-may-care way he said it all in the 59 seconds video is something a tear-away would cringe to say. It is misogyny carried too far. There is no justification for it, there is no excuse for such recklessness in public communication. The argument that Madam Betsy started it will not suffice here. When others are losing their heads, elders like Oshiomhole are expected to keep theirs. It is most unfortunate that at 73, Comrade Oshiomhole would choose to engage in a swine fight with a woman in the first place!

The APC stalwart is an experienced married man; one who has handled women for decades. One begins to wonder what lessons he has learnt in marriage if he could descend to the mud the way he did in this instance. If the younger generation can no longer look up to the older generation for wisdom, guidance and discretion in the face of provocation, what else is left of the society? This is beyond politics and its dirtiness. The outburst speaks more to the personality of the ex-governor. This is the same man who as governor told a widow, who only begged for sympathy, if not empathy, to “go and die.” I think I am genuinely ashamed. It is embarrassing if we must counsel Oshiomhole at 73 that it is unacceptable before God, and condemnable among men to deride a woman on account of her childlessness.

Childbearing, we need to reiterate, is an exclusive preserve of God, the creator, who gives and refuses to give. It is not for nothing that my people praise the Almighty as Aseyiowu (He who does as he pleases). On the other hand, failure or success in marriage is the man’s prerogative. If Betsy indeed alluded to whatever failure Oshiomhole’s candidate might have suffered in marriage, bad as that may be, it does not justify Oshiomhole’s mockery of Betsy and her husband, Governor Obaseki, on the account of their childlessness. Doing that, we need to tell the senator, amounts to mocking God and, who knows tomorrow? My countryside upbringing teaches me that eni omo sin ló bí’mo (It is who is survived by offspring that can be said to be fruitful).  An elder does not run a zigzag. Edo people are too civilised. They are too cultured. That is why they intoned that elders don’t revenge insults with their age-long concept of ogieriakhi. The elders of my place also say when a child defecates in the family mortar, and the elder uses a rag to clean it up, it is akin to moving from one filth to another filth. Oshiomhole is an elder by all standards. Can we all appeal to him to please demonstrate that grey hair is all about wisdom?

By Sonnie Ekwowusi

The continued detention of the EndBadGovernance protesters by the Tinubu administration demonstrates that the administration has blossomed into full-blown despotism and totalitarianism. It is no wonder that the international human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, has recently called for the immediate and unconditional release of over 1,000 #EndBadGovernance protesters who are currently in prison custody nationwide due to their participation in the recent nationwide #EndBadGovernance protest.

Similarly, the Catholic Bishop Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), Transparency International (TI), renowned human rights activist Femi Falana SAN, and others have vociferously urged the federal government to expedite the release of the #EndBadGovernance protesters and other individuals being detained in connection with the protest. According to Falana, no fewer than 2,111 protesters have been arrested in connection with the nationwide protest, out of which 1,403 have been secretly arraigned in various courts and ordered to be remanded in prison custody due to lack of legal representation.

This follows the surreptitious granting of a 60-day extension to the police by Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja to detain 124 alleged protesters, including at least 22 minors. In another development, a Federal High Court in Abuja has issued an order freezing the bank accounts of 32 individuals and companies allegedly linked to the #EndBadGovernance protest. Meanwhile, the Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR) has drawn the attention of the federal government to the deteriorating health of some of the detained protesters, particularly Michael Adaramoye, Mosiu Sodiq, and Eleojo Opaluwa.

The nationwide #EndBadGovernance protest spanned ten days, from August 1 to 8, 2024. It is noteworthy that, prior to the protest, the federal government and some state governments openly acknowledged that the right to protest is a constitutional right and, therefore, urged the would-be protesters to conduct their protest in a peaceful manner devoid of violence.

The Lagos State government not only permitted the would-be protesters to protest but also directed them to do so in designated places in Lagos. It is therefore surprising that the protest has drawn the ire of the Tinubu government, culminating in the arrest and detention of over 1,000 protesters, including minors aged 14-17, who have been thrown into prison on accusations of terrorism, treason, and treasonable felony under the Terrorism (Prevention & Prohibition) Act.

The minors being detained include: Muktar Ishaq Alhassan, 16; Sani Aliyu, 17; Mahmud Mustapha, 16; Umar Abdullahi, 17; Habibu Sani, 17; Mustapha Abubakar, 17; Sani Hassan Idris, 17; Abdulrahaman Ibrahim, 17; and Salisu Adamu, 16. Others are Bilal Auwalu, 15; Amir Muhd, 17; Abdul’aziz Adam, 15; Sadiq Sunusi, 15; Ibrahim Sani, 17; Hassan Muhd, 17; Saifullahi Muhd, 15; Umar Ali, 17; Musa Isyaku, 15; Muhd Musa, 14; Usman Amiru, 14; Abdulganiyu Musa, 15; and Sunusi Nura, 14.

If the federal government had initially acknowledged the right of the protesters to protest under the Constitution and even permitted the protesters to go out and protest, why is the same federal government now turning around to arrest and detain the protesters, accusing them of committing terrorism, and treasonable felony? Why detain harmless minors who probably joined the protest for the fun of it?

It is unfortunate that the Tinubu administration has been unlawfully arresting, torturing, and detaining some of the protesters and promoters, contrary to sections 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution, which guarantee the right to freedom of expression and assembly. Additionally, the government has been unlawfully freezing the bank accounts of some of the #EndBadGovernance protesters and promoters.

The aforesaid actions of the Tinubu administration are illegal and unconstitutional. The continued detention of these protesters and the freezing of their bank accounts are capable of triggering another round of protests. We have yet to recover from the damaging effects of the last wave of protests, yet the government is not laying the groundwork for peace. Instead of giving peace a chance, the government is persecuting the #EndBadGovernance protesters and promoters.

Why should citizens suffer prolonged incarceration for exercising their fundamental rights and expressing their views about Nigeria? The truth is that young people in this country—those in the age bracket of, say, 18 to 45, who could technically be categorized as the younger generation—are seething with anger, perhaps now more than ever, over the way they are constantly being shortchanged in Nigeria. They are angry about the country’s deteriorating politics, increasing youth unemployment, the failed education system, and, in short, about everything. They are angry that President Tinubu is living in a lap of wasteful expenditure and opulence at the expense of the Nigerian people, who are dying of hunger and human misery.

The paradox is that Nigerian youth constitute a significant percentage of our population, yet they are completely marginalized in the scheme of things.

The worrisome aspect is that while the government has developed a proclivity for arresting and detaining young people on any flimsy excuse, political office holders who have looted the treasury are freely walking the streets untouched. Do we have two criminal justice systems in Nigeria—one for the rich and another for the poor? The painful aspect is that while there are abundant laws against police brutality and human rights violations in Nigeria, the Nigerian police still go about arresting and detaining suspects and dumping them in prison without bail or trial. As clearly stipulated in our 1999 Constitution, every citizen is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law of competent jurisdiction.

Additionally, any person who is arrested or detained shall be informed in writing within 24 hours, in a language they understand, of the facts and grounds for their arrest or detention. If a person is arrested either for the purpose of being charged in court or upon reasonable suspicion of committing an offense, they must be charged in court within a reasonable time not exceeding 48 hours, failing which they should be granted bail.

Therefore, the Tinubu administration is urged to immediately initiate the processes for the release of the #EndBadGovernance protesters. The government should halt any further clampdown on #EndBadGovernance protesters. Nothing is gained by seeking revenge against these protesters and their supporters. After all, they are our children. Rather than wage war against our youth, the government should, in the coming weeks, order the release of the detained young protesters. It is self-destructive to continue shortchanging the young people, the leaders of tomorrow.

The beauty of democracy, in contrast to the totalitarianism and dictatorship we witnessed during the military regimes in Nigeria, is that citizens are free to express their opinions without any form of intimidation, persecution, or victimization. The rule of law ought to reign supreme over the arbitrary and capricious exercise of power.

Arbitrarily arresting peaceful protesters undermines the rule of law and further erodes public trust in the Tinubu government. Peaceful protest is a fundamental human right enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution. The detention of a suspect in prison without bail or trial is unconstitutional and actionable in law. In a democracy, the government must respect the voices of its citizens. Peaceful protests are a means for people to express their views, grievances, and demands.

Suppressing a peaceful protest by young people undermines democratic principles and can lead to more protest against the government. Nigeria is a signatory to various international treaties and conventions, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which protect the rights to freedom of assembly and expression.

Arresting peaceful protesters flagrantly violates these obligations and can damage Nigeria’s international reputation. When citizens are denied the right to protest, they may resort to other, less peaceful means of expressing their dissatisfaction. This can lead to instability, violence, and disruption of public order, which is detrimental to the nation as a whole.

Concluded

At 89, old age has confined Dr. Omololu Olunloyo to the wheelchair, but he remains as sharp as he was 29 years ago when I first met him. He still does not wear eyeglasses, even to read. A genius who proved his prodigy as a toddler. I thought I should visit him and inform him how lucky he is that he was born in 1935 and not now. I sauntered into his genial presence last Friday; his back facing my arrival. He was born and raised at a time genius and youthfulness were not crimes and disabilities. Today’s children do not have his kind of luck – the girls can be married off at any age but can’t go to school at any age. From next year, both boys and girls in Nigeria are barred from seeking admission into the university at the age Olunloyo sought his.

On 16 July, 2013, our senators fought over what should be the age of maturity for the Nigerian girl. The Senate had sat to review Section 29 of the 1999 Constitution. Section 29(4)(b) says “any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age.” Popular Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima from Zamfara State, supported by Senator Danjuma Goje from Gombe State, stoutly opposed a recommendation that that Section 29(4)(b) be deleted so that 18 years contained in Section 29(4)(a) could be affirmed properly as the age of maturity in Nigeria. Senator Sani argued that once girls of any age are married, they are considered mature and “of full age.” The Senate upheld his argument after a storm. The provision was retained and it is there in our constitution as I write this.

Some actions and decisions are as hot as 20-year-old pounded yam – they burn fingers. Senator David Mark who presided over the voting exercise on that clause in 2013 warned his colleagues that they were “on the threshold of history.” He asked each of them to “vote according to (their) conscience.” And they did, endorsing marriage (not 18 years) as the marker of maturity for girls. Could it be that today’s education minister, Tahir Mamman, is unaware of that provision in our constitution which his senators championed and endorsed eleven short years ago? Minister Mamman told a national television last week that age 18 is the minimum for writing the Senior Secondary School Certificate exams and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination. He said he was enforcing an old, existing policy.

If a girl of 14 years is considered “of full age” by our constitution because she is married, shouldn’t that her “full age” automatically qualify her for university education? And, shouldn’t this, in fact, apply to boys also because the same constitution – Section 42(1a & b) – expressly forbids discrimination on the basis of sex? If the married are qualified because they are married, the unmarried ones have Section 15 (2) of the constitution to run to. The section adds discrimination on the basis of “status” to the list of the prohibited. Marriage is a social status.

Senator Sani Yerima is out of the Senate but Goje is still there. So, can Goje please come out against this education policy as boldly as he and Yerima did in 2013 for marriage? If he needs to foment trouble for the Senate president as he did for David Mark in 2013, he should for the sake of the future. He should be heard loud and clear telling our minister and the president that anyone who is mature enough to read through Senior Secondary School up to the point of writing the final papers should also be deemed “of full age” and “of university age”. Whatever (and whoever) is good for marriage should be good for education – except there is something else hidden in this 18-years policy enforcement. Or is it a distraction from the existential pains of the present?

Someone should tell the minister and his boss, the president, that they cannot climb this tree from the top. The policy they are vowing to implement is 6-3-3-4. If they want to enforce the 18-years-or-nothing policy, the place to start is the point of entry into primary school – the first year of the first six years of schooling. That is, if they can do it without first expunging Section 29(4)(b) from the constitution.

It is President Bola Tinubu I pity more here. What his minister is toying with is a decision that will affect every home where education is prized above politics. You can’t ask sixteen-year-old children of the rich and the poor not to write their final exams and be greeted with love and thanks. No. What would those students be doing between their present age and when they would clock 18? Marriage or street trading or banditry? I should think Tinubu is too smart to own this gamble and be buried in its rubble. He will certainly find out that this matter is far more dangerous than mass hunger and oil subsidy removal. This journey is an ambiguous adventure which will likely drag his government into a forest of a billion troubles.

“A righteous man regards the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” The system appears not done with helpless parents who are condemned to life perpetually spent on petrol and palliative queues. It has moved its afflictive fingers to their children. But why?

A horde of regime choristers are online and offline singing endorsements for this hemlock. Tinubu should run away from them and check them out. Those ones and or their own children graduated long ago at ages younger than what they prescribe now. They now say today’s young ones are too much in a hurry. The median age at death is what the white man calls life expectancy. The WHO says it refers to “the number of years a person can expect to live.” In the United States, it is 79.25 years. In Nigeria, as I write, it is 56.05 years. Out of those 56 short years, ASUU will take its own which is infinite; NYSC will take one. Very crucial is unemployment which will take years that are indeterminate in number. How many do we really have to live? And you want these super kids to waste away waiting for your magic year before trying their luck by going to the university?

I met Olunloyo last Friday sitting exactly the way an Einstein would in a lab. First Class (Honours) Mathematics; PhD Applied Mathematics at age 26; commissioner at 27; former governor, Oyo State. He was there, profoundly deep, all sorts of printed materials around him. I saw him immersed in the soul of what was playing from a sound box by his side stool.
“Classical,” I said of the tune wafting in the air.
“Yes. Heavenly. W.A. Mozart, 1756 to 1791. Genius,” he told me.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer and pianist. Mozart started playing music at age 3; he started composing at age 5. By the time he was 17, he had played in European royal courts and palaces. A biographer described his physique as “remarkably small”; another agreed that “he was small” and added that “his large intense eyes gave no signs of his genius.” Mozart had a total of 626 compositions: symphonic, operatic, chamber, choral. He did all he had to do and died at thirty five. His number 626 composition is named ‘Requiem.’

“He was a prodigy. He had no time to go to school,” Olunloyo told me. I replied that if Mozart was born here and now and would want to go to school, our government would say no. He cannot; he must wait for his age and time. Even if he smuggled himself into a school, the system would wait for him at the port of disembarkation. He would not write his final papers until the year our government decreed him ripe. We laughed. Olunloyo described the government policy of outlawing writing WAEC and NECO exams before age 18 as nonsense. “I wrote mine at 17,” he stressed.

If you meet your gist mate, you become talkative. We launched into a long session, discussing the age and life of geniuses, plunging deep into music and mathematics, particularly the marriage between the two disciplines. He brought out his secondary school class four result sheet. I looked at it and smiled. He asked why. I told him his Biology looked like mine. I never scored more than 68 in that subject. He was a one hundred percenter in mathematics. I told him I had that too, not once, not twice. Maths was my forte before I was abducted by literature and the arts. Really? Yes, but that was where the comparison ends. I was not described as “very heady” by any of my own teachers. At the university, Olunloyo consistently beat his own records where he took “first place in all his mathematics classes.” He was described as a gold medallist at the 611-year-old University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he did his PhD. What does being a gold medallist mean? I asked him. He said it meant being first among the first.
“For instance, in an exam, I scored 132 over 100.” He told me and I couldn’t understand how that arithmetic was possible. I asked him how.
“If you are asked to answer five questions for full marks and you go on competitively to do as many as you wished, you get more than 100,” he explained. I asked if that happened to him once. “More than once,” he answered and I laughed. He asked why. I told him, here, he would fail; you can’t be asked to answer five questions and you proceed to answer all eight questions contained on your question paper. The system will fail and ‘jail’ you for not following instructions. You will be guilty of a crime called ‘too know.’

We went back to Mozart.
“His music makes the smart smarter”, I teased the old genius. He looked at me, flashed the old blithe smile and pointed at my phone.
“Yes, the Mozart Effect. Let’s ask Google for details on that.” I checked. The Mozart Effect is a scientific theory that links music with smartness. It is popular and proven. It claims, with more than an assumption, that listening to Mozart’s compositions and other classical music increases spatial intelligence. “Yes,” Olunloyo chipped in his experience: “When I was in school, his number 525 was always the last music we played before entering the exam hall.”
“Oh. It was your talisman, Mozart’s music?”
“It worked,” he said, smiling.

My people say a song that is not difficult to lead should not be difficult to follow. They say when a good leader says “haaay”, he wouldn’t long to hear behind him “haaah”. Given the right place and age, brilliance can be contagious. Mozart produced another music genius in a man called Ludwig Beethoven. At age seven, this child prodigy had his first public performance. He also never had formal schooling but is remembered today as “one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music.” He was lucky that he was born where he was born and when he was born. His youthful age would be of no value here – except for marriage and associated conjugal bedroom benefits.

We moved to Évariste Galois (1811-1832). Remarkable mathematics genius. People of Mathematics, and generally of STEM, remember him with thanks for giving their world Abstract Algebra and Group theory from which computer science, physics, coding theory and cryptography evolved and got their buga. What is astounding is that Galois did almost all his mathematical ‘magics’ as a teenager. History records him as that tiny boy who solved a mathematics problem that had been open for 350 years. He died at 21. If he was here, his genius would have long died before him.

There was also Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the founders of Geophysics. Our government people who are making fetishes of age 18 should read the history of this genius who is called the ‘Prince of Mathematics’. History says at age three, Gauss corrected a maths error made by his father. There are other stories about this genius which may teach our husbands some lessons in how to implement policies without killing the star in our kids.

At age 10, Gauss found a shortcut for calculating the sum of an arithmetic progression. The story goes that one afternoon, Gauss’s schoolteacher was tired of teaching. He thought the way to find some rest was to keep his troublesome class busy. He gave his little pupils what he thought was a maths exercise that would sweat them for at least 10 or 15 minutes. Teacher asked students to sum the integers from 1 to 100. In simple English, the teacher asked his students to do 1+2+3+4+5+…up to 99+100. In less than five seconds, Gauss told teacher he had found the answer. What is the answer? Gauss replied that the sum was 5050. History says the boy’s classmates and teacher were astonished. All others fumbled and failed to get the correct answer within the allotted time. How did Gauss do it? Dr Olunloyo said precocious Gauss simply calculated 100x(100+1) and divided it by 2. He said he had his (Olunloyo’s) own way of doing the same sum – also in record seconds. My host picked a piece of paper, collected my pen, and proceeded to demonstrate the method to me, his student. I thought his is simpler and faster than Gauss’. Carl Friedrich Gauss went on in life to confound the world with his genius. He had his PhD at age 21 – a feat that would be classified irregular and unacceptable by the education policy of today’s government in Nigeria.

There was also Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). He too made his mark in maths, physical science and philosophy. He had a father that behaved almost like our minister of education who is saying that you can’t proceed in learning unless you are 18. Pascal plunged himself into studying geometry at a very young age. At age 12, he found what we still use today in our study of angles and triangles. Pascal theorized that “the inside angles of a triangle always add up to the total of two right angles.” His father, also a mathematician, was alarmed at his son’s precocity. He thought the boy was too young for what he got himself into. The way to save the boy from himself was to remove all mathematics textbooks from the house. But because the boy was on his way to meet his destiny, he found a way around his dad’s sanctions: He started doing geometry whenever his father was out or he was too busy to look his boy’s side. The father soon surrendered to his son’s genius and encouraged his flower to bloom. And it did, spectacularly. He invented the world’s first calculator in 1642 among other great things he did. Then he branched into philosophy where he used maths to prove the existence of God. He donated to the world what is known today as ‘Pascal’s Wager’: Believe in God “is a wise wager…If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that He is.”

Tortoise wishes to fight with his fists, but he has no fingers. The helpless people of Nigeria are that Tortoise. This fact the sword holders know. What is so special about the corpse of this 40-year-old policy that it must be exhumed from the cemetery to pollute the progress of our kids? And, why now, why ever?

I had a university classmate who graduated First Class at age 19. That was 34 years ago. She is doing very well today in the United States. Immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, was born on 16 February, 1960. For his secondary school education, he attended Barewa College, Zaria and graduated there at the top of his class in 1976. How old was he when he achieved that feat? He was certainly not 18. Around me at home and in the office are exceptionally brilliant young men and women who left the university by or before age 20. Today’s homes are dormitories of geniuses. As Chief Afe Babalola argued in a newspaper report last Friday, “children are now demonstrating exceptional academic intelligence which is not common in their ages.” This government cannot be allowed to stop their momentum. The uproar against this government’s war on genius is loud in the air. It will remain loud. If the pesky lice of this regime stay stubborn in the hems and seams of our babanriga, our thumbs will not stop crushing them; bloodstains on the fingernails won’t be our bother.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Seven years after his emergence as Nigeria’s military Head of State, in the third quarter of 1974, General Yakubu Gowon placed a telephone call to the then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Taslim Elias. The subject matter of the call, according to Atanda Fatayi Williams, himself then a Justice of the Supreme Court (and future CJN) with whom the Chief Justice discussed the matter, was a complaint by the Head of State “about the manner in which the courts in the country were being used for the indiscriminate swearing of affidavits in which allegations of corruption were made against public functionaries.”

General Gowon’s agonistes had their origins in events in his home state, Benue-Plateau (as it was then known). First, he had been forced to let go of a trusted minister from his state, Joseph Tarka, after one Godwin Daboh Adzuana deposed to an affidavit with quite damaging allegations of corruption against the minister. Gowon’s call to the CJN followed in the wake of another affidavit sworn to this time by Aper Aku (who later became the first elected governor of Benue State in 1979) accusing the then military governor of Benue-Plateau State and Gowon’s relation, Joseph Gomwalk, of what Fatayi Williams later described as “corruption on a vast scale.”

Rather than address the allegations of corruption, the General sought the help of his Chief Justice to shut down the disclosures. In the then incumbent, Gowon found a Chief Justice who was willing to go beyond the call of the law to fulfill the importuning of his Chief of State. Following consultations with his peers at the Supreme Court, CJN Elias convened a meeting of the Advisory Judicial Committee (AJC), as the apex mechanism for judicial governance was then called. Led by the CJN, the membership of the AJC included the Attorney-General of the Federation, all the Chief Justices (as they were then called) and Grand Khadis of the States; as well as the President of the Federal Revenue Court.

This high judicial conclave decided unanimously that “except in connection with proceedings already pending, the courts would no longer allow affidavits to be sworn in court by aggrieved citizens.” Public reaction was immediate and understandably visceral to a decision which was unconcealed in its design to instrumentalize the judiciary in order to hide inconvenient facts on behalf of the regime in power. To make matters worse, the AJC could not cite any legal authority or basis for their decision. They were collectively the highest judicial figures in the country and their word represented the law, or so they thought. It was abuse of judicial power on a colossal scale. Judicial authority was shot and it is arguable that it never recovered.

When a new military regime overthrew General Gowon in July 1975, their narrative and rationale harked back to the corruption allegations and the desperation of the regime to procure a cover-up with the ex-cathedra assistance of the judiciary high command. An early casualty of the new regime was Chief Justice Elias whom they forced to abdicate. They also took the hacksaw to judicial tenure, retiring senior judges compulsorily.

Then as now the judiciary in Nigeria was the author of its own defenestration. The real scandal then was that the decision to foreclose disclosure of inconvenient facts in affidavits occurred without dissent among the AJC. It showed the regimental and cloistered tendencies of the herd at their finest, even one comprising people claiming to be learned.

The best that can be said of the immediate past Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, is that he well and truly defanged the judiciary. When he was not in Port Harcourt cavorting with Nyesom Wike and his Group of Five Governors so-called; he was in Abuja dreaming us schemes to jump his next available family member or political satrap into a judicial sinecure. The unanimity of sentiment at his departure went beyond shame-faced relief.

Monday Phillips Ekpe writes delicately that the judiciary that Olukayode Ariwoola left behind made a habit of “rubbishing its own touted image” with “embarrassing and rampant unpredictability of judgments.” Onikekpo Braithwaite complains less delicately of a judiciary overcome by “mounting allegations of corruption, as well as the menace of conflicting judgments.” The Board of Editors of the Punch newspaper sadly acknowledge the reality of a judiciary characterized by “pervasive corruption” and of courts which “have become houses of rot and victims of state capture…. At 75 per cent, the judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Commission have the lowest public trust among Nigerians.”

On the back of this chastening diagnosis, many senior lawyers have stepped in with a rich and telling bouquet of recommendations for the new CJN, running the gamut from the platitudinous to the patronizing and everything in between. Former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Olisa Agbakoba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), desires reforms that are both “transformational and radical.” As part of that menu, one of his later successors, Augustine Alegeh (SAN), wants attention to “delays in the dispensation of justice and the uncertainty of the judgments of our courts.”

These references to “uncertainty” in or “conflicting”  judgments are coinages deployed by lawyers to avoid saying that some judgments are corrupt on their face. That, sadly, is the state of the courts that the new Chief Justice inherits. Indeed, a panel of the Court of Appeal has recently been constrained to describe as “scandalous” a High Court shielding former Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello, from criminal proceedings.

But that is only a tip of the proverbial iceberg. In this state of transition in the highest judicial office in the land, three words of caution are useful.

First, a CJN in search of a legacy needs clear priorities. Many of the suggestions to the new Chief Justice focus on institutional or administrative re-design. In reality, however, the principal problem that ails Nigeria’s judicial system is that the guardrails and incentives for ethical judicial service have been destroyed by a concert of senior judicial figures, senior lawyers and senior politicians. Reversing this needs a new coalition for public good in the judiciary. Without a re-engineering of the incentive structure, every effort at institutional re-design is bound to collapse. That begins with attention to appointment, preferment, accountability and discipline. Restoring consequences for judicial malfeasance will be key.

Second, a reverse engineering of the political capture of the Nigerian judicial system is essential. Evidence of this political capture is seen daily in the implausible decisions and improbable orders that issue in most cases of partisan political salience; in the speed with which such cases are assigned priority to the exclusion of the regular judicial docket; and in the improbable consistency in the line-up of judicial actors involved in these judicial concatenations. If politicians find themselves regularly before courts that are no longer beholden to their blandishments, they may be forced to rethink their approach to politics.

Third, a CJN who desires a constructive legacy must know whom to avoid. With some exceptions – such as the aforementioned Olisa Agbakoba and Augustine Alegeh – many senior lawyers who are now crawling out of the woodworks were nowhere to be seen or heard from when the immediate past CJN was busy wreaking havoc. If anything, some of them could be described with some justification as having been part of his enablers. Much of what emanates from these kinds of sources at this time could be at best self-serving. A CJN who desires to succeed needs to seriously avoid occupational intimacy with these kind.

A Chief Justice who seeks to accomplish any of these will encounter challenges. One who desires to accomplish all may even struggle to survive in office. Such could be the extent of the political pushback. But that is why the task of reforming Nigeria’s judicial system is now clearly well beyond the technocratic or professional incest of lawyers and judges. It is now political and only a Chief Justice willing to enlist citizens in that urgent task can scratch the surface.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]