Oseloka H. Obaze

The art and practice of good governance and nation-building is not for the apathetic, shortsighted or presumptuous. Only focused, selfless, visionary, adaptive and transformative leaders end up being great leaders and nation builders. For sixty-four years, Nigerian leaders have respectively offered platitudinous intent to make Nigeria great, and to restructure it for greater equity and effect. They all failed. On their respective watch, Nigeria has with disambiguating blatancy stagnated.

The argument has been made continually that Nigeria needs systematic restructuring, or risk being restructured by default, with indefinite outcomes. Realities gleaned from the just-concluded #EndBadGovernance protests offer a scary insight into the unfolding trajectory.  Nigeria has never been this polarized. Besides bad governance, Nigeria has been damaged by highly-placed bigotry. The protests have ended, but two salient variables remain: lessons learned and missed opportunities.

Curiously, one of the narratives that emanated from the August protests was the allusion of foreign involvement. This is mythical and mere shadow chasing. It was Nigeria that misplayed her diplomatic and political hands by meddling in Niger’s domestic affairs; thus damning as it were, realpolitik and historical and contiguous affinities. Some protesters unfurling presumed Russian flags on Nigeria’s soil was an outlier that reflected unintended and unforeseen consequences. It’s nonetheless a deeply troubling reality. Relatedly, the usually non-protesting North has finally protested. With its Zanga-Zanga fervor, the genie is out of the bottle and the much touted north-southwest pact stands amortized. Some have translated the Northern protests as indicative clamor for an Arewa Republic.

Nigeria’s diversity used to be her strength. As a composite of over 250 ethnic nationalities cobbled together by the colonialists, Nigeria had always managed to find some balance, by her three major Wazobia tribes symbolically standing in brotherhood, and also through the symbolic protection of minority rights.  This is no longer so. Unwittingly, Nigeria is presently being dangerously dissected by Nigerian elites, for primordial reasons that trumps her rich diversity and hardly serve common cause. 

Up till now, it was accepted, even if grudgingly, that each of the 250 ethnicities that form Nigeria’s national mosaic had a place and role in the federation. But as things stand, those places and rights seemingly can no longer be protected. Thus, the places and rights of the big three can’t be guaranteed. Ever more, Nigeria’s tight knit seams that underpin the national mosaic have frayed, making each ethnicity more distinct, yet weaker. Nigerians now seems averse to cohabitation, which denotes clear and present danger.  

Sardonically, some mistake and therefore misinterpret the evolving ethnocentric distinction as having achieved leadership primacy or unilateral sectional strength in a secular federal system. But the intrinsic comparative advantage of each ethnic component has not changed.  Neither has the mutually beneficial attributes. Here is the befuddling fallacy; whereas some national parts seem to have become stronger, the resiliency of the parts that form the whole have became visibly weaker. The crux of this challenge is the tactless default of recent leaders who placed sectional interests above national interest. 

In her 2018 book, Our Time Has Come; How India is Making its Place in the World, Alyssa Ayres, drew on how two successive Indian leaders, Mamohan Singh and Narendra Modi, single-mindedly and selflessly repositioned India. Apropos Nigeria, except for Murtala Muhammed’s Addis Ababa Declaration that ‘Africa has come of age’, no other Nigerian leader has in the strict sense, visualized and enunciated authoritatively, Nigeria’s place in the world. 

Contextually, Nigeria continues to wallow in unbridled leadership ineptitude and bad governance. Her comeuppance has manifested via unvarnished bigotry. And restructuring, as desirable as it is, remains to some, a national buzzword of seemingly inconsequential value. As far as metaphors go, present day Nigeria mirrors in stark reality, the depiction so well-captured by the great allegorist, John Bunyan: “He that is down needs fear no fall.” The apathy that is commonplace in Nigeria is predicated on the contrived willingness of the national elite to ensure that Nigeria, a fallen and failed nation stays down.

Oddly enough, the national elite clearly have not factored in fully, the intent and aspirations of the succeeding generation – Nigeria’s Gen-Zs. Hence, the unfolding battle ground for the soul of Nigeria, is across the generational divide. Perhaps Nigeria no longer needs to be restructured formally. The visible divide in the compartmentalized support of the national protests, speaks clearly to this fact. The people have restructured Nigeria, albeit involuntarily.

Also, the nation’s inexplicable change of her national anthem may yet prove prescient. ‘Nigeria, hail us or let huger kill us’. This assertion is antonym to ‘Nigeria we hail thee,’ which is now often mouthed facetiously and derisively. Such a sarcastic anecdote would be comical, if in reality, it was not so tragic. The scriptural return to the old order, if that was what the perfunctory anthem swap was meant to signify, holds nothing nostalgic, except for foolhardiness and pain, now well beyond suffering and smiling. It was exceedingly painful to hear Nigerians call for a return to military rule. It was also very painful for a nation of 200 million people to come off the 2024 Paris Olympics, without a single medal. Signs of the times!

For long Nigeria has been immersed in a rut. Truly, the rut did not start today. Still, given her dependent-independence status, asserting Nigeria’s independence, is now a bittersweet oxymoron. Nigeria can be whole, but it is not. Her citizens are cofounded by the stupor of independence co-mingled with incivility of deprivation. Long held beliefs of national greatness have turned grotesquely illusory. Due to squalidly bad leadership, Nigeria and her denizens reel in itinerancy. Nigeria and Nigerians have thus become a beggar nation, beggarly people; and debt and poverty challenged.

Bad governance in Nigeria is a reality. At all levels, governance has become a walk in the perilous forest; not a walk in the freedom park.  Presently, some of Nigeria’s best brains –youths trying to japa– lay buried in unmarked graves in the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea. Understandably it’s the prevailing dichotomies that compel some to seek an exit from the union; from that ‘sea of mud’ that is Nigeria, or die in the mud while trying. Yet some insist on the reset of Nigeria, convinced that a new Nigeria is possible. Their mission is not to put Nigeria asunder; but to reset it in line with the vision of the founding fathers and the tenets of true federalism and democracy.

There can be no pretenses whatsoever, that unaltered and un-restructured, Nigeria’s future will remain bleak; and her past indeterminate and fraught by a gilded era of disparate voices for unity. There could not be hope; not with interloping faux leaders taking charge in nation building; not with embedded voices in the southwest vociferously promoting the #IboMustGo campaign, without broad censure and disclaimers from the region’s elite; and not with the insipient call for military rule. What these attests to, is that very few true patriots remain who retain a modicum of unshaken faith in the cohesion and indivisibility of the nation. It’s salutary that some Patriots recently engaged the President.

Quo Vadis, Nigeria? Which Way Nigeria? Before ever talking of modalities for restructuring, Nigerians must grapple first with the need to reset Nigeria as one would reset an errantly late clock. There are two parts to this urgent process. There are inherent demands aligned with the national protestations. Too many grievances persist that needs to be addressed. So too, are unmet governance and material needs. Poverty, hunger and deprivations are the common denominators. That totality of bad governance can’t be wished away. And that’s the butt of the protestations by Nigerians.

Those protesters who took to the streets to clamor for change were not scofflaws or miscreants. They are hungry, disenfranchised and disappointed Nigerians. They are also Nigerians cognizant that peaceful protestations are permissible within constitutional ambits. Though separated by ethnicity and religion, they were unified by poverty, hunger and deprivations. As such, no bluster or intimidation can dampen their fervor. And so long as hunger and bad governance persist, we can expect more protestations in the months ahead.

Nigeria is in dire straits, but a sliver of hope remains. In contemplating Nigeria’s curious next steps, the present APC leadership should lead by example. First, is to acknowledge the evident governance fallibilities and quickly rethink its defective governance modalities. Second, is to concede to some key demands aimed at abating prevalent hunger and suffering. Third, with the recent convocation of the National Council of State, present and past Nigerian leaders must undertake measures to expeditiously rejig Nigeria; perhaps first, by embarking on a government of national unity comprised of a team of rivals. They can also elect to dither until unscripted circumstances compel a different trajectory to collective or segregated aspirations. That seemingly hard choice is indeed quite an easy one to make.

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Obaze is MD/CEO, Selonnes Consult – a policy, governance and management consulting firm in Awka.

By Calixthus Okoruwa

The recent Miss South Africa pageant gave vent to yet another outbreak of the ugly war of mutual hate that has built up over the years, between South Africa and Nigeria. A lady, one Chidimma Adetshina had entered for the Miss South Africa pageant and been shortlisted for the finals. “Adetshina,” being a Nigerian name apparently derives from her father, being Nigerian. This was Adetshina’s original sin. Even though Adetshina had been cleared by the organisers of the pageant to compete, on the understanding that her mother was South African, to many South Africans, this wasn’t enough. Ms. Adetshina in having one parent as a Nigerian “was not South African enough” to compete in the Miss South Africa pageant.

Ms. Adetshina is a black African like majority of South Africans, but this fact may have even infuriated South Africans the more, as the country has for years exhibited a growing predilection to a unique form of xenophobia that is targeted at fellow black Africans, namely afrophobia.

The young lady was trolled mercilessly by South Africans online, a process that soon degenerated to virtual fisticuffs between Nigerians and South Africans. Days later, the country would announce that it had found evidence that suggested that Adetshina’s mother, an erstwhile citizen of Mozambique had in acquiring South African citizenship, done so fraudulently via identity theft. Investigations were ongoing, it said. The announcement was an “aha moment” for the millions of South African trolls as it provided a convenient justification for their callous bullying. It didn’t take long for the young lady to decline further participation in the pageant, again to the delight of her South African trolls.

Eventually, it was a South African lady with roots traceable to France – in fact her parents are Caucasian – who won the pageant.

The Adetshina affair, is just another in a growing list of afrophobic incidents in South Africa. In 2008, at least 62 people were killed and many more injured by South African mobs which targeted the homes and businesses of African migrants including Nigerians. Again in 2015, at least 7 people were killed in anti-black-African foreigner violence. In 2019, the Nigerian private airline, Air Peace, helped to evacuate hundreds of Nigerians in the heat of another round of xenophobic violence in South Africa. Like other foreigners of black African descent, Nigerians are blamed for the economic malaise of the country, reflected in massive unemployment, drugs and crime, among others. The criminality of some Nigerians, it must be stated, is inexcusable and it facilitates the convenient blanket scape-goating of Nigerians even when there are many Nigerians living decently in the country.

South Africa has, since the abrogation of apartheid, demonstrated that it is not significantly different from the dozens of African countries which attained independence before it. Its political leaders have largely been corrupt, greedy, managerially incompetent and lacking in vision. It is the symptoms of the ineptitude of the country’s politicians that are daily reflected in a rail system that is fast becoming dysfunctional with rail infrastructure regularly vandalized wantonly across the country. It is the corruption and ineptitude that manifests in the costly inefficiency of the erstwhile energy monopoly, Eskom, which delivers increasing hours of darkness to South Africa.

Eskom is in this wise, very much like Nigeria’s oil monopoly, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which has for decades kept its four refineries non-operational, preferring to export crude oil and import refined fuels in opaque and shady deals while petrol queues have become a fact of life in Nigeria. It is government corruption and incompetence that continues to drive social inequality that finds expression in the sprawling ghettoes, euphemistically referred to as “townships,” which adjoin South Africa’s major cities; “townships” overflowing with unemployed young people living in filth, disease and deprivation, amidst crime and insecurity. And it is a lamentable lack of foresight that leads politicians to neglect South Africa’s public education, in so doing, worsening the country’s inequality crisis. The average black South African, for instance, being a victim of the malnourished public education system, typically earns only a quarter of what his white counterpart earns.

Unfortunately, like their peers elsewhere in Africa, South Africa’s politicians have long systematically planted the seed of foreigner distrust in the minds of their simple citizens in order to deflect attention from their shortcomings. So rather than interrogate the competence or lack of it of their politicians under whose watch South Africa has for many years been on a steep decline, black South Africans regularly turn their anger and frustration at their worsening circumstances, against foreigners – fellow black Africans. They are poor and hungry because by setting up a shop or car-wash or hair salon nearby, the Nigerian immigrant deprives them of jobs, while the Malawian, Zimbabwean and Ethiopian immigrants have taken up the cleaning jobs at all the neighbouring hotels. The town is increasingly unsafe because the Nigerian immigrants have recruited dozens of jobless, uneducated South Africans, trafficking some and turning others to drug couriers and addicts. And the Nigerians have become so bold, so arrogant, they regularly marry South Africans!

Politician-inspired afriphobia did not start with South Africans, interestingly. Over the years, Nigerian traders have been deported from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana and the then Zaire. Togolese farmers and labourers have been deported from Ghana and Ivory Coast. Even civil servants from Benin Republic (Dahomey at the time) have been deported from Niger and Ivory Coast.

In 1981, with the Nigerian economy tottering on the brink of disaster even while its politicians, lived in nonchalant profligacy, the statesman, Obafemi Awolowo wrote an open letter to then President Shehu Shagari. To avert looming economic collapse, Awolowo counseled Shagari to radically reorganize the machinery of state, including eliminating wasteful spending. Shagari’s government dismissed Awolowo’s warning, countering that the Nigerian economy was sound and hinting that Awolowo’s critique was occasioned by sour grapes (Awolowo had lost the 1979 presidential elections to Shagari). Barely two years later, faced with the consequences of its poor economic policies in the face of rapidly plunging oil prices, Shehu Shagari sought out a victim to blame – foreigners. In January 1983, more than two million fellow Africans, comprising more than a million Ghanaians were summarily evicted from Nigeria. Their crime? As “illegal aliens,” they bore huge responsibility for Nigeria’s economic crisis. Fourteen years earlier, Ghana had similarly expelled Nigerians. Of course, as in the case of Ghana in 1969, there is no evidence to show that these evictions of millions of Africans from Nigeria made any positive impact on Nigeria’s economy, as the decline continued unabated. In fact by December 1983, it provided a convenient excuse for military adventurers, led by Muhammad Buhari to forcefully take over power.

Buoyed by the ignorance of majority of their people, Africa’s politicians have continued to resort to the afriphobia playbook. Where there are no foreigners to blame, they play the ethnic or religious card, both of which are ultra-emotional subjects in many parts of Africa.

Perhaps what the continent needs is the emergence of a corps of educated Africans which can help to play a mediating role of nipping the chicanery of politicians in the bud from time-to-time and encouraging Africans to be more rigorous in interrogating their leaders and holding them to account. In much the same way as the journalism profession introduced “factchecks” to help stem the spread of fake news, Africa’s elite need to come together to help save the continent’s peoples from the machinations of its indolent politicians who pith nationalities and ethnic groups against each other in order to deflect attention from their failures, corruption and incompetence.

• Okoruwa works for Lagos-headquartered communications company, XLR8

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

At the beginning of March 2020, Nigeria’s Supreme Court  dismissed an application for the review of its seven-week old decision to judicially install Hope Uzodinma as the Governor of Imo State, citing as its main reason the need to preserve the authority and finality of decisions of the apex court. The court issued what appeared to be a principled defence of the finality of its judgments, declaring somewhat ostentatiously that once it had issued a decision, “it shall remain forever.”

Olukayode Ariwoola, who delivered the judgment of the majority in the review was also a member of the original panel which decided in January 2020 that Mr. Uzodinma had won the election despite being the candidate who came fourth in the tally of votes scored among the contestants on the ballot. Few could recall at the time that Olukayode Ariwoola had previous experience in this kind of improbable judicial alchemy.

Ahead of the 2007 general elections, the then ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) chose Joy Emordi, a lawyer, to fly its flag in the contest to represent Anambra North in the Senate. In the contest for the party ticket, she had defeated Ubanese Alphonsus Igbeke, who had been installed by judicial order after the 2003 elections as the member representing Anambra East/Anambra West in the House of Representatives. After losing the senatorial ticket to Ms. Emordi, Ubanese Igbeke relocated his party loyalty to the All Nigeria Peoples’ Party (ANPP)

Election day was 28 April 2007 and voting took place in the seven LGAs of Anambra North to determine the person to represent the constituency in the Senate. At the end of the contest, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) returned Joy Emordi as the winner. Five of the losing candidates, including Ubanese Igbeke, lodged petitions to challenge the outcome before the Election Petition Tribunal in Awka, the capital of Anambra State.

On 14 June 2008, the tribunal dismissed the petitions and upheld the return of Senator Emordi. Eight months later, on 10 February 2009, a Court of Appeal panel comprising Victor Omage, Ladan Tsamiya, and Olukayode Ariwoola as Justices of Appeal dismissed the appeal by one of the candidates, Jessie Balonwu, against the decision of the first instance tribunal, holding in particular that there were elections in the seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the constituency.

This was significant because the crux of the appeal by Ubanese Igbeke in his own appeal was that there were no elections in two of the seven LGAs in the constituency, specifically in Anyamelum and Onitsha South, respectively. At the same time, Igbeke also asked the Court of Appeal to find that Joy Emordi had failed to score the highest number of lawful votes in the election and to, instead declare that he had in fact scored the highest number of lawful votes in the election and return him as the winner.

One year later, on 25 March 2010, the Court of Appeal, this time comprising Amiru Sanusi, Ladan Tsamiya and Olukayode Ariwoola found in favour of Ubanese Igbeke on all issues and returned him as duly elected. To reach this decision, a panel of the Court of Appeal which included two of the three Justices who decided the earlier case, inexplicably changed their position on the pivotal issue of whether balloting in fact occurred in all the LGAs in the constituency but felt no need to explain how or why.

Having found in Igbeke’s favour on that point, the panel incredulously proceeded to award the election to him when the only logical order was a re-run in the LGAs where the court claimed that no balloting in fact occurred. The skills required to produce this outcome defied all laws of judicial calisthenics.

Senator Emordi lost in her effort to appeal against this to the Supreme Court and on 25 May 2010 – with a mere one year to spare out of a four-year parliamentary term – Ubanese Igbeke took the oath as Senator representing Anambra North.

Of the three Justices of Appeal who implausibly sent Ubanese Igbeke to the Senate, Ladan Tsamiya remained on the Court of Appeal where his career ended in ignominy in 2016 on allegations of corruption in another election dispute.

In the month of the fourth anniversary of the senatorial debut of Ubanese Igbeke secured through their judicial machination, Amiru Sanusi proceeded in May 2015 to the Supreme Court from where he retired in February 2020, the month after they installed Hope Uzodinma as Imo State Governor.

The year after Igbeke’s entry into the Senate, in November 2011, Goodluck Jonathan appointed Olukayode Ariwoola as a Justice of the Supreme Court. After more than one decade on the court, in June 2022, Ariwoola emerged as Chief Justice after leading an unprecedented mutiny against his predecessor in which 14 Justices accused then Chief Justice, Tanko Muhammad, of ignoring their wellbeing. He was officially born 22 August, 1954.

The tenure of Olukayode Ariwoola as Chief Justice of Nigeria began “amid ‘all-time low’ judicial trust.” It was not too much to hope that shoring up public trust in the judicial branch should have been a priority in these circumstances. Instead, he seemed to be on a mission to make up for lost opportunities in the material benefits of office. The result was a tenure which denuded public trust in the judiciary rather than rehabilitate it.

As CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola will be well remembered for the alacrity with which he redressed any previous neglect – real or imagined – of the welfare of his own family and his beloved village, Iseyin, in Oyo State. In two years in the position, he made his son a judge of the Federal High Court; his daughter-in-law a judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory; his brother auditor of the National Judicial Council  (NJC) chaired by himself as Chief Justice; and another reported member of his family a Justice of the Court of Appeal. It was done with a grubbiness that did not pretend to have any regard for the authority of the CJN or respect for the Judicial Code of Conduct, which explicitly prohibits such manifest nepotism with the warning that a judge “who takes advantage of the judicial office for personal gain or for gain by his or her relative or relation abuses power.”

Fittingly, Olukayode Ariwoola’s tenure as Chief Justice ends in a filigree of clannish patronage. In his last meeting as Chair of the NJC, he handed out judicial sinecures to two sisters; one to the High Court of Kwara State and another to the High Court of Ondo State. The month before, he had installed their brother as a judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory. Their dad was a judicial benefactor.

In 2020, the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) then chaired by Olukayode’s Ariwoola’s predecessor sanctioned a lawyer who had applied for elevation to the rank of SAN by altering Supreme Court judgments to insert his name as counsel in cases in which he had not acted. 21 days to his departure as Chief Justice, Olukayode Ariwoola rushed through new elevations, making this same lawyer a SAN when he was better off being struck off the Roll entirely. When, in one of her first acts as Chief Justice, his successor inaugurates this kind of specimen into the Inner Bar, it will set the seal on unquestionably the most baleful judicial legacy in contemporary Nigeria.

Addressing the opening of the legal year before a special session of the Supreme Court – the last to be presided over by Olukayode Ariwoola as CJN – in November 2023, Ebun Sofunde, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) speaking on behalf of the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN), testified that judicial reputation “is at an all-time low… to a point where it may no longer be redeemable” and ended with the complaint that Supreme Court judgments under him had become “perfunctory.” These words easily sum up what will be remembered as the most lamentable tenure in the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria since the appointment of the first indigenous CJN in 1958.

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