#SomberTuesday! As expected, the new year progresses relentlessly, for neither time nor tide waits for anyone. It’s still resolutions season. The quest for transformation is a never-ending one in human life. Candidates for political office & their proxies continue campaigns, each promising that they have the magic formula to transform Nigeria. However, history shows that such promises are rarely kept. Nigeria’s quest for true democracy requires collective work if there will be political, economic & social transformation.

The masses are suffering from economic, political & social stressors that are not of their making. Regardless, they must become agents of the change we all desire by embracing civic engagement as a norm. Voting is the 1st step. Tenacity & vigilance are also needed. Civil society organizations should hold government accountable & build pro-poor coalitions for change. Elected officials must be uncharacteristically selfless & work to produce the beautiful Nigeria their campaigns are promising. These are all urgent goals. Our competitive world won’t wait for us to become organized.

If Nigeria is to be transformed, all citizens must commit to working together to reach the nation’s full potential. We must curb, even end insecurity, inequality, unemployment, and underemployment. These are core demands made by the #EndSARS protesters. Our youths called for good governance, an end to impunity, violence, and police brutality. They were violently attacked by state security forces. Two years on, #Nigeria cannot afford to forget the massacre of peacefully demonstrating #EndSARS protesters at #LekkiTollGate and other locations. Together, we should declare: #NigerianWomenArise #EndPoliceBrutalityinNigeriaNOW #EndSars #EndSWAT #EndImpunity 

I am the voice in the wilderness who repetitively quotes Howard Zinn’s statement and insists on its relevance to this moment in Nigeria’s history: “Civil disobedience, that’s not our problem. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while, the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” Let the kleptocrats give back our stolen wealth so that we can fix our infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and also offer worthwhile social protection to our people.

Let the masses enjoy the full benefits of citizenship in Nigeria. Let the leaders and political class repent and build peace with justice. This is no time for politics as usual. The people elected should be those trusted to bring justice, equity, and human security to the entire country, not expedient, unethical, and egocentric individuals determined to dominate for self-aggrandizement or sectional gain. We don’t need oligarchs’ continued domination. We also need a government that puts the interests of majority of citizens first.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”

(Stanley Baldwin, Queen’s Hall, London, 17 March 1931)

When he took over power at the end of December 1983 after overthrowing the elected administration of President Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari, then a Major-General in the Nigerian Army, had all the trappings of a high priest of a regimental cult. His entire programme was boiled down to three letters -“War Against Indiscipline” – which went by the deliberately suggestive acronym, WAI.

To implement this, Buhari the General arrived in power armed with a hatful of decrees, nearly all of which required everyone to accomplish his diktat “with immediate effect.” On some issues, such as corruption or drug trafficking, even this impossibility was too dilatory for him.

Drug trafficking was just bubbling up the policy food chain as Nigeria was then on the foothills of emerging as a major transit point in the global drug trade. General Buhari’s answer to this was the Special Tribunal (Miscellaneous Offences) Decree Number 20 of 1984, which elevated a laundry list of 19 offences into the league of crimes punishable with death. One of those was drug trafficking.

Although promulgated eight months after he assumed office, General Buhari took such a dim view of drug trafficking, he had the decree back-dated to the end of 1983. These offences were to be tried by tribunals comprising a high court judge as chair with three other uniformed persons as members, including two soldiers and one police officer.

By an instrument issued on 28 August 1984, General Buhari constituted the Tribunals, five of them to sit respectively in Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, and Port Harcourt. In Lagos, he designated the urbane Justice Adebayo Desalu to head the tribunal.

After their arrest at the end of 1983, Bartholomew Owo, Bernard Ogedengbe, and Lawal Ojuolape, were arraigned as suspects on charges of drug trafficking, which was then a felony. They were 26, 29, and 30 years old, respectively. Regular courts had jurisdiction to try the offence. Decree number 20 changed all that, railroading them long after the fact to be tried before Buhari’s mongrel tribunals on charges that had become man-eating.

Convicted in March 1985, General Buhari quickly signed the death warrants, condemning these three young men to be killed. On 8 April 1985, a squad of soldiers duly obliged, shooting these three in a public execution at the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in Lagos in a process that “took 5 minutes to complete. The victims were loaded into rough coffins for burial at Atan cemetery in Lagos.”

Four months after this event, in August 1985, General Buhari’s Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Babangida, overthrew his boss and, by Decree number 22 of 1986, undid Buhari’s imposition of capital punishment for drug trafficking.

Seven years thereafter, in 1993, following an investigation into a Nigerian heroin trafficking ring that lasted nearly five years, a United States District Court in the Northern District of Illinois issued forfeiture orders for the sum of $460,000 in respect of 10 accounts held in the name of one Bola Tinubu. In 2015, 30 years after his ouster from power, Muhammadu Buhari, claiming to be a “born-again democrat”, returned to power in Nigeria as an elected president, his electoral victory made possible by a political marriage with that same Bola Tinubu.

At the beginning of June 2022, Bola Tinubu emerged as the candidate chosen by Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to fly its flag in the vote for president in Nigeria’s 2023 elections. Chief spokesperson of the APC presidential campaign, Festus Keyamo, himself also a Cabinet Minister and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), explains with reference to the forfeiture orders from the District Court in Chicago 30 years ago, that his principal was “roped in the drug trafficking case of two Nigerians who once stayed in separate flats in the same building where the ex-governor stayed at a time in the US.”

Had General Buhari not back-dated the decree all those decades ago, Lawal Ojuolape could easily have been alive today. If he were, he would have been about 68 years, not much younger than the official age of the candidate whom President Buhari’s party has chosen to succeed him as the APC’s presidential candidate.

Some people will miss the irony in the fact that Buhari’s party political successor could be a man whom he would happily have had shot by firing squad in his first coming for involvement in drug dealing, preferring instead to see this turn of events as proof of his “born-again” credentials. They may even see in this evidence the kind of implicit bargains that make politics the ultimate art of the possible in pursuit of political power.

In democratic politics, these implicit bargains begin, of course, with the understandings that govern membership of political parties. In return for enjoying the platform and economies of political scale provided by the convening capabilities of the party, members with political aspirations enjoy the privilege of being advanced by the party to the electorate in order to eventuate their ambitions. The fidelity of members to their party is a central part of this bargain. It is the underlying responsibility that makes politics such a historically tribal sport.

This fidelity is often tested the world over. Hartley Shawcross, Clement Atlee’s choice as Attorney-General after Labour’s victory in the United Kingdom in 1945, so tested the loyalties of his party with his political flirtations that he acquired the sobriquet “Shortly Floorcross”. Floor crossing is supposed to be the ultimate act of rending one set of political accoutrements in favour of another. It also advertises changed political loyalties.

As Nigeria prepares to go to the polls next month, however, harlotry is emerging as a new political normal. While still in the party, some luminaries of the ruling APC, such as former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal; and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, for instance, have elected to work for the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).

In return, at least five governors of the PDP, four of whom are indeed running for office in these elections on the ticket of the party, are on the political dance-floor cavorting with the other side. Effectively, they ask their supporters to split tickets in the ballot, committing to another party for the top of the ticket and for their party down the ballot. In a general election where multiple seats are in play, this could be a recipe for confusion.

Former Minority Leader in the Senate, Enyinnaya Abaribe, who left the PDP and now flies the flag of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the contest for the Abia South Senatorial seat against one of Wike’s peers in the Gang of Five Governors, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, declaims the conduct of the governors as “without integrity”, a riposte to the Governors’ self-identification as “Integrity Group.”

Waziri Adio has recently traced the history of what appears now to be a practice by senior politicians to “openly flirt with all interested political suitors while still in a serious relationship”, concluding that “of late, Nigerian politicians are not the most faithful.” In other words, politics, supposedly an exercise in high ethics of envisioning how power is best accessed and managed for the benefit of society, has been replaced by low harlotry, complete – in typical Nigerian fashion – with Aso Ebi.

This may be the best evidence of the failure of Nigeria’s political parties of all hues to fulfill their mission of aggregating societal interest or earning public trust; the ultimate proof of failure of responsibility in the power game. The future of elective government in Nigeria may depend on whether the politicians realise that this cannot continue much longer.

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

By Sylvester Udemezue

In Re: “SAN Application: Controversy Over One Million Naira Application Fee By LPPC” (6 January 2023: TheNigeriaLawyer).

Section 5(2) Legal Practitioners Act CAP L11 LFN 2004: “(2)    A person shall not be conferred with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria unless he has been qualified to practise as a legal practitioner in Nigeria for not less than ten years and has achieved distinction in the legal profession in such manner as the committee may from time to time determine”.

If this SAN award is about recognition of excellence and distinction in the legal profession, should people apply for it or shouldn’t it go through nomination process?

Shouldn’t excellence and distinction in the legal profession be a matter of the facts speak for themselves, leading to handwritings on the wall for all to see and judge?

Shouldn’t it be when one is nominated, that the LPPC would now request from the nominees, their CVs, cases, literary or other contributions speaking to their suggested excellence and distinction?

Thereafter, the LPPC would now do a selection process guided by the Guidelines, leading to award under the principle of many called, few chosen because not all that glitters is gold?

Is the LPPC awarding SAN or selling SAN?

How much did Prof Ben Nwabueze pay to get awarded the rank of SAN in 1978 or thereabouts?

Have we not turned the SAN rank from the “award/privilege” which its founding fathers had in mind to a trading process which its founding fathers had not in mind?

Sometimes, and I may be wrong, I compare this SAN award to the award of Professorial Chair (in the teaching profession) or the National Honours Award in Nigeria, only that no one had ever been reported to have been asked to pay any “application fee” as part of the process of award of the rank of professor or the national honours of GCFR, GCON, MON, OFR, CFR, etc.

Have we not ruined the original intentions of our forebears in instituting the rank of SAN as an award/privilege instead of a commodity to be paid for, negotiated, or traded?

Is it not inapt to make one pay for an award? Now, if he truly has distinguished himself or otherwise attained excellence in the legal profession why does he have to pay for the “award” or “privilege”?

Let’s think about these? SAN as an award or privilege to be bestowed on who reasonably merits it or a commodity to be bought by the highest bidder?

Okay, let’s leave “award” alone. let’s rather look at the SAN rank as a privilege. Should one pay to get a privilege?

Finally, does section 5 LPA envisage the making of an application, let alone the payment of a mandatory Application Fee, as a condition precedent for the award of, or the privilege of having a SAN rank?

 Do not forget it’s meant to be an honorary award/privilege to be given to persons considered by the LPPC to have attained excellence or distinction in the legal profession! Don’t forget!

Now, does the LPPC have the locus to impose any such mandatory condition as per payment of an application fee as a mandatory condition precedent? Or, is this one way for the prospective awardee to demonstrate that he has attained excellence or distinction in the legal profession as required by section 5(2) of the LPA? Or, is payment of an application fee envisaged by the expression “in such a manner ad the LPPC may from time to time, determine”?

 One more question, pardon me; I don’t want to make this too long: Does section 5 of the LPA authorise the LPPC, the CJN or anyone within the profession to unilaterally, whether through a Rule, Guideline, or other subsidiary legislation, exclude any segment of the legal profession from the award of SAN or to otherwise impose conditions aimed to frustrate or make it impossible for lawyers (bona fide members of the legal profession) from any segment of the Legal Profession, to ever be able to attain such level of excellence or distinction as may be necessary for their possible consideration for the award/privilege of SAN? For example,  does section 5 of the LPA envisage that it’s possible for any Law Teacher (other than the DG) in the Nigerian Law School (where there is currently not in existence any award of or promotion to “Professorship”) to attain such level of excellence or distinction in the legal profession as to make him/her eligible to be considered for the award/privilege of SAN? If yes, then by imposing a ban on the award of SAN to non-professors in the academic category, has the Guidelines not acted in breach of section 5 of the LPA by excluding Law School Lectures in a manner that could reasonably be seen as an unjust and unlawful discriminatory?

▪Even in the universities, are you saying until you become a professor it’s not possible to have otherwise distinction in the legal profession as a Law Teacher?

You see, there may be times oppression, suppression, and victimization may render one powerless. But let there never be a time oppression, suppression and victimization could deter one from at least raising one’s voice in protest against the oppressor. (Well, stories for another day! 😂)

Meanwhile, all I have done is to ask questions. Or, let me just adopt the trademark concluding expression of one of my ogas (names withheld): Just Asking.

Respectfully,

 Sylvester Udemezue (udems)

08109024556.

[email protected]

(January 06, 2023)

By Sonnie Ekwowusi

It all began on June 29 1951: Two blood brothers: Joseph Ratzinger (24), and his older brother, Georgi Ratzinger (27) are ordained to the priesthood in Freising, a university town in Bavaria, Germany. With outstretched hands the two brother priests impart their first blessing on the waiting bemused crowd, and, by extension on the 1.2 billion Catholics-one-sixth of the world’s population. April 19 2005: Joseph is elected Pope by a clear majority of 115 Cardinals. He replaces Pope Saint John Paul 11. Immediately after his election, he presents himself to the faithful on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica amid the spontaneous outbursts of “Habemus papam ex Germania”. The outbursts shake the pillars of St. Peter’s Basilica to their foundation. There are about 400,000 people in St. Peter’s Square, some of them radiantly waving the German flags. Joseph is the first German Pope succeeding St. Peter, the first Pope, for gargantuan 482 years. The new Pope chooses the name, Benedict XVI after Saint Benedict of Nursia, the great religious founder and educator whose motto is: ora et labora (“pray and work”). September 14 2005: the new Pope unveils and blesses a statue of St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, which is placed in a niche on the outside of St. Peter’s Basilica. February 28 2013: Pope Benedict XVI resigns citing his advanced age and declining health as the reasons for his decision. He is the first Pope to do so in over 600 years. I can go on and on reeling out the prominent events that shaped Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

In his funeral homily at the funeral of Saint Pope John Paul 11, Joseph Aloysius Cardinal Ratzinger said: “This is not the time to speak of the specific content of this rich pontificate”. Likewise, this piece does not aim to cover the full extent of Pope Benedict XVI’s rich pontificate and his rich literary achievements. Instead, it serves as a way for billions of people across the world to pray for the merciful judgment of the soul of Pope Benedict XVI. We pray that the Lord Jesus will welcome him home as his humble servant and a curator of saving truth. We pray too that all those who loved and admired and inspired by him may take consolation in the following words of his homily in the solemn inaugural Mass of his pontificate at Saint Peter’s Square: “Do not be afraid of Christ. He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything..”

As John L. Allen jr. rightly noted in his book: The rise of Benedict XV1, to be elected Pope is tantamount to being sentenced to life imprisonment, meaning that the job of a Pope is not only tasking but entails gigantic self-immolation. One of the first remarkable things about Pope Benedict, in my view, is his calm recollection, self-assurance and serenity even during seemingly turbulent times. He stood out for his surpassing intelligence, calm demeanour and strong convictions.  Another remarkable thing is his towering stature and presence in the world. For short of a better expression, he was a first-class world intellectual. He could be counted among the first 10 most intelligent human beings that have lived in this world. He was known for his strong stance on issues such as the defence of traditional marriage and opposition to violence and terrorism.  He was the professors’ professor. Above all, he was a professor of dogmatic theology. He was the theologians’ theologian. Elmar Bruber, who was his student in theology at the Academy of Freising, recalls that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger taught theology ex-tempore as if the whole body, branches and principles of theology was in his head. “His rational brilliance, inked with his verbal gifts, generated an unconditional admiration”, writes Bruber. Bruber recalls that whenever it was the turn of Joseph to preach on Sundays the cathedral was packed to the brim, and that even Ratzinger’s fellow professors attended and “listened to his words in a breathless silence”. After publishing his benchmark book: Introduction to Christianity, Pope Benedict XVI had published more than 135 solid theological works including Jesus of Nazareth; The nature and mission of Theology; Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium; Values in a time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future; What it means to Be Christian: Three Sermons, Christianity and Crisis of Cultures;  The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State and the Church.

Undoubtedly Pope Benedict XVI derived his strength in accomplishing the foregoing from prayer. I think this largely accounts for the success of his pontificate. He was rooted in the faith of his parents, in a rural, liberal-Bavarian Christian piety. As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict XVI, in collaboration with his boss, Saint Pope John Paul 11, worked indefatigably hard to ensure that the message of the Gospel might be handed down bereft of errors, untruths and falsifications. In fact, Saint Pope John Paul 11’s numerous encyclicals bear the imprint of Cardinal Ratzinger’s resolve to maintain Christian values and doctrinal purity. Small wonder Saint Pope John Paul 11 gave him the task of producing the Catechism of the Catholic Church which he successfully produced.

Perhaps Pope Benedict XVI’s most-prized achievement was his unflinching commitments to providing the right answers to the following eschatological  questions which threaten the happiness of most right-thinking persons: Who  am I? What is the meaning of human existence? What am I doing in this world? Where am I going after this life?. I think Pope Benedict appreciated that his answers to the above queries would not be readily acceptable in a highly secularized world which seeks to remove God from the public space. The world crisis is essentially a crisis of religion not much crises of intellectual conviction.  During the pontificate of Saint Pope John Paul 11, the primary challenge was communism and its suppression of human freedom. But at the election of Cardinal Ratzinger in 2005 the primary challenge had shifted and focused on confronting what he dubbed “dictatorship of relativism”. Pope Benedict’s crusade against dictatorship of relativism although rather diffused and amorphous was very effective. Allen writes that the real challenge which Pope Benedict faced was to convince the secularized world that there was a “dictatorship” to be resisted in Europe. As Cardinal Francis Stafford then aptly put it: “The tragedy of Europe is rooted in the eclipse of the Christian identity of individual Europeans and their society as a whole… Unfortunately that is being repeated in the European Union. There is a kind of Christophobia, a fear of Christ, not just a withdrawal from him…Pope Benedict will be able to bring the people of Europe a new, rediscovered sense of the dignity of what it means to be a child-to be chosen by God in Christ to be his child”

Pope Benedict knew from the onset that his pontificate would be buffeted from side to side by the different forces swelling up the secularized culture. Even the cardinals who elected him had identified secularized culture or post-Christian secular culture as the dangerous ill-winds that would attempt to rock the boat of the successor of St. Peter. He was pained by the crisis of religion. He often repeated that the Church needed a revolution of faith. That probably explains why he chose the name Benedict after St. Benedict XV the great, founder of European monasticism. According to Pope Benedict XV1, St. Benedict XV  “lived at a time when Roman Empire was collapsing, and he saw the role of the Church as to preserve the best in human culture throughout the centuries…in his footsteps, I place my ministry in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples”

In imitating Pope Benedict V1 who preserved the best in human culture, Pope Benedict XV1, according to German journalist, Peter Seewald, decided to run a papacy of love. This is not surprising because Pope Benedict XVI loved humanity and had always nurtured love and sympathy for the poor and needy. Perhaps not many are aware that Pope Benedict XVI freely authorized the use of his organs after his death for those who are in need of them to stay alive. According to Pope Benedict, “to offer, spontaneously, parts of one’s body for someone who needs them is an act of great love”. Although Allen and others do not think that such an offer will be accepted after Pope Benedict’s death, the offer goes to illustrate the Pope’s unwavering social concerns and his love for others. In his first encyclical letter, Deus caritas est (God is Love) he extensively treats the different aspects of love. He ends up explaining why all loves should find their root in the real Love-love of God.

Another enthralling encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI with masterful scholarship is Caritas in Veritate (Charity in truth). This particular encyclical, in my humble view, is a must read especially for those  involved in promoting or building human development, democratic culture and ethical standards in banking and financial institutions and others. The encyclical covers themes such as integral human development in our time, ethical considerations of the world economic crisis, notion of rights and duties in development, dignity of the human person and demand for justices and the search for lasting peace in the world. In this encyclical, Pope Benedict writes that world peace cannot be considered a product of mere agreements between governments or product of inter-diplomatic contacts, economic, technological and cultural exchanges. For these efforts to lead to lasting peace, according to Pope Benedict XVI, the voices of the people affected by injustice must be heard and their situation must be taken into consideration if their expectations are to be adequately corrected. In concluding the encyclical, the Pope states that while technology has greatly helped to transform the world, the supremacy of technology has prevented many people from recognizing the higher things which cannot be explained in terms of matters alone. He finally ends by stating that “a humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism”

A good thought for Pope Benedict XVI will not be complete without mentioning his unbelievable ecumenical drive.  If Saint Pope John Paul 11 provided different platforms for collaboration between Christians and Muslims, non-believers, Jews, free thinkers, atheists, agnostics and all that, Pope Benedict XVI equally did something greater in his short stint as Pope. He was excited about the growing rapprochement between the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, Orthodox Church and other churches. During his pontificate, about 4,000 traditional Anglicans comprising clergymen and laymen returned to the Catholic Church, thanks to Pope Benedict’s papal endorsement.

As the remains of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is reverently being carried for interment amid tears of sorrow and joy, we pray God to welcome him to eternal home, that heavenly convivium, as Richard John Neuhaus liked to put it, where fellowship, laughter, smile, love and conversation will never end. The legacy of Pope Benedict XVI will continue to be felt within the Church and beyond.