Other systems harness their youths. But Nigeria toys with is youths and gambles with her future.

By Emeka Alex Duru

(08054103327, [email protected])

Unless, as it is said, the carriage of a messenger depicts the mindset of a principal, President Muhammadu Buhari should be sufficiently ashamed of the conduct of the Minister for Education, Adamu Adamu, in his meeting with the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). A video clip of the meeting and the Minister’s haughty demeanor, remain a bad publicity for Nigeria and the Buhari administration.

The students who were protesting the continued face-off between the government and members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which has paralysed academic activities in the nation’s universities, had taken their anger to the minister’s office, clutching placards demanding a quick resolution of the crisis.

After some remarks and few questions by the students, who were led by the NANS President, Comrade Sunday Asefon, the minister walked out on them, dismissing virtually all the issues raised by the youths with a wave of the hand.

That was arrogance and impunity taken too far by a public servant who is supposed to be answerable to the people. Adamu should have been relieved of his office by that crass indiscretion, in a saner clime. But then, you may not need to go far to locate where the minister derived his crude guts from. Recall occasions in his early days in the office when the president had made it a mantra to talk down on Nigerian youths, in some instances, describing them as being lazy. Adamu and other office holders may have read his lips at such moments and have been acting accordingly.

During the last strike by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), the Labour Minister and incidentally, a medical doctor, Chris Ngige, toed the ugly path by reminding the doctors that the country had more medical personnel that it could do without them. There is this rootless entitlement mentality that the president and his aides exhibit in dealing with other Nigerians. They behave as if the country owes them by putting them in positions of authority.

40% of Nigerian youths jobless; angry, restless — Adesina

What seems to be the only medium of communication by the government and its functionaries, is command and control. When the late Afro-beat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang in Beast of no Nation, that he had not known any other country other than Nigeria, where officials of the state ridiculed other citizens as being useless and undisciplined, many did not reason with him. Situations have eventually shown that the ebami eda, was prophetic, after all.

But the country seems to have been boxed to a corner by the sheer unresponsiveness of its leadership class. The current youth crisis, is one that may have defining consequences, if not carefully managed. It is like a time bomb that may explode on our faces.

The leader of the protesting students in Kano, Yazid Tanko Mohammed, captured the situation succinctly. “ASUU has been going on strike since 2009, and students are always the victims of the strike. We are not benefiting from the strike. Instead, we are always at the receiving end. Imagine, a programme that is supposed to last for four years will take up to six years. And the one meant for five years will take up to seven to eight years”, he said. Just as the students suffer the disruptions in the academic calendar, their parents bear the brunt of keeping them in school, endlessly. And the society loses the most.

ASUU-Strike As Nigeria toys with the youths, gambles with the future
ASUU strike
The current strike began on February 14 because of the failure of the Federal Government to renegotiate the agreement it signed with ASUU in 2009 including adequate funding of the system, replacement of the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), with the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), as the payment platform in the university sector, among others.

The teachers insist that IPPIS has never worked in any university system anywhere. Among its drawbacks, they say, is that it will shut the doors against foreign scholars, contract officers and researchers needed to be poached from existing universities to stabilize new ones.

But the Federal Government insists that the payment system is for transparency and neither intended to trample upon university autonomy nor designed to subsume the university into the civil service.

These are issues that can be resolved with openness of mind and sincerity of purpose by the two parties, hence the position of the students on the parties to find a speedy resolution to the crisis. For emphasis, the students are not taking sides with any of the gladiators but rather seek a way out of the logjam. For such patriotic young men and women to be snubbed by a minister of the federation, shows the premium government officials place on service to fatherland.

Nigeria has become a classic case of where the leaders do something same way repeatedly and expect a different result. It has never worked anywhere. The logic, rather, is that one reaps what he sows. The #EndSARS protest of 2020 by the youths against the highhandedness of the police and sundry incidences of poor governance, was enough to have taught some lessons to the authorities. The impacts of the protest still resonate in areas it affected. The mismanagement of the protest by the government leading to the exercise being hijacked by hoodlums, account for the rising insecurity in many parts of the country, today. Anything nearer to that experience, may pose more challenges to the nation.

What the government is doing by appearing not bothered while the obviously frustrated Nigerian students take over the major highways in protest to the ASUU strike, is unwittingly exposing the innocent ones amongst them to what is not in them. The consequences of this exposure may be dire for the country, if care is not taken. The maxim is that the youths are the strengths of a nation. Other systems harness their youths. But Nigeria toys with is youths and gambles with her future.

Treating the youths with levity, remains the bane of Nigeria’s development. We may take it or not but when we talk of the rising insecurity in the land, occasioned by the ravaging insurgency and terrorism in the North East, banditry in the North West, intermittent clashes in the North Central, kidnapping and ethnic nationalism in the South West and South East or militancy in the South-South, all boil down to the youth unleashing their anger on the nation that has abandoned them for a long time.

Former Minister for agriculture and President of African Development Bank, AfDB, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, came close to saying so when he observed in his recent lecture that 40 percent of Nigerian youths are jobless, adding that they are discouraged, angry and restless, as they look at a future that does not give them hope. Estimates of the country’s population put the youths at 60 percent. Take away 40 percent of this figure as being unemployed and angry, the danger ahead becomes glaring and more frightening.

By Emmanuel Ogebe

The recent nomination of America’s first black woman for the US Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown, serves as an opportunity to X-Ray the status of Nigeria’s own female justices, especially in light of the month of March’s dedication to women.

On the surface, it looks impressive that Nigeria has produced in 60 years of independence at least eight black female justices of the Supreme Court while the United States has not produced one black female justice in over 200 years. In fact, Nigeria has produced more female justices of the Supreme Court than the total number of female US Supreme Court justices!

In the epic pantheon of judicial juggernauts, the eight Nigerian women ever to attain the status of Justice of the Supreme Court are:

Mukhtar, Alooma Mariam CJN (Chief Justice of Nigeria)

Adekeye, Olufunlola JSC

Odili, Mary  JSC

Ogunbiyi, Clara JSC

Kekere Ekun, Kudirat JSC

Augie, Amina JSC

Abba Aji, Uwani JSC

Ogunwumiju, Helen JSC

Justice Aloma Mukhtar became the first woman JSC and ultimately the first and only female Chief Justice of Nigeria ever.

Hon. Justice Mary Odili is the first female Justice from southeast Nigeria to attain this exalted JSC position, Justice Mukhtar was also the first from the north while Justice Adekeye JSC was first from the southwest of Nigeria.

Out of the top seven most senior JJSC today, three are women. This means in any constitutional matter or case warranting a seven-judge panel, almost half would be women if empaneled by order of seniority.

This gives women an over 40% representation in the judicial hearing of constitutional matters affecting all Nigerians and this is way above the 35% gender quota requested by Nigerian women into appointive political positions.

Of greater note is that this judicial gender representation is purely on professional merit and not simply affirmative action. Indeed as research by the Kudirat Institute for Nigerian Democracy reveals, of the three arms of government, the judiciary which is merit-based has a higher percentage of women than the executive or legislature which are politically based.

In effect, KIND implies that but for political factors, left to professional performance, Nigerian women are capable of achieving equal or comparable representation.

Against this backdrop, the recent abandonment of gender parity bills agitated this strong reaction, from the Women In Politics Group, Makurdi in a March 1 statement, “It is particularly sad that in a month globally dedicated to celebrating women worldwide, our NASS has chosen to deny women basic human rights.

The proposed gender bills in the 5th Constitution Alteration Bills that were all rejected are Bills targeted at addressing the current gender imbalance across the legislative arm of governments across the country whilst reducing the under-representation of women in political office.

The men of the 9th NASS have reinforced the discrimination and political bias against women as enshrined in the 1999 constitution  by:

Denying citizenship to a foreign-born husband of a Nigerian woman. (While it allows Nigerian men’s foreign-born wives to be awarded automatic citizenship).

Denying Nigerian women indigeneity through marriage.

Denying 35% appointed positions for women and settling for 20%.”

Incidentally, Justice Mary Odili now the most senior JSC after the Chief Justice doubles as the first woman representing both southeast and south -south by nuptials – two-thirds of the south of Nigeria.

Technically speaking, although there are now two female justices of the Supreme Court of Igbo extraction in the land today or ever, neither of them is there representing their state or the southeast region.

Justice Mary Odili who is only the second female justice in the history of Nigeria to rise to number two in the Apex Court is from Imo state but married into Rivers State where she served in that state’s judiciary until she rose through the ranks to the Apex court.

Similarly, Justice Amina Augie from Delta state (the Igbo Speaking part) married into Kebbi state and served in the Sokoto judiciary before rising to the Supreme Court.

Therefore NO female judge has risen to the Supreme Court from the judiciaries of southeast Nigeria or by virtue of federal character representing the southeast on the court. Both female Igbo justices arose by their adoptive marital states.

This is a sorry state of affairs largely due to trenchant internal self-discrimination within southeastern states. An accomplished female lawyer who qualified in the ‘80s with a distinguished educational profile that included postgraduate studies in The Hague – the world capital of international jurisprudence – was denied appointment to the Imo State judiciary on the grounds that she was married to a man from neighboring Abia state.

The travesty in this scenario was that at the time of her marriage, the lawyer and her engineer husband were both from Imo state. However, the state creation exercise created a split wherein he fell on the Abia side while she fell on the Imo side.

Secondly, she lived and worked in Imo State government and never for one day lived or worked in Abia state. Nevertheless, her judicial appointment was rejected for over 25 years until she was finally appointed a high court judge in 2021.

The tragedy of this gross injustice is that had she been appointed as at when due, she would by now have been on the Supreme Court of Nigeria representing the southeast in its own right and not by proxy. Even northeast Nigeria has produced two female JJSC but not the southeast.

It is therefore ironic that south- south, and northwest helped appoint the first Igbo women to the Supreme Court while Imo state was persecuting an Imo-born lawyer from appointment to Imo state high court even while working in Imo state civil service! In this case, indigeniety by marriage was helpful to the Igbo Justices while actual indigeniety was unhelpful to the Imo-born female lawyer.

Incidentally, this is an unfortunate pattern seen in other locations as well.

In Kano state decades ago, Justice Alooma Mukhtar was denied Chief Judgeship of the state judiciary because she was female, though Muslim and an indigene, then went on to become first female Chief Justice of Nigeria.

 Similarly, Justice Patricia Mahmoud was recently denied Chief Judgeship of Kano State for being a Christian female while her husband was the President of the Nigerian Bar Association despite having served in the Kano judiciary her entire career. Rather she was appointed to the Court of Appeal through her home state of Benue whose judiciary she had never worked in.

While marriage State failed Justice Patricia Mahmoud and indigeneship state rescued her judicial career, Justices Elizabeth Karatu and Beatrice Iliya of Kebbi and Gombe states were not so lucky. Despite being indigenes, and the most senior judges in their respective state judiciaries, they were denied appointments as state Chief Judges in violation of the constitution. They were supplanted by junior Muslim males. Both female judges were Christian.

Despite these unfortunate and atavistic political manipulations at state levels, women judicial officers have continued to fare fairer on the federal bench.

For the first time in Nigeria’s history, its two federal appellate courts were headed by women – Justice Mukhtar, CJN, and Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, PCA (President of the Court of Appeal.)

Thereafter the historic succession from woman justice to woman justice occurred when Bulkachuwa handed over to Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem who is now the current PCA.

As The Nation editorial said, “This brazen injustice that is gaining grounds in most states against female judges, who have worked hard and diligently to deserve an elevation, is not in the interest of justice, and it’s tarnishing the reputation of the judiciary.”

We join FIDA to condemn this patriarchal anomaly. Indeed, the female gender suffers a double whammy, because, apart from discriminating against her based on gender, she is also discriminated against based on state of origin, after marriage. We saw that in Cross River and Rivers states, not long ago. By a narrow definition of state of origin, a woman is denied the highest accolade, after giving her services to a state, sometimes both in her state of birth and state of marriage.”

In addition, religious discrimination also factors in. Justice Patricia Mahmoud from north-central was denied Chief Judge of Kano in the northwest the same year that Justice Amina Augie from south-south was appointed a JSC representing the northwest. Though both married into northwestern states, Justice Patricia Mahmoud maintained her Christian name while Justice Amina Augie adopted a Muslim name (nee Anne Eva Graham.)

Justices Elizabeth Karatu and Beatrice Illiya were northeast and northwest indigenes denied for gender and religion thus creating the bizarre situation that a south southern or South-eastern woman who marries in the northwest and adopts Islam is more acceptable than an indigenous Christian female judge.

East or west, women judges are stressed and the time has come for them and other females to be treated fairly.

Only one woman has headed another federal arm of govt – Hon Patricia Etteh was Speaker of the House of Representatives though technically that is a lower chamber of a bicameral legislature and therefore debatable as a partial arm of govt. Across the country, the same applies as more women have headed the judicial arm of state governments than any of the other arms. Women have made strides where chauvinist barriers are not in place.

A society cannot progress beyond the progress of its women.

Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq, an expert on the Nigerian judiciary and head of the US Nigeria Law Group writes from Washington USA

By J.B Daudu

Q. What is NATO doing at Russia’s doorstep?

A. Trying to stop Putin from rebuilding the Soviet Union, which was almost an equal rival with the United States in the past.

Q. Is NATO right to do this?

A. No. Because of an old agreement in which the West agreed not to move any closer to Russia, which is eastwards.

Q. Did Russia agree (in the Budapest memorandum) to guarantee Ukraine’s independence and never to invade them?

A. Yes.

Q. Is America the strongest nation in NATO?

A. America is not just the strongest nation in NATO but synonymous to NATO.

Q. What happened in 2014 that may explain the current conflict?

A. A Ukrainian President loyal to Russia (Viktor Yanukovych) was toppled in a Yellow-Vest-type of revolution. Russia believes that this revolution was instigated and sponsored by the West.

Q. What was the immediate fallout of the ouster of Yanakovich?

A. Two predominantly Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine broke away and became semi-autonomous. These regions are Donbass and Lugansk.

Q. Is Ukraine a stakeholder in Russia’s economy?

A. Russia’s natural gas pipeline to Europe passes through Ukraine.

Q. What is this pipeline called?

A. Nord Stream 1.

Q. Who owns the Nord Stream pipelines?

A. The Swiss-based company called Nord Stream AG.

Q. Who owns Nord Stream AG?

A. A Russian company called Gazprom, which is one of the largest energy companies in the world.

Q. Why did Putin not invade Ukraine immediately after the 2014 issue?

A. He feared sabotage of Nord Stream 1 by Ukraine in case of an attack. Nevertheless, he took Crimea.

Q. What plans did Putin put in place to ensure that he will be able to invade Ukraine and reinstall a President loyal to Russia?

A. He began building an alternative to Nord Stream 1 aptly called Nord Stream 2. As expected, Nord Stream 2 bypasses Ukraine to Europe straight from Russia.

Q. Did the military establishment understand that Nord Stream 2 held the key to a Russian invasion of Ukraine?

A. Not just the military establishment but analysts and politicians knew that, as soon as Nord Stream 2 was completed, a countdown to a Ukrainian invasion has begun.

Q. Although not the cause of this difficult situation, how did President Donald Trump prevent Russia from launching an invasion of Ukraine?

A. First of all, in 2018, Trump annihilated a Russian force trying to cross the Euphrates to the Eastern side of Syria, where the oil wells are located. 300 ex Russian soldiers of the Wagner Group were killed. This aggressive response by Trump put Putin on notice that Trump was willing to use the overwhelming force of the US military to achieve his foreign policy goals. Secondly, Senator Ted Cruz (a Republican Senator) authored a bill requiring the sanctioning of Nord Stream 2. This bill was passed and President Donald Trump not only signed it to become American Law, but enforced it. Thus, Trump prevented a war without firing a single shot: he just used America’s economic might to cage Putin. Whether or not Trump thought it was unfair for NATO to want to admit Ukraine is hard to know. But it is important to note that Trump was at such logger heads with NATO that the current French President (Emmanuel Macron) lamented that NATO was about to die under a hostile US President. It is safe to guess that Trump (whose America First Policy is well known) did not fully support the shenanigans of NATO with regards to Ukraine.

Q. How did the sanctioning of Nord Stream 2 affect Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine?

A. It affected Putin’s plan because it meant he had to wait until Donald Trump left office before the project could continue. But as long as Donald Trump was in office and Nord Stream 2 could not be completed (giving Russia an alternative means of selling gas to Europe) he suspended his plans. This is proof that, in spite of what the media keeps repeating, Trump is no friend of Putin.

Q. If action speaks louder than words, who is really a good friend of Putin?

A. Joe Biden. As soon as Joe Biden took over the White House from Donald Trump, he waived the Nord Stream 2 sanctions, giving Putin the singular most important factor he needed to carry on with his Ukraine invasion plans.

Q. Contrary to what Joe Biden did for Russia, how did he “help” America to remain energy independent?

A. Although Trump had worked hard to ensure that the US became the largest oil producer in the world, Joe Biden “helped” the United States energy industry by cancelling several oil-related projects. The most popular of these was the Keystone XL pipeline, which had already gulped the equivalent of N10 billion. After deliberately destroying America’s energy independence and helping Russia, guess what Joe Biden is now doing? America now buys oil from Russia. And the quantity keeps increasing, which is why Russia cannot completely be banned from the SWIFT global financial platform.

Q. Can sanctions stop Putin from sacking Zelensky and installing a puppet loyal to Russia?

A. Time shall tell.

Q. Is Putin’s desire to install a puppet in Ukraine understandable in view of the security disadvantages of having a NATO country so close to Russia’s border?

A. Of course it is.

Q. What should Joe Biden (who emboldened Russia by waiving the Trump sanctions) had told Ukraine if he wanted to avoid war?

A. He should have advised Ukraine to tread softly and even remain neutral, knowing that Putin (with the second most lethal military in the world) cannot be stopped by Ukraine; knowing that only the United States can take on Russia; knowing that the US (under him, Joe Biden) will not send troops to fight for Ukraine.

But what did Joe Biden do?

Who then is responsible for the current conflict?

Did Joe Biden set up Ukraine to be destroyed as part of the campaign to humiliate the United States? The humiliation of the US has already been ordered by the World Economic Forum. Remember Afghanistan! That debacle that saw America humiliated was planned. Remember point Number 2 of the 8 predictions of the World Economic Forum, which is that America will no longer be a superpower but that a group of nations will call the stakes in world affairs?

Or are the globalists (as some believe) trying to start a world war that will shake things up really well to prepare the ground for the New World Order?

Time shall tell.