Nigeria: Abusing the Honours System

Honoured for service

A few years ago, my father was honoured with a chieftaincy title by the king of our hometown; when I heard of the news, I was certainly pleased for him knowing that he had been conferred this honour by reason of his work and commitment towards the development of our town.

Of his generation, he stood out as one who gathered the people, engaged his peers and encouraged the powerful to raise the profile of the town. Titles like these are primarily the means by which clans and tribes are able to honour leaders in their communities.

The electrification project, the building of the cathedral, the refurbishment of the primary school, the building of the secondary school, the mentoring of the younger generation – they were hallmarks of his service – work of over 40 years rewarded by a grateful people and their king.

The patriot that he is, I am definitely not and if he bore his traditional title in formal address, I would not begrudge him.

Dishonouring honour

However, I worry about the way titles and honours get dished out by whim or caprice by any traditional leader of the hut, hamlet, village, great city, tribal land or kingdom.

Everyone gets conferred with a chieftaincy title such that we are probably running out of people to give modernistic irrelevant but trendy titles that the pets might begin to feature in these ceremonies.

Ológìní of Gbókítí (Cat of Tumbler) or Ajáọba of Mẹ́ranyìí (King’s Dog of catch the goat) – The imaginary places could easily be your homestead.

People go out of their way to flatter and aggrandise themselves before traditional leaders who in turn are captivated and entranced by the show of wealth that could be used to buttress wanton excesses in the throne-room.

Honours by the basketful

This all for the sake of being addressed as chief with the most prized title being Otunba (Right-hand man of the king), though, I rarely see anyone interested in being the left-hand man of the king. You wonder if the king has lost a hand in battle.

I remember when Gbenga Daniel, the governor of my home state, Ogun State ran for election in 2003, he had already bagged about 50 chieftaincy titles from literally every named habitation in Ogun State and more from other states.

He is formally addressed as Otunba Gbenga Daniel; his wife currently holds the fanciful title of Yeye Aare Ajibosin of Owu kingdom and is addressed as Yeye Olufunke Daniel. Yeye being a synonym for mother in Yoruba.

Honours from anywhere

You then have people who seethe with religious addiction and superstitious stupidity whilst in the bondage of subjectivity that gives more credence to evil than good conferred with church or mosque titles.

Reverend, Canon, Venerable, Imam we know, but how would one handle titles which have become the formal style of introduction as Deacon, Senior Assistant Evangelist, Prophet, Apostle, Pastor, Senior Prophetess, Mother-in-Israel or Iya Adinni to mention a few?

This has become the raison d’être of the Nigerian elite, you are nothing if you are not titled, even if the title is conferred by some backwater king who has a wicker stool for a throne and nothing more than loincloth to retain his decency.

Bastardisation of Nigerian honours

A more recent development grates me, after the hairdresser hair-singe of Madam Etteh the erstwhile Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, the new 38-year old Speaker was conferred with the national civic honour of Commander of the Federal Republic.

Members of the House have taken umbrage about the class of honour and remonstrated that as the fourth citizen of the country, she should have received a higher honour because of her status and especially where the Chief Justice of the Federation who is lower in the order of precedence (seventh) has received a higher honour.

I am afraid; this clearly shows that our representatives are clueless about how honours systems work. This is not some conferment that comes by reason of office; it should come by reason of having a track record; a history of service. News of those honoured.

Two Ts short of a citation

Mr Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker, who has not yet been subsumed into the chieftaincy morass of Yoruba culture happens to be the son of a high-chief in Egbaland who goes by the chieftaincy title of Seriki Jagunmolu of Egbaland so, some of those titles might be on the way. I would not be surprised if people are not already needling some backwater king to make him Chief Chatterbox of Backwaterland.

It would go without saying that Mr Bankole’s political base stems from the influence his father exercises and the failed political forays into seeking popular electoral office; it could well be that coming from the same city as the last President (Olusegun Obasanjo) is a coincidence.

I am not convinced that Mr Bankole has the track record or body of work in service of Nigeria to be conferred a national honour at all, we only have to see what the Chief Justice of the Federation brings to the table.

Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi, was called to the bar at The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn on the 20^th of July 1965 and he enrolled at the Nigerian Law School on the 22^nd of July 1966 (I have records of all lawyers registered in Nigeria up until mid-1990 since I worked on publishing a Legal Desk Book for 1991), he became a High Court judge in 1976 and was appointed to the Supreme Court as an Associate Justice in 1992, then became Chief Justice in 2007.

I think this citation would read for minutes and would attract deserving applause without having to consider the fact that he has been elevated to the post of Chief Justice.

The embarrassing thing about Mr Speaker’s national honour would have been the way the citation would have been bloviated with verbosity and filled in to justify the act after just 4 months of becoming the Speaker for a term that should last 4 years, although he has been a representative since 2003 - the key fascinating fact would really be his age, for which many clapped; everything else is par for the course.

Honour should come after service

However, one only has to see examples in the United Kingdom where Tony Blair was Prime Minister for 10 years and quite visibly a world leader for most of that time – he was not conferred with honours during his term and having left office he might not be conferred with honours for another year or so.

This does not mean he does not deserve honouring; at least a knighthood, but the case in Nigeria might well be compared with giving a Nobel Prize in some science to someone we anticipate would come up with a ground-breaking idea because he is a scientist rather than because of the work that has been done that has served humanity.

In the end, if people are honoured long before they should be with honours way beyond what recognition they should get, the whole exercise is cheapened, and it is made it worthless in the face of many other Nigerians who have no political influence but are even worthier and more deserving of accolade and honour.

The honour should not have been conferred at all, at least not at this time; but until we have objective representatives who are not caught up in the tide of emotion, we can expect such idiocy to grab the headlines.

Putin and Chavez - Great Leader or Dear Leader?

Overstaying your incumbency

If democracy is just the ability to walk out and vote and hopefully get your vote counted we had a demonstration of that concept yesterday.

I cannot however say that the use of democratic means to decide a direction of governance ends up in a democratic situation – we saw examples of that in Russia and Venezuela.

The week before, it was the elections in Australia where John Howard who had been in leadership over a decade had failed to realise that he had overstayed his welcome.

He lost the premiership and on confirmation would most likely lose his parliamentary seat. That is a damning indictment of a leader who had brought great progress and prosperity to his nation, but somehow, leaders have a tendency to be absorbed by arrogance and hubris that makes them think no one else could do the job better than they have been doing.

Leaders who have become bosses

This incumbency-complex that gravitates towards a pseudo-dictatorship is dangerous because the leader begins to project his ideas as right and hence the only solution whilst regaling us with the idea that leadership is really tough.

This kind of conviction plagued Tony Blair towards the end of his long premiership which left him almost the most unpopular prime minister for generations at the time of his leaving; it has plagued George W. Bush, but now he is moving into a multilateral phase possibly to secure a legacy for himself in the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Abusing democratic process

The Russia and Venezuela, Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez have been schemed to use the democratic process to entrench their incumbency, Mr. Putin would most likely metamorphose into a Prime Minister with considerably more powers than the incumbent has and would serve under a President that would be made into a ceremonial head of state.

The Russian constitution precludes Mr. Putin from serving another term as President, but being absorbed with the idea that no one else can rule Russia in his stead with authority and purpose, he would assume another national leadership post to keep in control.

The was a time I sympathised with Hugo Chavez and the leader of a developing economy that was ploughing some of the nation’s resources and moneys into improving the plight of the poor who had been left uncatered for by successive governments.

America’s moral laxity

Unfortunately, his mildly socialist rhetoric has gained virulence and notoriety exacerbated by America’s complacency when he was overthrown some 6 years ago.

America always fails to learn and lead in the matters of fairness, justice and balance when the issues of democracy, civil rights and oil collide. It acts like a multi-dimensional chameleon in the pursuit of self-interest instead of upholding the mantle of liberal democracies built on vibrant capitalist economies – thereby, it has little moral authority and the only muscle is seems to be able to wield is the projection of military power anywhere on the globe.

Even bullies eventually have their come-uppance and America is sometimes left with allies who can only lend support in word but hardly in means.

Chavez – all mouth

Having arrogated to himself presidential rule-by-decree, Mr. Chavez was not satisfied with the extent of executive authority as his socialism bandwagon gathered steam towards a 21^st Century aberration.

The theory of socialism probably has idealist and Utopian goals, the practice however has yield much less of that ideal – it entrenches a ruling elite that brooks no opposition; it stifles open debate; oppresses the free media; enacts laws for the purpose of exercising omniscience in all areas of the community and society whilst producing too much government that fosters corruption, reduces efficiency, promotes nepotism (See, Time.com - Where everyone important is a Chavez) and sycophancy and eventually destroys the country.

The Time Magazine in Petro Laggard highlights the fact that Venezuela sits on one of the largest reserves of heavy crude which needs large injections of cash to realise and maintain – not much seems to be done to ensure that this “golden goose” of the oil industry remains healthy to satisfy Venezuela’s obligations to the increasing demands for fossil fuels.

Democracy sometimes delivers

However, the referendum that failed yesterday by a margin of just 2% is a welcome development for a motor-mouth that was running out of control.

The question again is why one man thinks out of every good person that can be mentioned in his country, he is the only one who can properly govern his country and bring the goods home.

France is working hard to rescind the 35-hour-week because it offers no particular economic competitive advantage in a global economy and Mr. Chavez proposed to bribe his people with a 36-hour-week, reduced from 44 – no nation of slothful laggards can survive with that slovenly demeanour – projects would take forever and considering the red-tape that socialist ministries can spurn, the country would most definitely grind to a halt.

In the times of almost $100/barrel oil, Mr. Chavez seems to be awash with much cash and little sense of the fact that Venezuela belongs to a global economy, his quest to control the Central Bank of Venezuela is no less the money-grab of a highwayman – it takes more that socialist dogma to run a bank.

Yes, the Venezuelans love their leader but not enough to allow him manipulate the democratic process to deliver a dictatorship thriving on the cult of personality, for that, I am very glad.

Democracy sometimes grates

Mr. Putin has deployed every Soviet tool to grab the election for the United Russia Party that he supports, they have all the means to change the constitution to whatever they might desire, however, I would suppose they would limit their greed to knowing that capability.

All people of a nation should be happy to vote if there was a level playing field in the democratic process – it would appear, hurdles were put in the way of opposition parties who were harassed by thugs and miscreants, they never had equal access to the media, workers were threatened with their livelihoods if they did not toe of the line and monitors did not have untrammelled access to ensure the elections were free and fair.

The party leader announced yesterday that the national leader is Mr. Putin and one can only wonder if this leader would be in the mould of the Dear Leader or the Great Leader none of which augurs well.

On two ends of the world, leaders drunk on the proceeds of oil and intoxicated with power have tried to assume eternal incumbency and omnipotence – one succeeded and the other failed.

e-Petition pillow fights at 10 Downing St

Petitions

This is either democracy in action or a fad of activism that is the hallmark of the era of Tony Blair's reign.

In the last 2 weeks I have signed petitions on the 10 Downing Street e-Petitions site, whilst none have yielded the kind of response we the undersigned have desired, there has been some movement indicating that the petitions do have some effect.

The first was pertaining to an administrative error by the AFC Wimbledon football club which lead to them being penalized 18 points in their league. The petition garnered over 1,000 signatories and eventually there was reconsideration and a clemency to just a 3 point deduction and a 400 Pound fine.

Reactions

That first petition was rejected, but it spurned other petitions, one to reconfirm the original 18 point penalty and the other to reinstate the club in the Football Association Trophy competition which reads like the first and has since been rejected.

Basically, we have created turfs for opposing activism on the e-Petition site. The principle was that this punishment was too draconian considering other clubs with greater influence and resources have hardly been sanctioned for similar errors.

The club accepts they were wrong and pleaded for leniency, something that has now been achieved to the satisfaction of many and the chagrin of the few who would prefer to win the league by other means than by playing football.

Petition to: PLEASE Stop AFC Wimbledon being deducted eighteen points

Petition to: Stand by and confirm the 18 point deduction on AFC Wimbledon

Petition to: Bring pressure to re-instate A.F.C. Wimbledon

Those Naval cretins

Then as I have written in recent blogs about the Naval Personnel News Stories debacle, I came across an e-Petition which called for the Prime Minister to first name and then sack the official who allowed the naval personnel to sell their stories.

That gathered quite a few signatures and whilst I am no budding activist, I felt so strongly about committing my name to that petition because the whole episode is just so shameful.

The e-Petition was not that well worded but it had its purpose and the many who supported it identified with its particular message.

The petition read - We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to name and sack the person responsible for declaring that members of the armed services can sell their stories to the media.

The details read - We the undersigned consider the statement to allow members of Her Majesty's forces to sell their stories to the media to be a major government failure -and PR disaster for the Royal Navy - and "heads should roll" at the highest level.

It was a definitely a propaganda disaster but it was a bit of wishful thinking that heads would roll.

Our petition was rejected with the following statements indicating the stories were sold in good faith.

11 April 2007

Tony Blair says the decision for the seized Royal Navy personnel to take money from the media was a response to a "wholly exceptional" situation.

In an interview with Sky News, the PM said the situation wouldn't occur again but insisted that the decision had been taken in good faith.

The MOD decided to allow the sailors and marines to sell their stories but has since ordered a review of the decision.

The 15 Britons were seized by Iranian gunboats in the Gulf on 23 March and freed last Thursday.

The PM's words in full

Look, I didn't actually know about the decision until after it was taken but really that is not the point. The Navy were trying to deal with a wholly exceptional situation in which the families were being pursued by the media to sell their stories and the Navy took the view that it was better to manage the situation rather than let it happen.

Now with hindsight was that a good idea? No, precisely because people would then misrepresent that as somehow the Navy encouraging people to sell their stories, which they weren't doing at all. Do I believe it will happen again? No. But were people acting completely in good faith and honourably so far as the Navy was concerned? Yes, they were.

Now I think we've had days of this now and really it's time to move on.

Well, I am not sure it is time to move on till the people who allowed this shameful situation to manifest are accorded both deserved opprobrium and requisite sanction.

Then we can all move on.

Seeking my next petition - this is fun stuff.

© All references to the e-Petitions are quoted in full or excerpted from the 10 Downing Street e-Petitions website and I acknowledge their ownership of the quoted and excerpted parts that appear in this blog.

Selling their discretion, dignity and honour

The death of discretion

It is now institutionalised; our armed forces do not have to live by the old English tenets of honour, courage, discretion, dignity and valour.

In fact, this might as well be the whole sum of 10 years of Tony Blair in government, the fact that everything that was traditionally British in terms of conduct and decorum has been jettisoned for the cult of personality.

After the naval personnel were released and had flown back to motherland, they lamented the fact that they were blindfolded, kept in isolation and interrogated.

The fact of captivity

One is left quite gob-smacked about what else was to be expected; surely, if anyone captures a group of military personnel in seemingly criminal activity like in this case allegedly plying the waters of Iran.

Any self-respecting intelligence outfit would isolate the members, disorientate the individuals and introduce elements of mental anguish and disinformation to discover in reality what that team was up to.

This is serious business, and what was to say that the British personnel under the guise of UN inspections were not trying to gather other intelligence about Iran?

The Iranians having captured the seeming enemy had to ensure beyond reasonable doubt that not one of all those captured had a specific assignment to do something different from what the team as a whole believed was their purpose and assignment when they presumably strayed into Iranian waters if that really was the case.

Preventing group-think

Beyond that, isolation was necessary to prevent a case of group-think where the captives would parrot out an agreed view rather than allow the intelligence people to piece together each story to see if they indeed match up.

It is something used everyday in crime-fighting, evidence gathering and basic interviews or interrogation, there is no reason for the Iranians to have been foolish about this.

That aspect of group-think came out in one of the interviews when some of the personnel said they all agreed that they would confess that they had crossed into Iranian waters - this is the kind of thing isolation and disorientation through blindfolding is supposed to prevent.

Smart and dumb

The supposed outrage at this treatment is a bit over-stated, we are at war in that region, and some really hard things are happening there just as we learnt of the death of four of our soldiers in Iraq on the day the naval personnel flew in to be reunited with their loved ones.

The only really smart thing the naval personnel did was not to adopt the folly of bravado in resisting the overwhelming power of the force that took them captive in the Iranian/Iraqi waters a few weeks ago.

Sell, sell, sell

Now, this is where I have abandoned hope about the discretion of the English, however, one must say, this more the exclusive preserve of the well-bred and properly schooled; that sort of breeding seems to have been exhausted at the Ministry of Defence when they gave permission to the naval personnel to sell their stories to yellow journalism newspapers, village rags and tabloids.

I really feared this development in an earlier blog but against hope really thought that reason and discretion would prevail on those in authority that was not to be the case. Publicists are now working overtime in an auction to determine who would pay the most for stories that were neither heroic nor commendable.

This is going to end up worse than some Big Brother tripe, the first to get their story in might get the most views and who better than the propaganda bait Leading Sea(wo)man Faye Turney to break all records and precedents of serving military personnel set lose to tell tales?

Nothing good will come of this

Each consequent story from other personnel would have to trump the previous till the whole thing becomes too incredible to believe because it is unlikely that each story would be interesting without suggestive prompting and reckless analysis as they egged on by editors without conscience or restraint.

The worse case scenario as I have already predicted is if and when anyone else gets captured anywhere in the world by our enemies, beautiful smiling faces would we not see, that is if they end up living to tell the tale - it could really become that serious, because no enemy would want to be portrayed a fool after their captives are released.

The clear and present danger to those left on the battle field cannot be exaggerated, not to talk of the possible recklessness of others who might see being guest of the Islamic republic as a ticket to earning a cool big packet of cash - at last reckoning Mrs. Turney was being offered GBP 100,000.

Even if the fees were to go to charity, the damage would have been done and it would have done irreparable damage.

No Great in Britain anymore

I am sick to the stomach not of the opportunity and the benefit, but of the fact that the whole infrastructure behind our military personnel could not provide emotional, mental and financial succour to the victims of a seeming injustice and captivity that they think being able to sell their stories would provide the best treatment for their trauma.

The ones who then have nothing interesting to sell would probably be left more damaged for not looking good enough to be fed to the British public as the next "Jade Goody" of ignoramuses who are in cahoots with Tony Blair in taking the Great out of Great Britain.

References

Dismay as crew told they can sell stories | Breaking News | News | Telegraph

Woman sailor sells her story in lucrative deal | Uk News | News | Telegraph

BBC NEWS | UK | Captives' media fees spark fury

Taking the "Great" out of Britain

The Day of the Toothpicks

Piffle at Westminster

In politics, the Night of Long Knives has resonance, be it, 1934 when Hitler purged Germany of his opponents or 1962 when Harold Macmillan sacked 7 members of his cabinet, 2006 brings us the Day of the Toothpicks, people at the bottom rung of the ministerial ladder act to impose a resignation on the Prime Minister.

So, seven junior ministers resigned from the Blair government yesterday saying they had lost confidence in the leadership of Tony Blair to take the party forward and in readiness for the next election.

It is clear that since Mr Blair the Prime Minister had announced that he would not run in the next election which at the earliest would be 2009 or very latest 2010, a good few impatient people would be on his case to abdicate from the day after he won a third successive victory for the Labour Party.

The restless press and Labour Party have been on the verge of apoplexy trying to read when the Prime Minister would depart, we cannot entirely discount the machinations of an organ grinder who lives next door and who has played second fiddle to Tony so long, the tune is sounding like – Now is my time, get out of the way.

Chancellor of the executor

Gordon Brown cannot be blameless in what has lead to Tony Blair’s accusation of disloyalty and discourteousness from the most senior of those who resigned; it would make one wonder if Gordon Brown is the right man for Prime Minister of Great Britain in this dispensation of the New World Order.

Mr Watson who was a junior Defence Minister might have managed a pen knife as opposed to the toothpicks that the other Parliamentary Private Secretaries lanced into Mr Blair’s back. It would appear the only damage caused would be to the material of the PM’s suit, none of those people have a patch of Caesar’s Brutus even if Mr Blair accorded a polite – Et tu, Brute? – to Mr Watson.

And so, it appears Mr Blair would make an announcement today to clear up the air about when he is leaving, it might gladden Mr Brown’s heart, but it may not be as smooth sailing as everyone would want it to be.