Nigeria: The need to manage the Emperors of State

Emperors of State

Executive governors of states in the Federal Republic of Nigeria appear to have untrammelled fiat almost equivalent to absolute monarchies of old within their fiefdoms.

I do not intend to cover that particular matter but they are also granted immunity from prosecution which has the somewhat unintended consequence of many acting with impunity as they project the personification of absolute power that corrupts absolutely.

Thankfully, they only have that megalomania for the tenure of their offices before they become ordinary citizens again. Usually, to forestall a wholesale jettisoning of the things they put in place they would most likely attempt to interfere with the succession process with the hope of putting in a stooge that will for gratitude or other allegiances be their marionettes in power.

Deficiencies in governance

One thing is evident with our system of democracy, there are no strong institutions that make for ensuring that the governor acts within the sometimes grey areas of the law, the state legislatures tend to be overly partisan and factional rather than work as a moderating chamber more representative of the people and the powers the governor exerts are sometimes unreasonable that they will almost always be reviewed and the acts rescinded.

In many states where the new governors have been elected especially where the successor has come from another party or there have been differences within the same party that the erstwhile governor has not been able to influence the succession process the states have been in radical flux.

Basically, it is like the new governor is on a crusade to expunged every act and idea of their predecessor which all fall within the spectrum of atrocious through commendable to excellent, you rarely find areas where these governors attempt to build on the previous successes and take the state forward.

Consequences of the lack of continuity

Obviously, each governor has their own agenda and manifesto; it is their prerogative to act and hopefully in the best interests of fairness, justice, of the people and of the state rather that follow through their personal animosities in a show of sheer pettiness masquerading as leadership.

However, other things suffer if the system is not built to manage the acts of the executive governors at their most powerful and guarantee continuity after they have left. In fact, it feeds a vicious circle of counter-productive measures that give a lie to our democratic experiment.

On the matters of contracts, land ownership, business confidence, long-term enabling environments for development and growth the looming uncertainties that are generated by the musical chairs of quadrennial elections mean many projects not completed within the tenure might get abandoned and other thriving initiatives might be jettisoned.

Examples of breakdown

Worse still will be actions the old governor took for their own benefit when the new broom puts the old person in their place as is now happening in Ogun State - the once promising potentate at the advent of office who by the end of his term was probably the worst thing that ever happened to Ogun State who for his power-drunk egregious and megalomaniacal excesses plundered the state and appropriated lands that are now subjects of dispute.

If the new governors do not do well to spell out their intentions, many might read their actions as an all-out vendetta especially when one read the placards of student protesters whose university was downgraded to an institute of education amongst other things happening there and all around the country.

Constitutional review

There is a need to review the powers the executive governors had and what they can do, the state legislatures need to rise to the challenge of being better moderating influences on the governors whilst ensuring that the ideas and projects put in place have every prospect of continuity no matter who sits in the governor’s house.

Our constitution after almost 13 years of use is in need of radical amendments and subtle refinement to make our democracy more representative whilst also making leadership more responsive and accountable to the electorate.

Most importantly, there is a need to redress the matter of public service with more emphasis on the service over just having a public – these changes must happen soon, if we are to have a more enduring union and the hope that the best minds do vie for office and bring forth the change that Nigeria so badly needs.

References

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – State Executive

Amosun, Daniel trade words over church land | Vanguard Nigeria News

Tai Solarin Varsity students protest merger | The Nation

Editorial: Sixteenth of May 2011

The laughter of battle

If clowns became kings, maybe we can be royally entertained but the business of the statesmanship and politics will bring the kingdom to great ruin.

The thought of hare-brain ideas like performing circus tricks to make the enemy army laugh to the point of incapacitation that our poker-faced army half-giggling might gain a thumping victory.

Indeed it was buffoonery cum garrulousness that had no other purpose than to draw global attention to what was most vulgar, deplorable and unmistakably uncouth about America all exemplified in one man.

As despicable as they come

For weeks he led a campaign of calumny and debauched and gross assertions that contemned the person and the office of the President as he teased those who liked his tripe with the idea that he might lead.

Though his views lacked substance, seriousness or gravitas he appeared to the lead the polls within a party that had lost its soul to a narrow fringe of presumed constitutionalists that might well have peopled the Boston Tea Party of the 18^th Century.

The Wild West had been abandoned for civility over a hundred years ago but there seemed to a frontier force in the making that was willing to fight wars of plunder that would have made Biblical battles like kindergarten finger-painting exercises.

Pricking the buffoon

Then for all the bombast and bluster the President took the wind out of his sails as derision and opprobrium followed and he grasped at straws of redemption that gave with every new utterance that whatever credibility or reputation he had left was nothing worthy of praise or emulation.

An almost ran who has rapidly become a has-been having chickened out of a contest he had no hope in hell of winning when it really came to the brass tacks – it is with regret that we announce that the circus clown will no more be performing.

In case you missed it, Donald Trump who the sensible never expected to get far, who the respectable could barely abide and the cultured will avoid like a plague has withdrawn his unconfirmed, tentative and undecided intention to seek the Republican nomination – would someone now put Jack back in the box, lock it up and let it gather dust in antiquity?

Thank you.

Nigeria: Otunba Daniel - A governing example of hubris

A time to be forgotten

There was a time when this was a mere Mr., who had been given the title of Head of Department in a fledgling college of science and technology that was the sin bin for all who could not get into a more prestigious higher institution that year, the year was 1981.

I am of the opinion that the rate of attrition was high after the first year when the higher percentage of students made it into other schools that made you proud to say you were now amongst the learning and becoming one of the learned.

Lagos State College of Science and Technology was just that, I spent more time playing Scrabble and Chess than being in class where the perfunctory lecturer marked time nonchalantly; in one chemical engineering class the lecturer used German names for the compounds – this was a suburb in Lagos not Dusseldorf.

He was just Mister

The only course that seemed to be up to anything worthwhile was the architecture class where modeling took up all their time, all our practical engineering classes were conducted at the better equipped and famous Yaba College of Technology.

Within this melee of listless students and happy-go-lucky lecturers; young, handsome and bestowed with titles by reason of their being available rather than being all that capable was a Mr. Gbenga Daniel; things are a lot different now.

The difference is exemplified in an episode that happened in a church two Sundays ago [1] and it reads as both interesting and deplorable.

The once Mr. Gbenga Daniel is now Otunba Gbenga Daniel, a 2^nd term executive governor of Ogun State in Western Nigeria, who by the time he was running for governor literally had a chieftaincy title in every city, village, hamlet and hut in Ogun State, I counted 53 then.

Prayer for harmony or discord

At a church thanksgiving after the marriage of the Lisa (Prime Minister to the King) of Egbaland's daughter, Chief Bisi Macgregor (Probably of Scottish Descent), the pastor at the Redeemed Church of God, Peculiar People’s Parish, Onikolobo, Abeokuta had just finished praying “that God should intercede immediately in the crisis in the state and engender the return of peace and harmony.”

Now the ruling political party of Nigeria is a cesspit of garrulous uncouth egos in interminable conflict and discord, Ogun State simply mirrors the chaos of misgovernment, anarchy and the hell that the ill-disciplined and categorically reprobate party represents.

It would appear the Executive Governor has not been able to bring the order of mechanical engineering which was his specialty to the affairs of state, querulous factions abound and every public opportunity they find is used to up the ante to the most despicable conduct with reckless abandon.

No sooner than the pastor had finished his prayer of conciliation, the Executive Governor who enjoys some elements of constitutional immunity and wields great power seized the microphone from pastor and proceeded to negate the prayer of the pastor by raining curses on his supposed enemies to the chagrin of the families of the newlywed couple who were in church for entirely different business than this political calumny.

The burden of patronage

But then, you should expect this because the Nigerian society is so patronage, nepotism and influence-peddling driven, important but rather obnoxious people have to be invited to your functions lest they get slighted and you end up in the crosshairs of their villainy. In any case, the family of the Lisa of Egbaland would have acquired a pall of shame and well, that is par for the course considering the bridegroom’s family is of another tribe.

The audacity and effrontery that allowed the governor to think it was right and proper to disrupt an august occasion for his own ends in a church is breathtaking but Nigerian politicians would put themselves above God in the quest for recognition if they could; hubris, pride and megalomania is personified in these people with characteristics that brought the downfall of Lucifer of old.

Be titled or un-entitled

Beyond that, it was interesting to read about the entourage of the governor, he himself as Otunba (Right-arm of the king) in many towns, then his wife who has the title of Yeye (King-mother), had Akogun (War logistician), Are (War general), Aremo (High Chief of war), Prince, Architect, Comrade along with the common Chief.

These are supposed to be leaders of society in Ogun State, respectable, honourable, demurred, cultured, agreeable, virtuous, patient, honest, longsuffering and diligent in fostering peace, harmony and community spirit – I am deluded, I think.

Woe betide anyone who bears rudimentary address of Mr., Mrs., Miss or Ms. In fact, I am now of the opinion that being plain Mr. in Nigeria might just show you have either not yet been contaminated by the system or you cannot afford to pay to be awarded a chieftaincy of a hamlet in some non-descript forest where people wear no clothes.

More curses rained

Having seeded that church with commotion, he moved on to the annual Tarborrah campmeeting of the African-Initiated Church – Aladura sect, which I once attended in 1980, where again, his enemies were subjected to the threat of God’s wrath.

To have moved so deftly from a Pentecostal church setting to an Aladura setting where apparently his father is an Archbishop is quite amazing to say the least.

Now, the question is what if his so-called enemies are praying the same prayers to assumedly the same God in their own religious settings?

Nothing would be as peacefully rewarding as to see the ground open and swallow all of them up, in the re-enactment of a dreadful Pentateuch (Mosiac books) quake so that the better people of Ogun State might just breathe a big sigh of relief and praise the Most High God.

Can we rise and pray?

Source

[1] The PM News - Nigeria’s leading evening newspaper » SHOCKING: Daniel Curses Opponents In Church

Pugilistic debates in the Nigerian Congress

Filthy house of dirty ambitions

Speechless did not begin to explain my emotion when I heard of the cost of renovation on the Speaker of the House of Representatives’ official residence in Abuja, Nigeria.

At about $5 million one would have thought she was breaking new ground for a residential complex rather than making the residence more to her liking after the erstwhile occupants vacated the premises.

Really, one does wonder what exactly needs to be done to the residence that with the ensuing uproar and calmour three major contractors have pulled out of the renovation exercise.

OANDA quotes the exchange rates at 1 US Dollar = 126.826 Nigerian Naira or 1 Nigerian Naira (NGN) = 0.007885 US Dollar (USD), so the oft touted figure of NGN 529 million is really closer to $4 million; but I did not notice Gordon Brown of the UK having craved residing at 10 Downing Street for a decade write out a gravy train contract to cart all the chattels from the Buckingham Palace into the Prime Minister’s residence, just because he could.

Megalomania par excellence

Nigeria however offers an interesting view of the corruption of just acquired power and the megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur that consume the sensibilities of the few who forget their mandate of service for the wanton plunder of the nation’s resources for self aggrandisement.

All the three previous renovations to the residences of the Speaker and the Deputy since 1999 add up to NGN 21.7 million with the latest work being done in 2005, what could have been done to the houses to exact 24 times the total cost of all the previous renovation work leaves one quite bemused, but I am not aware of a blitzkrieg over Abuja in the recent past.

All sorts of things are awry with this project as the owners of the property the Federal Capital Development Authority which should have been involved in the renovations has never been consulted for these activities and even the contractors are not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission.

Madam Speaker is the 4^th in line of succession of Africa’s most populous democracy needs to exude her status and the rigours of office have required the installation of a NGN 98 million body massager, though it is not clear if this was for her or some other representative.

Thieves are not honourable at all

The mind boggles as the hoodlums who stole the elections in April 2007 have found time to install a 9-person panel to investigate how the Speaker is living up the life of Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba combined and leaving them out in the cold to make bricks of straw for their huts.

Having no mandate, it is no surprise that the people who have no respect for democracy, no mandate from the people of Nigeria but having grabbed power by blatant daylight robbery now settled to debate on this matter as Barbarians and Philistines would do, they rained blows on each other on the floor of the House as the Speaker got hurried out of the House.

The House then went into closed session where murder might just be routine as thieves cannot be expected to have honour amongst themselves – at no time has the real desire for democracy where the elected are aware of their responsibilities to the electorate been so pertinent as in Nigeria today.

This is a shame, we have more problems in Nigeria than to have reported in the international news that dishonourable and disgraceful idiots who now represent Nigerians are intelligently attending to the matters of the nation by using their fists – even boxers have rules of engagement.

Shame!