Ademola Araoye
Let me begin by associating myself with the well-earned congratulatory messages to you that have been amplified in the last fortnight. With all humility, I urge you, Baba, to savor the sweet scent of the roses that have been presented to you. As an AGSOBA, I want to assert in the most unequivocal terms the pride of my generation in the solidity of your life attainments. As your children, we read in your life the expression of the very essence of the “Primus et Solus” mantra of our great Alma Mater, Abeokuta Grammar School. Your well-codified life struggles and sacrifices to the pinnacle of success encompass invaluable services to the nation. Profoundly, your philanthropy has transformed the lives of many. Your lifelong battle has been aboutthe transcendental idealsof a just and humane society. In your view, the state is compelled to revolve around the preeminence of that sacred human life. In this radical expectation, you are indeed a reverent scion of Reverend Oludotun Ransome Kuti and a true son of Lisabi. Senator, “Lori Oke ati Petele”, from Oke Igbein to Idi Aba, I salute you for this service to humanity. In your tenacity of purpose, you give us hope.
But Baba, we celebrate your centenary in somber times. That lofty hope of your generation for Nigeria has transmogrified into an insufferable nightmare across the land. Dark clouds have enveloped all facets of our national life. The Legislatureof which you were a part is not the Legislature of these past seasons. A Senate President has been put in the dock. A Senator was a fugitive from the law hounded by the INTERPOL. Legislation has been transformed into a confusingenterprise that blurs facts from myth. Under normal circumstances, the Legislature, as the pivotal institution in a democratic polity, reflects the pulse of society and drives the direction of the state. An efficient Legislature constructs the pathway to prosperity and peace in the polity. The Legatum Centre for National Prosperity is dedicated to advancing the understanding of what drives success in nations and providing practical insights to policymakers, organizations, and communities around the world to build their pathways to prosperity.The Foundation’s periodic reports correlate good governance with prosperity within states. Good governance is also closely related to the efficiency of the Legislature. Evaluated on nine pillars namely:Economic Quality, Business Environment, Governance, Personal Freedom, Social Capital, Safety and Security, Education, Health, and the Natural Environment, in Legatum’s index of global prosperity index for 2023, Nigeria is ranked 142 out of 167 states in global prosperity. Nigeria isbehind countries such as Ghana, which is tottering at the edge of bankruptcy, Guinea, Zimbabwe, Sao Tome and Principe, as well as Namibia, among other states in Africa. The implication is that Nigeria is not one of the best-governed states across the globe, and indeed in Africa.
It is acknowledged that the development of the Nigerian Legislature as an institution has been impeded by several factors. These factors includethe transition from a parliamentary system to a federal bi-cameral legislature, political instability occasioned by incessant military interregnums in the political space, the dissipation of societal values,and the traditional overbearing influence of the executive that was inherited from colonial times and consolidated by the military that infused centralized control into political life. More profoundly for the inability of the legislature to function efficiently is the loss of integrity of the political parties as an intermediary between voters andlegislators and the political party system as mechanisms for the articulation of ideological visions rather than as convenient platforms for personal aggrandizement- the “amulumala syndrome.” Political partiesseeking to protect their integrity will monitor legislators and discourage opportunistic behavior of legislators elected on the platform of the political party. Randall G Holcombe and James D Gwartney note that an erosion of the party’s ability to monitor the principal-agent relationship between voters and legislators causes an increase in opportunistic behavior by legislators. These factors have undermined the oversight responsibilities of the Nigerian Legislature. Accordingly, the capacity of the Legislature to efficiently legislate is tied to a functioning political party system that develops platforms and protects the integrity of their visions. A monetized political process can neither expect to have a credible Legislature nor many men of sanity. In this sense, the Nigerian Legislature is in transition in the development of an institutional culture that would codify its role and clearly define its relationship with the Executive branch. Today, with the monetization of the political process and the lack of a credible political party system, the outcomes of the legislative process have no bearing on and are delinked from the debilitating existential realities of the people. Politics is reduced to a business enterprise where investors are more concerned about recouping their investments than advancing any program for their voters. The Nigerian Legislature has upended political theory by acquiring quasi-executive functions through the allotment of “constituency allowance”. Since it is all business, no one raises an eyebrow. The operative mantra is not “service” but “profit”. In the politics of the search for profit, there are no guardrails. Electoral cycles are characterized by violence and death. Outcomes are contested permanently until death does them part. Politics is reserved for only those who dare. In this somber setting, the Legislature, as a critical arm of a democracy, cannot be exonerated from the poverty ravaging the land. There is disillusionment across the land.
But the Legislature is also a victim of the appalling circumstances of the Nigerian state. The challenges of Nigeriatranscend an atomistic interrogation of the Legislature. We cannot speak of the Legislature outside the context of a state system that has completely derailed. The Legislature is just one broken spokein a system that has gone awry. Nigeria is thus at a critical existential juncture. Therefore, in a prognosis of the future of Nigeria, it is imperative to abjure any sophistry of sentimental or partisan delusions that seem to cloudthe public discourse on the subject.The circumstances of Nigeriacall for brutally frank discursive interactionsinunstinting holistic engagements. This intervention investigates the systemic malaise that is paralyzing Nigeria.
It is the consensus that the problems of Nigeria are found in the Constitution of the country. The aberrant idealism that underpinned the substantive contents of the Constitutions of 1979 and 1999 as well as the substantive directions and the process of formulating the 1999 Constitution have not done Nigeria a lot of good. The 1979 Constitution was based on the idealistic premise of strengthening the unity of the country. It turned out to achieve the opposite result.Professor Ben Nwabueze, a preeminent Constitutional lawyer who played a major role with his friend Chief Rotimi Williams in making that Constitution, was profuse in his recognition of the many errors in the 1979 Constitution. I would like to cite an interview that he granted 10 years ago.
“Quite frankly, there are many flaws and many errors in the content of the constitution. So many errors and I as a person was partly responsible because I was a member of the constitution drafting committee set up by the military government in 1978. I was not only a member but the chairman of one of the sub-committees that produced Chapter 2, the fundamental objectives and one of the cardinal flaws in the constitution is the concentration of powers in the centre.
That is why I accept that I am partly responsible for that because at the time, late Chief Rotimi Williams, a close friend of mine and nearly everybody in the Constitution Drafting Committee were so overwhelmed with …this patriotic feeling that we needed unity and the most effective way to achieve unity of the country is by having a very strong central government.
Most of us in the committee shared that idea at the time. Chief Williams shared it because of the patriotism in us and we wanted a united Nigeria, we feel we can achieve unity by having a strong central government. Then, what did we do to achieve our mis-guided objective? We took away 50 per cent of the items on the concurrent list and gave it to the centre.
…And the result is the almighty Federal Government, but what we discover was that instead of producing unity, we produced disunity because of the intensity of the struggle to control the center.”
Meanwhile, the 1999 Constitution, on which the Fourth Republic is anchored, was the product of bad faith and a rogue process. These two constitutions laid the groundwork for the current unfortunate state of affairs in the country. The integrity of the national process is contested. A few opportunists are milking the country to death by exploiting the weaknesses of the Constitution and the normlessness in society. Adewale Yagboyaju observes that in the fourth Republic, the rule of law is merely pronounced, elections and electoral processes are subverted, and political parties and other important public institutions are manipulated in favor of the privileged few. Chief Afe Babalola identifies the Constitution as the source of Nigeria’s poverty and insecurity. Michael Owhoko notes that Nigeria was a country of optimism until it was subverted by entrenched interests using demography and territorial delineation to give the North superiority over the South. Nigeria’s Constitution had become a mechanism to distort the organic balance required of a just political system. Southern leaders are held responsible for the structural imbalance of the country. By Southern leaders are meant all persons of Southern descent who have held positions of authority and influence either in the Military, Executive, Legislature, and all platforms of social and political influence.
At this juncture, permit me to wax theoretical on the concept of politics, power, and justice. The relationship between the three concepts defines political legitimacy. Graeme Garrard and James Bernard Murphy aver that politics is the intersection of power and justice: that is power that is justified and justice that is empowered. Politics, they illuminate, is Right made mighty and when MIGHT is exercised Rightly. The activity of politics is the constant attempt to bring a conception of justice to power. Here they decipher for us the fundamentals of political legitimacy. By these metrics, Nigeria as presently constituted and run, has scant legitimacy. Let me affirm here that legitimacy is a quality infused in any organization by the people in whom sovereignty exclusively inheres. Courts validate processes based on the provisions of the extant law. The people confer legitimacy on the political dispensation. The search for legitimacy also relates to who constructs the fundamentals of the state. The simple answer to this is the people. That is the essence of the Social contract of the people with the state.
In the course of the decline to a paralyzing nadir, the Nigerian state and society, operated by violent barons exploiting deficient constitutions, have depreciated the value of everything; from undermining good society, and brigandage as a national attribute to even the collapsing value of the Naira through contrived fiscal recklessness.The guiding principle is “me first, my family next then me”. The toxicity of the existential facts around the expression of life in this social-politicalspace is not just more than pathetic, it iscomprehensively inhuman. The stark fact is that Nigeria exhibits the classic pathology of what may conceptually be described as a deconsolidated polity.
As a rule, given the structural configuration of the post-colonial African state, strategic interaction among groups is characterized by competition for control of the state. Accordingly, the pursuit of particularistic objectives often becomes embodied in competing visions of just, legitimate, and appropriate political orders.The political process becomes rivalries of contending groups to control resources and dominate state policy. This generates clear security imperatives that drive the struggle of the constituent groups for the appropriation of the state. The political process is a struggle without safeguards for all the forces implicated. The zero-sum struggle without safeguards is unending. Armed hostilities, instigated by the state and disaffected non-state actors, which often break out, represent the most intense stage of the struggle. These fit into the paradigm of what is conceptualized as a deconsolidated statehood.
As a deconsolidated state, the critical deficits of Nigeria can be distilled into five main features: These are:
- Devaluation
- Delegitimation/Defection
- Disequilibration
- Dissonances
- Dystopian/Dysfunctionality
Devaluation: A major feature in the operations of the Nigerian state is its intrinsic propensity and capacity to devalue everything from the abstract to the physical. State and society are run by upending everything of the essential values defining it. This spans from the ethical and value system to include all standards that are defined globally and are watered down in rationalized affirmative principles. In its physical expression devaluation has impacted even the national currency. The concept of Excellence has been so bastardized that what should be an ordinary performance is glorified to achieve political objectives. Educational standards have been nationalized such that the average graduate of a tertiary institution cannot be trusted to perform basic clerical responsibilities. The concept and practice of politics and statecraft have been debased. The political process ensures that the principles of holistic devaluation are contrived to attain political ends. Democracy is transformed into an instrument of partisan political objectives that are contrary to what democracy stands for. The end goal is to build an opaque system and prevent transparency in the noxious trading among opportunists that goes for politics. Everything made for the good of humanity is sabotaged.
Delegitimated: Associated with the proclivities of holistic devaluation in deconsolidated statehood is the principle of delegitimation. In political science, legitimacy is the right and a willing, (note: not coercive) acceptance of an authority by a population, usually of a governing law or a regime. Whereas authority denotes a specific position in an established government, the term legitimacy denotes a system of government—wherein government denotes the “sphere of influence”.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy proposes that political legitimacy is a virtue of political institutions and of the decisions—about laws, policies, and candidates for political office—made within them. It goes on to expatiate that some associate legitimacy with the justification of coercive power and with the creation of political authority. Others associate it with the justification, or at least the sanctioning, of existing political authority. Authority stands for a right to rule—a right to issue commands and, possibly, to enforce these commands using coercive power. Some have argued that political legitimacy has to be answered primarily based on procedural features that shape these institutions and underlie the decisions made. Others argue that legitimacy depends—exclusively or at least in part—on the substantive values that are realized.[i] In the least, the source of authority in the Nigerian state, the Constitution, is actively contested. This fact robes all institutions, including the Legislature, emanating from a disputed Constitution, with scant legitimacy.
Disequilibrated: Nigeria suffers from structural imbalance. The so-called 1999 Constitution is perceived by many stakeholders in the Nigerian experiment as a product of a rogue process designed by a clique to ensure the perpetual control of the state by a minority group. Accordingly, the legitimacy of the state and all its structures and institutions of control are not perceived to be in the service of the totality of the population, but for the benefit of a clique for whom the Constitution is designed to favor. Responses to the structural disequilibrium of the state have included demands for the restructuring of the state by those who believe that Nigeria can be redeemed. A demand for self-determination by those who no longer have faith in continued citizenship in a permanently lop-sided arrangement is also on the table.
Dissonances is about chasms in value and ethical orientations in society and across the classes of people. The source of dissonance may be traced to disparate worldviews on the nature of the “good society” across different constituent units of the state at one level, and at another level across classes across the spectrum of stakeholders across the national territory. In societies that tend to believe in predestination, the status quo is divinely ordained. Human struggles to change the circumstances of life are considered futile. At the other end are what may be termed negative cognitive contamination across society where a class of people propagate a philosophy or vision of society that validates the worst instinct of the individual. The consequence of negative cognitive contamination is the destruction of the humanistic assumptions underpinning the social contract on which the state conceptually is founded. The state assumes a false centrality in the affairs of citizens. The needs of the state begin to override the centrality of our individual and collective humanity.
Dystopian/Dysfunctionality: This relates to a very bad or unfair society in which there is a lot of suffering or to the description of such a society.The state is dysfunctional and paralyzed by corruption, incompetence, and inefficiency across the board. Yet, all these may be contrived by the political elite to attain partisan objectives far removed from the legitimate interests of the state. The situation may elicit mass defection from the system across all strata of society. Defections have also been demanded by large communities and constituents who no longer believe in the country. To sustain the state, the use of force becomes a preeminent modality to suppress dissent around the fundamentals of the state. In this setting the sanctity of life is compromised. The whole of the national territory may become a vast wasteland of death and suffering without respite.
In its monumental failure to successfully manage its structural homogeneity, moral, values as well as ethical deficits, in plain language, Nigeria is in decay. Nigeria is sinking further into a quagmire and is in dire need of rescue. The comprehensive indicators of a looming systemic crash range from violence as a validated currency of interaction in national life, barefaced robbery of the commonwealth, internal moral and ethical atrophy to a comprehensive loss of respect for Nigeria and all it stands for.
At home, the perception of the legitimacy of the state is scanty. At a human level, the Nigerian story is heart-wrenching. The younger generation, dismayed and disoriented, “japa”, vowing never to return to these shores again. Our professional class is deserting the country in droves.But then, not a few are repatriated home with ignominy. A total of 13,235 Nigerians have been deported from at least 10 African countries in four years. Nigerians were deported from Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, South Africa and Cameroon. Also, senior officials of Nigeria, across the Legislature, the Executive as well as in society, end up in jail at home and abroad. Political offices have become a shelter for patriotism-preaching scoundrels from accountability for heinous transgressions committed at home and abroad. Meanwhile overwhelmed, our leaders seek excuses to escape the horrendous realities that they have brewed at home.
Abroad, Nigeria’s stature has diminished. In the recently released Henley Passport Index for Q2 2023, the Nigerian passport was 91st among the 199 countries measured across 227 travel destinations. Nigeria’s passport is one of the 10 weakest in Africa. It is in the unenviable company of Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Libya and Somalia.
Yet, responses to this catastrophic ledger of a nation have been diverse. They have ranged from murderous insurgency, militancy, peaceful admonitions and protests, and respectful demarches of concerned statesmen for adjustments to helpless lamentations like this one. To this evolution, determined to suppress reality, the post-colonial establishment deploys coercion to neutralize dissent. That is the trajectory of peculiar democracies in the post-colonial African universe. Presenting a façade of normalcy, the state bandies instrumentalized democracy on driven by elite deception. To this devolution to a farcical state, there is manifest resistance by different interests and legitimate stakeholders in the affairs of what I often call deconsolidated states. Resistance would ultimately be exacerbated. It is a very dangerous impasse that any state could face.
Surveying situations such as these, Francis Fukuyama affirms that political decay occurs when political systems fail to adjust to changing circumstances. He adds that when the surrounding environment changes and new challenges arise, there is often a disjunction between existing institutions and present needs. These dissonances surely have unsavory consequences. Yet, the outmoded structures are supported by legions of entrenched stakeholders who, in pursuit of personal interests, oppose any fundamental change. A perfidious but powerful national coalition emerges to advance private interests that are falsely equated to the public good.
Excellencies and Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, that exactly is the elephant in the room that official Nigeria has refused to acknowledge.
What then is the way forward? How do we cure the malignancy of the state? As I hinted earlier, alternative perspectives on the way forward have been abundantly expressed by major stakeholders. In summarizing these perspectives, three major tendencies have emerged. These can be grouped, based on classic parameters into three:
The first is what can be called a preference for the Status Quo and its regime. A second is the Reformist aisle and the third would be the Revolutionary groups.
Status quo forces, led by the Legislators and individuals with high personal stakes in the continuity of the extant regime, affirm the possibility of reinvigorating the weak legitimacy of the extant order. In that perspective, a tinkering, here and there, of the Constitution would be sufficient to keep Nigeria moving ahead. This translates into the acceptance of the continued validity of the 1999 Constitution as the framework for the organization of the Nigerian polity. Recognizing the challenges, those aligned to the status quo infuse in Nigeria a mythical attribute to survive whatever turbulence time would throw at Nigeria. Prayers, a national pastime that paradoxically has been heightened by the terrible existential dilapidations, is counted upon to ward off evil out of Nigeria’s way. Some even say every President brings his team of formidable marabouts or prayer warriors to fortify himself and Aso rock. Status quo forces view alternative proposals on the future of the Nigerian state with suspicion.
The Reformist Group, led by highly respected successful professionals and individuals with stout credentials as patriotic senior statesmen, has strong reservations about the continued legitimacy of the 1999 Constitution. Among the many arguments put forward by the reformist aisle is that the monumental failures of the Nigerian state are attributable to the 1999 Constitution which they also describe as an imposition on a multi-national state. Also,in that connection, it is observed that the logic of the 1979 Constitution that preceded the 1999 Constitution was premised on aberrant idealism with limited appreciation of the challenges of the security dilemma inherent in the constructions of multi-national states. Reformists struggle and agitate for true federalism, for fiscal federalism along with value and ethical rejuvenation. They are confident that Nigeria would not attain its full potential because the basis of unitythat they had advocated earlier in their careers has proven to be misguided. They nowperceive whatsubsists as more disunity than unity. Fromtheir standpoint, the Constitution is seen as the source of the problems of the country. Reformiststherefore demand the abrogation of the 1999 Constitution, and the conveyance of a Sovereign Conference to reformulate the basis of the operations of the country.The Legislators are defined as interested parties determined to protect both institutional and private interests. There is a conflict of interest. Accordingly, the Constitutional order is imperiled by perceptions of the Constitution as a product of a rogue process and absolute loss of confidence in the operators of the state. For reformists, it is critical to avoid instituting another rogue process in the formulation of the new Constitution. Again, Professor Ben Nwabueze clarifies that:
The arguments from the National Assembly (that they have the right to formulate a constitution) are again misplaced. They are representatives of the people who are elected members, elected by the people, but what is their mandate? There is a clear difference and distinction between the National Assembly and the Constituent Assembly or National Conference. The National Assembly are elected and given a mandate to govern according to the Constitution.
The Constituent Assembly, the National Conference is an assembly for just one specific purpose, the purpose of making a constitution. Their mandate is not to govern, the mandate is a special one and that is making a constitution. The people are the constituent power; the constituent power in any country is in the people as a sovereign people. The National Assembly is not sovereign, the people are sovereign. In exercise of their constituent power of their sovereignty to deliberate on their constitution and how they are to be governed, that is the whole purpose of the demand for a National Conference.
The third forcein resolving the nationality crisis is theamalgam of revolutionary movements that advocate the breakup of the country. These disparate movements of ethno-regional organizations often come together under the aegis of the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS). The NINAS declared a Constitutional Force Majeure against the Nigerian state on 16th December 2020, claiming to be representing indigenous ethnic nationalities of the South and Middle Belt. NINAS seeksto decommission what it terms as the repudiated illegitimate 1999 Constitution. They argue that the 1999 Constitution took away the self-determination of ethnic nations. Thus, Nigeria became a Disputed Project, over a Sovereignty (or Union) Dispute occasioned by two issues with the Preamble of the 1999 Constitution:
In pointing at the failures of the Nigerian state since the amalgamation, the revolutionary movements conclude that a refurbished or a restructured state would be insufficient to release the energies of stakeholders whose developmental thrusts they suggest have been constricted by the workings of the Nigerian state. They challenge all the fundamentals of the state beginning from the legality of the amalgamation and the validity of the Constitutions of the Nigerian state. They argue that revitalizing the fundamental underpinnings of Nigeria is beyond the mandate of a Legislature that derives its legitimacy from a contested Constitution.
Finally, the radical movements allude to the defection of a significant proportion of citizens from a national process from which they are alienated. They note that declining voter participation in national elections suggests indifference to, or more abysmally, popular delinking of the mass of the population from the national process. Political penetration in Nigeria is also very poor. As Kabir Yusuf observed in the Premium Times of March 5, 2023 Nigerians’ aversion to voting during elections is well documented, but the challenge (in the last elections) saw a new low last weekend (Presidential elections of xxx) when citizens went out to elect federal lawmakers and the president in an exercise that was keenly watched across the world. Yusuf advances that of the 93.4 million registered voters this year, 87.2 million people collected their Permanent Voters Card and the total number of actual voters on election day was only 24.9 million. The voter turnout was abysmal, the lowest since Nigeria’s independence. In 36 states, less than half of the eligible population turned out to vote, and no state had a turnout above 40 percent. In the three largest states based on voter registration — Lagos, Kano, and Rivers — less than a third of the eligible population voted. Rivers turnout was a shameful 15.6 percent, the lowest in the country, despite producing a lot more votes in past elections. The report of the International Observers Group was also not salutary. The declared winner of the Presidential election scored a total of 8,794,726 votes, the highest of all the candidates. The estimated population of Nigeria on 28 October 2023, when Baba marked 100 years of meritorious existence, was 225,365,403.
Accordingly,the revolutionary groupadvocates the dismemberment of the state into new sovereign political entities established among indigenous ethno-regional groups that they define as natural political communities and entities. They seek to enter into a new social contract with new states that, they hope, would guarantee the dignity of their humanity. They preach that the confluence of power and right would be a happy intersection of power and justice in their envisaged new republics.
Under these circumstances, pretense or feigning ignorance of reality is counterproductive. The rational focus would seem to suggest a more holistic engagement than deconstructing the system into atomized interventions.
Again,to conclude:Mase tan ara re: Egbe Ni Fun Eni to ntan rare!
Baba, Otunba Senator, as we AGSOBA revel in your triumphant presence at your centenary, we reaffirm the honor done us by your exemplary life and career. Up School!
*This talk was given by Professor Araoye at Abeokuta Grammar School to commemorate the centenary of Senator Kunle Oyero.