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From: ogunsalabs@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 15:50:34 +0000
To: Prof Ayo Olukotun<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
ReplyTo: ogunsalabs@yahoo.com
Subject: Fw: GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
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From: Jide Balogun <balogunjide@hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 15:37:59 +0000
To: Alaba Ogunsanwo/Prof<ogunsalabs@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
It is unfortunate that political gladiators have succeeded in diverting attention from the fundamental issues, the issues competently dissected by Prof. Olukotun. Our ship is sinking, but the first thought that comes to the mind of the average politician is who gets to own and run the ship. Still, I won't absolve Jonathan of any blame. As President of this country, he has the constitutional and moral responsibility for steering the ship in the right direction. Let the North fume. Let the South-South whine. The buck stops at Jonathan's table. Unfortunately, and contrary to popular belief, GEJ is the most cynical of all the politicians. He will do or say anything to stay in power.
And this over-hyped conference! It will, as predicted in one of my blog posts, go the way of its predecessors. Its report will end up in the graveyard of discarded documents--along with the reports submitted by the countless committees. Remember, I was a member of one of those committees. We spent months dissecting the ills of the public service. Members of our committee--mostly strong-willed men and women--took firm positions on how to reposition the public service for current and rapidly unfolding challenges. In the end, yours faithfully led a group that submitted a minority report, a report taking a radical view of what ails the public service and what it needs to be whole again. Will you believe if I tell you that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation literally pleaded with us to agree to a merger--and therefore, to a watering down of our radical recommendations? We refused point blank. Both the Main and the Minority Reports are gathering dust in one obscure office at the Presidency.
I have no objection to your sharing this with Professor Olukotun and others on his mailing list. Kindly draw his attention to my website as well.
Happy Holidays!
Jide
Subject: Fw: GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
To: balogunjide@hotmail.com
From: ogunsalabs@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 06:50:08 +0000
And this over-hyped conference! It will, as predicted in one of my blog posts, go the way of its predecessors. Its report will end up in the graveyard of discarded documents--along with the reports submitted by the countless committees. Remember, I was a member of one of those committees. We spent months dissecting the ills of the public service. Members of our committee--mostly strong-willed men and women--took firm positions on how to reposition the public service for current and rapidly unfolding challenges. In the end, yours faithfully led a group that submitted a minority report, a report taking a radical view of what ails the public service and what it needs to be whole again. Will you believe if I tell you that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation literally pleaded with us to agree to a merger--and therefore, to a watering down of our radical recommendations? We refused point blank. Both the Main and the Minority Reports are gathering dust in one obscure office at the Presidency.
I have no objection to your sharing this with Professor Olukotun and others on his mailing list. Kindly draw his attention to my website as well.
Happy Holidays!
Jide
Subject: Fw: GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
To: balogunjide@hotmail.com
From: ogunsalabs@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 06:50:08 +0000
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
From: ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 04:39:04 +0000
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ReplyTo: ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com
Subject: Fw: GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.
From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 13:20:41 +0000 (GMT)
To: ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
ReplyTo: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
GOVERNANCE PALAVER AND OUR LOST OPPORTUNITIES
Ayo Olukotun
Much of the past week was dominated by debates over allegations made by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal about Jonathan's kid gloves approach to corruption as well as former Head of State, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo's stormy 'letter' to Jonathan.
There was also the revelation by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) concerning the failure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to remit to the federation account close to 50 billion dollars between January 2012 and July 2013. As this columnist argued last week with reference to Tambuwal's criticisms of the president, there is probably as much politics as moral outrage at work especially when you consider the growing clamour for arresting Jonathan's second term bid. Another four-year term for Jonathan it has been argued runs against the political grain to the extent that it keeps the North out of power for nine years following the death of Umaru Yar'Adua who was cheated by death of a possible eight-year tenure.
Indeed, the Boko Haram phenomenon has been traced partly to the disaffection created by the failure of the ruling party to grant the argument of Northern politicians that a Northerner should be allowed to as it were complete Yar'Adua's projected two-term presidency. Ammunition appears to have been supplied to the regionalist dimension through Obasanjo's confirmation that Jonathan indeed promised to restrict himself to only one term though it is not clear whether the one term would be four years or six if the Constitution is successfully amended.
The palaver is complicated by the fact that Jonathan's presidency contains an element of poetic justice given the long and pitched battles fought by the Niger-Delta minorities for political and economic restitution within a federation that both denied them resource control and political power. This theme of Northern presidency versus South-South political assertion explains a lot of the shenanigans that are going on in the run up to 2015.
The tussle may have been avoided or ameliorated if the leaders of the ruling party had at the outset successfully negotiated these thorny matters by requesting all the sides to commit themselves to a binding agreement considering that the political class lacks the maturity and decency to operate by unwritten agreements. Of course, even a written agreement which some claim exists can be honoured in the breach but it would have moved us farther away from the current cliff hanger in which the two regions appear to be locked in a do or die contest for the presidency.
Ideally, these are matters for the national conference to resolve; it is far from clear however, whether a conference held in the current fractious circumstances will not simply replicate rather than resolve underlying ethno-regional conflicts. However that may be, there is no doubt that we cannot get to the bottom of Nigeria's problems: the impotence and truancy of the federal government, predatory rule and corruption on an unprecedented scale, imperial presidencies among others without getting right the political fundamentals and the mathematics of federalism.
If you look at it historically, the great moments of rapid transformation occurred in the First Republic when the regions had the relative autonomy to determine their destinies as well as in the case of Eastern Nigeria during the existence of Biafra when the people's energies and creativity were concentrated around a unifying goal.
This is another way of saying that federal mediocrity with its recycling of incompetent and visionless leaders will remain our lot for as long as we perpetuate this dysfunctional political structure in which the centre appropriates the bulk of the nation's wealth with very little to show for it. If we connect this to Obasanjo's letter one can raise the issue whether the nation's current downturn morally and in terms of executive energy is not itself the result of a structural deformity which allows our second and third elevens to thrive under the umbrella of federal character. The complaints made by Obasanjo are also traceable to the party system he both inherited and perpetrated, the PDP that is, which substitutes a so-called unifying ethos for vision and statesmanship. As Professor Pat Utomi, recently reminded us, no major road construction project undertaken by the federal government since 1999 has been fully completed.
What I am driving at is that Jonathan exemplifies a system that is crying out for overhaul. In this sense his greatest contribution to our political history may be the recognition that this political arrangement is unworkable and unviable and the earlier we come together to re-compact it the better.
Pinpointing structural weaknesses is not to excuse Jonathan from responsibility over the deterioration in our national fortunes. For although the centre under successive governments has hosted a long running bazaar for the high and mighty who monopolise the nation's resources there is a sense that this cynical arrangement in which there is little or no deterrence for public theft on a gargantuan scale has gone gaga in the last two years. The feeling that people at the top can literally get away with blue murder if they are properly connected has increased.
In the opinion of this columnist, the opposition against Jonathan will be less visceral if he could have shown that he is not just in charge but that he has the stamina to hold predatory rule and impunity in check. What obtains now however is an atmosphere of anything goes; if the public gets restless about corruption you simply douse the storm by setting up a committee whose findings would be promptly discharged to the burial ground once the storm has subsided. For example, by one count Jonathan has set up 72 committees since being sworn in as president. If the findings of half of these committees had been faithfully implemented Nigeria would have been a different place altogether.
To give one example of what can be called dilation by committees; it will be recalled that very early in Jonathan's tenure a committee was set up under the Chairmanship of General T. Y. Danjuma. One of the strong recommendations that emanated from that committee is the pruning down of governmental expenditure through the merger of parastatals and overlapping governmental agencies. For a season, word was put out that the project which will help in slashing recurrent expenditure was about to be implemented. Then nothing happened and today that noble suggestion remains one of the conspicuous and regrettable abortions of the administration.
If the political thermometer which was forced up by the recent statements of political heavy weights is to come down two things must happen. First, there must be a mark-up within the limits of our structural deformities of the moral tenor of governance while Jonathan must display readiness to hold the rascality and rapacity of the political class including those who are close to him in check. Second, he must display statesmanship by greater willingness to enter into negotiations over his troubled second term bid rather than as hawks around him are suggesting ram it down the throats of Nigerians. Such negotiations will constitute an important prelude to the larger much-needed conference on the national question which he has initiated.
Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236