In his valedictory address to the Senate, “distinguished” former member, Adamu Bulkachuwa, has confessed to influencing the decisions of his wife, Zainab Bulkachuwa, while she was serving as a judge and President of the Court of Appeal. Mr. Bulkachuwa, an 83-year old chieftain of the ruling APC, who represented Bauchi North senatorial district in the 9th Senate, confirmed infringing on: “My wife, whose freedom and independence I encroached upon while (she) was in office, and she has been very tolerant and accepted my encroachment and extended her help to my colleagues,” he said. The former Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, realised the old man was making dangerous revelations of their secret practices in public and stopped him saying: “Distinguished, I don’t think this is a good idea going this direction. It is not a good idea, please.” It would have been great to hear examples he might have given on how they perverted the course of justice.
Browsing: Prof. Jibrin Ibrahim
One of the clearest symbols of the failure of the Buhari Administration was former Minister of Aviation Hadi Sirika trying to pool the wool over the eyes of Nigerians presenting a hastily repainted Ethiopian Airline plane chartered for the trick at high cost to claim that he had delivered on his mandate of delivering Nigeria Air before the end of his mandate. The tragicomedy was not funny because Nigerians knew about the billions spent on the project with nothing to show for it. Maybe the big question was why was he reappointed to deliver on this mandate when he had been given the opportunity in the first term of the Administration but had failed miserably? For his failure, he was promoted from junior to senior minister in 2019 and his “empire” carved out of the Ministry of Transport so that he would have sole authority on the matter. The signal was clear, the reward for failure under Buhari was promotion.
In his inaugural address on Monday, President Bola Tinubu announced the end of fuel subsidy as it would no longer be an item on the budget. On Wednesday, Government announced a drastic rise in the prices of petrol from 185 to up to 557 Naira a litre depending on location. It was a shock to the Nation and immediately, labour was up in arms demanding for a complete withdrawal. The shock was due to expectations based on government announcements that palliatives would be negotiated and offered to poor Nigerians who would be impacted negatively by the new prices expected to come into effect in July this year.
There has been a frenzy of governance activities over the past three weeks as the Buhari Administration abandons his “Baba go slow” mode of operation and gets into the “let’s work as if there is no tomorrow” mode. Many new contracts are being signed daily. Ministries are being restructured one week before the end of the Administration’s mandate. Requests for approvals are flooding the National Assembly, new loans are being taken and above all, publications are being launched on the great achievements of the Buhari Government. The on-going hysteria is best symbolized by the announcement from the Minister of Aviation who is demolishing buildings, restructuring the ministry, sacking and appointing management staff that today, 26th May 2023, Air Nigeria will come into service as it flies into the country. Don’t ask me why it should start service on the last working day of the administration, it’s all part of the governance frenzy. I am one of those who remember that Minister Sirika told us in 2015 that the President has directed him to start a national carrier and it will be done immediately.
Last Friday, I gave the Convocation Lecture at Modibbo Adama University in Yola. The theme was the Nigerian University System and the Public Good: Pathway to Recovery. I addressed the problem of declining finances of the university system, which makes it difficult for the universities to recruit and above all to retain quality staff, engage in research and provide a conducive atmosphere for learning and research. I also addressed the more complex story about the corruption of Nigerian society in general but particularly insidious in the university, which created a mentality of looting and wanton exploitation in whatever situation people find themselves.
Incoming President Tinubu has chosen Godswill Akpabio (South-south) and Barau Jibrin (North-west) for the senate president and deputy senate president respectively. For the House of Representatives, he has endorsed Tajudeen Abbas (North-west) and Ben Kalu (South-east) for speaker and deputy speaker respectively. In-coming presidents never learn. Since 1999 when President Obasanjo introduced the tradition, there have been frequent battles over the assumed “presidential prerogative” to appoint presiding officers they like and it has seldom favoured the executive. We will see if this one will be different.
Yesterday, the Cuban Embassy held a briefing session on their recently held elections which took place in March. Cuba, with a population of just over 11 million has a National Assembly of 470, with each member representing just about 30,000 people. This means constituents actually know their representatives. Their National Assembly is not full time, members remain on their work posts and run their normal life and simply go to parliament when it is in session. While the National Assembly is directly elected by the people, the President is elected indirectly, that is, by the National Assembly. The high level of participation in the elections, 75%, in a context deep economic crisis provoked by the American blockade was widely seen by both pro- and anti-government groups as a litmus test to gauge support for the Cuban leadership at this time. Once again, the message seems to be the legendary resilience of both the people and government of Cuba remains strong. No wonder the Cuban President, Miguel Diaz-Canel hailed the vote as a “victory” for the Cuban people.
The cost of the 2023 general elections on Nigeria’s social fabric has been very high. Many Nigerians felt threatened by strong ethnic mobilisation aimed at harassing them with the intention of stopping them from exercising their franchise. Voter suppression emerged as a core electoral tactic precisely because in many parts of the country, the assumed inclination of Nigerians to vote along ethno-religious lines were significantly undermined. In other words, political warlords were concerned that votes they had considered theirs for the taking were going elsewhere and breaking up their hegemonic control. In response, they intensified negative ethno-religious profiling to revive latent bigotry imbibed by Nigerians over the generations. Their political objective then became to intensify national disunity for the sake of preserving their political domains. The consequence of voter suppression is to question the right of belonging and participation in the political community causing deep pain and hurt.
The 2023 general election has taken its pride of place in the long line of elections that have traumatized Nigerians due to the extremely high levels of ethno-regional and religious bigotry that marked them. The 1964 elections might have been the most acrimonious following the census controversy that following the rejection of the 1962 census and divergent attitudes to the 1963 census, the creation of the Midwest and operation wetie in Western Nigeria. In short, all the key ingredients about the survival of the Nigerian State were on the table in that election. The result was complete breakdown of public trust and the civil war. The learning from the 1964 elections was that the abuse of powers of incumbency to impose the will of a section of the political class was a threat to the survival of the state itself. The outcome was that the First Republic fell.
There was a symposium yesterday organised by Nextier for the Presentation of Prof Tunji Olaopa’s latest book: “The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir”. Olaopa’s life and commitment has been one of an intellectual in government devoted to seeking pathways to public service reform so that the Nigerian State can produce and deliver necessary public goods to a people that desperately need public service. In Nigeria, there has been a high consciousness of the lack of effectiveness in the delivery of public services leading to many efforts to reform the public service so as to improve its performance. Indeed, for the past thirty-five years, Nigeria has been undergoing a regular process of public sector reforms aimed at increasing the capacity of State actors to provide public goods to citizens. The reforms have not been very successful. They have simply led to a series of disruptions in the organisation and power equations in the public sector that have led neither to increased efficiencies nor improved service provisioning.