PDP and the Long Walk to Trouble

15^th December, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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et’s first admit the complexity and the difficulty involved in actually describing what historically constitutes the party PDP or what group of people can be seen to constitute PDP and over what time. This complexity is more so when we continue dwelling on the assumption that PDP was responsible for destroying this country in the preceding 16 years before APC. One looks back and discover that many of the major actors that participated in this so-called destruction are either not the major current drivers in the party or are comfortably within some camps that tend to make the most noise about this destruction. Should we then hold the current PDP composition absolutely responsible for this 16 year destruction?

If you consider the fact that former President Olusegun Obasanjo who served as president for eight out of those sixteen years in question and that his two directly anointed and imposed candidates completed the remaining eight, later abandoned the PDP pretending not to be party to all that was wrong with the party and what it turned Nigeria into, then you will really understand the complexity of passing a definite verdict on this particular present PDP and other related issues.

The PDP recently conducted a convention to elect its national leaders for the first time not as a Ruling Party but as the major opposition party in Nigeria. Now, everyone expected the party to make deliberate but collective and calculative sacrifices to lay a solid foundation for a decent outing in 2019. Though the party influencers may see their choices in that convention as justified, but many outsiders may not think so.

The PDP, whether freely and fairly or not decided to have its National Chairman from the South-South at the expense of the apparently unprepared, unorganized and indifferent South West, a decision some say will help strengthen the support base of the party. After coming out of a long legal battle necessitated by string of crises, many expected the PDP to make a better if not a perfect decision irrespective of personal interests.

The decision not to have their chairman come from the South-West will be a very costly one likely to cause them an already unlikely victory in 2019. The party may have just set itself on a long walk to trouble; a walk that may last for probably more than the period it spent at the helm of affairs in this nation. To make things worse, the old traditional fraudulent PDP ways of doing things were still alleged to have manifested in the just concluded elections. With the power, patronage and money the party uses in the past to compensate and unite warring factions no longer available, the PDP will be likely enmeshed in another cold running internal battle which the current reconciliatory effort may likely fail to address into 2019.

The South West is the political capital of the ruling APC and by extension of Nigerian politics. It is the second most populated geo-political zone in Nigeria after the North-West, it is also the most politically sophisticated. A strong Olusegun Mimiko-like PDP National Chairman from that zone would have been far much better than an Uche Secondus coming from a zone where PDP are under the illusion of having absolute control. It is very important to note that the PDP support in the South East and South South is largely exaggerated. If all post 1999 elections in those two zones were averagely free and fair or at least as credible as in other zones, the story would have been much different. Now with the party out of power, this illusion will be met by a brutal reality in 2019.

One major disadvantage facing the PDP is the inability of Nigerians to prioritize credibility of candidates and policies over party politics and sentiments. The fact that many people who participated in destroying Nigeria are now calling the shots in APC wouldn’t change an already uncertain electoral fortune awaiting it in 2019. Ponder on the fact that five out of the six PDP House of Representative Speakers that served between 1999 to 2015, are now in the APC. Roughly, one third to half of the PDP ministers and governors that served in the same period are either in the APC or elsewhere.

The signs of open desperation already exhibited by early leaders to hand over the presidential ticket to journeyman Atiku will also likely tear the party apart. The likes of Sule Lamido who endured through thick and thin to identify with the party will never take this lightly. The sellability of Atiku and the dearth of a better powerful alternative to him are problems in their selves. A good acceptable flag bearer for the PDP that will match President Muhammadu Buhari who is likely to contest will be very difficult to find and even a good Ike-Ekweremadu-like running mate from the South East may not make much difference.

In all of this, the ruling APC will be the biggest winners and Nigerians will be the biggest losers. Any proponent of competitive democracy and any advocate against one-party state would like to see the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) remain strong and vibrant enough to keep the ruling All Progressives’ Congress on its toes. Probably, only a fanatical APC sympathizer would like to see PDP become extinct in the current situation. The role of a strong opposition in a democracy cannot be overemphasized and without opposition, democracy becomes autocracy.

There is a reason why well-meaning Nigerians wish good for the PDP. Many neutrals have sympathy for the party neither because the party deserves such nor because it is showing signs of deserving such any soon, but because it is the only party that is in a strong position to keep APC on its toes-something the governing party itself needs to be motivated. We know the experience we went through when an almost unopposed PDP were in charge.

No matter how well outsiders wish to see things go for PDP, it won’t be possible if the major stakeholders within the party are not willing to put their acts together. If there were other viable opposition options apart from PDP, majority of Nigerians would most likely go for them and back any among them to become the major opposition party in the country. Alas! There is none and considering what it takes to build a formidable national political party or to transform a dormant one in Nigeria, we can say, there would be none at least for the time being, except if an unforeseen miracle-like situation happens.

After the 2015 General Elections, the question on the lips of Nigerians was: how would PDP manage defeat? Others asked whether PDP would bounce back and if yes, how and when? The problem we are facing in Nigerian politics is that political parties are almost solely judged based on electoral performance. Therefore, in the eyes of many, PDP would only be considered to have bounced back if it takes over from APC at the next polls. From the look of things, PDP itself also narrowly look at things that way.

Virtually, all 2019 calculations do not currently favour the PDP, but we don’t know what the immediate and long term future holds. However, the part must prepare itself for defeat as much as it is preparing for victory. One thing the party should be thankful for though is that the culture of free and fair elections appears to have come to stay in Nigeria.

The truth is, if PDP can still remain in existence, strengthen its organs, engage in massive grassroots membership drive and followership, give the nation a rebranded and innovative opposition, retain its states and win some elusive states like Lagos and have a decent presidential election outing in 2019, that would be enough success even if they don’t win back the presidency in the next 8 years. The PDP should not be exclusively looking forward to winning elections, it should think of ways it can set the standards and become the epitome of internal democracy, de-commercialization and de-monetization of politics, inspiring political consciousness and awareness as well as ideology-based politicking, things the ruling APC have promised but largely failed to do so far.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez 

A Season of Dashed Hopes

25^th October, 2017

 By: Amir Abdulazeez

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his week, the news of an alleged secret recruitment process by the Federal Inland Revenue Service broke out. According to the news, FIRS was sending text messages to some privileged individuals inviting them to a certain location for interview and possible appointment. Just as the news went viral, I came across an appeal by a concerned citizen on Twitter copying the handles of the organization in question, that of the Nigerian Senate, House of Representatives, the presidency and a host of others. Here was my thought and reply to the appeal; why petition people without whose open or silent approval such a thing can never happen or perhaps those whose candidates are most certainly the beneficiaries of this kind of recruitments, if not this same exercise in question.

Now, the question is not about FIRS, CBN, NNPC, DSS and other Federal Government parastatals allegedly conducting secret recruitments targeted at few privileged Nigerians to the detriment of the less (or non) privileged, it is about it happening in the government of (or which supposed to be of) change supervised by a party promising a fundamental difference and a leader whose credentials have always been about integrity, honesty and justice. One thing, I personally expected to see but have since given up on seeing in Buhari’s Nigeria was a united country driven by justice and fairness for all; at all levels and in all matters. Nigeria becoming a society of equity and justice is once again elusive.

One fundamental political manoeuvre that the ruling APC appear to have succeeded in executing is convincing (or may be bullying) many Nigerians into accepting their submission of only promising to tackle corruption, insecurity and the economy. Lest we forget, the APC was a merger of political parties who spent their whole lives claiming everything was wrong with Nigeria because of PDP. The APC itself spent between 2013 to 2015 telling us how everything is wrong and how, if elected, they will fix them. Their well packaged all-encompassing campaign promises which they never disowned until weeks after the commencement of their tenure are well documented.

This was the first basic (mis)step the APC Government took in disappointing Nigerians. Considering the disastrous past which the PDP represented, it was easy to forgive APC and give it more time to achieve its mandate until it gradually and lately proved that it cannot. Let us for the sake of analysis briefly focus on anti-corruption, which is the APC’s national anthem; tackling insecurity, which is what primary aided the party to power and fixing the economy which is the most tricky of all.

While anti-corruption is what President Buhari has emphasized the most, it is also the issue in which he had critically and decisively failed the most so far. Nothing captures this more adequately than the Punch’s editorial of 24^th October, 2017 titled ‘Maina: The Audacity of corruption’.  

Read some abridged sections from the editorial “There has been a serial condoning of corruption when it comes close to home. The Chief of Army Staff, Yusuf Buratai, and Dambazau were alleged to have acquired unexplained wealth, as was his controversial Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari. He brushed these aside just as he initially ignored allegations of corruption against the SGF, Babachir Lawal. Even after eventually suspending Lawal and receiving a separate probe report of a presidential three-man panel, Buhari has sat on the report.

When Abdulmumuni Jibrin blew the lid on how budgets had been padded by billions of naira to corruptly enrich lawmakers, even confessing to being a beneficiary, the government failed to move against the House Leadership thus missing a golden opportunity to break a system that enables lawmakers to annually cream off up to N100 billion through the notorious constituency projects scam in the lower chamber.

Corruption was on the march again when Senator Isah Misau recently accused the IG of Police, Ibrahim Idris, publicly of failing to account for over N10 billion monthly earned from special security postings, among others. Again, instead of using this lead to resolve the contentious issue of over 100,000 policemen being assigned to individuals and corporate bodies and the monies levied on them, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, curiously filed criminal charges against Misau.”

With all these and other incidences, we can effectively assert that President Buhari’s fight against corrupt individuals who mostly served in the immediate past government is still alive, but his anti-corruption war is effectively dead. This is where he lost the most significant part of his goodwill and can be said to have unfortunately and needlessly proven many of his critics right.

On insecurity, one can give the Buhari administration a big commendation for decimating Boko Haram amidst sustained and determined efforts to completely crush it, which will understandably take some time. However, the same cannot be said of other equally disturbing security threats like kidnapping, herdsmen killings, armed robbery, religious and ethnic crises, etc. How the government handled (and continue to handle) the Shiite crisis in Zaria two years ago and the Biafran secessionist insurgence, coupled with its inadequate response to senseless herdsmen and communal killings  which had seen no one brought to justice so far, has worsened the deep suspicion and cold relationship that existed between the Nigerian security architecture and the citizens. Nigerians today are generally just as unsafe as they had ever been and the efforts to finding the lasting solutions to our security problems are as inadequate as they had ever been.  

One area which you may find it difficult to categorically score the APC government is the economy. One thing that is undeniable though is that, whether justifiably or not, there is no economy in recent history in which the common man has suffered like this current one. Though, the APC’s theory of previous mess being mainly responsible for nearly collapsing the economy and reform efforts making the suffering inevitable is largely acceptable, but the question of its inadequate role towards improving it is very much in place.

The government have made giant strides with its social investment programmes; their sustainability and impact on the economy especially in the long run is something we cannot ascertain yet. The government’s claim of making significant progress in diversifying the economy is still somewhat vague. We have seen some states make noticeable progress in agriculture, we have also seen the fruits of the Federal Government’s determined interventions in resolving catastrophic salary issues, we have seen power supply relatively improving but not stabilizing, etc. However, we see big ambitious national budgets without diligent implementation. We are yet to see the successful progression of any of the critical infrastructure the government have been talking about, especially the ones in the transport sector. Perhaps, this is the one area we can give the APC some time before judging.

At the end of whatever analysis, Nigerians are largely disappointed openly; even those who are pretending not to be, are disturbed deep inside them, particularly about recent developments. Nobody expected many of these things to happen under Buhari’s watch and no excuse will suffice. This is by far the most tolerated government whose response to people’s expectations has always been a demand for more time, patience and understanding with little to show for it. Buhari was considered by many to be the last bus stop to turn around things, now people are uncertain of what to do next. We are in a season of dashed hopes.

With the high expectations they made Nigerians to have, the APC cannot demand that we judge them with average standards. After apparently not learning from the past, they do not deserve to get away with all these disappointments and dashed hopes. When PDP started misbehaving and Nigerians were reluctant, they gained more and more courage until they devised fraudulent means of remaining in power in spite of Nigerian’s efforts to remove them. We should ponder on the possibility of the APC following suit.  

Though we have had so many cross carpeting of individual members that had almost collapsed them into one, but at the moment, the fundamental difference between PDP and APC is that, one had enough time to metamorphose into a notorious impunity machine, while the other is still pretending as if all is well, and the real tragedy of 2019 is that both may be the only options for Nigerians to choose from.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez 

Messi versus Ronaldo: A Philosophical View

29^th August, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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here is one thing apiece that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi sympathizers are finding it difficult to contend with. There is also one other thing that the two of them cannot settle on. These are among the many reasons why the debate between who is the best player between them keeps getting controversial by the day.

Cristiano Ronaldo fans cannot believe that despite his out of the world, mind blowing performances over the last 10 years, there was still someone considered by many (other than those in their category) to be better than him and perhaps rightly so. Lionel Messi fans cannot believe that his super human and breath taking performances over the last 10 years, has not given him the absolute monopoly of global attention. That someone else is sharing the accolades and honours with him and apparently even threatening to have a larger share of them is what they can’t simply fathoms.

The other thing that both Messi and Ronaldo followers won’t understand is that, rating one above the other doesn’t take anything away from the other’s greatness. Neither of them needs to be superior or inferior to any other player for him to cement a unique place for himself in the history of football. One more contentious issue is that neither Messi nor Ronaldo may be objectively considered as the greatest player of all time; although that debate would be better fruitful when they retire.

The modern football world’s obsession with Ronaldo and Messi seems to have affected many followers’ sense of memory and history. It may be possible that more than 70% of present day football followers were not born or old enough to follow football before 1990. For this category, who is the majority, no any other player in history was as good as Ronaldo and Messi, let alone surpasses them. Those who actually know what football was in the 1950s to 1980s may or may not be up to 10% and their voices are not often heard these days. Some 20% may not be that old, but they have enough knowledge of history, the problem is that we don’t often listen to them when they speak.

Except some miracle is going to happen in the remaining few years of Messi-Ronaldo careers, Pele will still remain the greatest football player of all time and only core Messi-Ronaldo fanatics and some few others will dispute that. Whatever scale one is going to use, it would be nearly impossible not to rate Pele above anyone else. From skills to statistics down to achievements, it’s all there. His over 750 official goals in just about 800 matches and his three world cup (the greatest football competition) among others will testify to that.

What of Maradona who single-handedly won the World Cup for Argentina in 1986? Well, Pele-Messi-Ronaldo individual and team achievements as well as their consistency over a long period plus their statistics are too irresistible to place him above any of them; this is debatable though. His on and off the pitch controversies, and injuries also tend to work against him when it comes to discourses like this.

That this piece is intended to be more hypothetical than analytical means emphasis will not be laid on dishing out statistics of these players which it is assumed the reader is fairly conversant with. That it is intended to be as short as possible also means that long arguments will not be employed.

The player who is very closely behind Pele among the all-time greats would arguably be Lionel Messi. There is probably no objective person who would watch Messi for a year and comfortably rate any other person other than Pele equal or above him. Does that make Cristiano Ronaldo and some of the best players over the last 40 years inferior? Certainly no. as far as there is competition, there must be some ranking.

How exactly everyone ranks and at what magnitude is one better than the other may be the only difficult thing to categorically determine. For example if Pele is top among all-time greats and Cristiano is second, it doesn’t mean that the Brazilian is three times better than the Portuguese.  Likewise Zidane may be just some inches away from Messi in terms of greatness but still rank 5^th, 6^th or even lower.

Determining what constitutes greatness in itself is something very controversial. Is it by rating everyone base on what he is good at? If that’s so then why are many defenders and goalkeepers conspicuously missing among the all-time greats?  Is it someone with the best statistics? Then where will the likes of Zidane and Ronaldinho end in such ranking? Is it the number of trophies? Then we will be talking of only the likes of Dani Alves. Is it the individual honours? Then what happens to players who played when many awards were not even in existence. Is it the immensity of followership and support? Then no one can be better than Cristiano and David Beckham. Is it by the amount of individual influence on the team? Then let’s talk of only Maradona and the likes of Michel Platini and Alfredo Di Stefano. Is it by rating everyone base on the opportunities and circumstances he found himself? Then may God help the likes of Eusebio.

However, despite all these impediments, there must be some ranking governed by many factors that balance each other as well as with some rationality and objectivity.

Cristiano Ronaldo will most likely settle as the 3^rd all-time greatest player. However, over the reaming 3 to 5 years of his career and with a world cup coming in June 2018, he still have a say on whether Messi is good enough for second place or even Pele in first place and we all know what Ronaldo can do in a year, not to talk of 3 to 5 years. If that isn’t achieved, he’ll have the chance to consolidate his place and move clear of competition from the likes of Maradona, Platini, Zidane, Beckenbauer, Ronaldo Nazario, Johan Cruyff and a host of others.

Now let’s see if there is any other way Cristiano can rank above Messi or even Pele among the all-time greats. Yes that may happen if we decide to disaggregate greatness and approach it from different sub-categories. For instance, little will doubt that Cristiano Ronaldo is the most complete footballer of all time and the most successful European footballer ever. He’ll also be, alongside Gerd Muller, among the greatest goal scorers. With his 50 goals plus in 6 consecutive seasons and 25 plus in 10, he is perhaps the most consistent player ever. He is the most famous and supported footballer by far, also among the most decorated and the finest Portuguese player. He is the best player of the greatest club team in history. In fact, there is possibly no category of football greatness that Ronaldo would not become 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd.

In Messi’s case, he may rank worse than 3^rd in many critical categories. For instance, in terms of completeness, he’ll be nowhere near the top 5; and even if he wins the world cup, Maradona may still be seen by the majority as the finest player in Argentine colours. Repeated failures in the South American continental competition and spending virtually his whole career out of the continent may see him rank below expectation among the all-time South American greats. However, he is among the greatest if not the greatest dribblers, playmakers and brilliant players of all time. His technique, decision-making and vision is incomparable.

If at the end of Messi-Ronaldo retirement, Pele still remains the greatest footballer, then he will have the latter to thank. Ronaldo has successfully put a clog in Messi’s bold wheel of attempting to become bigger than football itself. Ronaldo’s statistics are what most significantly makes his play great, but Messi’s stats appear to be only a by-product of his mesmerizing play. Messi does with little or no effort what Ronaldo sweats and labours to do. However, both players have shown us that there’s more than one key to any door and the most important is to use the key at your disposal to open it.

We can make a case for Ronaldo that football has not presented him with equal opportunities it presented Messi but at the end of it all, only few will give this view any significance. After all there is considerable amount of luck and external factors involved in any greatness. Besides, Ronaldo himself got more than a fair share of opportunities which thousands of other players will claim can do better if they had same.

Players like Ronaldo and Messi will be very difficultto have successors. While it is more possible with the case of Messi since there is no limit to what nature can give you as the cases of Pele, Maradona and Brazilian Ronaldo can testify, it is nearly impossible to become a Portuguese Ronaldo. There is limit to what hard work can give, but not when you are a Cristiano Ronaldo.

After all have been said and done, Messi’s post–retirement achievement will be by his natural master class; Ronaldo’s, by what he has forced out of himself to challenge nature, plus how he has prevented Messi from making everyone else look like a fool.

Amir has supported Real Madrid for close to 20 years

The Other Issues ASUU is Ignoring

17^th August, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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ast year around October, the Senate passed a bill seeking to stop sexual abuse of female students in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions. The bill, titled: “Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Education Institution Prohibition Bill, 2016” sponsored by Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, prescribed a 5-year jail term for lecturers and educators convicted of sexual harassment of their male or female students. The bill also recommended expulsion or suspension for students whose claims of being serially abused by lecturers or educators are found to be false by any competent court. In the alternative, the bill also proposed a fine of N5 million in the event that the accused person is convicted by a competent court of law even as it made provisions for lecturers and educators who may be falsely accused by their students to seek redress.

Now, that a condition overwhelmingly exists which warrants the passage of a bill like this one is very disgraceful not only to the Nigerian academia, but to the Nigerian morality in general. But, the worst part of it is that the bill may never be able to address the smallest fraction of indecency and sex abuse going on in our tertiary institutions. In fact, students-teachers sex relationship driven by both silent and open threat is gradually and subconsciously becoming normal and legal in our universities. 

The general reactions from the Nigerian academia when this bill was passed were at best silence, and at worst condemnation towards the bill and its sponsors. At the moment, there is hardly any place dirtier than Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions when it comes to sex scandals. Our institutions have been turned into hallmarks of prostitution and sexual harassment. The integrity of the system has been eroded to the extent that even its topmost hierarchy is guilty of this. These are some of the issues you seldom or never hear ASUU vigorously fighting to correct. The very system the union is seeking external intervention to correct infrastructural-wise is already internally rotten moral-wise. Again, ASUU is on strike for the same old but many reasons, but the moral degradation imposed by some of its members on the system isn’t one of them.

“Our members across the country were getting increasingly frustrated, distracted and disenchanted” were the reported words of the National President of ASUU, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi when declaring the just commenced nationwide strike. While briefing journalists, Ogunyemi listed ASUU’s outstanding issues with the Federal Government to include; payment of fractions/non-payment of salaries; non-payment of earned academic allowances, non-releases of operational license of NUPEMCO; non implementation of the provisions of the 2014 pension reform act with respect to retired professors and their salaries, removal of universities staff schools from funding by government and funds for the revitalization of public universities among others.

Problems like moral degradation of the system, internal socio-administrative corruption bedeviling universities, many lecturers’ nonchalant attitude towards their jobs, inadequate or non-existent monitoring and evaluation of lecturers’ performance mechanism, unethical academic practices, nepotism and favouritism in employment are not among the major problems ASUU is concerned with. These are problems caused and promoted by lecturers, many of whom are also ASUU members as well as by university administrators who once were or still are. The union must make efforts within its control to see that we first have a cleansed system, before we can talk of improving it.

As is common with many government agencies, universities are now some of the most visible symbols of financial corruption and mismanagement. The little scarce resources sent to the universities from the government are not well managed by the university administrators from top to bottom. It is very common these days to hear of vice chancellors, bursars and other university principal officers standing trial for corruption cases. Stories of lecturers collecting bribes from students and their parents to award marks are also heard everywhere. The union must emphasize on internal honesty, transparency and accountability which is largely lacking. Senior academic staff are imposing their incompetent sons, daughters and cronies as lecturers into the system and the trend is continuing at an alarming rate.

ASUU should also be concerned with how many universities are hiding under the excuse of inadequate funding from the government to introduce aggressive and in many cases, easy, dubious and exploitative revenue generation methods with little or nothing to show for it. Some of these methods tend to portray the universities as revenue generation agencies rather than institutions of learning. In a bid to bridge the wide funding gap, many Nigerian universities have resorted to charging exorbitant and in some cases ridiculous application, processing and registration fees for their undergraduate and more significantly post-graduate programmes. Such exorbitant fees are been hiked regularly with any slight opportunity. In some universities, students are forced to pay high sums for the use of facilities which are built and maintained by public money. With these sorts of easy, unearned and exploitative revenue generation policies, many Nigerian universities are tilting towards commercialization.

ASUU should be concerned with the quantity of our universities. The number of federal, state and private universities operating in Nigeria and registered by the Nigerian Universities Commission stands at about 135 which rose from 51 in 2005. While ASUU members are busy taking advantage of the large number of universities to serve as visiting lecturers, the union itself appears to be indifferent to this. The union still wants efficiency and at the same time it doesn’t discourage its members from picking up visiting appointments in 2 to 3 other places apart from their primary places of work thereby largely neglecting their primary universities and underperforming in their visiting ones. The union should discourage state governments from flouting political universities and the Federal Government against issuing licenses to many of the private universities largely considered incompetent.

Isn’t ASUU worried that in a university system boasting of more than 2500 living professors, academicians are still hiding under the guise of inadequate government sponsorship for their failure to produce any ground breaking research of the Nobel-prize nomination grade over the last 30 years? With the decent amount of external and non-governmental research funding coming into the Nigerian university system plus the little government intervention, how much have we even came close to achieving that?

Granted that all ASUU demands deserved to be looked into and we must put substantial part of the blame on the Federal Government for the stagnation of our education system, but in all honesty and sincerity, how much have Nigerian universities themselves able to achieve, initiate and innovate to compellingly motivate government enough to invest more? How much of a potential have they shown to attract private and corporate national and international organizations to invest in them?  How much value has our academia independently added to our society? Do we really think that the strongest universities in the world were actually made what they are by their governments?

Nigerian academic researches conducted by some ASUU members are dominated by plagiarism and other violations of ethical and professional considerations. The union will do a great job if tries to address many of issues like this. 

ASUU have been seeking a rise in education quality from without more than it is seeking it from within. Isn’t the union aware of how recruitment of lecturers has now been dominated by nepotism and favouritism? While this has resulted to the system becoming replete with incompetent hands, how much has the union tried to stop university administrators from doing this? How is the union working towards mounting a mechanism that will expose the incompetent members among its ranks who are the main drivers of poor quality education in the country due to their poor teaching?

Our primary and secondary education systems are more than rotten; they are ten times worse than our tertiary education system. If ASUU’s objective is quality of education, it must also be concerned with this as there will be no proper tertiary education without a solid foundation from the bottom.

ASUU should also be concerned with how many of its former members opportune to serve in government in various positions and at various times have largely failed to make a significant impact either on the education sector in particular or the general progress of the country in general. Lest we forget, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and Professor Yemi Osinbajo are former ASUU members.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez  

Not Too Young to Run?

25^th July, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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ow that the National Assembly is considering passing the 'Not Too Young to Run Bill' apparently from public pressure, it is good to examine some few issues surrounding it. One question we should first ask, is age really the main barrier to youths occupying elective and non-elective public offices in Nigeria? Who are even the youths by the way? In a society where people close to 50 years old are claiming to be youths and people well above 50 years of age are occupying the ‘youth Leader’ positions of many political parties, how can you easily determine who is a youth?

Through the amendment of sections 65, 106, 131 and 177 of the 1999 constitution, the bill seeks to reduce the minimum age for contesting the Nigerian Presidency and Vice Presidency from 40 to 30 years, that of governors, deputy governors and senators from 35 to 30. Others are, reducing the age for contesting House of Representatives and state houses of assembly elections from 30 to 25. The bill also wants the councillorship contesting age to be reduced to 20 from 25 as well as youth inclusion in politics.

First, age in my opinion shouldn't even be a major electoral criterion for any candidate contesting elections anywhere. I will propose that a standard process should be put in place by electoral bodies like INEC where candidates will prove their basic capability of successfully holding the office they are aspiring for. Such a process should come with guidelines other than age for qualification to contest for any office. A candidate above 20 to 25 years should be allowed to run, depending on the kind of office, as long as he has proven his minimum ability to hold that office satisfactorily. This however doesn't mean he may not fail after getting elected; because just like age, many times, failure in public office may have little or nothing to do with capacity. There are so many factors that lead to failure in this regard.

Second, if the issue of age must be considered as a primary requirement in qualification for elections, then we should consider maximum age for which one must not run for office and not only the minimum age for running. For instance, a man above 70 or 80 years old must not hold public office for the fear that he may not be able to perform his functions properly. It may be easier for a young man to cope and gain experience from the office, than an old man whose body and spirit can’t cope with the job. This will perhaps ensure fairness against age discrimination in the electoral process.

If age must be an issue, I think, it should equally be considered in the case of the voters as well. For example, how are we sure that an 18 year old can make a good political decision while voting? What experiences does he have to ensure that he votes along national interests? On the other hand, how many 30 to 70 year old people have actually brought their experience and old age to bear while making political decisions? Don’t we have many 30 to 70 year olds in Nigeria who still vote along ethnic and sectional lines while they know clearly that it isn’t good for the country?

Third, what actually is the correlation between age and good governance? How many of our youths have been given chances to hold both elective and appointed public offices? How much difference have they made? We once had a 35 year old Dimeji Bankole as the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives. How was his tenure better than that of the then over 50 years old Aminu Bello Masari who served before him? The current age of the 36 Nigerian Governors range from between 40 to 67, what result are we likely to get, if we rank their performance by age?

There is an argument that leaders who served in the First and Second Republics were mostly young and they did well. However, the truth is that, they didn’t do well because of their age; they did well because they were disciplined and they operated in an honestly-driven system quite different from what we have today. Therefore, the best way is to let a candidate satisfy critical requirements like sanity, maturity, literacy, etc and let the electorate decide whether he is too young or not to govern.

Fourth, many of our youths have effectively proven to be the main enemies of their own progress by becoming stooges and sycophants of politicians. The Nigerian political space is dotted with hopeless youths who serve as thugs, hero worshippers, social media warriors and errand boys who do dirty works for political leaders which apart from the office they hold, are no better than them. The love for easy money has driven our youths crazy and they no longer truly aspire to be leaders themselves, they rather remain political jobbers.

The few serious and determined youths that are available and willing to make a difference are not been helped by their fellow youths. The ‘big’ political parties won't field young people for elective posts except the few ones nominated by godfathers to serve some vested interests and our youths would rather support old politicians than their counterparts in small parties. What then is the benefit of their majority? This bill cannot help Nigerian youths more than they can help themselves. It is just like the case of Nigerian women who want 30% of elective posts but will not vote for any woman who decides to contest.

Lastly, the nature of our politics in Nigeria and not age is the major barrier to youths running for elections in Nigeria. Nigerian politics seems to be only for the rich people or for people backed by godfathers with big purses. This is because many Nigerians are money worshippers and also politics has been turned into a big commercial and lucrative industry. This is why we witnessed excessive use of money to buy party nominations in all our elections from 2003 to date.

Our youths need #NotTooPoorToRun much more than they need this #NotTooYoungToRun. Let’s pass a bill that will demonetize and de-godfatherize our politics and see wonders.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

Osinbajo's Surge for National Unity

24^th June, 2017

By: Amir Abdulazeez

W

hen we celebrated the 24^th anniversary of June 12 nearly two weeks ago, I was among those Nigerians who might have left deeply wondering how Nigerians graduated from a people who were willing to vote for you without caring what your religion or that of your running mate is, to a people that are sharply divided and their voting patterns only reflecting their mainly religious and ethnic sentiments over the last four national elections. 

When then Presidential Candidate in the 2011 Elections, Muhammadu Buhari and his defunct Congress for Progressive Change party were said to have scored only 500 votes or so in the whole of Bayelsa State and only about 8000 votes in the whole of Enugu State, I was left not only shocked with the amount of unacceptability or possibly electoral irregularities that could have produced such results, but also with the amount of religious and ethnic factors that allowed such to thrive. In the 2015 elections, Goodluck Jonathan scored about 200,000 votes in Kano State, a bulk of which came from Christian dominated areas mostly settled by people from the South. Today, we ask where are those Nigerians that helped MKO Abiola, a man from Ogun State to defeat his rival Bashir Tofa not only in Kano, his home state, but also reportedly in units that constitute his backyard?

There is no doubt that over the last 24 years, Nigeria’s political space has been negatively transformed. The seeds of this somewhat contemporary transformation were probably sowed in the 2003 elections when some people employed all sort of electoral frauds tailored along strong and devastating religious sentiments, ethnic campaigns and sectional divisions to remain in power. The rest, they say is now history.

Though ethnic, religious and divisive sentiments has perennially been with us since independence, but their significance and impact on national life has varied from time to time and from dispensation to dispensation as we may compare between 1993 and may be 2015 for example. Today, we are again witnessing a period when national unity is being threatened by violence, hate speech, politics, quit notices and secession. Many believe that our country have never been this divided since after the Civil War or may be even before or during it.

The Federal Government under the initiative of the Acting President Professor Yemi Osinbajo have conducted and are still conducting series of consultative meetings with various groups of leaders and people of societal influence across the country to make sure that the situation is tamed and controlled. The presidency has met separately with leaders of thought from the North and the South East, traditional and religious leaders from the same regions as well as all 36 state governors. This is no doubt a big positive step to which even the opposition Peoples Democratic Party have commended.

In continuation of such consultations last Thursday, the Acting President deemed it fit to meet with Nigerian media publishers, editors and a handful of veteran journalists and writers which I was privileged to be invited. In that meeting, few attendees representing the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, Nigerian Guild of Editors, Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, veteran journalists and two others were given the opportunity to speak before the Acting President was given the stage to lecture us on what I see as yet the best and most impressive speech I listened to this year. It was so not because, I didn’t had some few reservations about what the Acting President had said, but because the speech was so inspiring and wise that I wished every single Nigerian was listening to it at that particular time. Though I didn’t physically attended any of the previous consultative meetings, but I’ve noticed that unlike in them, Osinbajo spoke freely rather than read from a prepared written speech, except in few cases where he needed to glimpse at his tablet when reeling out some facts and statistical figures to support some of his arguments. Even then, he gave so many statistics without making any reference to that tablet.

The Acting President emphasized on four things that currently constitutes a threat to national unity; prejudice, politics, misinformation and carelessness, all of which he thinks the media have a role to play in neutralizing or promoting. Nigerians, Osinbajo had said, have built up and subsequently consumed by a series of negative thoughts over a long period of time and they only see and understand events base on such established negativities. He said some strictly but wrongly believed that the series of killings executed by Fulani herdsmen were parts of efforts to Islamise Nigeria despite overwhelming evidence on the ground that proves otherwise. The Fulani herdsmen killings is more an economic crisis that centres on struggling to use resources, than it is religious. How and what relationship does it have with Islam or Christianity? Prejudice.

Osinbajo said that, within last week or so, he woke up around 6:00am in the morning and saw a text message on his phone sent by a renowned Christian leader who said to him that one day he will account for allowing Muslims to dominate and take over the government of Nigeria. He said, he wondered what informed that sort of message while statistics show that there are two more Christians than Muslims in Buhari’s cabinet. He cited an example of a time when a Northern Senator visited President Buhari in his presence and complained bitterly on marginalization of his people. He however left with the embarrassing information that North West, his zone were leading in the number of heads of government parastatals with 47, followed by South West, South South, South East, North East and then North Central. Why didn’t this senator do his homework before complaining? Misinformation.

   

Some Igbo leaders had in the recent past complained to Osinbajo how there is no single person of their kinsmen among the service chiefs. He systematically told reminded them that there was a time not long ago, when Nigeria had two Igbo men among the service chiefs, with other zones not having any. Did they bother to ask why were they favoured at the expense of others or do you want justice only for yourself? Politics.

Osinbajo blamed the killing of some Biafran protesters on the dilapidated law and order structure of the Nigerian State which had degraded over time. For instance, from the killing of Chief Bola Ige in 2001, Harry Marshal in 2003 and so many high profile murders, how many culprits were brought to justice? Will those killers ever be uncovered? Extra-judicial killings by Nigerian security men and law enforcement agencies have never been bias, everyone, not only Igbos has been victims at different times and unless the system is adequately fixed, the problem is bound to continue. Do Nigerian security men kill base on tribe or do they just do that to the ordinary masses extra-judicially? Carelessness.

At the end, what the Acting President demanded from the media were simple; stop giving publicity to divisive people who are ignorant or are just mischievous. Secondly, the media must appear more informed than the ordinary citizens and must as a result help in tackling the misinformation about how things happen and why. He advised that, despite the universal convention of right to self-determination, but Nigeria is better off as one country. If Nigeria disintegrates into smaller countries that can be run over at will by powerful ones, he said, every region will be disadvantaged in different proportions. He therefore said our strengths lies in our diversities, number and size. He gave the example of Lagos State’s economy being six times bigger than that of Rwanda despite all the so-called giant strides recorded by Paul Kagame over the years. He emphasized that the country needs not disintegrate into smaller parts for people to have the opportunity of holding public office and if it is his face or that of President Buhari you dislike that you want secession, then know that, their days in office are numbered but Nigeria can live forever.

Now, tell me you are not impressed by Osinbajo’s words even though I only reproduced a brief summary? However, the question is, to what extent will the Acting President’s intellectual appeal solve the problem at hand? We understand that he had expressed his resolve in previous meetings to use the full force of the law if needs be. But I think what he should be thinking is what is the genesis of this problem despite been historical, escalating only when they came to office?

One of the major reasons I am writing this article is not only to share with fellow Nigerians what transpired in that meeting, but also to send back a message to the presidency which time and other obvious factors didn’t permit me to do so at the meeting. The message is that, no matter how it may try to absolve itself from blame, the Buhari-Osinbajo presidency must partly accept responsibility for the divisive situation we find ourselves today. The presidency was quite aware from the 2015 elections, of how divided Nigerians were socially, religiously, politically and regionally. What they should’ve done, was to make intensive and extensive deliberate and conspicuous moves in the first few days of their presidency to mend fences and unite the nation before governing it. Alas, they didn’t do that, at least not in an effective way, and by the time they wanted to govern, the Niger Delta Avengers had already plunged the nation into an avoidable recession.

It is commendable that the presidency later made efforts especially in the South-South and South-East to bring everyone to the table, but the truth is, they need to do better. It takes more than one or two meetings to achieve consensus and unity; these kinds of meetings must be continuous and must be extended to include people that are crucial to unity even if they are perceived to be enemies of government. There was a reason why Late ‘Yar’adua allowed militants into the Villa and treated them like Kings. Jonathan may have used money and patronage to buy peace, but APC must take lasting measures to solve these problems. They must also stop turning what looks like a blind eye to calls for restructuring the country.

At the end of the meeting, the Acting President took it upon himself to meet everyone on his seat, shook his hands and have a word or two with him. Such was his humility, simplicity and brand of politics. He is an intellectual leader per excellence. I strongly wanted Tinubu to become Vice President, but now I am satisfied of Osinbajo’s technical and political capabilities. If there was anything positive that religious sentiments like the Muslim-Muslim ticket brouhaha had produced, it is Osinbajo.

Usually, people in authority will give you their hands to shake, but Osinbajo is the type that will actually shake your hands. Osinbajo shook my hands firmly and when it occurred to him that I appeared star-struck, he while asking some questions, brought himself much closer to me to hear me better, make me feel comfortable or both; perhaps he had noticed I told myself, that I was obviously and by far, the youngest person in the meeting who might have undeservedly and accidentally became a participant.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez