Prosper in 2013!

Happy new year to everyone.

On Name-Adornment: A Look at LSS Bus and "Governor D's Era"

History is capricious in its awards of fame. It fixes on dramatic incident and ignores the quiet service that may count for much more. - George M. Wrong (1860 - 1948) Life is in stages and just like the many pages of the Bible, you cannot view it all at once. In fact, you will need to take the days one at a time, like blocks being pieced together in the building of an edifice. However sometimes, just like the scriptures, you will need to compare one episode with another to get an appropriate interpretation of a phenomenon. Taking anything on its face value as its definitive version is similar to lifting the letters of the word of life without seeking the spirit behind those letters – an agreed age-old path to death; death in this sense not exclusive of the body but perhaps more particularly of the soul, the intellect and the social being. It is in the same vein that the courts in Nigeria and other nations particularly within the Commonwealth jurisdiction have always in the interest of justice sought to know the spirit behind any law while interpreting that law in the settlement of a dispute or the determination of a suit before them. Lawyers as co-ministers in the temple of justice are therefore enjoined to do the same. By inference, even students who are Lawyers-in-equity have that unpronounced responsibility to always look beyond the surface of any statute and consider the facts and circumstances before taking a stand or making a pronouncement on any matter. How well they are intellectually endowed or prepared to do that is but a discussion for another day. My first encounter with the Law Students Society (LSS) bus was on Facebook; a dear friend of mine had put up a side-picture of a seven-seater Toyota Sienna otherwise called a ‘Space bus’ and tagged it “LSS Bus”. I did not put up a comment neither did I ‘like’ the picture, I simply smiled, wryly. We were promised a bus by the Dayo Ogunyemi-led administration and we all saw them make serious efforts at making sure the promise was fulfilled so if they could only deliver a ‘Space bus’, at least they tried, it was an unprecedented feat. That was my thought and the next day when I met Dayo Ogunyemi (then LSS President) who will hereafter be referred to as Gov. D, in the Resource Centre, I hit him on the shoulder and quipped “The Space bus will be useful, particularly for Moot and Mock committee when we are going for the next Space Law competition preliminaries!” If he felt insulted, he concealed it with a smile that half-stretched into the upper hemisphere of his lips and said “Tobi, wo, a ma rira later” meaning “we’d see later”. Two weeks before then, I had met Gov. D in a popular eatery in New Buka and he was just about leaving when I and a graduate friend walked in and perhaps to impress her, Gov. D reminded me in the open that he promised LSS a bus and he would deliver before leaving. To me, that was a mere puff and I simply told him to show me and not just tell me. My friend being a former student of the Faculty felt she need not drag herself into our flimsy banter and busied herself with ordering our meals. A week of suspense-filled wait followed. The ‘Facebook LSS bus’ had refused to get to Ife the weekend before as against earlier speculation and I would not hear anything from Gov. D until the following Wednesday when I received a mail stating that Gov. D had followed me on Twitter. I switched to Twitter to follow him back and review his timeline. There, I saw a post where Gov. D boasted that he had delivered the LSS bus and on all his promises to the society. I quoted the text and replied asking if he had indeed fulfilled all his promises. I expected a fiery response or perhaps a threat as I had been told he had been dishing out in the course of my absence but none of that came. The next day, as I made my way to the bus stop after the S.N.O.W. programme at the Covered Pavilion, a blue Ford bus drove past me and beyond the spectacle of a relatively unknown glittering blue vehicle tickling my imagination, the inscription “LAW STUDENTS SOCIETY” shot a mixed drip of awe and admiration into my veins. I could have chosen to call Gov. D on phone but I decided to preserve my voice for the RECTAS gateman who would definitely not conceal his anger at my late arrival. I would see Gov. D two days later in the faculty and the details of our brief exchange of words is irrelevant here. The crux of my discussion here is the decision of the Law Students Representative Council (LSRC) that the inscription “Governor D’s Era” be removed from the body of the bus. The manner of the removal, be it scrapping, tearing, spraying, defacing or re-painting has not been made clear and is not even the focus here. I rather want to examine the rationale behind the decision in the first place and the ratification thereof by the almighty Congress interestingly under the watch of the new administration and other colleagues.

Name-Adornment; Taking a Look into "Governor D's Era" and the LSS Bus

History is capricious in its awards of fame. It fixes on dramatic incident and ignores the quiet service that may count for much more. - George M. Wrong (1860 - 1948) Life is in stages and just like the many pages of the Bible, you cannot view it all at once. In fact, you will need to take the days one at a time, like blocks being pieced together in the building of an edifice. However sometimes, just like the scriptures, you will need to compare one episode with another to get an appropriate interpretation of a phenomenon. Taking anything on its face value as its definitive version is similar to lifting the letters of the word of life without seeking the spirit behind those letters – an agreed age-old path to death; death in this sense not exclusive of the body but perhaps more particularly of the soul, the intellect and the social being. It is in the same vein that the courts in Nigeria and other nations particularly within the Commonwealth jurisdiction have always in the interest of justice sought to know the spirit behind any law while interpreting that law in the settlement of a dispute or the determination of a suit before them. Lawyers as co-ministers in the temple of justice are therefore enjoined to do the same. By inference, even students who are Lawyers-in-equity have that unpronounced responsibility to always look beyond the surface of any statute and consider the facts and circumstances before taking a stand or making a pronouncement on any matter. How well they are intellectually endowed or prepared to do that is but a discussion for another day. My first encounter with the Law Students Society (LSS) bus was on Facebook; a dear friend of mine had put up a side-picture of a seven-seater Toyota Sienna otherwise called a ‘Space bus’ and tagged it “LSS Bus”. I did not put up a comment neither did I ‘like’ the picture, I simply smiled, wryly. We were promised a bus by the Dayo Ogunyemi-led administration and we all saw them make serious efforts at making sure the promise was fulfilled so if they could only deliver a ‘Space bus’, at least they tried, it was an unprecedented feat. That was my thought and the next day when I met Dayo Ogunyemi (then LSS President) who will hereafter be referred to as Gov. D, in the Resource Centre, I hit him on the shoulder and quipped “The Space bus will be useful, particularly for Moot and Mock committee when we are going for the next Space Law competition preliminaries!” If he felt insulted, he concealed it with a smile that half-stretched into the upper hemisphere of his lips and said “Tobi, wo, a ma rira later” meaning “we’d see later”. Two weeks before then, I had met Gov. D in a popular eatery in New Buka and he was just about leaving when I and a graduate friend walked in and perhaps to impress her, Gov. D reminded me in the open that he promised LSS a bus and he would deliver before leaving. To me, that was a mere puff and I simply told him to show me and not just tell me. My friend being a former student of the Faculty felt she need not drag herself into our flimsy banter and busied herself with ordering our meals.

LOVE AND MEMORIES

That line comes back often

Like the aunty Tola's abiku

'The memories of our heroes past'

Ken Saro Wiwa and the nine

Even Dele the Giwa

Nigeria the nation I love

The love and the memories

They come together like strings

Of an ancient beaded crown

When Dele is no more deh

AAnd Wiwa can no more wa

Then we think of Goodluck.



Oil they say is flowing

Beyond the creeks to the palms

He is a Jonathan without a Saul

But with Patience on his side

His bowler can work the trick

Wondering if he shoots high or low

Jonathan sounds like John

Who knows

Vision 2020 may just not be so far.

I TOUCHED YOU

We often think
And then do things
But sometimes
We do things
And then think
Oreke my friend
I went back in time
To those days
In our sleepy village
To think upon
My youthful actions.

I never asked you
But frequently
I touched you
In wily ways
I touched your hair
And rubbed your arms
Smartly and quickly.
With words
I was a wimp
But at your waist
My brave hands nibbled
At the stream
While on your head
You tried to balance your pot
I even stole kisses
And in the dark
I felt at your bosom
In pretended attempts
To touch your supple cheeks

It was not love
But youthful lust
So
I neither loved you
Nor sought your consent
Yet I touched you.
The years indeed
May have rolled by
But I still offer
My heartfelt apologies
For I was wrong
To have touched you.

THE NIGERIA WE DESIRE

Voices rose up in justified anger, fists curled up into knuckles weaving through the air at rallies, in unveiled nationalist protests against the subjugation of their people under the obnoxious self-imposed rule of colonialists who not only stole from the owners with impunity but also annoyingly reprimanded him (the owner) for seeking to watch over his usurped property. “This is the voice of the people, the true people of this nation. And they are telling you, get out and take with you your renegades who have lost all sense of shame.” Such rousing speeches characterized sensitization gatherings that eventually heralded the demise of colonialism and birthed self-rule in our dear beloved country.
Those days when the principal desire of statesmen was to wrestle power from the hands of colonial imperators are gone now, like stony ice dissolved in a mass of sea. They were remotely replaced by a period of trials and errors during which indigenous leaders new to the art of leadership contended with its accompanying challenges like a newly built ship released into the uncertainties of the Mediterranean, either to sail or to sink. However, banking on their intelligence, commitment and support of technocrats, they were able to surmount the storms that assailed them and sailed beautifully, albeit only for a few post-independence years. Their grand achievements as regards economic and infrastructural development shooting heavenwards soon began to recede into the mire of corruption, bickering and paranoia. Subsequently, time and resources that should have gone into the articulation and implementation of plans to further advance the lives of the people soon began to be frittered away on propaganda either to keep the opposition at bay, present it in bad light or completely muffle its roaring voice, all to the detriment of the nation and its people. The dogs had ceased barking and had begun to bite. An evil had been let loose upon the people and even a greater one soon took over in the name of military intervention.
A people who know not from where they come can hardly speed much towards their destination but having reminded ourselves of how we have come to have a nation that is available but not desirable, then it becomes necessary to point out those features which make this nation, Nigeria undesirable in its current state. This seems to be an invitation to the grim disheartening tales of decadence in virtually every sphere of our national life, starting with the saddening fact that of the nation’s 150million population, seventy percent are reported internationally to be living below poverty line, struggling to survive on less than a dollar daily. This obviously is as a result of the kleptomaniac predilections of successive corrupt and inept leaders who care less about taking the life of the common man beyond where they met it but rather whose actions and inactions have obliterated the middle class and further pushed down the impoverished majority into depths of misery.
The crashing standards of education reflected in dilapidated structures, empty library shelves and inefficiency of demoralized teaching staff is just one of the other parts of the Nigerian national life lamenting how far the nation has regressed. Add that to the grossly unequipped hospitals, dismal power supply, collapse of industries, horrible roads, unceasing fuel crises, uncurbed inflation, insecurity among other ills, and you are indubitably confronted with the image of a nation painfully refusing to fulfill its potentials. You see a nation with nothing in the midst of plenty, throwing away its opportunities at development like its flared gases in the Niger Delta. However, in the midst of all this darkness, a glimmer of light glows in the distance which is hope, the one thing a deprived people must never willingly yield to the ills that oppress them.
In the words of John Mason “Where there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.” It’s thus clear that for us to have the nation we desire, we must keep the hope alive. That hope that Nigerians tenaciously cling onto is symbolic of their aspirations, expectations and desires for our beloved country. Collectively, Nigerians desire a country where things would work the way they should without the fear of someone placing a cog in the wheel of progress for his own selfish interest. That may seem a tall order but it’s definitely possible to have a Nigeria where medical services would not only be available but qualitative and affordable. Where political leaders and the wealthy would not need to incur the extra expense of time and resources to seek treatments for minor ailments abroad but rather have their health taken care of by excellent doctors working with equipment that dictate the world standard. We desire a Nigeria whose hospitals would qualify as the best referral institutions worldwide for the most complicated of surgical endeavors. A Nigeria where people need not say their last prayers before going to bed knowing not if their lives would not be surrendered before day-break either to armed robbers or religious-cum-ethnocentric fanatics.
Nigerians would indubitably be more than happy if their vehicles can glide across roads like snakes sliding on glasses or have light and potable water at their beck and call in the comfort of their homes. Such comforts would no doubt be complete if the people can happily rest their heads on their pillows with their minds at rest knowing that trustworthy and efficient bank managers handle their savings with utmost proficiency and professionalism and not shepherding their institutions towards heart-breaking liquidation through such reckless lending out to their cronies while they also lavish themselves with various items of ostentation procured with millions of naira sourced from the sweat of millions of Nigerians whose only sin is imbibing a saving culture and trusting their savings into the hands of some people they hold in high esteem.
Nigerians desire a nation that caters for its citizen’s welfare and grants them the benefit of constant development in such areas as technology, infrastructure, modern transportation models, agriculture and sports without neglecting any of the areas that make up its geographical or ethnic composition. A nation reputed globally for its worthy contributions to the world’s advancement not despised for the criminal predilections of a small but visible portion of its population, even acquiring a terrorist nomenclature in recent times. It’s however pertinent to note that these much desired transformations in several facets of our national life can only be orchestrated by godly leaders who intelligibly chart the course for progress and a committed citizenry honestly and diligently using the resources trusted into their hands to create the nation they desire. We can have good leaders, we can have the nation we so daily dream of, yes we can if only we rise up and transform prayerfully into actions those fantasies, those thoughts, and those plans that will create the Nigeria we all desire. Thanks!
TOBI ADEBOWALE.

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE 2

By promising substantial attention to Food Security and Agriculture as the second point on his agenda, the president had made many Nigerians who had hitherto been calling for the diversification of the economy to think that a saviour had finally come to heed their demands but two years into his four-year tenure, the president is yet to really show he meant what he said.
The placement of Wealth Creation and Employment in the seven point agenda must indeed have been a ray of hope for the citizens of a country where more than 80% of her population are said to be living on less than a dollar a day, a pointer to chronic poverty. A nation where the population of unemployed people far exceeds the whole population of some other countries would no doubt consider such a policy good news that calls for celebration, if only the people can even afford that under circumstances where people are not sure of where their next meal would come from. In his words, President Yar’Adua said that the reform is “focused on wealth creation through diversified production especially in the agricultural and solid mineral sector” but how much of that has been implemented is a question that begs answers.
Other points such as mass transportation and land reform must have been added to fill up the papers in the reckoning of many for the administration has neither evolved a blueprint on them or even casually stated how such reforms were expected to be implemented. A synonymous phenomenon with the usual common-place promises of the provision of water, road and power bellowed by votes-seeking politicians.
Another sore point in the nation that made it to the president’s seven point agenda. However, aside the Niger-Delta problem which has lingered for long, other security ills simply gained more momentum in the last two years. A rise in the spate of kidnappings nationwide, bank robberies, sectarian violence, religious crises and planned murders among others simply showed nothing was being done about the security state of the nation. To make the matter painfully ridiculous, the recent comments of the Inspector General of Police about his non-awareness of the visit of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the former EFCC boss to the country to condole with the family of late frontline lawyer and human rights activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, really says much about the degeneration of intelligence gathering and alertness in the police force. An enemy capable of inflicting a collateral damage on the country could have slipped in, perpetrated evil and slip away again without our security agencies even catching just a glance of him. It was such level of incompetence that allowed the recent Jos crisis and the more recent Boko Haram crisis to be planned and executed without the police and other security outfits nipping it in the bud. It’s sad to say but true, that life in the nation is now struggling for value with such commodities like cotton buds and matches.
Perhaps more critical at the moment will be the last point on the agenda, Qualitative and Functional Education. You are probably giggling by now because thousands of university students will be celebrating the independence at home not because of the public holiday but because for more than three months now, there schools have been under locks due to the industrial actions of the three major unions in the universities. Likewise, several primary and secondary school students have not been able to resume after the summer holidays because their teachers have downed their ‘chalks and dusters’ over the non-implementation of a new salary scale for the teachers in nineteen states of the Federation which has been approved almost nineteen years ago, in 1991 to be precise. Perhaps, it would be good to have a peep into the President’s intents on education as at the time of his inauguration even if we cannot categorically state his current plans for the sector expected to produce Nigeria’s future leaders!
In his seven point seven agenda, the President stated on education that “The two-fold reforms in the educational sector will ensure firstly the minimum acceptable international standards of education for all. With that achieved, a strategic education development plan will ensure excellence in both the tutoring and skills in science and technology by students who will be seen as the future investors and industrialists of Nigeria. This reform will be achieved through massive injection into the education sector.”
Two years since the agenda was read out to the hearing of jubilant optimistic Nigerians, no one can clearly state what steps have been taken to attain the promised minimum international standards of education for all not to dream of the strategic development plan expected to follow. It’s also worthy of mention that it’s the debate over increased funding for the education sector that forced the university unions to all embark on indefinite strikes. Perhaps, it won’t be false to state what to expect are not future investors, industrialists and leaders from the Nigerian education sector as the reform promised but future followers! The children of the current leaders will most likely one day return from developed nations where they have been better trained and come to take over from wherever their fathers left off, except something critical is done. It could even be argued that the placing of education as the last on the agenda is not a mere coincidence, it’s probably the last thing the president will worry about or include in his travelling-stuffed schedule!
Since the seven point agenda does not seem to presently hold much hope for the people, it would suffice to look at other promises this administration has made. Though they do not feature in the major policy framework, the seven point agenda but they have been major features in the president’s speeches during the last two independent celebrations and at other for a where he has had the opportunity to talk about the progress of his administration. Such promises include electoral reforms, constitutional amendment, anti-corruption battle, enforcement of human rights and the popular rule of law upon which he claims his administration is founded upon.
For one, the corruption battle does seem like a mere play around the park as several of the president’s former governor colleagues who were once indicted for corruption by the EFCC today roam the streets, nay, stride in exquisite palaces and occupy the hallowed chambers of our legislative houses after failed attempts to bring them to justice. The trial of people like James Onanefe Ibori, former Delta state governor, have been stalled due to alleged frustrations from higher places, one of them being the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation with the occupant, Michael Aondoakaa, an alleged Ibori faithful. Several mind-boggling revelations of malfeasance such as the Halliburton scandal, the Bode George/NPA scandal, the Siemens bribe scandal among others have also graced the pages of papers only to be swept under the carpet after undue setting up of panels that have turned up reports without the federal government doing anything to ensure the suspects were properly tried. All those cases since to have been gone with the wind and would only probably get a mention in the papers when another of such revelations surfaces.
On electoral reforms, the president had given the people hope when after his inauguration, he had admitted the process that brought him to power was faulty and had promised to carry out a reform but since then nothing has been done. The amendment of the 2007 Electoral Code that was much talked about at the time has now been pushed aside and nothing else is being said on how the nation hopes to have credible elections in 2011. Likewise, plans for constitutional amendment have dragged on without any hope of the definite time serious deliberations will begin. Squabbles over committees on the matter have since thrown a spanner in the wheels of the process in the National Assembly. On the enforcement of human rights, it will be good to mention the non-passage of the Freedom of Information Bill which could have boosted freedom of information and to a larger extent promote the fundamental human rights of Nigerians through the promotion of transparency in governance as a result of free access to government information. Several attempts to re-introduce the bill at the National Assembly have suffered serious frustrations by the opposes of the bill who hide under the lame excuse of protection of vital information for security purposes. Yet, the president has said and done nothing in influencing the matter in the favour of the vast majority of the masses who are clamouring for the passage of the bill and whom he claims to want to guarantee access to fundamental human rights. The open assault on civilians by the powerful have also gone unchecked right under the nose of the president, the latest being the case of House of Reps member, Hon.(?) Chinyere Igwe slapping a security officer at the National Assembly for daring to ask him to identify himself since his dressing passed more for a street tout than a legislator. More interesting is his case because he is actually the chairman of the House of Reps committee on Human Rights, painfully laughable really. Yet, the presidency by their action and inaction ensured the man has not been made to pay for his sins, least of all tender a public apology as the leaders of other nations would have demanded of him. Thus, has the rule of law not been reduced to a mere mantra without intent in its every pronunciation?
It is such disturbing facts as these that makes one ask questions about the nation’s independence worth truly worth celebrating when daily life for the common man has become a battle for survival. In Prof. Wole Soyinka’s speech, ‘The Precursors of Boko Haram’ recently delivered at the centenary celebrations of Kings College in Lagos, he succinctly describes the common man’s battles thus: “The Nigerian is a conscript, forced to fight not just one, but several wars. The citizen is conscripted to fight the war of darkness, the deprivation of elementary electric power that is crucial to development and basic existence in a modern society. He or she is conscripted to fight the wars of disease, while the new imperators jet off to Europe and Saudi Arabia for their own treatment. He is conscripted to fight the wars of exposure for lack of affordable shelter, to battle ignorance for lack of functional educational facilities that have been run aground, deliberately by one neo-colonial fascist after another, be he in uniform or mufti.”
It is thus clear that though while the white colonialists granted the nation independence 49 years ago, the Nigerian is back under colonialism, this time under black imperialists who he labours under. He laces their pockets with tax and gets nothing in return but bruises to his physical and mental self. He has no reason to celebrate independence, at least not yet! He must rather join the necessitous battle to free himself and the millions of other Nigerians living under harsh conditions similar to his. In the words of Prof. Soyinka, “The report is out, the demands of the electorate are clear. We know where the battlefront is - the seat of governance…My conviction - once again - is that a people’s gathering is long overdue. It should take place in that right on that battlefront, that space where anti-people conspiracies are hatched and executed.”
Finally, it’s clear there is a need not to celebrate but to act and the best time to act is now! Let me leave you with the words of the erudite Professor Wole Soyinka himself, “It’s time to send in the conscripts- you and I.”


This piece was originally written before independence.