MANY people probably missed the story, especially the audacity of the challenge. But it led Blueprint newspaper of Wednesday, December 7th, 2011. The nut and bolt was that DIG in charge of operations, Alhaji Audu Abubakar, apparently perplexed about persistent complaints against the police: eternal extortions of N20 from relays of commercial vehicle drivers; those alcohol-laced: “Oga your boys are here” solicitations, etc.

Audu Abubakar challenged “the Nigerian public…to judge between police officers and state governors who are often guests of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on account of corruption”, as reported by Blueprint from Jalingo.

Abubakar was not done. “It would have been better if they said we are legalising illegality because our boys stretch out their hands shamelessly and defy the laws, reduce their dignity, and ridicule the uniform which is symbol of authority for only N20”.


The Police at work.
DIG Audu Abubakar knows the extortionist propensity has long reduced the esteem of the Force with the Nigerian people. “But even at that, what one governor uses biro to steal within one minute in his office is much more than the bribe all the policemen collect for a whole year”.

This is a very serious matter! Nigerians would agree that the two specimens are unpopular; the police and the state governor. But it would be unfair to generalise, because there are be policemen and governors, who work honestly and with commitment.

But since 1999, we seemed to have consciously gone for the lowest common denominator, in leadership recruitment. Doyin Okupe told Sunday Sun of December 11th, 2011, about Nigerian governors: “we have created emperors in the states. The situation is so bad that what even the President of the country cannot do, the governors do it with ease in their states which have now become their empires….Commissioners would put their hands behind their backs when they want to talk to the governors.

In some states, they even kneel down while talking to the governors”. This is the context which gave DIG Audu Abubakar the audacity to describe governors as worse thieves than all policemen taken together!

The blatant levels of theft in some states and the impunity are truly scandalous. Former Jigawa governor, Saminu Turaki was accused by his successor of having cashed N5billion in just a week and the same Saminu allegedly handed over billions to support Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda.

In another Northern state, long run as a family fiefdom, a former governor instituted one of the most elaborate scams Nigeria ever witnessed; using the dubious cover of PPP, he fleeced the state during his eight year tenure. The ex-governor continues to rule by proxy, controlling the state’s monthly allocation for all intents and purposes, almost as personal till, and he returns on the same day that Abuja releases the state’s monthly allocation.

There are several examples in this respect. But there have also been significant green shoots of growth in a number of states, making it unfair to generalise. But governors have a credibility problem, given their conduct since 1999. The DIG who described them as more corrupt than policemen leant on that credibility problem.

In Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Devil On The Cross, the International Organisation of Thieves and Robbers organised an exhibition on exploitation and theft. They pooled the world’s leading exploiters and thieves to exhibit their abilities.

Given the challenge thrown by DIG Audu Abubakar, we might also have to organise a Nigerian Corruption Challenge, with the same preparation put into our National Sports Festival; governors competing against policemen.

Challenge events will vary from pilfering local government accounts; PPP; variations on contracts; extortion on highways; theft of exhibit monies; taking bribes from accuser and accused and other such relevant events. Each team will be encouraged to present their most in-form “athletes”, never mind that many could have distended bellies like African toads! At stake is crowning the most corrupt in the serially-raped nation called Nigeria; policemen or state governors!

Troubling thoughts about Prof Ben Nwabueze’s ‘People’s Constitution’
THERE can be no gainsaying the fact that Prof.Nwabueze is one of our most distinguished academics; he regularly speaks out for what is right and for that he is admired in the country. But his recent 11-page paper titled Nigeria Needs A People’s Constitution, raises four troubling points that I thought should be interrogated.

He argued for a “People’s Constitution” stating that the 1999 Constitution is a military one. Fine! But didn’t he participate in drafting the 1979 Constitution? Wasn’t that also a Military constitution? Why did he participate in drawing up one then, but condemns a successor document, two decades later?

Prof. Nwabueze quoted Professor Sir Arthur Lewis out of context. Lewis used the quotation taken from Pg. 68 of the 1965 Whidden Lecture, titled Politics In West Africa, to validate an argument for federalism and consensus building, stating that Nigeria was perhaps the ONLY African country that can build American-type federalism in Africa.

But Prof. Nwabueze extracted Lewis to support an ethnic-based national conference and constitution-making. Thirdly, he stated that his PROJECT NIGERIA “is synonymous with the life of our dear nation”; furthermore, the group will draft a Bill to be “submitted to the presidency”.

We need a clarification on this, especially from the presidency, on the agenda of “Project Nigeria”. And what is the basis of the assumption that his group “is synonymous” with our country?

It is also troubling that the paper was presented at the NLC Headquarters, because Prof. Nwabueze’s ethnic-based argument contradicts the Pan-Nigerian, CLASS-based platform of the NLC. It is in fact a defeat of the well-choreographed, ethnic-based “People’s Constitution” view similarly posited by Chief Afe Babalola, as reported by The Guardian of Monday, December 12th, 2011.

The obsession by sections of the Southern Nigeria elite with constitution-making as panacea to Nigeria’s problems and by extension, delusions that such constitution must come with ‘restructuring’ Nigeria along ethnic lines, suffer at two critical levels.

Nigerian pre-colonial political units were historically Territorial not ethnic, so how to ‘restructure’ into ‘ethnic’ formations without historical antecedents, is not convincingly explained. The most ‘authoritative’ voice for that line belonged to the late Chief Anthony Enahoro.

He argued that the Ishan mind (his ethnic group) knew only the clan and tribe. Working from the Ishan ‘state of nature’ mindset, he attempted to carve Nigeria into ethnicities. But Nigeria’s history and those of the various peoples constituting Nigeria is far more complex than the late chief allowed for.

Similarly, those who romanticise pre-Independence constitutional platforms of the 1950s, conveniently forget that they were not platforms of “ethnic groups”, but of Nigerian political parties. The obsession of these leading lights of bourgeois Southern Nigeria about the nation’s political structure is so blind to issues of socio-economic injustice in the land.

Most people agree that the political structure is defective, yes; but why has the structure of socio-economic injustice escaped them? Was Nigeria’s political structure responsible for the depredations of SAP, championed by IBB and Chief Olu Falae?

Why have they refused to question the neoliberal capitalism which Obasanjo foisted on our country with its concomitants: privatisation and open theft of national assets; de-industrialisation; extremities of poverty amongst the majority and the creation of a few multibillionaires, cutting across ethnic groups?

Is political structure responsible for the fraudulent electoral process? Is the constitution reason for the demographic time-bomb that Nigeria perches on today, with 70 percent under the age of thirty and 45 percent under the age of 15?

How will a “People’s Constitution” solve problems associated with a dysfunctional neoliberal/neo-colonial capitalism? Will it create jobs? Leading lights of bourgeois Southern Nigeria must show us how their ‘People’s Constitution’ answers the serious problems which face Nigeria, beyond their simplistic ethnic-based solutions.

Interestingly, Prof. Nwabueze attempted to mobilise NLC in support of bringing “the ethnic groups together around a conference table”. But NLC has a historical superiority to Nwabueze’s obsession with ethnic groups; it unites Nigerian working people and leads them in struggle against socio-economic injustices. Injustices that “People’s Constitution” advocates apparently take as given!

Vanguard Nigeria