Opinion

Descent From Humanism: Literature, Music, And The Media

Published

4 years ago

August 18, 2021

NewTimes

In Understanding Modern Nigeria, Falola Directs Our Noble Cause

Olu Obafemi

Many would agree that when the core principles and values inherent in humanism–rationality, reason, compassion, human dignity, fellow-feeling, freedom, love, and kindness–are in deficit in society, a vacuum is created and all manner of dogmas, doctrines, superstitions, theories, and abstractions hold sway. Human values are required to be reassembled and restored as a result of these failings and pitfalls– which include war mongering, stoked by the availability of superior and sophisticated weaponry, moral bankruptcy such as corruption and the corruptibility of power, pride, greed, rapacious avarice, religious fanaticism, ethnic irredentism. They defray from humanism and all need to be eliminated for the re-affirmation of humanity. Among these pitfalls, also is the “robotization” and “thingification” of humanity, resulting from advanced technological innovation and artificial intelligence.

By electing to deploy literature, music, and the media among the diverse tools and fields of the humanities, to mediate its ideology, humanism, the thought of the choice of three, just three, rests on the three witches at the opening of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. There is tempo-spatiality (time and space–of when and where). There is so much metaphorical witchcraft in the arts–all of them, literature, theatre, film, music, and the media. When you fold or scaffold time and ages into a few hours, “hold eternity in the air,” take on persons and characters into oneself, remove costumes and make-ups, and wake up instantly from death to active life without the miracle of Christ, confer immediacy upon news and news paces, record events into soundtracks and sound bites, and make them live in the real world, you confront the witchcraft and the magic of the arts–the humanities. So the idea of echoing the witches and their witchcraft is not too far-fetched; after all; it is not stretching the imagination too thin, as is done in our vocational engagement in the arts.

The Yoruba Nollywood talks of Idan, which is magic. Apidan, the magic-makers, the theatricians, the actors, the storytellers, and the whole process of their art of creation on stage, screen, studios, and so on. And timing (the duration) of the clap-trap of lightning–the age of cataclysm, violent eruptions in the streets, outright warfare, which is actually what the witches were referring to, plagues, epidemics and pandemics, tornadoes, massive flooding, ravaging fires, earthquakes; chaos, banditry, kidnapping, dystopia, and the likes. These do not make the echoes of witches, magic, and the cult of Iyas (mothers) too intriguing or too dissimilar to the world of the arts.

In all the ages, writers covet the news space for self-expression to say the things that must be said urgently and to test the waters of their creation as they form words from their thoughts–poetry, prose, drama sketches. In that sense, there is an intriguing love relationship between the media and literature. Throughout time, men of letters seek refuge in the media as they mould their blocks of expression that are later turned into books. The role of newspapers in the evolution of literature drew the writers into the waiting arms of the media, newspapers to be specific, in a relationship that has become permanent, as the newspapers, periodicals, and journals and their creators themselves became a new type of literature and literary artists. Therefore, from the 18th century on, the inventors of the periodical essays extended the tactic of the fictitious self into the new territory and became writers.

All over the world, including in Nigeria, overt and subtle control proved incapable of stemming the growth of the media industry. The creeping in of censorship to control the opinions and feelings expressed in rapidly popularizing media had begun to accommodate issues and topics on politics, the lives of public individuals and businesses. Its popularity generated the desire of governments to control what would come out in the newspaper the following morning. Patricians and politicians tried hard to control the press, to dictate its views, and to contain its criticisms, but in Britain (and I daresay everywhere, including in Nigeria), the media and literary realms and phenomena proved too large for such ‘arrant limitations.’

Getting too hot and pinching the skin and the nerves, the government created “licensers of the press” to hunt down heretical and seditious publications and through strict licensing laws to limit the flow and narrow the range of newsprint, but whenever these laws lapsed, innovations in newspapers abounded before new forbidding laws are created. The bid to kill freedom of speech, arising from the gradual dehumanizing capacity and strategies of the powerful, had been there and it remains with us today. We must reach out to our society where the contribution of the media in those early days of independence struggle was valiantly resisted by the colonial authority. The politicians (civilian and military) inherited that strategy to control and censor the media. The draconic decrees to muzzle and snuff out freedom of the press and literature are evidence of the descent from humanism, derived from debased and depraved corruption of power in our country and continent.

Literature stands as a bridge-head between music and the media. Just as the media and literature are inextricably linked in a Siamese-twins relationship, so do literature and music bond in close affinity such that, many times, it became difficult to draw distinct lines between the two. Poets were considered as failed musicians and musicians as failed poets, and when those whom the world consider pop culture musicians began to win the Nobel Prize for literature (Bob Dylan, for instance), the separation line between the two blurs and melts into oblivion. Music became a friend of the media as literature, a friend of music, is the original friend of the media. So much for the justification of the meeting of three subfields of the humanities for mediating humanism!

As succinctly captured above, humanism, which I consider the ideological plank of humanity, reclines on the principles of reason and rationality. To attain a better society where love, humane value, and freedom reign, away from excessive religiosity (not religion), the human agency places the power for individual action in some other forces outside of the self and has brought so much human destruction since many centuries ago. There abound myriad theories of humanism since the age of the Renaissance. For instance, humanistic psychology emerged in the mid-20th century as a rebuttal to the limiting cynicisms of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, and B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism provides “a perspective that emphasizes’’ and ‘stresses concepts such as free will and self-efficacy.” In line with my offering above, humanism has been rendered as a “philosophy that stresses the importance of human factors rather than looking at religious, divine, or spiritual matters.” It is perceived as being “rooted in the idea that people have an ethical responsibility to lead lives that are personally fulfilling while at the same breath, contributing to the greater good for all people.”

The essence of humanism is its advancement of the significance of human values and dignity. People possess the capacity to solve their problems through rational and scientific means to attain the fulfillment of individual and communal ideals and to transform the world into a better livable place for all people. For many centuries, the tragic emotions and irrationality that dominate religious dogmas and fanaticism, leading to extreme violent movements on intra-religious bases, have had lethal and mortal outcomes on humanity. To the media, the question is, how much information have they rendered to us in recent times, and in our search for truth which ought to promote peace but have provoked wars and battlements?

I will like to write on the passionate assessment of the descent to the barbarism of the media–traditional and social–in Nigeria and elsewhere to get a perspective of the state of our and the world’s media. On February 21, a prominent Nigerian female journalist, Kadaria Ahmed, gave a very passionate, captivating, and no holds barred address titled “My Message to the Nigeria Media,” whose altruism has been challenged by other prominent journalists. Kadaria Ahmed’s address would have simply gone down as a classic on the need and essence of media practitioners to shun ethnic profiling and return to the traditional, noble profession of truth-telling and leading the nation aright in times of national crisis. Kadaria wrote thus:

It is with a heavy heart, worried of Nigeria and a sense of impending doom
That I am sending this to you, my colleagues,
Let me begin with a question;
What exactly will we gain if Nigeria descends into war?
How does it advance us if our fellow citizens turn on each other
And begin large scale ethnic killings against each other…
How does enabling ethnic strife help achieve this objective?
For some time now, a lot of us has thrown away the book on ethical reporting
Propelled by emotion, we have betrayed every moral consideration
That assigns our noble profession

But the critical probing to the other side of the coin happily carried out by Tayo Olu in The Whistler of February 15, 2021, titled “Attack on Nigerian Media,” has helped to put the “attack” by Kadaria in context without necessarily defraying from the value of her address.

Tayo Olu shed light on the reaction of Kadaria’s colleagues’ overt “scathing criticism of journalists’ reportage of the herdsmen crisis in the country” and for “fanning the flames of ethnic hate through their coverage of the crisis involving mainly the Fulani ethnic group.” Reactions came first from the Chairman of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) FCT Chapter, Emmanuel Ogbeche, Ibanga Isine of Next Edition, and Ekhator Ehi, among others. The rationale of these accusations and counter-accusations among media practitioners is the reality of crass partisanship in the media at a time when they should be the true watchdog of the common folks on whose behalf they ought to speak truth to power and denounce agents of violence and crime. At a time when our humanity is badly assailed on all fronts, the media should be a rallying point and not a house of raucous voices.

The social media, on its part, has nearly swamped the traditional media in this digital age. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and the likes have become dominant tools of engagement all over the world, and our country has embraced it irreversibly. Whereas it has increased the democratic space and has been deployed by both government and the citizens, it is radically redefining the nature of engagement (especially political) between the citizens and the state all over the world. It has also generated a lot of conflict and tension because of its massive usage and has brought the two into more direct interaction, and the government can no longer monopolize free speech. Its power (the power of technology that it uses) lies in its immediacy, speed, political reach, and its uncontrollability.

It is projected that in the next few years in Nigeria, the deployment of social media will increase “by more than 80 percent with more than 44 million people accessing online forms in a demography of about 200 million.” The state worries about the potential of social media abuses to undermine the state and ‘threaten the corporate existence’ of the nation. Yet, apart from its capacity to widen dialogue space, its economic development/utility reality, put at about 10 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and used by nearly 25 million people, makes it unstoppable in Nigeria. There is the debate of the mutual advantage of communication technology (in which Twitter is critical) to both government and the citizens and, thus, the increasing local, national, and international criticism of Twitter’s censor as impeding the nation’s humanity and freedom of expression. As this debate rages, the state must tread softly in its drive to hammer social media, recognize its universal nature, its mutual advantage in a democracy, and its humanizing power.

And to music, I find the danger of the descent of humanism pointedly depicted in the music of I. K. Dairo, as far back as the early sixties, and which still rings screamingly prophetic today. His album Ise Ori Ran mi ni mo se (loosely translated as “I do the job assigned to me by destiny”) ramifies this message of the need to restore humanism in society. Every line of this album warns against the dehumanizing power of greed and self-debasement in the search for sudden and filthy wealth. The inordinate search for crass materialism demeans and dehumanizes the world and sets it on the path of descending humanism. Many of our musicians; Fela, Idreez, and so on, make this frantic call on all us, especially the state, to pursue the path of humanizing society.

As we all know, literature is a reflection of society, in the manner of a mirror. Beyond mere reflection, it refracts society in the way that the soul breathes life into the body. Literature, therefore, as an arm of the creative industry, endows, ennobles, and enriches a nation’s humanity. It advertises and tells its story. Politics and matters of an imperatively political nature have, for instance, in the African experience, preoccupied the literary establishment. Since the colonial aegis, our writers have put their songs and stories in the service of humanizing our society, committed to the fact that “the poet speaks not for himself only but also for his fellowmen. His cry is their cry, which only he can utter.” All this is in the project of reconstructing society in the moment of declining, degenerating humanity, and the pursuit of viable nationhood and the world order.

Generally speaking, Nigeria’s literature predating the fratricidal war of 1967 to 1970 was essentially in search of a certain socio-spiritual and cultural stability. This is especially so during the cultural nationalism phase, which set the tone for political independence from the hegemonic clutch of colonialism and imperialism. But the war, with all its absurdity and catastrophic devastation of the individual writers, due to suffering and considerable loss of lives at very close and personal levels, compel the literary characterization of the decline or indeed descent of our nation’s humanism.

Even though I had described in a previous study on the Civil War, that the war wrought a serious body of national literature, its blight compelled a certain kind of dark pessimism and cynicism in the emerging visions. This may have been caused by the deep sense of loss, personal and collective, which the war generated. Okigbo died in the war, Soyinka suffered protracted solitary confinement, and Achebe and Clark, on different sides of the nation’s pole, carried huge emotional and psychological burdens. The sowing of regenerative seeds in the flesh of the country carried tragic overtones, as we found in some of the war and post-war writings.

Additionally, the Nigerian Civil War is used as a background against which the human condition is examined in its perverseness. War is absurd and irrational. The regime of bestiality characterized by war–pogroms and genocides–which tend toward the deployment of technology and war weaponry can lead to ultimate human extinction. Through war, wanton killing of one’s kind is the expression of the philosophy of the absurd and the descent from humanism.

With the ravaging impact and the trauma inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the arts of creation and creativity, with a positive, cathartic sensibility, have moved on, as we find in Of Shadows and Rainbows: Musings in Times of Covid (2021), a COVID-19, PEN Nigerian publication of poems, short stories, playlets, and essays edited by Olu Obafemi and Folu Agoi. Leaping out of the pages of this publication are lines from the authors “gripped by emotions, paroxysms, compassion, searching for startling enlightenment, illumination and, in many cases, reconstructive tropes” as an affirmation of humanism. Other evolving creative works include the Platform, All Poets Network (APNET), created to promote poetry in English and native languages in this pestilent era and administered by Dzukogi, Khalid Imam, Ola Ifatimehin, and Ismael Baba to “give voice to young and established poets from all continents of the world,” and many more.

The Nigerian society is going through a transition of bleakness and blight, which has raged since the war and truly never ended, reaching very precipitous climaxes even under civil democracy. I have called it the descent from humanism which I have chosen to illustrate with music, the media, and literature. Unorthodox warfare through insurgency, insurrection, frightening banditry, armed herdsmen, lethal violence, dystopia, and wild social incoherence manifests our nation’s descent from humanism. The mediatory and recuperative essence and power have been explored here somewhat. Part of my recommendations is that the media, music, and literature should become more prophetic and politically more engaged in raising mass awareness to restore, rekindle, and promote humanism and humanity. Also, the essentialist principle of humanism, which deals with identity retrieval and identity marking, should be more robustly engaged by the media through investigative and development journalism in tracking the concrete character and identity of the bandits, herdsmen, and other agencies of insurrection and insurgency on our land.

Taking due cognizance of the present realities in the country as imposed by the pandemic, we must wake to the need for science, technology, and the humanities to focus conversations on humanistic issues, and human and social welfare. We must also concentrate our efforts on the centrality of the human race rather than building knowledge that will lead to its destruction and extinction. Innovations should focus on the discovery of the human inner strength and capacities through critical and constructive reasoning to sustain humanity and the security of the coming generations. To conclude, in order to establish an inclusive democratic society for everyone, the nation, the states, in particular, should work in collaboration with agencies of humanism, as extolled in this essay, rather than foster mutual distrust and resentment.

This is an excerpt of the Convocation Lecture delivered by Professor Obafemi, FNAL, NNOM, during the 2021 Nigerian Academy of Letters Conference.

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Opinion

Professor Femi Badejo At 70: The Advocacy Of Equity

Published

4 days ago

March 7, 2025

NewTimes

Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon

Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

People who are well-grounded in understanding the operations of the universe would quickly tell anyone who cares to listen that life is about words, signs, and symbols. Individuals in this category do not suddenly come to that knowledge midway through their life’s journey but through experiences, exposure, and study.

Regardless of their cultural identity or ideological mindset, everyone would accept that many things that happen in life are circumscribed by universal signs and symbols, which ordinary or inexperienced people may not easily understand. For example, where people are born and the environment where they grow up are vital signs that sometimes determine the trajectory of their life journey.

These things constitute what should be called signs because where we are born, and the environment where we grow up is crucial in shaping a few things in our lives, especially how we see the world or how we socialize in it, leading to the manner of which we negotiate the unfurling activities. More importantly, one’s lifelong destiny is often shaped by confident choices that humans make, especially the choice of what career path to follow or one’s ambition concerning one’s intellectual evolution. Professor Badejo’s signs and symbols of greatness are easily unmasked by his life’s series of activities, especially his career choices. Anyone expert in political science and law should excel in what they do, except if they do not have enough discipline to see themselves through.

The world has long cultivated the habit of celebrating individuals with outstanding contributions to the human world, and it is no coincidence that Professor Badejo falls into this category. The signs have always been there that an individual of his intellectual strength and persuasion cannot but contribute significantly to the straightening of things in a chaotic world, particularly in their conviction that as the world operates today, issues and activities are not orderly or in a right direction to guarantee collective advancement.

It cannot be overemphasized that every moment in human history is always dotted with a fair share of critical problems that often demand outstanding individuals’ precocious ideas and creative ingenuity. Professor Badejo is a shining example of the quest to make the world a better place. His foundation in the legal profession is deliberate, for he understands early enough that people who would dare the devil in today’s global society must understand the operations of their activities and predict human steps. This way, they can make timely decisions that would change the tides of things for the good of everyone. As already implied, the world always faces a fair share of its challenges because there are individuals who are blessed to solve issues using their intellectual strength. As a professor and a professional in legal affairs, Badejo is very grounded in dissecting international issues so that people can have a proper overview of the interplays of power and contestation in the global community. In other words, if you intend to take advantage of the vulnerable systems of the world, people like Badejo would be there, reminding you of the atrocities sparked by the parochialism of your ambitions.

It is exciting to discover that Badejo has profound knowledge of political science, which places him in good condition to understand political figures’ operations, intentions, and inclinations toward whatever actions they embark on. It, therefore, makes it more rewarding for him to use his intellect to redefine public relations through political insights so that the human world will attain progress and sustain the one they have already accomplished. That Badejo has worked in different places, especially in international locations, using his educational insights and professional skills to improve the conditions of the world speaks highly of his dedication to making an indelible impact.

I cannot state enough how vital Badejo has been. As indicated, the signs that he would make such accomplishments exemplify his career choices. While we cannot deny his commitment to such ambitions, we cannot understate how he has dedicated himself to getting the best from his knowledge. We, therefore, cannot undervalue his dedication to academic engagements, as that forms the basis of his intellectual advancement today―one which continues to brighten his life in tremendous ways. At the international level, he has served in different capacities; the summary is that he was either contracted to use his wealth of experience to save the day or use his professional expertise to provoke a change.

His efforts in community development services, especially in his involvement with the international community or non-governmental organizations, have always demanded his intellectual support. This cannot even overshadow his contributions to building the world’s human capital. It is interesting to state that Professor Badejo is a teacher who has made substantial contributions to knowledge generally. Apart from being a seasoned researcher, he has always been dominant in teaching, producing a sizeable fraction of students who underwent tutelage under him. This explains why many people can attest to how profoundly this scholar has redefined how they see the world and the things in life. Teachers hold a good place in our collective lives because they sacrifice very much to mold people’s minds correctly.

Badejo belongs to the class of educators who make incredibly critical efforts to improve Africa. He has painstakingly conducted research to study different issues, especially in areas of political science and, by extension, the legal profession. His success is significant, and he is enthusiastic in his endeavors. I should inform you that although the activity of teaching is conventionally seen as restricted to the four walls of an institution, it, however, transcends such conceptual location; teaching is what we do when we enlighten groups of people, communities of learners, and class of individuals to impact them or provoke them to change socially.

It gets more enjoyable when you know that Badejo has made an invaluable impression on us all with his solid academic publications, from which many of us today learn. In 2024, Badejo published an exemplary work titled Nigeria Corruption Perception Data. Apart from the fact that this work produces an objective overview of how the country is perceived by its citizens and the world generally, it is also an indictment of the political class about how they manage the systems and institutions in the country, thereby affecting Nigeria’s political and economic destiny in some ways. One who knows Badejo knows that such academic engagements increase his adrenaline because it will use his intellectual expertise in that domain and allow him to present his thoughts or ideas to the people. He has consistently revealed to the world the undergarments of Nigeria’s political systems, especially how it has become vulnerable in the hands of the few who control it. In what manner and character does one explain the problems of unbridled leadership compared to how neocolonial Nigerian leaders have particularly (mis)managed the country’s available resources, demonstrating their myopic imagination about the future? Issues like this are always given the necessary attention, and it explains how Badejo addresses fundamental issues, not the periphery.

Perhaps because of his intellectual depth, he has consistently produced respectable works on African democracy, using the Nigerian situation as his experiment laboratory. On many occasions, he has suggested to the political elites that they should make conscious efforts towards transforming Nigeria’s democracy and save it from whatever problems it may face. He takes this position, knowing that it is the freedom highlighted by democracy that is fundamental to the creation of a functional society, which would produce the necessary atmosphere in which people can grow. He understands that although democracy may have internal failings and even complications that could be a threat, especially when mismanaged, it remains the only avenue through which divergent thinking can be amplified so that the best ideas and approaches can be born. Such an individual cannot but be celebrated and even appreciated for their invaluable contributions to the human world. They have paid their dues and thus would always be accorded royal treatment, for their voices remind us of what we should be as a collective and not what our impulses want us to be.

On May 15, 2025, I will offer an in-person tribute and a lecture in his honor.

Opinion

Natasha As Worthy Rebel

Published

4 days ago

March 6, 2025

NewTimes

Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

Elegant Natasha. Handsome Natasha. Beautiful Natasha. Nice Natasha. Sharp Natasha. Clever Natasha. Natasha the envy of men and women. Natasha of several qualities – above all, Natasha the rebel; Natasha a worthy rebel. Natasha a good patriot that is a worthy patriot. Everything the columnist has just stated or has just outlined or has just highlighted constitutes his interpretation of Senator (Barrister, Mrs.) Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s performance when she appeared before Arise News Good Morning Show on Friday, 28 February, 2025 to throw light on the drama that happened in the Senate a day or so before.

What was the drama on that day really about? What happened in the Senate between her and the Senate President was it really all about her seat re-allocation or re-assignment? Or, was it essentially about something else to entrap her – as she was allegedly told on the floor of the Senate on the afore-mentioned day of drama? The columnist saw everything as shown live on his television set that was privately power-generated (in this power-less or electricity-less clime) from the beginning to the end. The columnist wondered why, just why Natasha reacted the way she did, and why specifically she dared the Senate President the way she did. What was inevitably amiss? Why was/is Natasha claiming everybody’s attention the way she did (and she is still dong)? Why were her fellow senators, more than several of the male senators, I mean, flowing to her in her river of rebellion against the standards of the Senate that must be kept up? Was it because even if she was right in her classical democratic rebellion of a loner, it was necessary that the prestige of the great senators and that of their equally great but almighty President who is not more than first among equals should not be allowed to dwindle? And why was the Senate President so stupefied when Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan brandished Order 10 several times as she rebelliously but decorously stood her ground, grounds or no grounds? Did the Senate President at any time try to have a bite or a taste of Natasha’s inviting stupefacient something that had caused him the stupefaction I was allowed personally to notice by the inner master on that day that the rebellious one knocked him to stupor – or to a state of near-stupor before his like-minded senators came to his rescue? All these questions are significant ones (or must be significant ones) for all those who desire to find a factual and truthful solution to what is growing to be a pattern of values between the Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Senator (Mrs.) Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the very wife of Mr. Godswill Akpabio’s good friend (or now erstwhile good friend?).

On Saturday, 29 February, 2025, that is, almost a week ago, I read entirely on pages 10-12 of Saturday Vanguard details of the Natasha Uduaghan-Godswill Akpabio problem and other proclamations, claims and counter-claims, including Natasha’s full interview she granted Arise News Good Morning Show which I had already alluded to. Natasha answered more than very satisfactorily all the questions put to her concerning the following: “allegations by a northern group”; “harassment of clerk and requests for CVs of staff”; “how the sitting arrangement issue started”; “denial of rights”; and “the night-cub incident.” My assertion(s) to each of her every answer is clearly clear and transparently transparent, and brings me to this conclusion: A highly brilliant and sharp female senator; a highly valuable, worthy, no nonsense female senator that Senator (Drs. Mrs.) Remi Tinubu, our President’s dear, dear wife, who is equally bright and brilliant, needs in her core team of patriots to help make our country reach its rightful destination. But I have no persuasive influence whatever upon her to make her see Natasha as I see her – or as I am seeing her. Yet I should tell her as the inner master tells me to say to her what I am now saying to her. Natasha certainly has her foibles – like all human-beings, including our one and only Godswill Akpabio. Her foibles, however, pale into nothing or insignificance in comparison with her positively rebellious bent and manner.
Since the matter between Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senator Godswill Akpabio entered our television screens and newspapers and everywhere outside the main-stream media the Senate President has not deemed it right to claim our attention with at least one important line of defence from his own persuasive mouth. Why? Others, some of whom claim to be activists (activists my foot!) have been speaking for him. Why? If he does not want to say anything he should instruct his hangers-on, including his lawyer(s), his acolytes and cohorts and sycophants, and Natasha’s back-stabbers in the Senate, to keep mum until the brouhaha stills itself, evaporates and vanishes. But will it? I don’t think so until he transparently opens his line of persuasive rebuttal himself.

By the way, why did his wife, his damsel (who, like Natasha, is an impeccable communicator), come into the fray? What for? I saw her on television trying to persuade people like us in vain. After all said and done I exclaimed to myself “What for?” in the trope of a question. She said several things which I, as a literary detective and gleaner, punctured. I will only mention one or two here. (After all, I am not Natasha’s lawyer as I am not Unoma’s lawyer). She said, among other things, that no woman or women ever complained against her disciplined darling husband as a governor or minister – if I heard her well. I chuckled. No woman or women who succumbed to the sheets-whims-and-caprices of her darling governor- or minister- husband would complain openly or in loud silence to Unoma or to anyone for that matter close to Unoma. I put this to Unoma as a literary gleaner who is ever objective come rain or sunshine. Secondly, her open swipe at Natasha’s husband has drawn the very decent man who cannot hurt a fly out of his refined shell. I am sure that she and her disciplined husband have since seen and read the mature and refined letter of the highly cultured Alema of the very beautifully great Kingdom of Warri, the envy of many kingdom-less kingdoms, on what has been that shouldn’t have been.

There are other things I want to say but which I am nicely holding back as a top Niger Delta personage. What I can do best is to immerse myself in my own quiet way on how to bring this matter to a good and transparent end. The Senate President and the Alema of Warri must meet to resolve the knot in the favour of their friendship and that of the people of the whole of the Niger Delta and beyond. The situation needs to be remedied. I know how, but I won’t open my mouth wide here. For the time being, however, Natasha, our worthy rebel, needs to be appeased with appeasable appeasement by appeasers agreeable to the parties and all the parties in our Niger Delta and the Confluence State and beyond. I hope I am not building castles in Spain. Phew!

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

Opinion

IBB In The Annals Of Civil Service Reforms In Nigeria

Published

4 days ago

March 6, 2025

NewTimes

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The autobiography is a most delicate, complex and indeed disruptive art form. It is the autobiographer’s authorial insistence to be heard in terms of his or her narrative addition to a historical discourse. In fact, it is the autobiographer’s narration of the historical event from his or her own perspective. And more often than not, when the autobiographer is a fundamental participant in the event, the complexities of that event and the circumstances surrounding it are multiplied. Only very few autobiographies enjoy global approval. And that is because the art form is seen as an ego trip. That sentiment is summed up by the English biographer, Humphrey Carpenter: “Autobiography is probably the most respectable form of lying.” This is even made worse if the protagonists are critical individuals whose lives have affected national trajectories. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) is one such critical protagonist, and his autobiography has arrived.

A Journey in Service has since started generating lots of furors in all strata of the Nigerian public space, online and offline. Lots of opinions have tied IBB to several significant historical moments in Nigeria, especially the annulment of the June 12 elections, and the demise of MKO Abiola. What many have conveniently glossed over, and a case I have consistently made, is that personal narrative in the forms of autobiography and memoirs serve a unique function in terms of their historical import. If A Journey in Service had not been written, we will all be gasping within the yawning silence of the political and administrative gaps that ought to have been filled with whatever the autobiographer has to say. But now it has been written, and we can then commence the journey of unraveling how the narrative fits or fails to fit in with the existing accounts of Nigeria’s political development.
This personal narrative has a critical import for me as a historian of Nigeria’s administrative and reform trajectories. The Babangida administration played a very fundamental role in articulating a significant portion of Nigeria’s administrative reform architecture. And so, that portion of the trajectory, and the entire institutional reform agenda of the Nigerian state, will not be complete without adding the voice and perspective of the key protagonist to the understanding of how the reform policy emerged. No matter what anyone thinks, the imperative of national history demands that such an account be added to the stock of what we already know, and to flesh out a better understanding of what we already know. The idea therefore is to see how the protagonist, no matter the groundswell of national opinion for or against him, fits into a larger picture of the political and administrative frameworks that enable us to see where the nation is coming from and where it is headed.

This is a task every institutional reformer must long for without getting sidetracked by sentimental opinion that accords blame and slings mud. This is part of what makes IBB and A Journey in Service such a delight for me. Unfortunately, the head of the historic administration does not consider that irreducible reform agenda that distinguishes his administration so significantly as to celebrate its conception, elements and operation, as well as its limitations, in a significant autobiography. That responsibility has been passed to posterity. This piece rescues that fundamental omission.

The pre-Babangida administrative reform narrative must always revert back to the 1974 Udoji Commission. That Commission is singular because it was the first to attempt an alignment between Nigeria’s reform efforts and the emerging managerial revolution in public administration across the globe. The Udoji Commission took its immediate inspiration from the Lord Fulton Committee of 1968 in Britain. The task of the Fulton Report was to inquire into the capability readiness of the British civil service to confront the modern British society and its technological complexity. Fulton’s most significant recommendation was the displacement of the cult of generalist amateur civil servants in an approaching administrative dispensation that requires a critical mass of new managers who possess the professionalism and specialist expertise to harness the talents needed to make the civil service economic, effective and efficient.
By the time the Udoji Commission was inaugurated, Nigeria had also reached the critical juncture where it became imperative to ask whether the Weberian assumptions underlying the British administrative legacy were capable of tackling the urgent governance requirement of a postcolonial society. The wage impasse which the system had been confronting before independence, for the Commission, was a symptom of a deeper administrative malady represented by a bureaucratic culture that had arrested innovation and entrepreneurial creativity in the analysis and implementation of policies. Managerialism therefore provides the most timely and perfect means of making the civil service system align with the goals of national development.

The Udoji Commission went on to leverage the global good practice of the time that calls for a new style of public service that deploys new management techniques of Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS), Management by Objectives (MBO), the precursor of what is today called the performance management system, project management system, among others, that were totally alien to the Nigerian public service, at the time. The new management architecture that the envisioned management system would have institutionalized would obviously have been inadequate but would have laid a critical substructure that would have set Nigeria on the new productivity paradigm that assisted Malaysia, Singapore, the Asian Tigers and many other developing countries that are within Nigerian global ranking at the time.

The most devastating blows that the civil service suffered were those created not by it but the governance tradition that militarism and “New Federalism” of the post-civil war years created where the rigorous analytical frame that governed development investment got replaced with the unreflective “with immediate effect” command and control governance tradition which created huge process, policy, capacity, performance and resource gaps. The Udoji Commission and its limitations, as well as the succeeding Phillips and Ayida Commissions, could be understood only within this military tradition of which IBB was a significant part. When he assumed office in 1985, one of the most immediate decisions was, according to his admission, the need to “strengthen the practice of the presidential system with clear economic, political, and social reforms to strengthen the nation as a constitutional democracy based on the presidential system.” Assuming the title of a “President” was therefore more than a mere nominal gesture to narcissism. Rather, he said, it was “a summation of our consensus on the need to preserve and strengthen the presidential system and make it work better for the nation.”

But a nominal title was not enough. A commitment to the presidential system, IBB insisted, defined the necessity of “structuring a reform programme around institutions to make it work.” And given the tension that already was prevalent in the heated polity, IBB surmised, the reforms that must make any significance must be as comprehensive as the administration could make it. And the first act of symbolic gesture was negative: the urgency of the need “to review the various draconian decrees, convictions, and pending cases that bordered on human rights violations.” The Exchange Control (anti-sabotage) Decree 7 and Decree 4 (Public Officers Protection Against False Accusation) had to be significantly reviewed. This was followed by the real positive task of reforming the economy and governance in ways that go beyond “knee-jerk populist reflexes.”

The task, in governance and economic terms, was therefore to “Remove the government from the role of an enormous money changer to that of an enabler of the appropriate economic environment. We also needed to let the economy, in general, breathe more freely.” It was to liberalize the economy and make government an able enabler rather than occupying the ‘commanding heights of the economy.”

Unfortunately for us all, IBB fails to dwell on what could have been a defining dimension of A Journey in Service, the civil service reform framework of the Babangida administration. This is shocking but revealing in itself. One possible reason is that the author subsumed the civil service reform under the broader political reforms: “Our political programme targeted the critical areas of political and socio-cultural restructuring highlighted by the Political Bureau report: the party system, the electoral process, including election administration, the federal structure, the civil service, and the problem of succession, including political leadership.”

And yet, this fails to do justice to the significance of the Babangida administration and its inheritance of the Dotun Philips Commission from the Buhari-Idiagbon administration. The Phillips Study Team is significant because it had the task of re-organizing the operations of the civil service in terms of professionalism that will eventually align it with the managerial revolution recommended by Udoji. And that reform effort alone cements his administration’s significance in the annals of administrative history in Nigeria, and a fundamental contribution to the cumulation of reform knowledge in Nigeria. IBB already gave the significant intellectual basis of the restructuring that was an imperative: to achieve “national rebirth and future greatness,” there is a need for political and economic restructuring that frees up the national space for transformation. And one way to do this, according to him, was cultivate intellectuals: “We needed the input of intellectuals to enlighten the business of government.” There was also the crucial need for the public service as the engine of government business. It beats me how IBB did not see that.

The Dotun Philips Study Group was constituted by the Buhari-Idiagbon administration in 1985, with the objective of undertaking an interrogation of the structure, mode of operation and strategy of the civil service in the light of contemporary administrative situation, as well as finding means by which the eroded professionalism of the system could be restored. After the 1985 coup, Babangida inherited the study group and transformed it into a full-blown commission whose task was to keep up with the objective of aligning the spirit of managerialism and a professionalized civil service with the form and spirit of presidentialism. This was to be incorporated into the total package of the Civil Service Reforms through a Civil Service Reorganisation Decree No. 43 of 1988. Given the administration’s concern with the rigid Soviet-styled centralization of the economy and the need to open the economy up to market forces, it was only logical that the administration would adopt the critical managerial principle of letting managers manage by having greater control on critical resources. This possesses the capacity to inspire a wholesale decentralization of the HRM function to MDA. The policy choice here is between centralized resource governance for example where the civil service commission wields constitutional powers for recruitment, promotion and discipline exercised at top management levels by the Commission while delegating the powers to MDAs at middle to lower levels.

The Philips reform was compromised essentially because (a) it took the issues involved in professionalism too far (for instance, by attempting to make a professional out of everybody within the civil service); and (b) its own unique managerial thrust was directed towards integrating the civil service into the presidential system of government, with one unintended consequence being that professionalization turned into politicization through an attempt, for instance, that turned an administrative post (permanent secretary) into a political one (director-general). And yet, this is not a failure because it was a logical reform complement to the short-circuited Udoji Commission recommendation of a public service founded on performance management, and its underlying managerial philosophy was significant in getting the Babangida administration its governance template for transforming national development.

I insist that an administration is only as good as its reform agenda, both in design and implementation. The Babangida administration gave Nigeria’s reform trajectory one of the key moments in the protracted attempt to translate the gains and efficiencies of a managerial opportunity to a bureaucratic system.

. Olaopa is a Professor of Public Administration and Chairman,
Federal Civil Service Commission .