Opinion

Africa In The Turbulence Of A World In Search Of Direction

Published

1 year ago

October 19, 2023

NewTimes

Dr. Kayode Fayemi

By ‘Kayode Fayemi

Allow me to start by celebrating the leadership and members of the Society for International Relations Awareness (SIRA) for putting this platform together and, in so doing, providing us with an opportunity to step out of our everyday preoccupations with our national affairs and shifting our gaze to the global scene where a lot is also going on that matters for us as a country, a continent, and a people. There is a way in which amidst the many and ever more complex domestic challenges which our country has been grappling with these past decades, our individual and collective energies and attention have been trained much more on our internal affairs, to the neglect of the equally many and increasingly complex developments in the world around us and what they mean for our own prospects.

This occasion reminds me of a culture of public engagement on international affairs that was once strongly embedded in our national system in the first three decades of our independence. As a student during that period, the culture of public engagement with international affairs played an important role in shaping my world outlook, just as it did for many in my generation. As a precocious Secretary – General of both ANUNSA (All Nigeria United Nations Students Association) and YUSSAN(Youth United in Solidarity for Southern Africa in Nigeria) at the University of Lagos, I spent a good deal of my late teenage years volunteering at ANC and SWAPO Keffi offices in Ikoyi, Lagos under the tutelage of the late Comrades Mark Shope and Herman Ithete, both Chief Representatives of ANC and SWAPO in Nigeria at the time. From consciousness about the crime that was apartheid, awareness of the imperative of completing the liberation of Africa from colonial domination, and alertness to the costs of the East-West Cold War on our continent to pride about the position and role of Nigeria as the most populous black nation on earth, the quest for a revival of the pan-African ideal, and the need for a new world order, we were all the richer for the public political education which we gained through various campus clubs, professional associations, and dedicated media columns and programmes that brought the world to us in real time and vivid terms.

The sterling work which the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs carried out in accordance with its mandate also played a vital role in cementing that culture that ensured that happenings around Africa and across the world did not seem as remote and of no concern to us as they may have appeared. We learnt, as students, about the theoretical basis for the organic interfaces between domestic and foreign policy; for the ordinary Nigerian citizen, the blend between the two was almost taken as given, and it ensured that while we were proud of the many elite diplomats who were doing our country, continent, and the African world proud, foreign policy was not in any way narrowed to an elite affair.

In, therefore, accepting the invitation which the inimitable and indefatigable Owei Lakemfa extended to me on behalf of SIRA to speak, I did so without hesitation partly out of a nostalgia for the yesteryears of a popular national engagement with world affairs and an earnest hope that we can revive that culture and expand it for the immense benefit which it will bring as much to our domestic governance as to our foreign policy. In fact, today more than even in a previous era, developments in the international system deserve to be monitored ever more closely not only by a highly professional foreign service but also by a conscious domestic public whose knowledge, engagement, and activism can only enrich the work of our diplomats as they bat for the country, for Africa, and for all black people around the world.

I do not need to remind this audience of why today, more than before, we need to pay closer attention to developments in the international system. For one, many are the common challenges that are bedevilling the international community regardless of geography or national endowment. Foremost among those challenges is climate change and the scourge of epidemics and pandemics. For another, the world is presently traversing one of the most unequal phases in its history, with the implication it carries for our capacity to achieve the much-desired structural transformation that will enable us to turn the table of underdevelopment. Furthermore, we are living witnesses to changes in global order, including a radical redistribution of economic power, that presages the end of the post-1945 multilateral system and its replacement by a new multi-polar order characterised by competing centres of power and influence.

Indeed, it is the process of the gradual decomposition of the post-1945 multilateral system and the Pax Americana that underpinned it that is at heart of the current turbulence which we are witnessing in the international system. The present moment in world history is probably best captured by the analytic statement which was made in 1930 by the famous Italian political philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, about a different era that was equally defined by the multiple problems that were playing out in and around his native Italy: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that old is dying and the new cannot (as yet) be born; in this interregnum a great deal of morbid symptoms appear.” It is a statement that was subsequently popularised as to assume the status of a global cliche.

Periods of transition from one global order to another tend to occur gradually, and even sometimes imperceptibly for a period. Nevertheless, the forces of change that underwrite the transitions progress inexorably until the shift that they bring about bursts into the open. The transitional periods, given the triple dynamic of the decomposition, recomposition, and redistribution of power that they entail, tend to be marked by turbulence, instability, and even violence. At the height of the global hegemony of Great Britain and the Pax Britannica which it enforced, the capacity of that Island state to rule the waves on account, inter alia, of its industrial prowess and superior naval power, placed it in a position to enforce its will and demand compliance.

Pax Britannica did not, however, go unchallenged as much from the European rivals of Great Britain such as France and later Germany, but also from emerging new centres of power such as the United States which, though previously a colony of the United Kingdom, was rapidly coming of its own to assume an important role as a pole of global economic growth and political influence. The decline of Pax Britannica began long before the onset of the First World War but that war, and the Second World War that inevitably followed it, marked its substantive and symbolic end. It was a violent end that claimed millions of lives. In the inter-war years, the world experienced massive convulsions that included the Great Depression and the economic and social dislocations that came with it. The air in Europe was filled with revolutionary fervour even as anti-colonial/ national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America gathered momentum. The ill-fated League of Nations, an intergovernmental child of extremely difficult circumstances that was overwhelmed from birth by the many crises that were playing out, and which was further incapacitated by the rising tide of fascism in Europe, also finally collapsed.

Pax Britannica was replaced by Pax Americana with the United States emerging formally as the single most powerful economic and political force in the international system. The global economic dominance of the United States was largely projected by its transnational corporations and the pre-eminent position that the U.S. dollar came to assume in international finance, commerce, and investment. Combined with the massive military capability that it had built up, and its ability to deploy power on a global scale, it is not surprising that the United States took on a frontline role in the making of the new global multilateral system that was built at the end of the Second World War, and at the heart of which lies the United Nations family of organisations, including the Bretton Woods twins, the World Bank and the IMF.

Indeed, Pax Americana as a concept and practice may have embodied the pre-eminent position of the United States in global affairs after the Second World War. However, it was subject to contestation from the outset following the politico-ideological and strategic interest divergences between the United States and its allies in the West, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, Russia which, having paid a heavy price in lives lost during the Second World War, was determined to consolidate its Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) under a revolutionary socialist banner. In the Cold War that ensued and which eventually came to frame global politics until the 1990s, Russia bolstered its military arsenal to become a credible rival and competitor to the United States in the deployment of massively destructive military capability. The politics of deterrence such as it played out effectively meant that no overt effort was made by either of the two biggest nuclear powers to interfere in the spheres of influence that they had carved out for themselves and sought to control.

The USSR, with Russia at its core, may have successfully matched the United States in the military-political-ideological fields. However, it struggled economically, and in the face of the increasing pressures on its continued sustainability, it ended up being dissolved. Not a few commentators, including, for a time at least, the well-known Francis Fukuyama, were quick to adopt a triumphalist narrative that stated that the United States, either on its own or with its Western allies, had won the battle for political, ideological, and systemic supremacy over its keenest rival and competitor. Capitalism, it was said, had shown itself to have triumphed over socialism/Marxism/communism, and liberal democracy had won over the “authoritarian” system of democratic centralism that the Soviets had practised. In the words of Fukuyama, it was the end of history. But was it?

Fukuyama himself was to later admit that his proclamation of the end of history in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR and its Warsaw Pact and COMECON was, to state it politely, a little premature. For out of the rubble of the old USSR, the Russian Federation reconstituted itself as an independent power which also claimed and retained the massive nuclear arsenal of the old Soviet Union. It may have become weakened but it was not entirely out and it was only a matter of time, especially following the accession of Vladimir Putin to power, for a resurgent Russia to reposition itself as a major force and power broker in its own right, complete with an upgraded and avant garde arsenal of conventional and non-conventional forces. The conventional components of that arsenal are presently being put to test by the US-led NATO in the war that is going on in Ukraine.

The moment which the United States may have enjoyed as the sole remaining superpower still standing was clearly destined to be extremely short lived, and any thoughts about a unipolar world order under the untrammelled hegemony of America was clearly never going to happen. Even as Russia embarked on a path of rapid military-political resurgence, China led a pack of countries such as India, Turkey, Brazil, and a host of other middle powers (Is this, finally, the arrival of Prof Akinyemi’s Medium Powers?) to challenge and successfully erode the economic dominance of the United States. The re-emergence of China has been especially rapid and comprehensive, positioning it next to the United States as the second biggest economy in the world, and which, by all projections, is well on its way to overtaking America by the next generation. What the defunct Soviet Union and the resurgent post-Soviet Russia were unable to do in the economic arena, China was able to do.

Beyond being the factory of the world, holding the biggest foreign exchange reserves, expanding its international trade, investment, and foreign aid profiles, enhancing its competitiveness in science, technology, and innovation, and growing its soft power, China has been carrying out a single-minded modernisation and expansion of its military capability. The massive financial resources at its disposal enable it to invest the kinds of resources in reinforcing its defensive and offensive capabilities on a scale which has already placed it among the topmost military powers in the world. Not to be left behind, other actors, mostly Middle Powers, are also asserting their global geopolitical interests more autonomously and aggressively, thereby contributing to the much more diffuse nature of power and influence in the present situation. A good example is what we are witnessing with BRICS nations.

Scholars seeking to characterise the current international balance of power among nations talk about the emergence of a multipolar global order with multiple competing centres co-existing, uneasily. I suggest that that multipolarity itself speaks to a global reordering in which the old is dying simultaneously as the new is struggling to be borne. It is a tense and delicate transitional moment in human history that is packed with doubt and fear as old certitudes are dissolved, now pecking orders are emerging, and existing global governance institutions are straining at the seams. As the UN Secretary-General puts it, “we are now at an inflection point… power dynamics have become increasingly fragmented as new poles of influence emerge, new economic blocs form and axes of contestation are redefined.” (United Nations, A New Agenda for Peace, 2023) Not surprisingly, an unprecedented militarisation and arms race is taking place in which the old powers are expanding their defence expenditures (with military expenditures globally setting a new record, reaching $2.24 trillion in 2022, according to SIPRI and IISS), boosting their arsenals, and setting up foreign bases just as the new powers are taking various steps to boost their positions in as equal a measure as possible. More worryingly, nuclear conflict is once again an active part of public discourse.

The precarious balances underpinning the evolving multipolar system represent a moment which requires enlightened leadership on all sides to navigate. And yet, it is precisely that kind of leadership that has increasingly been in short supply around the world as voices of narrow nationalism, raw xenophobia, blatant fear-mongering, and belligerent militarism overwhelm the political space and constrict avenues for meaningful dialogue to ensure that global change is delivered peacefully. As the drums of war are being beaten, and events are increasingly being interpreted tendentiously through the prism of what increasingly looks like a new Cold War, many observers have noted that we have not been edged nearer to a third world war than now. Indeed, there are even suggestions that we are already witnessing the first scene of the first act in a possible third world war following the outbreak of the military conflict in and over Ukraine.

Turbulence such as we have seen during this transitional phase in global order has manifested itself in numerous arenas and touched every country in the world. From ever more frequent and frightening forest, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes to much higher temperatures, irregularities in weather patterns, and the attendant droughts and famine, climate change is taking its toll on people and economy. Internal and cross-border migrations triggered or accelerated by climate change have, in turn, revived ethno-regional consciousness and produced serious inter-communal clashes over water resources, land, and pasture among farmers and pastoralists. International migration, undertaken through the most hazardous routes, have met with a rising tide of racist populism and extreme right nationalism that is changing the face of politics in Europe and North America.

The crises and instability that are wracking the international system in this period of transition have also manifested themselves in the spate of security problems arising from radical extremist claims, mostly tinged with questionable religious motives, that have called the secular state into question and challenged its constitutional foundations. Although not limited only to Africa – and this point bears repeating at every opportunity – the continent has borne some of the harshest and most prolonged brunt to date of violence and insecurity underwritten by local and ambulant franchisees of Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, Ansaru, and other global networks of militants committed to the violent pursuit of an alternative vision of governance and development clothed in a contestable Jihadist ideology. For us here in Nigeria, the Boko Haram group which started as a small, highly localised movement has flourished to encompass huge swathes of northern Nigeria and the entire Lake Chad Basin. The entire Sahel belt stretching from West to East Africa and the Horn has been in a state of continuous turmoil for nearly two decades and the instability in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and now Niger are not unconnected to these untoward developments. .

Violent militancy in the contemporary period is not only limited to non-secular or anti-secular groups. Various armed groups fighting different causes have emerged or re-emerged around the world and engaged state authorities in pitched battles. Taken together with the violence of the non-secular extremists, the activities of bandits, kidnappers, and other criminal gangs, the cost on people, communities, economies, social cohesion, and the mass displacement of populations can best be imagined. In this process, poverty has been accentuated and the social contract has been emptied of any meaningful content. It is not surprising that with the volatile cocktail of poverty, inequality, unemployment/underemployment, and mass insecurity, political systems faced with multiple pressures have succumbed to greater authoritarianism amidst democratic recession and reversals.

It is usual in periods of transition in global order for those countries that are the weakest links in the chain of power and influence to bear some of the biggest costs of change. Africa has been badly hit by turbulence emanating from outside its boundaries such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2007/2008 sub-prime economic crisis, and the global climate change. The continent has also been grappling with its own internal challenges, both structural and non-structural. On top of rising poverty, growing inequality, currency depreciation, mounting inflationary pressures, and persistently high levels of youth employment, a new external debt crisis is hovering over many African countries which threatens another round of austerity and externally-imposed adjustment if not quickly contained. Historic social gains of the early post-independence years and early wins of the first decade of the return to democratic politics are being rapidly lost. Without a doubt, turbulence in the international system has been refracted into Africa to produce a season of anomie across our continent.

In the face of this season of anomie, the temptation is strong, and has already been manifested, to resort to fragmented, disjointed, and uncoordinated actions. However, this need not be so. Nor should it be allowed to continue. Change in global order must necessarily come with its own challenges. But the various dimensions of change which are taking place also present opportunities. For us in Africa, one clear opportunity is the chance to win ample autonomous space within which to advance our ambitions of structural transformation and, in doing so, take a role as a co-rule maker as the new global order gets fashioned out. Yet while opportunities may be available to be tapped into in the context of ongoing realignments in the international system, they are not always given, nor do they last forever. Acting speedily, purposively, and with single-minded determination is an imperative which must be embraced with boldness and vision by the governments and peoples of Africa. This is all the more so as periods of transition in global affairs are also known to be replete with various dangers, including war. One immediate threat which the continent must avoid is to be reduced simply – and yet again – to the site for a new scramble among the competing powers – big and medium, old and new – that are positioning themselves to be among the strategic drivers of a revamped, global multilateral system made as much as possible in their image and for the advancement of their vital interests.

This is where visionary leadership must come in to help, in a forward-looking way, to develop a strategic, coordinated, coherent, and shared African approach to managing the turbulence in the international system as the process of change gathers momentum. The underlying preoccupation must be to ensure that amidst the turbulence in the system, Africans and all peoples of African descent are not made casualties and cannon-fodder as various interests compete for advantage. Nor should the hard won sovereignty of African countries be allowed to be compromised either by acts of omission or commission emanating from within or outside the continent.

Visionary African leadership fit for these turbulent times will, additionally, demand close attention to the new global order that is evolving slowly, unevenly, unsteadily, and chaotically but surely. When the key pillars of the post-1945 global order that has now come under strain were established, most of Africa was under direct colonial rule and global Africa was under the weight of political oppression and exclusion. Today, the continent has every reason to assume a seat at the table and play the role of a joint-rule maker for the new order that is emerging. For this to happen, we require nothing less than a complete reset in our approach that begins with refusing to be corralled into the corner of any of the competing powers and insisting that the only thing that matters to us is the advancement of the needs and dignity of Africans at home and global Africa at large.

To advance our own core interests and values, African leadership must also of necessity expunge the development aid framework from our thinking and instead embrace the audacity in defending our rights and interests in global affairs that has eluded us for way too long. It is demeaning that every now and again, our leaders get drafted to the capitals of competing powers on grounds of development aid and support. Leadership audacity was at the heart of the launching of the pan-African project. That audacity served us well in the struggle for independence and decolonisation. As President Kwame Nkrumah used to tell African leaders, we should neither face the east nor west, we should always face forward. As the world is being remade to reflect shifts in the balance of power, that ancient audacity must be rediscovered and deployed to maximum effect and for maximum benefit. Out of the turbulence of the moment, the path for continental rebirth must be cleared and a conscious effort must be made to extend the rebirth to global Africa.

To rise to the challenge of the times, Africa must organise itself to develop and deploy the necessary strategic plans, policy packages and leadership resources that are fit for the era of rapid and complex change. It is this task of policy and leadership advancement that must be addressed as an urgent necessity if Africa is to play its rightful role in the ongoing dynamic of change in global order.

Of course, it is altogether natural, for reasons of history, demography, economic weight, and human and natural resource endowment that Nigeria should play a frontline role in framing and harnessing the African response to a changing international system. Fortunately, our Foreign Service has a proud record of having been home to some of the best diplomats coming out of Africa for whom the world reserved a healthy respect. Allow me in this regard, and as I close, to pay a warm tribute to His Excellency, Ambassador John Kayode Shinkaiye – the one I fondly call my Egbon and namesake and His Excellency, Ambassador Brownson Dede, that icon of the liberation struggle for their distinguished service to the fatherland and the continent, and the role model legacies they left upon retirement. It is my hope that their huge contributions, as well as the contributions of others in their ranks, will undoubtedly serve as inspiration to the present generation of Foreign Service Officers, if only to underscore the point that we have no business as a country and a continent, to play second fiddle to anyone anywhere and at anytime. To this end, particular attention must be paid by the leadership in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the equipping of the next generation of our diplomats with the requisite policy and political tools and aptitudes that will allow them to hold their own as worthy bearers of the core values and interests of a renascent Africa in a changing international system.

I thank you for your kind attention. God bless Nigeria. God bless Africa. God bless Global Africa. We have a world to gain! Let’s go for it in unity and faith.

Being Text of the Annual Lecture Delivered by His Excellency, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, CON, former Governor of Ekiti State and former Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum to the Society for International Relations Awareness (SIRA) on Wednesday 18 October, 2023, Abuja, Nigeria

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Opinion

Professor Femi Badejo At 70: The Advocacy Of Equity

Published

3 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 .