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It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was credited in
1994 with coining that evocative expression Rainbow Nation, a phrase
that captured the hope and optimism of multiracial unity, but also
suggested the eclectic mix that makes up South Africa.

Here you have the most liberal constitution in the
world that recognises the right to homosexual unions resting cheek by
jowl as all the seven colours do, with the practice of virgin testing.

No surprise then that a rainbow nation should
produce a rainbow of issues including this latest on the subject of
sushi, a Japanese culinary delicacy and the serving of it. To be exact
sushi is prepared from a base of vinegared rice pressed and rolled
between fine thin sheets of seaweed with toppings or inserts of various
other ingredients consisting of fish, seafood and vegetables. Sashimi
is the term for sliced raw fish often included in sushi.

Japanese cuisine is regarded as an art form in
some quarters and a distinguishing feature of Japanese aesthetics for
outsiders is the complete marriage of form and substance, to wit: the
presentation of the food is just as paramount a consideration as the
taste. In other words, the reason for being of this cuisine might just
be considered the complete antithesis of man must whack, especially for
those whose lifestyles have soared way above the primary consideration
of just filling the gut.

Let me put it another way: gari, tuwo or pounded
yam have a clear purpose, sushi appears to be something you eat to
enjoy which of course would be why you would find sushi served on the
body of a naked woman, Nyotaimori to you, meaning female body
presentation or adorned body of a woman; or on a naked man Nantaimori.

This practice of using naked women as food
platters is described as rare, obscure even, and according to Wikipeda
has been outlawed in China for public health reasons. One can well
imagine a typical Nigerian reaction, what new form of poisoning is she
trying on me now?

Last October South African Kenny Kunene,
businessman and club owner had a big bash for his fortieth birthday.
The party was held at his club in tony Sandton and featured models
lying on tables in bikinis their bodies covered with sushi. This act
raised the hackles of ANC politicians, the Trade Union leadership and
women’s groups including the ANC Women’s League.

Undaunted, or perhaps spurred on by the
significant publicity Kunene repeated the stunt at the launching of his
latest club ZAR on the Cape Town waterfront late last month.

ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe was moved to
voice his condemnation of the “serving of sushi on the bodies of
scantily clad women,” calling it, “defamatory insensitive and
undermining of women’s integrity,” The Times wrote. As for that, women
must mind their own integrity, but that is another column. Kunene told
the paper he understood the party’s concerns and since he was humbled
by the way Mantashe handled the situation would desist in future from
serving sushi that way. He told the paper:

“If the ANC had not spoken I would have had Indian
and Chinese girls in Durban. I just wanted to change the plates to see
how the sushi tastes from one plate to the other – so South Africans
will miss the Indian plates and the Chinese plates,” he said bursting
into laughter’. Kunene also added he was not the only one who enjoyed
picking sushi off beautiful bodies. “White ladies were also enjoying
sushi off male sushi plates.”

Well that’s alright then equal opportunity pleasure!

Jokes aside what strikes one in all this is the
incongruity of the behaviour in the context of the setting. Put simply
it is a typical example of money miss road insensitivity that is
universal, but on this continent has a heightened impact because of the
wide gulf between those who have the means to live like this and the
conditions of the vast majority who do not.

Kunene, a former teacher and ex convict who served
6 years in prison for fraud, has argued in interviews that he now makes
his money honestly and has the right to enjoy it. He adds that he
donates substantial sums to charity and visits schools to tell children
that they can live well if they earn money the right way.

But it goes beyond that. This was an act in bad
taste and the depiction of a wealthy black man in the new South Africa
bending to eat food off the body of a naked woman left a bad taste in
the mouth. It had echoes of Idi Amin riding on the shoulders of a white
man and loving it because it signified a reversal of the status quo.
Surely we should have gone beyond that by now. There are far more
important goals to reach.

There’s been quite a bit of angst, south of the Sahara, about recent events in some Arab countries.

To be sure, not as
much as in the Arab world itself, where rulers fear that they can no
longer rely on the complicit acquiescence of the United States of
America in their fundamentalist/Islamist = Hamas/Hezbollah =
terrorist/destruction of Israel equation as an excuse for repression.

But in sub-Saharan
Africa, the commentariat has been exercised about whether it could
happen here, why it hasn’t happened here, and how docile Africans (and
in particular, Nigerians) are: quite a reversal from the belief of many
Africans that it was the Arab people who were spineless and
downtrodden! Only short memories can explain ignorance of the fact that
“it” has happened and continues to happen here.

In September 2009,
157 peaceful opposition protesters were killed in Conakry, the Guinean
capital. Before that, West Africa saw Ghana’s June 4th uprising in
1979, and Southern Africa had the continuing civilian resistance to
apartheid of which the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre and the 1976 Soweto
uprisings were bloody punctuation marks.

But as the world waits to see the outcome of the Egyptian revolution, some similarities with our own history are striking.

During the June 12
crisis, troops commanded by General Sani Abacha killed 194 Nigerians in
the streets of Lagos. The kind of restraint that informed the Egyptian
Army’s declaration that it would not fire on the people for making
“legitimate demands” was not a big feature of the Nigerian Army’s 1993
philosophy. Nowadays, even if cold-blooded firing on unarmed
demonstrators in the full glare of the international media might no
longer be acceptable, reports of the army-of-hostile-occupation
behaviour of troops quelling civilian unrest in places as far apart as
Jos, the Niger Delta and Zaki Biam suggest that our armed forces are
yet to fully imbibe the principles of ‘friendly relations with
civilians’.

Indeed, it was the
violence of Abacha’s soldiers that informed the decision of civil
society leaders to continue the June 12th protests by a ville morte
(dead city, no movement) strategy. And it worked: despite his bluster,
our dictator du jour, Ibrahim Babangida, was forced out.

But not only did
Babangida leave Abacha planted in the Transitional National Government
of Ernest Shonekan, he himself didn’t go anywhere. Similarly, Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak has ruled out a fate similar to that of
Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who reportedly fled with a gun to the
pilot’s head to dissuade him from turning the airplane back to Tunisia.
Instead, Mubarak insists that he will live (and eventually die) in
Egypt.

Of course, at 82,
Mubarak can hardly be hoping for the kind of comeback that our own
ex-dictators hanker after (with apparently only General Abdusalami
Abubakar immune to the disease). But despite the international arrest
warrant issued for Ben Ali, Mubarak is not unrealistic in looking
forward to a happy old age in the country of his birth if the fate of
Nigerian dictators is anything to go by.

Provided you go when you are advised to go:

Mubarak however,
insists that he will go at a time of his own choosing in keeping with
Egypt’s constitution. This might bring his fate more closely in line
with that of the same Sani Abacha. It is not for nothing that Nigerian
wags declared that ABACHA was an acronym for After Babangida Another
Criminal Has Arrived. His rule almost exactly mirrored that of his
military predecessor: civilian assassinations, phantom coups, attempted
coups, constitutional assemblies and so on.

Except that by the
time Abacha was ready for his own metamorphosis and subversion of the
democratic process only to find that the Nigerian people were no longer
afraid of his guns and soldiers; he failed to learn from Babangida’s
example. We have the battered face of Olisa Agbakoba, convener of
United Action for Democracy which called the ‘Five Million Man March’
in Lagos, as well as the dead of the Ibadan counter-demonstration and
the May 1st rally to remind us that the Nigerian people were indeed
ready to take risks and make sacrifices for their freedom in 1998.

Abacha’s fellow
generals certainly took note, and Nigeria being a military
dictatorship, the line of succession was already established. By
contrast, in Egypt Mubarak’s immediate successors were only moved into
place when the crisis was well underway, with the appointment of a new
vice-president and a new prime minister, both old soldiers.

Still, now that
they are in place, Mubarak should remind himself of what happened to
Abacha at the point where – unlike Babangida who tearfully agreed to
“step aside” – he insisted on steering the good ship ‘Nigeria’ onto the
rocks (i.e. continuing to resist the demands of the Nigerian people).

We were only told
that Abacha had died. But if a ship’s captain sets his course for the
rocks and resists the advice of his fellow-officers (who are at quite
as much risk of drowning as everybody else on board), nobody was really
all that surprised that the next thing we heard was: ‘Man Overboard’.

This week, the International Republican Institute
released an opinion poll carried out by a reputable polling company –
Opinion Research Business. They polled 3,030 Nigerians sampled from all
states in the country providing us a photograph of political opinions
and beliefs as of early December 2010 when the face to face interviews
took place.

The polls show serious concerns but also a lot of optimism about the political process and the future of Nigerian democracy.

Fifty three percent of Nigerians polled are
concerned that Nigeria is moving in the wrong direction. They list five
key problems that underpin their concerns and worries. In the order of
importance, they are corruption, unemployment, bad leadership, poverty
and the lack of electricity. This is not rocket science; we all know
that these problems have dogged our post independence life over the
past fifty years.

What is interesting about the poll results is that
77% of Nigerians expect their economic situation to improve after the
April elections and only 5% believe things will worsen after the
elections. This huge confidence and belief that the coming elections
will improve our lives is certainly excessive and my fear is that these
very high expectations might be followed by disappointment and rising
frustration.

It is however very promising for deepening
democracy that in spite of our history of consistently rigged
elections, Nigerians refuse to be apathetic and maintain their belief
that democracy will eventually produce dividends. This refusal to give
up has been strengthened by confidence in the new leaders of key
institutions. The polls show that 76% of Nigerians have confidence in
President Goodluck Jonathan and 63% have confidence in Attahiru Jega’s
leadership of INEC. Even more significant is that 84% of Nigerians
believe that all will be ready for the April elections.

According to the polls, 77% of Nigerians believe
that the elections will be free, fair and credible. This response is
broken down along ethnic lines and the responses in order of confidence
are interesting – Ijaw 91%, Hausa-Fulani 74%, Igbo 70%, Yoruba 68% and
the Tiv 40%. I guess Goodluck and Jega need to reach out more to the
Tiv population.

The proof of this optimism in the coming elections
is expressed in the massive determination of Nigerians to get
registered for the elections. We have all observed people getting up at
4 a.m. to queue up in registration centres to get their voter’s cards.
Nigerians were buying fuel to run generators and purchasing ink for the
printers to facilitate the registration process.

Nigerians however need to temper their optimism
with vigilance. The future of credible elections in Nigeria relies not
only on President Goodluck Jonathan and Professor Attahiru Jega but
also on other stakeholders. The political parties have an important
role to play. Political parties in Nigeria have shown themselves to be
instruments used by unscrupulous political entrepreneurs for selfish
purposes. As we have seen from the recently concluded party primaries,
most of them acted in total disregard of the Electoral Act and imposed
candidates that had not emerged in genuine primary elections. They are
likely to continue to use their favourite instruments of state power,
money and violence to impose their candidates during the forthcoming
elections.

Indeed, the godfather syndrome makes it impossible
for true accountability to be practiced in parties. The fact that one
or two individuals bear the cost of running campaigns and funding of
other party activities leads to a privatisation of both party and state
machinery because government officials would naturally owe allegiance
to the political godfather who “put” them in office rather than to the
ordinary citizen.

Yes, it’s good that Nigerians have high optimism
for the coming elections. We must however strengthen this by closely
monitoring the elections as citizens. We must be there to count, escort
and protect our votes because as the survey shows, the improvement of
our lives depends on free, fair and credible elections.

The road to free and fair elections must be lined
with civic education and citizen engagement. The real challenge for
future elections is about enlightening the citizenry on how to defend
the sanctity of their votes: and showing ruling parties that they do
not own the country.

Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
Chairman Farida Waziri must be looking for somewhere to hide this week
following the release of confidential cables from the US Embassy in
London citing in detail UK Foreign Office assessments of the Nigerian
Government in 2008 and 2009. Michael Aondoakaa, former Federal Attorney
General and close associate of James Ibori, is cited as keeping “Waziri
on a very short leash.”

A leaked US Embassy cable dated 17 November 2008
notes, “Former UK Chargé in Abuja (and current FCO East and Central
Africa Group Head) James Tansley assesses that Waziri will not pursue
any corruption cases that are not in the government’s interests.” It
seems from the cables that “not in the government’s interests” means
contrary to the wishes of the cabal running the Yar’Adua Presidency.
This was alluded to in this column on 19 December 2010, On Watch: Soft
on Corruption, in which I stated: “The political playing is done by
Chairman Waziri deciding which reports to act on and pursue to
prosecution. And therein lies the potential for mischief.”

One of the high profile cases Waziri consistently
backed away from was the prosecution of former Delta State Governor
James Ibori who has been accused of embezzling vast amounts of Delta
State funds while he was governor and transferring it to the UK. UK
authorities have been keen to pursue legal action against Ibori through
the London courts but the EFCC and former Attorney General Aondoakaa
have been less than helpful. Aondoakaa, a close associate of Ibori, had
requested the British return evidence earlier provided for the case.

Nuhu Ribadu, while head of the EFCC had initiated
an investigation against Ibori. A successful prosecution against Ibori
had serious implications for those in the cabal around President
Yar’Adua. Pressure was brought on Ribadu to drop the investigation and
when he would not comply he was removed with a trail of manufactured
evidence sufficient to provide the necessary pretext for his dismissal.

Waziri replaced Ribudu as chairman of the EFCC and
quickly moved the case against Ibori into slow motion. In one of the
leaked US Embassy cables Tansey “noted that it is bizarre how
frequently Waziri asks for additional information on major cases,
details that she should already be familiar with if she is ‘really
digging into her portfolio”.

The leaked US Embassy cable also noted that
“Waziri would prosecute small cases” confirming the opinion that has
also been previously set out in this column on 05 December 2010, On
Watch: Criminal Protection, “Thus far the EFCC’s conviction rate of
“high profile cases” languishes in single digits.”

In a further cable labelled CONFIDENTIAL from the
US Embassy in London dated 22 May 2009 the UK’s Serious Organised Crime
Agency (SOCA) Africa programme officer Mike Davey noted “the EFCC’s
reticence to prosecute high-level political cases.” Waziri’s stifling
of the EFCC has become evident to foreign crime fighting agencies.

On 19 September 2010, On Watch: Corruption
Undermines the Peace Process, this column observed that EFCC Chairman
Waziri “is the insurance for the big men who have flaunted Nigeria’s
laws and enriched themselves from state coffers thus ensuring those in
poverty remain in poverty”.

Clearly the EFCC has been reigned in by Waziri who
holds total control on all key operations in the EFCC. In the Yar’Adua
Administration she played the role of protection for the tight cabal
that ran the Presidency. That cabal is falling apart rapidly under
President Jonathan. Waziri’s patrons are increasingly being exposed.
Ibori and Aondoakaa are both facing prosecution.

The fact that the EFCC has been become misdirected
by Waziri is clear to both the US and UK Embassy staff and in
particular the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency which interacts
frequently with the office of Nigeria’s Federal Attorney General and
Nigeria’s crime fighting agencies. In this respect the EFCC’s
reputation has taken a nose-dive under Waziri’s chairmanship and with
it has gone the view that Nigeria is serious about fighting corruption.
This is a significant set-back for the Jonathan administration which
must now work to repair the reputational damage of Nigeria’s
anti-corruption agency and demonstrate that President Jonathan is very
committed to fighting corruption at all levels of Nigerian society.

So one is drawn to ask why, after two and half
years of restraining the EFCC from carrying out its responsibilities to
the fullest extent possible and frittering away the EFCC’s hard won
reputation for fighting corruption without fear or favour, is Farida
Waziri still the chairman of the EFCC?

February is now the month of love, because a
celebration based vicariously on the life of fairly minor saint that I
remember in my youth as being of almost minimal significance, has over
the decades gained such popularity and commercial value that it has
become a major urban event. Chocolate, red roses and giant declarations
of love are now de rigueur every February 14 and if you don’t deliver,
the consequences can be dire.

Love, romance and kissing, especially
mouth-to-mouth kisses, who on earth invented that act? I recall being
told by a graduate scholar at the university I was about to enter eons
ago, that kissing was not “African”.

I did not ask the provenance of his research, but
I cannot say I was totally surprised. If he had added that the concept
of romance itself was not African I would have believed him. There is
still something so enduringly prosaic about courting Naija style, so
cut and dried, practical and so unerringly objective that it cannot but
be rooted in culture and history.

So bless me if Google did not come to the rescue
with the answers I was seeking by furnishing my search with a paper by
Ezinna E Enwereji titled, Indigenous Marriage Institutions and Divorce
in Nigeria: The case of Abia State.

There was no “ro” not to talk of “mance” in the
revelations provided by Enwereji’s study that he did at the Abia State
University, College of Medicine in Uturu. The material for the research
was obtained from interviews with 12 ‘key informants’ from 8 randomly
selected small towns and villages.

This was Mr. Mr.Enwereji’s introduction to his paper:

“In Igbo tradition, men who have large acres of
farmland are encouraged to engage in multiple marriages so as to have
women who would work in the farms. Women who are lazy to do farm work
or not so fertile as to have large number of children who would also
work in the farm were divorced. This means that hard work and high
fertility were the basis for successful marriages.”

Enwereji also listed what he found to be the
common causes of divorce and these included: infidelity,
infertility/barrenness, impotence, probing a husband’s sexual life,
inability to reproduce male children and/or large number of children,
laziness in taking on assigned gender roles including farming, cooking
late and/or inability to cook delicious food, disrespect to husband and
his kinsmen.

In his findings Enwereji stated that these were
still “the common causes of divorce today” and asserts: “In this study,
the level of socio-cultural norms spouses observe and respect measures
the stability of their marriage relationships. That is the philosophy
of successful marriage in Abia State is a reflection of the efficient
performance of the woman’s subservient roles in her marriage.”

This is not to say that the traditions of Western
marriage were any less prosaic. The creation of wealth here, the
transfer and accumulation of property there, with the female being the
vehicle in both cases – distinctions with few differences. The concept
of Western Romance was a kind of invention of literary and cultural
traditions that made it sweeter, lacing the hard dry reality with some
honey and accounting for the human emotions that feed into the mix.

And that is what it must be here, the human needs
and emotions and the intervening influences from other cultures that
are now the major feature of the world we live in. After all, if I am
nothing but a tool for you, what else can you possibly be for me?

Not that one is knocking the importance of roles
and the adherence to fulfilling these obligations and living up to
society’s expectations that are based on these values. Marriage is one
of the fulcrums on which society organises itself, it is the wool that
knits the family, and the binding ties it creates live on even when the
original marriage is dissolved. Roles and obligations are after all,
part of the glue that holds us together, which keeps us centered and
informs our identity.

But it is heartening that the same importance
attached to fulfilling roles is now apparently being transferred to the
observance of Valentine. Woe betide the man who “forgets” to spread the
love to all the requisite components.

But there is the dark side to all this male
tyranny that Enwereji cautions against. “There are other indigenous
beliefs and practices in Abia State designed to humiliate and exploit
women that require modification. For instance, the practice of
divorcing a woman for reason of infertility or inability to reproduce
male issues should be discouraged … Also the denial of the custody of
underage children in the guise of preventing them from being exposed to
their mother’s deviant behaviours could place them at risk … “

Frankly the practice of marriage and divorce laws in Nigeria is a
tightrope walk for women: little to gain and everything to lose if it
fails to work. So while we are happily practicing Valentine in the
city, we should spare some thought for spreading the love in the
direction of making the institution more equitable for the half of the
world that keeps it going.

Events have
occurred in the third estate about which it is as difficult to speak,
as it is to remain silent. While the movement of the president of the
Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, to the Supreme Court may have been
halted by the National Judicial Council, in the fallout from his
rejection of the ‘promotion’, a can of judicial worms has been opened.

Certainly the
explanation given by PCA Salami for the lack of love between himself
and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Aloysius Katsina-Alu, namely that he
resisted the CJN’s attempt to influence the composition of the panel to
hear the Sokoto gubernatorial appeal and/or its outcome cannot be swept
under the carpet. The reported decision of the NJC mandating former
PCA, Justice Umaru Abdullahi, to intervene in the matter may settle the
personal difficulties which have arisen between the two protagonists,
but it is not only personal feelings that have been injured.

PCA Salami’s
assertion that CJN Katsina-Alu (who allegedly ascribed his desire to
influence the Sokoto decision to the concerns of the Sultan of Sokoto)
eventually had his own way by dint of simply hijacking the case to the
Supreme Court and having the matter decided as he wished there, raises
frightening implications for the administration of justice in general
and any adjudication arising from the coming elections in particular.

It is too late
now, to protest that the judiciary should not wash its dirty linen in
public for fear of losing the people’s confidence or, as the NJC put
it, undermining the integrity of the judiciary. The truth is that
public confidence is already shot to pieces, and when the stench of
unwashed linen is strong enough to reach public nostrils, secret
laundering may not be enough to convince nose-holding citizens that any
cleansing has really taken place.

What is more, the
constitutional amendment, which made the Supreme Court the final court
for gubernatorial election petitions, was already a slap on the face of
judicial integrity. It can hardly be denied that the move to prevent
the Court of Appeal having the last say in non-presidential election
petitions arose directly from of lack of confidence in the quality of
decisions emanating from that court at a time when the Supreme Court
was riding high in public estimation because of its decision which
allowed Atiku Abubakar to contest the 2007 presidential elections, and
Rotimi Amaechi’s case over the Peoples Democratic Party gubernatorial
primaries in Rivers State among others.

Now it is the
Court of Appeal that is riding high with the fickle public because the
INEC-declared winners of the governorship elections in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti
and Osun States have all been removed by its decisions.

The stock, clichéd
response to such developments are platitudes about how ‘the judiciary
is the last hope of the common man’, as though the gubernatorial
gladiators were indeed ‘common men’, or as though – even if they truly
represented the hopes and aspirations of the common people as expressed
in votes cast – the judiciary could do anything to realise the common
people’s hopes without the costly mobilisation needed to bring those
aspirations to judicial notice.

What this chopping
and changing from preferring one court to the other really says is that
our judicial institutions have dwindled into personal fiefdoms in which
the public can have confidence (or not) only on the basis of whichever
personality is in charge. This is as unfair to the majority of men and
women who make up those institutions as it is to the Nigerian people
who – not having their judges selected on the basis of their political
views, or their position on hot-button issues as for example in the
United States of America – are entitled to repose confidence in any
judge before whom matters are brought for adjudication, expecting that
appellate courts will intervene only to correct lower courts’ errors of
law or fact, not because they want to achieve political goals or serve
the interests of persons – no matter how highly placed – who are
outside the judiciary.

Even if the
elections were conducted perfectly (and we are far from certain that
they will be perfect) litigation is likely to ensue. When that happens,
Nigerians will expect Attahiru Jega’s Independent National Electoral
Commission not to play the same role that Maurice Iwu’s INEC played in
regard to election petitions that arose from the 2007 elections, where,
instead of remaining an impartial umpire, INEC descended as a combatant
into the arena of contest, defending results that were not just false,
but ridiculously so in situations where even political parties would
blush to defend them.

Uprightness and
transparency by INEC in declaring results and its response to any
post-election litigation may limit the scope for any impure judicial
actions, yet Nigerians are entitled to feel aggrieved that we must now
suspect that there might be such impurity. However, against a
background of such suspicions, the ‘common man’ had better think on. He
may put a modicum (or huge great dollops) of hope in INEC or the
judiciary. But divine intervention apart, his last hope is, and has
always been, his strong right arm.

Fifty-eight years
and 364 days after the “Burning of Cairo” on January 26, 1952 by masses
of Egyptians, January 25, 2011 marked the beginning of the longest and
noisiest mass vigil to bury the Mubarak regime. That burial was
completed on February 11. Day after day, the international media
reports on the streams of Egyptian youth flowing through the big
squares of Cairo. Unlike Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and former
President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire, Egyptians have sent Mr.
Mubarak to a seaside retirement. Whither Egypt?

A brief extract of
facts is necessary to provide a context for its current uprising. Egypt
was ranked 98th most corrupt country in the 2010 Corruption Perception
Index of Transparency International. Its score of 3.1 lies slightly
less than halfway between Ghana’s score of 4.1, giving it a rank of 61,
and the score of 2.4 earned by Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, and
Zimbabwe, tied at 134th most corrupt states on earth.

Turning to the
Ease of Doing Business Survey of the World Bank, Egypt is the 94th most
difficult place to do business. Ghana, by contrast, has a rank of 67
and Nigeria has a ranking of 137. In concrete terms, a foreign company
like Zambeef took 9 months to get a business license in Nigeria while
its Ghanaian subsidiary took 2 weeks to get the same license. We can
infer that it could take approximately 4.5 months to get a business
license in Egypt. Egypt has no chance of reducing its 24% unemployment
rate for the 15-24 age group when it takes such a long time to get a
business license to start a formal business.

Teeming unemployed
Egyptian masses also face exploding food prices. Egypt is the largest
wheat importer in the world. Unfortunately, the price of wheat has
doubled over the last year. Yet, expressing one’s frustration about
daily hardships or politics has been a hazardous undertaking for
Egyptians. Presiding over high unemployment and high corruption at a
time of high food prices while suppressing the free expression of
views, President Mubarak was asking for civil uprisings.

It is time to
consider some religious peculiarities. An American foundation called
the Pew Research Centre conducts surveys of people around the world to
elicit their opinions on topics such as the role of religion in
politics. In response to the question whether Islam has a positive role
in national politics, 85% of Egyptian Muslims thought it had a positive
role, compared to 82% of Nigerian Muslims, and 38% of Turkish Muslims.

As a former ruler
of Egypt for centuries and a modern democracy governed by an Islamist
party, Turkey paints one picture of the possible contours of a
democratic Egypt. Finally, Pew Research Centre reports that 82% of
Egypt’s Muslims would like to legalise the stoning of people who commit
adultery, 77% would like to cut off the hands of thieves, and 84%
believe that those who leave the Muslim faith should suffer the death
penalty. 56% of Nigeria’s Muslims support stoning for adultery, 65%
desire hand amputation for theft, and 51% would like Islamic apostates
to die. By contrast, only 16% of Turkish Muslims support stoning, 13%
are for hand amputation, and a minuscule 5% believe that death is the
only suitable punishment for a loss of Islamic faith.

Mao Tse-Tung said
that the guerilla must move among the people as a fish swims in the
sea. The Egyptian sea is likely to be acidic for those guerillas
seeking a secular democratic state.

Whither Egypt?
Hosni Mubarak has been the political face of a military regime. Except
for the 1805 to 1952 period, the army has ruled Egypt since the Mamluk
establishment in 1250. I doubt that the military will surrender power
anytime soon. Maybe, they will settle for a “Turkish” solution in which
secular democracy in law is guaranteed in fact by the military which
checks fundamentalist Islamic legislative impulses.

There will be huge
demonstrations of joy at Mubarak’s resignation. Urban Egypt,
constituting 43% of Egypt’s population, will come to a standstill. Yet,
Egypt is in a vice. Mubarak’s departure has no impact on the price of
bread or jobs and the new military junta is simply the transient
acceptable face of the old order.

Egypt has begun to write another chapter in Islamic democracy. We
shall learn whether that chapter is imbued with religious tolerance for
all! In the meantime, congratulations to the valiant youth of Egypt.

Promises are
dangerous; what if one is unable to fulfil them? Worse still are those
made in the heat of a moment, when one hopes that a final promise will
swing the decision in one’s way! Those were my thoughts after that
promise by Mr. President in far-away Turkey. What was all that about?
Wrong move or what?

A right that is
guaranteed by the Constitution cannot be contrived away by any means
especially if a beneficiary of that right insists on seeking to
exercise it. And therein lies the problem with this promise to not seek
a second term, come 2015. Don’t forget, President Goodluck Jonathan’s
supporters have always justified his contesting on grounds that being
the running mate of the last president, the late Umaru Yar’Adua he is
therefore entitled to utilise the second term that would have been
their due.

So, one could view
this promise from that angle: that being supposedly the second term of
a terminated joint ticket, the 2011 tenure, when it ends in 2015, will
exhaust the Constitutional limit the duo would have been entitled to,
thereby ruling out another term of four years for the good doctor.

But is it? Can you
seriously say that Jonathan 2011-2015 is a second term, of any other
administration, or indeed the first term of his? Stretching logic
further, how can this promise be enforced if he changes his mind by
2015?

We live in a
curious political environment, not completely removed from our
idiosyncrasies’; add to that a dash of that sense of ‘it’s-my-portion’:
our strong belief in the power of miracles especially when we have done
nothing really to earn the miracle; a conviction that we deserve this
unsolicited benefit, because someone up there has just decided to bless
us.

Can you imagine,
anyone, anyone at all, around any president in Nigeria, a president
whose Constitution easily grants two terms, of which he has only served
one, accepting his refusal to go for the second term? God forbid! Every
In-law, spouse-friends-committee, cousin, sister, brother,
friends-in-law, political aides and any living being remotely connected
to the man, will reject his rejection of their own dividend and good
fortune with such vehemence. People will wonder if they are not ‘doing’
the man from back home.

Then ‘the’ groups
would materialise from nowhere and start the laborious process of
convincing the man to ‘use’ his right ‘because God gave it’. Any person
who feels and says anything contrary, such as reminding all concerned
about the promise, will be cursed and bound over to Satan and
recommended for deliverance at a frenzied overnight vigil. Enemies of
progress: if it was their brother, cousin, uncle, nephew, father, son,
Grandfather, friend or any other remotely connected relative nko?

Could this be a
ruse as some say, to sway zones that hope to take the throne in 2015,
so as to garner their votes? Maybe, maybe not! It depends on what value
you are placing on the will-not-run-come-2015-promise, and how you
think you can hold the maker to it. Whether you accept the promise or
not, or believe it or not, know this:

If President
Jonathan wins this April election, he will be entitled to a second
term. See Section 137(1) (b) of the 1999 Constitution on
Disqualification: A person shall not be qualified for election to the
office of President if he has been elected to such office at any two
previous elections. Seeing as April 2011 will be the first election
where he will actually stand for office, if he wins, no promise can
wipe that S137 away! So, please keep this at the back of your mind. I
am telling you now, today, because I don’t want to hear any complaints
when 2015 comes and one man decides to seek his legitimate due.

This Constitution has come out on top every time, even on zoning.
The Constitution will prevail again, and again, and again. It is not
called the Grund Norm for nothing. It supersedes every law, every rule
and regulation contrived to chip at its supremacy. If it can supersede
laws, it will shred promises, trust me!

In 2003, a relatively unknown assistant
commissioner of police, armed with little more than a letter of
appointment, and an Act of the National Assembly, set out to battle an
enemy that had gone unchallenged for as long as anyone could remember.
The mission to wage war on corruption appeared to be yet another case
of wishful thinking tainted with misguided zeal; a fool rushing in
where angels had refrained from treading.

But Nuhu Ribadu was a serious man. Within three
months of his appointment as head of the newly established Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), no less than four of Nigeria’s
biggest advance fee fraudsters had been arrested.

In no time the heat was turned on where it
mattered the most – the highest reaches of government. One of the most
prominent persons to fall was the nation’s top cop and Mr. Ribadu’s
boss, Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun, who had spent his
tenure looting police funds and leaving tens of thousands of police
officers penniless and unpaid.

There were several other investigations and
convictions, touching every level of government – local government
chairpersons, state governors, ministers. All of these cases that were
constantly being uncovered and investigated were evidence of the extent
to which Nigeria had succumbed to institutional corruption.

What made matters worse was the absence of any
political will on the part of the country’s law enforcement agencies.
In 2001, Nigeria’s name was included on a list of “Non-Cooperating
Countries or Territories”, issued by the Financial Action Task Force, a
global anti-money laundering organisation.

The EFCC under Mr. Ribadu fought the battle
impressively. In 2006, three years after the commission’s creation,
Nigeria was taken off the blacklist. It was clear to all that, even
though corruption still existed, things had changed, and a culture of
impunity was no longer to be tolerated.

But whatever high hopes Nigerians had were not to
last for much longer. Under the Yar’Adua administration, the
anti-corruption battle took a bizarre turn, so that Mr. Ribadu and the
EFCC now seemed to be the hunted. Today, with the benefit of hindsight,
and with assistance from Wikileaks, we know what happened. Michael
Aondoakaa, the man in charge of the justice ministry, was more adept at
subverting the law than at protecting and enforcing it.

While not trying to argue that Mr. Ribadu was a
flawless man, or that his EFCC always operated above board, we can
still safely argue that the commission’s days of glory belonged to the
Ribadu era.

Farida Waziri, Mr. Ribadu’s successor, has in our
opinion, failed to live up to expectations. A recently released
Wikileaks cable (dated May 2009) hints at the frustration with the EFCC
of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA.) In the cable there
is a reference to SOCA’s determination to “continue its working-level
coordination with Nigeria’s Economic and Finance Crimes Commission
(EFCC) in spite of the EFCC’s refusal to move on high-level political
cases…”

Every now and then there is a show of strength on
the part of the EFCC, as though to remind us that it still exists. In
the past week we have seen another outburst of activity. Lucky
Igbinedion, Governor of Edo State between 1999 and 2007, already
previously convicted of corruption, is now in court again, over fresh
allegations involving N25 billion. Oyuiki Obaseki, the former boss of
the Nigerian Premier League, is also being investigated in a case
involving N3 billion made to magically disappear.

But if the past is anything to go by, it is easy
to predict that all of these exertions will lead nowhere; that we are
merely on the road to yet another dead-end.

Meanwhile, everywhere one turns there is evidence
that corruption is still very much alive and well in our fair land.
Only a few weeks ago a deputy director in the Federal civil service was
arrested by the EFCC, after N800 million was reportedly discovered in
her account. Billions of dollars of oil windfall earnings from the
Excess Crude Account have vanished in the past year.

This is not the time for the EFCC to give anyone doubts about its
commitment to its mandate. Farida Waziri needs to sit up and get her
job done – or resign immediately if she’s not capable. (Oh well. We
admit it; we are eternal optimists.) Mrs Waziri is a product of the
Aondoakaa era. That should ordinarily be enough for realistic people to
conclude that she is a lost case. But hope springs eternal. The
alternative is to regard the fight against corruption as dead, and
awaiting burial.