Nigeria Content Online

Nigerians
may not have invented cars, but they have demonstrated the fact that
they are geniuses in the semiotics of renaming cars made in other parts
of the world.

Just as names
given to vehicles by their producers go beyond mere identification to
become rhetorical means of marketing them, nicknames given to such
vehicles by the public also speak subtly about the products and those
that use them.

In relation to how
cars signify social status, the Volkswagen Beetle car is for instance
referred to as “Boosu Nwamgbei (A bus for the poor),” an Igbo parody on
“Volkswagen” that narrates how the vehicle represents or belongs to the
poor person in society, even when many poor Nigerians could not afford
to purchase it. The car was also renamed “Azubuike” in recognition of
the unusual location of its engine at the rear where other car types
usually have their luggage compartments. “Azubuike” literally suggests
that its strength is at its behind, which is humorously related to the
idea of one’s strength being in having a successor (in the offspring,
usually the male child).

Deriving from this
same tradition is the identification of the 2008 model of Toyota Camry
car as “Big for Nothing”. Borrowed from the discourse of abuse in which
individuals are called derogatory names, this particular case refers to
the bearer’s abilities not matching their advertized or physical image.
“Big for Nothing” figuratively represents a Nigerian perception of how
the actual capacity of the car does not justify its reinvented big
size. In spite of the fact that the renaming of the car reveals an
awareness in the Nigerian consumer world about how frequent
reinventions of car shapes and sizes do not necessarily translate to
higher performance of the product, many Nigerians still have their eyes
on the car for the simple reason that its “bigness” is appropriate to
their own sense of what it means to be a “big man” in the society.

It seems that being
a “big man” is something that has to be demonstrated in material terms,
as seen not only in Nigeria but also in other parts of the world. The
longish Rolls Royce cars of America, the early generation of Chevrolet
cars, and the Cherokee Chief, all narrate a similar use of car size to
dominate, not just the road, but also the space of power and influence
in society. Space constraints and change in values of course have
forced cars users in the Western world to appreciate smaller cars.

But within this
discourse on space and power in Nigeria, one also finds humour.
Nigerians are indeed good at laughing at and with the other, whatever
their social and economic conditions. Such humour is found in almost
all the nicknames they have for automobiles. The Golf 2 was once a
dream car for many Nigerians, but with the massive importation of
various “tokunbo” (used) vehicles in Nigeria, coupled with a remarkable
improvement in monthly income in the country, the car became common on
Nigerian roads and consequently fell in prestige. It fell to the level
of taxicabs in a society where taxis are seen as low-grade vehicles.
Many taxi drivers also prefer it for its low fuel consumption and
maintenance cost. Thus, because the car has become “common” to many
Nigerians for whom uniqueness is part of the construction of class
superiority, it has come to be nicknamed “Pure Water,” a name derived
from “sachet water” which is again common in Nigeria as a result of the
crisis in public water supply.

I particularly like the Igbo nickname for pick-up vans – Azuanuuka (A turned back listens to no gossip).

Understood within
the context of aggressive and unfriendly driving on Nigerian roads, the
nickname recalls the I-don’t-care posture of drivers of the pick-up
vans who, shielded away in the front compartment of the vehicles,
present a deaf ear to the invectives directed to them by drivers of
other vehicles whose road rights have been violated. Indeed, vehicle
users who are inconsiderate of other road users tend to take advantage
of some protective features built onto their vehicles.

Drivers of
articulated vehicles like trucks are inclined to frighten away drivers
of other fragile vehicles, sometimes causing accidents that involve
mass deaths. Thus in popular Igbo discourse on road transport, the
trailer or tanker is referred to as “Achaghi akuo” (Ready for
collision, if not avoided).

Such humour may
also be linked to an acknowledgement of a similar quality in the
automobile. For instance, the nickname of the 1984 model of Mercedes
Benz car “German Mistake” ironically conveys the recognition of its
superior durability, compared to other car models, or even other
Mercedes Benz cars.

It is considered a
“mistake” in a changing automobile world where the survival of the
automobile company may depend on how high their sales figures rise and
not how many decades a customer enjoys the product before considering
whether to change the spark plugs!

A talking public is
very useful to business, and the Nigerian vehicle nickname geniuses are
doing a good job in semiotically reinventing the vehicles for the
overflooded Nigerian automobile market.

Last week Governor Adams Oshiomhole had a busy time firing
engineers and contractors. First it was two engineers who he accused of
collaborating with contractors to deliver substandard roads. . Yahaya Afekhai,
before he unceremoniously lost his job, was an engineer with the Edo State
Ministry of Works, while Austin Edeki, also an engineer was hired as the
consultant to supervise the construction work on the Ihevbe/Ikao/Otuo Road.

The contracting firm, Boroni Proni, an Italian construction
company, admitted to subletting part of the roadwork to some local contractors
who used poor and substandard materials for the culvert and side drains of the
roads.

The site engineer, who refused to disclose his name to this
paper’s reporter, said he succumbed to pressure from the locals and sublet the
contract to them.

It is one vicious cycle of corruption begetting corruption,
shoddy work producing bad roads which contribute to accidents, deaths, delays,
late delivery of produce, an unhealthy business climate and staggering poverty.
When corruption has spread so deep that it blinds the locals to what is in
their own interest then it is easy to conclude that we are near the point of no
return.

It has become the norm to expect shoddy work and substandard
quality from government.

Projects embarked upon by government and its agencies in Nigeria
don’t last, and no one seems to care or listen. Political appointees and office
holders don’t see an opportunity to serve but a license to dole out largesse to
party faithful and other hangers on. This is why contracts to construct roads
are given to carpenters rather than road engineers while those for building
houses are awarded to tailors.

Mr. Oshiomhole described civil servants like Messrs Afekayi and
Edeki as liabilities to government and vowed that anyone found to be defrauding
government wound not be spared.

This kind of corruption and dereliction of duty should not be
dismissed with scolding and a slap on the wrist. What the two engineers have
done is totally reprehensible and should be condemned by all. By allowing the
contractor to construct substandard culverts they have compromised their
positions and endangered the lives of those who would have used those
facilities had the governor not detected the substandard work.

Yahaya Afekhai and Austin Edeki who were fired by the governor
should not be left to go scot-free. Mr. Afekhai, a state employee should be
made to forfeit all his entitlements while Mr. Edeki, a consultant should be
blacklisted from working as an engineer. The construction firm that sublet the
contract also has a case to answer.

As much as we believe that local contractors should have equal
opportunity to vie for government jobs the question of standards should never
be compromised.

This brings us to the issue of quality control and inspection. A
look across the country shows that there are many loopholes that need to be
covered. Recently, the LASU-Iba road, which cost billions of naira to
construct, collapsed barely a year after it was commissioned. Up till today
there is no evidence that the contractor or those who supervised the project
have been prosecuted for this colossal failure.

The same is applicable to several other roads and projects that
have failed shortly after being commissioned. There is need to bring back to
public life integrity and professional discipline that were the hallmarks of
our nation in years past.

In expressing his displeasure Mr. Oshiomhole said: “My anger is
really not with the contractor. But if we have engineers who are being paid to
supervise the job and they do nothing, then they are part of the problem. They
are the reason why government job never lasts. We still appreciate the work
done by the Ogbemudia government because then, we had committed civil servants
who take their job seriously.” It is true that today many roads constructed
during the First Republic are still standing while those done after them have
long disappeared.

We agree with Mr. Oshiomhole that civil servants must wake up to
their responsibilities and not connive with contractors to deliver shoddy jobs
for which they will later blame the politicians.

There’s
a fight currently going on in Kogi State. It has to do with a refinery
that is to be built near Lokoja, the state capital, by Chinese
investors. Apparently the governor, Ibrahim Idris, desirous of bringing
the famed ‘dividends of democracy’ to his kinsmen, decided to relocate
the proposed refinery to his village.

For the moment we will ignore the patent
illogicality of scheming to host such an environmental hazard, and
focus solely on the governor’s disingenuous move. It has become the
pattern amongst Nigerian governors and politicians to play politics
with construction projects funded by the government.

The most recent high-profile example is the
disgraceful drama that played out in Sango Ota recently, between Ogun
State governor, Gbenga Daniel, and the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, over who should take credit for – and
commission – an overhead bridge.

Ekiti presents another good example of the folly
of our politicians. In 2008 the National Universities Commission (NUC)
licensed a new University of Education set up by the Ekiti State
government, in Ikere-Ekiti. The new university was sited on the grounds
of a College of Education, which had been in existence in Ikere-Ekiti
since 1978. The government’s plan was to eventually relocate the
college to another part of the state. Ikere-Ekiti, uncomfortable with
the prospects of giving up a thirty-year-old College of Education, with
established structures and a sizeable student population, in exchange
for a fledgling university, protested vehemently. The controversy
spurred the governor to relocate the university. His choice of
location: Ifaki-Ekiti, his hometown. That decision immediately
aggravated the controversy.

The crisis between Oyo and Osun States over the
Ladoke Akintola University of Technology is also a good example.
LAUTECH is jointly owned by both states. The university campus is
located in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, while the Teaching Hospital is in
Osogbo, the Osun State capital. And then in 2009 Governor Alao-Akala
started the construction of a new teaching hospital – in Ogbomoso,
which also happens to be his hometown. The Osun State government
promptly raised an alarm.

Things have degenerated since then, with Oyo State
ordering all its indigenes at the Osogbo Teaching Hospital to
immediately relocate to the new site at Ogbomoso. Both states have also
separately appointed vice chancellors for the institution.

At a recent meeting with state governors in
Abuja, Vice President Namadi Sambo acknowledged that before now the
Federal Government sometimes deliberately sited projects in unviable
locations in states whose governors did not belong to the ruling party.
Assuring the governors that would no longer happen, he said: “I think
we have passed that stage. Today, we cooperate with all governments
belonging to all parties as one nation and this is part of the
achievements of democracy.” This shows the extent of the pettiness that
guides the conduct of our leaders.

Vital construction projects are not decided, or
sited, based on the principle of maximum benefit, but on parochial
considerations. During the Sango-Ota drama, Mr. Daniel was quoted as
saying that Mr. Bankole should find another project to “claim”.

The Obasanjo years were characterised by violent
clashes between Lagos State officials and officers of the Federal Roads
Maintenance Agency (FERMA), over who ought to handle traffic control on
Lagos roads that belonged to the Federal Government. As Vice President
Sambo acknowledged, communities are often deprived of projects because
they ‘belong’ to the opposition. Not satisfied with zoning political
positions, we mindlessly zone projects as well.

In the Kogi instance, the protesters are saying
that the governor’s decision to move the refinery to his hometown is in
disregard of a technical report specifying a location for the project.

The bad blood and controversy generated by these
controversial decisions ensure that whatever benefits the projects were
intended to provide in the first place are diminished. All of these
politicians ought to be called to order, and reminded that the monies
being spent are not personal funds.

When will the genuine needs of the electorate start taking preeminence in public spending decisions?

Let us zone poverty. Let us build it a tent and fasten it to the loose earth of the North West. Let us make the rest of the country poverty free and confine poverty to the North West alone. Have they not produced the most of our leaders since independence? They have enjoyed enough; it’s their turn to be poor. Poverty to the North West.

Let us buy hunger a new cloak and zone it to the South West. All those pot bellied men and women with oversized torsos need to slim down. It’s not even good for their health you know and liposuction is damn expensive. So let us do them a huge favour and slim them down for free. No more owambe parties and endless aso-ebi. It’s poverty to the South West for keeps.

Aha, these South East people, they are too wealthy, talking containers and consignments all the time. They don’t need all that money you know. Let us zone armed robbery to the South East. Let us get arms for the youth to help us reclaim some of the excess money. Perhaps we could add kidnapping to it. Yes, armed robbery and kidnapping go down well like beer and pepper soup. They will find a good home in the South East for sure. And yes, we must disarm the police and keep them underpaid.

The North Central, who are they sef? Sometimes they prefer to be called “Middle Belt” as if the word “North” is a curse. Well, we are not bothered by that. We will zone power outage to them. Let us declare darkness in their land. Let us import candles for them and banish Mikano and John Holt from Abuja. The toy “i-big-pass” generators must go as well. We shall establish a bush lamp factory to augment the candles. Black is beautiful they say. Black out is even more beautiful.

South South – the oil people; let us zone unemployment to them. What do they need jobs for? They already have oil. Let their youths lie about idle. Let them drink raw crude from the plentiful wells until they are drunk.

Perhaps they might decide to go fishing. That would be good. Time we freed our waters of sharks and whales. They don’t even have enough land for schools so we shouldn’t be bothered. The South South
must remain unemployed. Jobs shouldn’t be for everybody after all.

The North East would look good with bad roads, don’t you agree? Let us zone crater infested roads to the North East. Let us break the bridges and turn the expressways into single lanes. Let us remove the drainage canals, so that the roads will spoil faster. While doing that we must ensure we build across rail lines and make sure the airports are death traps. The North East will enjoy this I imagine. It would be good to see people staying at home more.

Perhaps when we are done with attempting to zone these conditions that plague us as a nation and find that they can not be zoned, we will end all this noise on zoning or not zoning the presidency. Our problems have no ethnic, tribal or religious identity; neither are they confined to one particular part of the country. The man in Maiduguri suffers bad roads as much as the man in Umuahia. There is kidnapping in Kano just as there is in Port Harcourt.

Unemployed youth are a legion in Lagos just as they also walk the streets of Abuja. And who in this country does not experience power outage? And yes, the hunger is nationwide and poverty is like a national identity.

When we go abroad do they ask what zone of Nigeria we come from before asking us to step aside as they poke fingers into our private areas just to be sure we are not smuggling drugs? After the Abdulmutallab incident, did they not put the whole of Nigeria on the terrorist list? When our name tops the chart of corrupt nations, is there a zoning of the ranking?

Since our problems cannot be zoned, there is no way zoning shall solve them. We waste time and energy bickering over the ethnic identity of our leaders as if when our ‘brother’ is in power any thing changes for us.

It irks even more when I listen to persons who suffer most from bad leadership we have had to endure all these years, stand around newspaper stands and in the public buses arguing about zoning. It doesn’t matter who is in the saddle. The language he speaks isn’t worth a thing.

What matters is, is he speaking the language of development? That should be our concern at this time.

The
decision last week to remove both the Chairman and the Director-General
of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was long overdue. I salute the
courage and decisiveness of my good friend Arunma Oteh, the boss of the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In all truth, the situation
had become intolerable.

During the
previous week former NSE chairman, Aliko Dangote had accused his
director-general, Ndi Okereke-Onyuike of financial misappropriation to
the tune of N11 billion. Apparently, the duo had been in a long-running
battle of power and control.

Since the spring of
2008, our economy has been crippled by gross insider abuses in the NSE.
Before then, our capital markets were unarguably the most attractive in
the world.

Returns on
investment of 100% were not uncommon, with bank stocks averaging 120%
before the bubble burst. The IPOs for the Dangote Group of Companies
were among the most successful. If you had invested in Dangote Cement
at the time they went to market, you could easily have made an
incredible 800% on your principal in less than a year. Dangote Sugar
was also the toast of the investment industry. We were all drunk with
the heady wine of a bullish bubble that we believed would always defy
the laws of gravity. People made loads and loads of dosh just by making
one or two phone calls to their stockbrokers.

And then the
chickens came home to roost. It started with a few whispering campaigns
and dirty little gossips in the gilded pavilions of Mammon. People
smelt blood when one prominent stockbroker declared that only an idiot
would invest in the Nigerian capital market. Foreign investors got the
cue and made for the border.

Within weeks, some US$16 billion of portfolio investments had left our shores.

Add to this a
ruinous banking crisis which predates Lamido Sanusi, and then you get a
fatal cocktail from which our capital markets have yet to recover.

The non-initiates
on these matters would be inclined to think the whole thing was
triggered by the global financial meltdown. Truth is, our capital
market crisis was largely home-made, in fact, occurring a good six
months prior to the sub-prime crisis that imploded at Wall Street in
September 2008.

Ndi Okereke-Onyuike
should have left the headship of the NSE as far back as 2007. Nobody
disputes her qualifications or professional standing in the industry.
It was her politics and greed that had compromised her.

As one of the
champions of so-called Corporate Nigeria, a gaggle of moneybags based
largely in Lagos, she had used her position in the dominant political
party to mobilise funds. It was unprofessional and illegal to compel
investors to cough out funds for politicians against their better
judgement or long-term interests.

Okereke-Onyiuke was
also Chairman of the Transcorp Group, a chaebol whose promotion by the
powers of the land would have made Russian oligarchs green with envy.
It was a blatant conflict of interest for her to double as Chairman of
the NSE while heading Transcorp. But she was the last to see the
absurdity of it all.

And then there was
the Obama campaign fund faux pas, which the Obama people were quick to
dismiss as 419. If Ms. Okereke-Onyuike had not been as blind as a bat
she would at least have seen the handwriting on the wall and made a
dignified exit before the curtain closed in on her.

I have met the Indlovukazi (Swazi for ‘she-elephant’).

In private she is
coquettish and shy — almost girlish. She once narrated the
serendipitous path that hauled her from obscurity to the summits of the
corporate world. Tears cascaded freely down her cheeks. I wish her a
restful retirement from the tumult that was largely of her own making.

As for the former
Chairman, Aliko Dangote, it was always odd that the richest man on our
continent should also double as Chief Rabbi of our synagogue of
capitalism. Lest I am misunderstood, I do not envy him his stupendous
wealth. And this is patently not a job application, in case the vacca
foeda who attacked me on this column is reading this.

Aliko Dangote had
no business chairing an institution in which he is the biggest single
investor. Italy has fallen below the league of civilised nations
because the country was hijacked by her richest mogul, Silvio
Berlusconi.

It would be
inappropriate to comment on Dangote’s dispute with Femi Otedola of
African Petroleum because the matter is still sub-judice.

Aliko is
surprisingly very smart. He has this astonishing capacity to rattle out
dizzying figures about profit margins, ROI and financial ratios. In
private, he is charming and humble — almost school-boyish. He has the
winsome face of Denzel Washington with the frightening eyes of
Caligula. Behind his back, his rivals refer to him as ‘Chemical Ali’.

Three lessons for
the future: first, never appoint anyone to manage the stock exchange
who is either avaricious or deliberately seeks to mix business with
politics; second,

the wealthiest
investors should be barred from managing the NSE; thirdly, we need an
anti-monopolies and anti-trust regulatory body to break the back of the
dangerous cartels that plague our economy. The market economy is indeed
the material foundation of a free society. But capitalism without laws
is like playing Hamlet without the Prince.

When
the idea of the Internet was conceived, its founding fathers intended
for it to be a medium of communication through which ideas and
information on important researches that would benefit the human race
can be shared effortlessly.

But as with the dynamite invented by Alfred Nobel
(based on intentions similar to his last name), the Internet created on
ideas of friendship and human progress has turned around to become a
weapon of willful human destructiveness and a tool for personal
vendettas.

About a month ago, naked pictures alleged to be
those of the young, talented and popular singer Wande Coal were put up
on the social networking site Twitter where it became a “trend”, a hot
topic, the first for a Nigerian subject. It is unclear whether
blackmail or extortion was involved in this case. In fact, the reasons
behind the showing of these pictures are still couched in mystery.

The representatives of the award-winning artist
first denied that the images were of him and then in the next breath,
referred to them as photo shopped.

While still in the aftermath of the Wande Coal
nude pictures controversy, another exposé hit the Nigerian webosphere.
This time it was the turn of a certain “Otubu” as the girl in the video
called him, a lecturer at the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. Unlike
in the Wande Coal affair, this was a clear case of extortion. That most
commentators on the Otubu scandal chose to ignore the criminal offences
committed in the course of shooting the video to focus instead on the
misconduct that led to them, speaks of the high public irritation at
the state of moral decadence on our university campuses.

But it was certainly not altogether out of the
altruistic motive of setting an example for randy lecturers that Judith
and her cohorts shot a humiliating show portraying the downfall of Mr.
P. O. Otubu a lecturer in Engineering at Ambrose Alli University. The
clamour for the lecturer “to sign the cheque” and “still drop
something” rang louder than recriminations at his unscholarly attempt
to exchange pass marks for sex.

To show the extent to which human beings would go
to carry out their revenge, no thought was given by the moviemakers of
the possibility of the screening of the video leading to their arrest
on the grounds of blackmail, extortion, kidnap, false imprisonment,
assault and a host of other crimes.

The carelessness and misplaced sense of moral
justification of these people who foolishly misuse the Internet says a
lot about a general lack of knowledge on the legal implications of
certain acts, the ineptitude of the Nigeria Police Force and the
non-existence of a working judicial system.

Those who celebrate people like Judith and company and the Wande Coal photographer,

should pray one day that they are never placed in a situation where they come under the receiving end of such notoriety.

This does not go to say, however, that Mr.

Otubu if indeed he did try to victimise his
student did not deserve to be exposed. (Video or not, that this is a
case of a victim of sexual harassment who got the better of her
harasser and not that of two lovers in situation of love-gone-sour is
debatable.) Be that as it may, it is most certainly a sign of good
citizenship to expose any form of crime and in the most public way
possible, especially the ones that might have been covered up by the
police. But to commit a crime while doing this just speaks of sheer
stupidity and totally torpedoes whatever noble intentions “the
activist” was inspired by to begin with.

It also encourages further stupidity and the perpetration of crimes in the name of justice.

The latest of these Internet vendetta videos shows
a couple having sex at knifepoint. From the voice screaming at them
from behind the camera, it could be discerned that they were
clandestine lovers caught in the act by the woman’s jealous and rather
murderous partner. As punishment, the unfortunate couple was now being
forced to continue their amorous act in the plain view of a camera, the
whole point being to expose their adultery on the Internet where it
would be viewed and condemned by the whole world. And to keep them in
position(s), the aggrieved partner kept slashing a knife in their
faces, at one point almost cutting the woman, even as he kicked and
spat out expletives at them- and all this while the camera rolled! The
video can be viewed freely on, of all places, Facebook.

Call me whatever but methinks that aggrieved or
not, the partner just provided indisputable evidence in his own
attempted-murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

Now, if only Nigeria were that kind of country.

Naomi Campbell is not just a pretty
woman. She has the kind of beauty that arrests attention, regardless of
race, gender or age: luminous and fascinating. So when I chanced on the
relay of her testimony to the Special Court for Sierra Leone on
television, I stopped to watch, expecting to appreciate her beauty.

What
I didn’t expect was to also appreciate her intelligence. But the way
she answered the questions, both from the prosecution and the defence,
showed a woman at the top of her game.

It explained why – in an era where
every workaday clothes horse is described as a ‘supermodel’ – she
remained at the top of a business where you need more than just good
looks to stay ahead for so long.

The
British media were also watching Campbell testify … with their knives
out. That’s another thing I didn’t quite expect. Campbell is certainly
notorious for her temper, but she isn’t the only international
celebrity guilty of public and private meltdowns. Yet ever since her
possible association with a diamond gift from former president of
Liberia Charles Taylor arose, Britain’s media have been in overdrive.

Subpoenas are as common as dust in
legal proceedings. But when one was served on Campbell, the story
became one of her being ‘forced’ to attend and testify, under threat of
imprisonment, as though a particularly harsh and unusual procedure had
to be deployed to drag a guilty and greedy accused person to court. An
ordinary subpoena!

From Campbell’s testimony and extracts
read by Taylor’s lawyer during cross-examination, it’s clear that only
her estranged former agent, Carol White, who apparently admitted two
men bearing the gift of uncut diamonds in the middle of the night, can
even link them to Taylor. Enough studies have been done to show how
different testimony about the same events can be, but despite the
brouhaha about how much contact Campbell had with Taylor, it’s worth
reminding ourselves that in 1997, when she was given the “dirty looking
stones”, the term ‘blood diamonds’ was hardly common currency.

The international NGO, Global Witness,
was among the first to highlight the link between diamonds and
conflict, but that was in 1998 when its report, “A Rough Trade” was
published. By July 2000, this had led the World Diamond Congress to
institute the ‘Kimberly Process’ under which all rough diamonds would
be given certificates of origin.

Again, although Sierra Leone’s civil
war raged from 1991 to 2002, it was not until the same July 2000 that
the UN Security Council held a public hearing on the conflict where the
direct link between the trade in diamonds and the purchase of arms by
the Revolutionary United Front (‘Foday Sankoh’) rebels was highlighted.
The role of Taylor’s Liberian government in supplying arms in exchange
for ‘conflict’ diamonds which it then passed off as originating in
Liberia, was exposed. As a result, the Security Council banned Liberia
from the diamond trade.

While a great deal of opprobrium has
been heaped on Campbell (the message conveyed by the media’s conversion
of her evidence about “dirty looking stones” to “dirty diamonds”
doesn’t even pretend to be subtle), we might also remember that from
her perspective, she was at dinner (not a ‘charity dinner’ as widely
reported) with ‘Saint’ Nelson Mandela, then President of South Africa,
and that Charles Taylor, whom she was meeting for the first time, was
Mandela’s guest.

One may wonder what he was doing there.
By September 1997, Taylor had been President of Liberia for just about
a month, and despite his history as a warlord in Liberia’s vicious
civil war, it had ended with elections that Taylor had won. However
widespread the feeling that his victory was due to the war-weary
Liberian people’s fear that anything other than giving him the
presidency would only mean the continuation of violence, he was now
Mandela’s brother-African President. Perhaps it was hoped that the
Madiba’s civilizing influence, which had worked its magic across South
Africa from Mangosuthu Buthelezi to fearful and suspicious Afrikaners,
might bring Taylor onside in the search for peace in Sierra Leone and
end his support for the rebels.

It’s
unrealistic to castigate Naomi Campbell for not knowing all this. Those
who want to ridicule her claim to have ‘never heard of’ Liberia might
pause to remember the number of times in their travels that they, on
identifying themselves as Nigerian, have been asked about their
interlocutor’s Ugandan friend. Or in what part of Accra is Nigeria?
(Yes!) How many island nations of the Caribbean can we name? Frankly,
the coverage given to Campbell’s testimony by the Western media in
comparison to that given to the trial, and indeed, the war for his role
in which Taylor is on trial (apart, of course, from the ‘fact’ that
Britain ended it) contains the alpha and the omega of why even educated
people who consume it know little or nothing about the rest of the
world.

Campbell may be no saint; but she’s hardly the blood-soaked villainess media hindsight would have us believe either.

In Nigerian English, when someone has no competence to carry out an act, we say that the person is too small to do it. My position is that President Goodluck Jonathan is too small to sign the constitutional amendments passed by the National and State Assemblies of our federation.

Over the past two weeks, there has been an intense debate over whether the said constitutional amendments have come into effect or whether they require presidential assent. Unfortunately, the debate has been too focused on legalistic arguments and most of the voices animating the debate have been those of lawyers. We non-lawyers should be part of the debate.

Indeed, my view is that the issues underpinning the debate are too important and too complex for lawyers, who with all due respect, are trained to argue about texts rather than their underlying foundational principles.

While the lawyers are arguing about whether the famous judgement in the United States {Hollingsworth vs. Virginia (1789)} – that presidential assent is not required for constitutional amendments to come into force – applies to Nigeria, we should take time to focus on the foundational principles.

In federal political systems, the federal (national) and federating (state) governments all have constitutionally defined areas in which each level is sovereign as well as areas where both levels have
concurrent authority.

According to the “father” of federal theory, K. C. Wheare (1963), in federal regimes, neither the federal nor regional governments are supreme; the constitution is the only supreme organ. He adds however that citizens in federal systems live under two separate authorities, each of which is supreme in its area of competence. On matters of the constitution, the two levels of authority – federal and state must act in concert. In addition, the act must be carried out by the most important organ,the legislature.

In democratic theory, legislatures are the most powerful institutions in democratic regimes for a very simple reason: Legislatures are the only institutions with the power to create other powers. They have the monopoly of the powers to make laws through which they create new commissions and agencies, enact public policy and determine public expenditure through the process of appropriation laws.

In democratic theory therefore, the powers of legislatures are considered more important than the powers of executives. Indeed, the theory of representative democracy is constructed on the pivotal role played by legislators, who have been elected by the people to represent them at the level of law-making for the society.

It is this legitimacy derived from the electoral process that gives them the power to translate the views and concerns of citizens they are representing into public policy. It is on the basis of this principle that when a president refuses to assent to a bill, a two-thirds vote by Parliament overrides the presidential veto.

Constitutions are fundamental to the culture of democracy. This is why the process of constitutional amendment starts with a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly thus giving it, ab initio, a status that is higher than the powers of the president.

As we are in a federation, the process is completed by two-thirds of votes cast by legislatures of two-thirds of the states – expressing the powers of the people which reinforces peoples’ power and gives the assent of the state legislatures a status that is higher than and beyond the authority of state governors. State governors are “too small” to sign the votes of over two-thirds of state legislatures and the president is too small to sign the two-thirds majority vote of the National Assembly.

As democratic theory accords great importance to constitutions, its amendment is given a status that is far beyond that of an ordinary act or statute, which is why a constitutional amendment is more than the question of signing a bill into law.

The debate on whether or not a presidential assent is required is coming at a difficult time in which Professor Attahiru Jega and his team at INEC are making Herculean efforts to produce free and fair elections after a long period in which Nigerians have lost their franchise.

All my arguments on the relative supremacy of the powers of the legislature over the executive assume they have been genuinely elected by the people whom they represent. We know however that a good number of them emerged through massive electoral fraud and therefore represent their godfathers not the people.

Our ambition as a nation is to organise credible elections so that genuine representatives of the people can exercise power on our behalf. We must not be distracted from this objective. Having asserted the theory, I conclude by proposing the only way forward in federal democracies: The lawyers should argue out the case in the Supreme Court and the decision that emerges becomes the final truth.