2016: A watch list

        Like a chameleon, one eye on the future, one eye on the past.

Malagasy proverb.

          This year will define the basic character of the administration of President Buhari and highlight opportunities and limitations that will challenge the administration and the nation. In this first, full working year of President Buhari, a number of major issues should be kept under watch.

1.      The economy

The Nigerian economy will be severely challenged in 2016. The dramatic fall in crude prices and uncertainties around attracting increased foreign investment will slow down growth. Plugging major leakages in revenue collection could improve available funds, but institutions involved in raising revenues need to be strengthened and their capacities improved. The pro-poor provisions in the 2016 budget are ambitious and bold, but their successful implementation will be predicated on quality conceptualization, planning and sustainability. Major fiscal and monetary policy decisions will represent areas of intense interest, as all social segments will feel the effects of an economy that will go through a difficult period. APC and PDP legislators will test their strengths on budget debates, and the legislature as a whole may fight against some of its provisions which affect them

2.      Security

The Boko Haram insurgency is damaged, but not crippled to a point where it will not continue to threaten populations. There are questions about the credibility of the military’s successes, principally because of conflicting narratives over the presence of insurgents in Sambisa forest, in towns and villages as well as cells in many areas that can strike with guns or suicide bombs. The captive Chibok girls will continue to haunt the fight against Boko Haram, and managing two million IDPs will be a major challenge for the administration.

The investigation of former militant leaders will trigger a resurgence of violent activity in the Niger Delta. Increased military presence in the area will pitch the militants and the military in direct confrontations under an administration determined to stamp its authority against violence. The Biafra agitation will be tested in terms of its support and capacity to take on the Nigerian state, with the on-going trials of its leaders. The Shiite movement in the North will continue to be a source of stress and tension, and the manner the state handles the detention and trial of its leader will be a major factor in determining future Shiite – government relations. Managing national security in the context of increasingly limited resources will be a major problem for the administration.

 3.     Fighting corruption

The administration enjoys popular support in its fight against corruption. Spectacular revelations about massive theft of public funds in many sectors of the economy suggest that many high profile individuals, including some who are pillars of the ruling party investigated and prosecuted. There are concerns over the degree to which the legislature will support the President in this ever-expanding campaign, with many legislators likely to be fingered, or have their cases re-opened. There are also legitimate concerns regarding the integrity and capacity of the judiciary to process possibly hundreds of cases. The possibility of the state being stonewalled by a weak and compromised judiciary and powerful interests with considerable mileage in avoiding penalties is real. Nigerians  will be frustrated at the pace of investigations and trials, and there is a genuine possibility that too much of the administration’s time and energy will be devoted to pursuing corruption cases at the expense of imaginative and productive policies that should  rebuild the economy and strengthen institutions of governance.

4.      Public institutions                 

The Buhari administration inherited weak and compromised public institutions that are vital to re-engineering the economy, plugging leakages and reducing corruption. It will need to radically improve basic policing institutions to turn the tide against crime and internal security challenges. The public service has been very badly damaged by the previous administration, and it will need an extensive review of its basic philosophy, operations and leadership to bring it up to the required level as the key institution in protecting public interest and serving as  the foundation of good governance.

5.     Governance and politics

The real character of the All progressives Congress will begin to show as the spoils of victory are distributed and the real business of running the country becomes the major focus. Key elements in the APC, such as the character and persona of President Buhari, the often-conflicting interests of very powerful office-holders who hold varied opinions over the real meaning of the ‘change’ mantra, the chieftains from parties who led and submitted to the merger, and Nigerians who expect dramatic and quality changes in the conditions of their lives will clash or reinforce each other this year. The manner President Buhari relates with the legislature, particularly the Senate, will be an important factor in the degree to which he succeeds in pushing through critical legislation, or is frustrated in the fight against corruption.

Disgruntled party chieftains can be ignored only up to a point. The lessons from the damage done to the defeated PDP by its members who defected with much of its assets will need to be carefully read and understood. Intra-party disputes will become more pronounced, and will be made worse unless the party is made strong and relevant by all political office holders at all levels. The administration will need to pay close attention to managing regional and religious threats, and its disposition to elites with capacities for mischief or improving popular support will be tested. Ambitious politicians with an eye on 2019 could divert attention and energy from creating synergy in policies and programmes at all levels of government.  

6.      People Democratic Party (PDP)

The PDP is unlikely to recover from its many and varied challenges any time soon. Its internal schisms and the large numbers of its present and former leaders who are being mentioned in scams of all types will deplete its capacity to re-invent itself. It is unlikely to benefit from disputes within APC, or provide an effective opposition outside the legislature. Nonetheless, its members in the National Assembly are a vital asset, and they could exploit intra-APC disputes to damage the administration’s plans and programmes.

7.      President Jonathan

The noose is increasingly tightening around President Jonathan's neck, with more and more revelations about scams and outright thefts that took place under his watch. It is a matter of time before his personal role and others, such as Dr Okonjo-Iweala, Allison-Maduekwe and other key ministers and officials are more closely scrutinized. President Buhari seems bent on extending the frontiers of enquiry into the management and abuse of public funds and other assets. It is unlikely that President Jonathan and former senior ministers will evade complicity in some of them. President Buhari may have to raise the profile of the fight against corruption and the inmates in E.F.C.C holding cells by nodding towards the investigation and possible trial of the former President and key ministers.

  

8.      The Buhari factor

Nigerians will become better acquainted with the persona and character of President Buhari. So far he has come across as determined and focused. He has been the face and voice of his administration, and has shown a personal trait of intolerance against corruption and threats to national security. In 2016, Nigerians will see whether he plans to yield some space to his Vice President and some of his ministers with solid accomplishments, to complement his image of strong personal integrity and unbending will. His temperament and disposition will be tested by the capacity of corrupt people to fight back, to be frustrated by compromised or weak institutions, or by the imperative of making compromises where they become necessary. President Buhari will retain wide popular support as he fights corruption, but in 2016, he also has to lay the foundations of solid socio-economic achievements. These will be his asset as an elite steeped in a tradition of pillage and plunder fight him back.

Not Amusing

A newly-committed crime awakens sleeping ones.

African proverb.

If we were not talking of almost N600b ($2.1b) of public funds that is being chased around Nigeria by the Economic and Finance Crimes Commission, (EFCC), the reaction of some of those accused of collecting from this largess will be amusing. It is even less amusing that these were funds reportedly meant for purchasing weapons to fight Boko Haram by the last administration. The stories of this and quite possibly similar audacious pillaging are not entirely told yet, but it already promises to be major issue from a past that will very much be a part of the future. 

            If not for the tragedy involved in this outrage, the image of a Falae, Yakasai or a number of those on the list of beneficiaries sitting smug with indignation over suggestions that they collected illegal funds and should now pay back will be amusing. Of the range of reactions to E.F.C.C’s flat demand to pay in full without equivocation (and still quite probably face prosecution), Brigadier-General Lawal Jafaru Isa’s will rank among the more dignified, even if he paid only in part. Olisa Metuh’s hunger strike and other antics will represent the other extreme. Most of the others specifically mentioned owned up to collecting, perhaps more because of the solid nature of the evidence than any altruistic reason. People like Fani-Kayode are putting a brave face, saying the N1.7b he received was properly allocated to his committee to improve Jonathan’s sellability through media and publicity. Baba Yakasai and Falae say they were merely conduits,and  no one will accept that they received blood money to get Jonathan re-elected.

            It will be amusing, if not for the need to retrieve every kobo literally stolen, to ask how E.F.C.C plans to ask people who say they received campaign funds to refund the amount in full. Obviously Mr Magu has never been exposed to election campaign or the manner campaign funds are used. Virtually everyone on his list of recipients will swear on the Bible or the Qur’an that the funds were duly distributed as intended. Alhaji Tanko Yakasai has already reeled out an expenditure outlay mentioning some very influential persons whose visit was facilitated by the money he received. He did not exactly say the eminent Nigerians he visited and requested to support peaceful elections received any of the money. So we should assume it was all spent by him and his committee on logistics and accommodation. How do you retrieve that? It will also be impossible to get Fani-Kayode to give  a full, accurate and defensible breakdown of the N1.7b his committee received and expended. No matter how much you press Bafarawa, how do you get him to account for the millions he received to seek spiritual help in getting Jonathan re-elected? Just ask him to refund or go to jail, unless you want him to say that even the spirits were against a Jonathan re-election, in spite of being lavishly fetted. Perhaps EFCC knows that most of those funds were not spent by people who knew Jonathan was un-electable.

            The mind boggles over just how much the PDP and the Jonathan administration spent towards losing the last election. It will take a long time for Nigerians to forget the elaborate billboards and posters, slick advertisements, targetted inducements and thousands of groups falling over each other and tons of money to sell Jonathan. Now we know, that campaign was substantially paid for with lives and limbs and the tragic destruction of whole communities in the fight against Boko Haram. Dulled by the pervasive nature of corruption in our lives, many Nigerians would have shrugged off allegation that companies, media organizations, prominent Nigerians with mixed personal records have received large sums from government to sell a sitting president. It is not new, only the  scale differs. But this blood money may be where Nigerians draw the line.

            The unfolding saga around the $2.1b (N600b) will swallow more and more people. If the president sticks to his position that he will not interfere in the investigation and possibility of prosecution, and E.F.C.C. stays within its rigid stance  that all recipients must refund in full, it will be safe to assume that E.F.C.C will require new or additional holding cells, and the courts will be inundated by the sheer numbers of cases that will be presented to them. From the opening skirmishes, a few of the recipients such as newspaper organizations have been willing and able to make refunds. Will E.F.C.C believe their stories that they did not know they were given blood money as compensation for losses suffered when president Jonathan's administration jackbooted their circulation for days on end? Why would the E.F.C.C believe the newspaper owners, and refuse to believe   Yakasai, Isa, Falae and Anenih, Mohammed and others when they claim that they did not believe they were receiving stolen funds?

            The trails following the N600b arms funds will lead this administration to mixed fortunes. It now has the best evidence that the Jonathan administration was bleeding the nation dry, literally. Funds meant for purchase of weapons for a military that was being pressed to confront a better -armed and motivated insurgency were being diverted in the same manner that billions were stolen through oil subsidy frauds, power-sector swindles, oil theft and all manner of scams that make sense only if you believe you were being governed by people who were confident that they will never be held to account. Now the fight against corruption will tap that popular nerve that is vital to its effectiveness and sustenance.

            But how far will it go and at what cost? At this stage, even the PDP leadership is attempting to put as much distance between it and the scandal. It says everyone who collected blood money is on his own. In fact it is asking President Jonathan to clarify his role in the processes involved in the release and distribution of  the funds. If you want to be uncharitable, you will smell a whiff of sour grapes from leaders of a party in disarray which saw a large chunk of its job taken away and handed over to a man and an office whose job was to advice on national security. If INEC bothers, it could ask them to account for the other billions they spent.

            There have to be answers around the process by which these funds ended up in a hundred hands, pockets and accounts. Since $2.1b did not just up and walk out of the vaults of the CBN, we have to ask who had responsibility for custody, approval for release and accountability from President Jonathan, Coordinating Minister for the Economy, CBN Governor, Accountant-General of the Federation, Auditor-General of the Federation, civil servants and security officials. How much is the administration of President Buhari willing to go in creating access to investigation around President Jonathan and other senior officials of his administration? How much of its attention and political capital  will be taken up by pursuit of corruption cases, in a context where it has to defend its action to friendly and hostile interests alike, as well as deliver on basic governance commitments? How much will the issues arising from the arms funds and other large-scale corruption cases test President Buhari’s commitment to the rule of law? How will the administration respond to the severe limitations of the judiciary? How strong is the commitment of the legislature to the fight against corruption?

            The arms funds diversions will engage the nation’s attention for quite a while. There will be people who received huge amounts that will be tried and quite possibly go to jail if government can prove that they broke laws in receiving and spending the funds. President Buhari should brace himself for corruption's fight-back, complete with parallels with 1983-1985. He may be forced to extend the battle to fronts he may not have envisaged. There is plenty of drama ahead, and the nation would be amused by some of it, if it is not so vital to our future.

Mohammed, the Bishop and a quarrel

A small house will hold a hundreds friends.

African proverb.

As a guest columnist in this newspaper of Tuesday, January 5^th, Bishop Mathew Hasan Kukah put on his most innocent demeanor to protest a “rather acerbic and scurrilous attack” from Mohammed Haruna who he considers a friend. Mohammed Haruna had used his Wednesday 30^th December, 2015 column in this paper to criticize the Bishop over his “attack on Islam.” The Bishop’s response was dripping with indignation and self-righteousness, with words like “cheap calumny” “rabble rousing,” “odious” and “bigotry in matters of religion and region”, giving a hint that this was not a friendly dialogue.  

Mohammed Haruna and Bishop Kukah had crossed swords in public in the past. These are two of the finest minds from the North, people who know each other rather well. Mohammed had taken exception to the Bishop’s latest foray into the complex Muslim – Christian relationships to, in Mohammed’s words, “ride on his hobbyhorse of what he says is the use of Islam by the Northern Muslim elites to impose their hegemony not only on the North but also on the rest of the country.” He was referring to the published Keynote Address by Bishop Kukah delivered at Fountain University, Osogbo to a Muslim organization. Mohammed said, as before, the Bishop had accused Muslim leaders “exclusively of manipulating religion for their selfish ends. Boko Haram, he said, was the dire consequences of such manipulation”.

The Bishop in turn accuses Mohammed of false representation. He claims that he was only continuing a personal tradition of campaigning against “Nigerian political power – mongers and entrepreneurs who have used the religion (sic) to extend their economic and political goals”. His paper, he claims, “focused primarily on how to protect religion (here Islam) from manipulation by politicians. I produced evidence to show how Muslim politicians had done this under our democracy. I concluded that it was this manipulation that created the condition for the emergence and claims of Boko Haram. This is not the same as saying Muslims brought Boko Haram.”

I have chosen not to quote copious portions of the Bishop’s Address which triggered this exchange. I am more interested in the issues which the exchange raise. One of these is that Mohammed has not stepped back from his position of taking on Bishop Kukah’s reputation in some circles as an authority on the interplay between faith in politics in the North and the nation. He is unlikely to put up his hand as the protector-in-chief of Muslim interests, however, and may even accept that exchanging blows with Bishop Kukah is not primarily the solution to Islam’s problems in Nigeria. You can chase flies from the dung, but it is still dung.  

Although even the Bishop may admit that it is not his business to make Islam and Muslims look good, his defence would be stronger if he is as innocent as he wants to be judged. His tendency to appear to be equally fair to Muslims and Christians is what offends many people of both faiths. Sadly, in a context where people of faith with responsibilities to offer guidance and leadership have become critically isolated by a political process that is rooted in the falsehood that faith can be separated from the political process, people like Bishop Kukah create spaces that seek to speak for faith, but cannot free themselves from loyalty to religions. His attempts to walk the thin line of enlightened liberalism is often badly exposed, such as his homily at the funeral of late Governor Patrick Yakowa and his latest clumsy attempts to secure some atonement for President Jonathan in relation to his past.

It is probably difficult for people like Bishop Kukah to accept that in spite of his best efforts to build bridges across religious divides (to which I testify), he will always be a leading clergy of the Christian faith, which no sophistry will change. Many Muslims are offended by his seeming attempt to hide behind his cloth and connections to hurt their faith, while he overlooks numerous injustices against Muslims in many parts of the North. His access to leading Muslim traditional and religions leaders and northern intellectuals, and the garb of a bridge-builder which he wears when he relates with the international community does little service to either Christians or Muslims. Christians still complain of severe restrictions to their rights to worship in the North, and even in Sokoto where for symbolism alone, the Vatican chose to post Bishop Kukah. Muslim communities in parts of Kaduna, Plateau, Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe and Taraba States complain of gross discrimination against them on grounds of their faith alone. Policing inter-faith boundries is a challenging endeavor which is not made easier by people who appear to walk on both sides of the fence. The 2015 elections had breached the walls of faith, but the hold of the clergy on the ballot is still very powerful.

Still, Bishop Kukah will continue to speak in the manner which offends Mohammed and many Muslims. My view is that allegations that Muslim leaders contributed to the context in which groups like Boko Haram developed will hurt Muslims less if leading Muslim intellectuals and clerics themselves have undertaken deep and strong analyses of the state of Islam in the North and Nigeria beyond internet groups and seminars. It is quite possibly the case that Muslims leaders have subverted their faith and weakened it by default, thus providing the context for the emergence of fringe groups and opportunities for people like Bishop Kukah to pontificate on their faith.

They have failed to rise to the challenges of influencing a Nigerian state which has increasingly distanced itself from the faith of majority of its citizens, hiding behind a weakness imposed by foreign, secular values. When they dangled attempts to make Muslims live under values and systems that are more appropriate for Muslims, it was largely for secular political reasons. They have failed to address poor governance, to secure a firm position for Islamic and western education, to address crippling social problems arising from massive expansion of the population and unacceptable levels of poverty among Muslims. They have failed to effectively police the boundries between Islam and other religions, and even more significantly, to police the faith in a manner that will protect simple Muslims from the types of crises that are almost endemically a feature of the state of their faith. There is not one element of governance at any level today that bears the imprint of a Muslim political leader or Muslim voters.

Boko Haram is primarily an affront to Muslim unity,integrity and strength in Nigeria. Its challenge to the Nigerian state was built on the weakness of the Muslim community. Muslim leaders and the community who make the case that they could not have prevented the growth and development of Boko haram and Shiism, should realize that they are  conceeding defeat in protecting their faith. Even if they were powerless in the past to stop Boko Haram developing into the monster it became, or that they could do nothing to stop the expansion of El-Zakzaky’s Shiite empire, they cannot do than now that they see how much damage has been done to the faith and the nation.

It hurts Muslims that leading Christian clergy like Bishop Kukah speak in disagreeable terms about Muslims and Islam, as if Christian clergy are expected to sing praises of Muslims and Islam to the high heavens. The solutions to this irritant lie in a re-discovery of the foundations of Muslim unity and the creation of a solid momentum that will shield the faith from opportunistic attacks. Muslim leaders in all spheres must lead and improve the welfare, knowledge and unity of Muslims. They should work to reduce the distance between the state and faith, to reduce intra-Muslim tensions which create avenues for emergence of weakening tendencies, and improve access and quality of Islamic knowledge. Muslim leaders need to become more actively involved in social engineering and local-level governance. When Muslims can effectively critique and improve the state of their religion, people like Bishop Kukah will find less room to fish in troubled waters.