Farouk Lawan, Otedola-gate and chameleon faeces

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Too many scandals have rocked this country of ours in recent times that have been swept under the rug or simply dumped in the trashcan or even incinerator of history. And they have almost always followed the same pattern. First, they would filter in as newsbreak, then the trickles would form a deluge and explode into Armageddon, then the “self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria” (apologies to Reuben Abati) would feast on it, then the mainstream media would devour it with gusto for a week or two, then we suffix a “gate” to the name of the man or woman or institution at the centre of the storm, then everything would fizzle out and we return to our normal lives – we forget. We behave like a typical village mother hen which grandstands and shouts to the high heavens each time she loses a chick to a roving hawk and thereafter retreats to nurse her pains, without internalising the lessons of that encounter, only to repeat the futile exercise when the episode recurs.

There is the Halliburton scandal, for instance. There is the probe by the Ndudi Elumelu-led House of Reps Committee on Power into the massive investment made in the power sector under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration (1999-2007), which opened putrefying cans of worms, as did the Senate probe into the operations of the BPE in 2011 which made mind-boggling revelations on how public corporations were sold at rock bottom prices, the probe on the management contract of the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (2002), the Petroleum Technology Development Fund probe (2007), the pension fund administration probe (2012), and the fuel subsidy scam probe (2012). The BPE probe, for instance, revealed that while the Aluminium Smelting Company of Nigeria, established at a cost of $3.2 billion, was sold for $130 million, the Delta Steel Company, which was set up in 2005 at the cost of $1.5 billion, was given away for $30 million. The pension probe uncovered how Abdulrasheed Maina, chairman of the pension task force set up by the Federal Government to reform the dysfunctional pension system, turned out to help himself and his cronies with the pension fund.

But apart from the publicity, funfair and razzmatazz that accompanied these probes and their entertainment value, many of them were inconclusive, and the reports of those that were concluded are gathering dust in the shelves.

But one scandal that has refused to go away is that involving Farouk Muhammad Lawan, a renowned stalwart of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who represented his Bagwai/Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano State in the Nigerian House of Representatives for a whopping 16 years (1999-2015).

Lawan, a graduate of Bayero University Kano, who was a registrar at the Kano State Polytechnic until he won election in 1999, served as chairman of the House Committee on Finance under Aminu Bello Masari’s speakership. Regarded as one of the power brokers in the House of Representatives, he played a key role in Patricia Etteh’s emergence as speaker in 2007, and also during the corruption scandal that rocked her boat later that year, he was the leader of the Integrity Group that was at the centre of Etteh’s ousting. He became known as Mr Integrity and was even then touted as a strong candidate for the governorship of Kano State. But Mother Fate had other plans for him.

In the wake of the January 2012 protests against the attempt by President Goodluck Jonathan to remove fuel subsidies and fully deregulate the downstream sector of the Nigerian oil industry, the House of Representatives set up an ad hoc committee to investigate alleged fraud in the Federal Government subsidy regime. Lawan was appointed to chair the House Ad-hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy. In April of the same year, the committee released its report uncovering a huge scam in which Nigerian oil marketing companies were being paid hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies by the government for fuel that was never delivered. The scam was estimated to have cost the country $6.8 million.

A big dent

It was all very mind-boggling and Nigerians looked in utter bewilderment, mouth agape, as the revelations tumbled in. But in a quick twist, the hunter became the hunted as Femi Otedola, billionaire oil tycoon whose companies Zenon and Synopsis were allegedly earlier indicted in the committee’s report, accused Lawan of accepting $620,000 from him as part of a $3 million bribe Lawan had solicited from him in order to have his companies removed from the list of companies implicated in the committee’s report.

It opened like a typical blockbuster full of theatrics, intrigues, accusations, denials and counter-accusations. Lawan, Otedola and Boniface Emenalo, secretary to Lawan’s committee, were the key players; the House of Reps, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Nigeria Police were the supporting actors, while the generality of Nigerians were the spectators in what was quickly baptized Otedola-gate or Lawan-gate depending on your perception of who was guiltier.

Otedola alleged that he had paid Lawan bribes on April 21 ($250,000), April 23 ($250,000), and early morning of April 24 ($100,000) to have Zenon and Synopsis removed from the list of companies indicted by the committee, but claimed it was a sting operation and that he acted with law enforcement agents who planted visual and audio devices to trap Lawan after he had pestered him to pay bribe.

Lawan admitted receiving the amount, but insisted it was meant to expose the businessman and to convince the House of the pressure the committee faced. He said he had communications with the chairman of the House Committee on Financial Crimes and the Inspector General of Police, alleging that Otedola pestered him to accept bribes in order to influence the outcome of the investigation.

“I think it is important to note that I have been a member of the House of Representatives for the past 13 years, of course together with several other colleagues of mine past and present, and we have done so much to build the House of Representatives. It means to show that I should enjoy the respect and confidence of Nigerians,” Lawan had told reporters in the wake of the allegations.

“As far as the issue relating to me is concerned, I believe ultimately, I will be vindicated. I believe in the end Nigerians will come to believe and see that for the 13 years that I have invested in championing good governance, responsibility and probity in this country that this last trial is a trial from God and I believe in the end we shall prevail,” he had said.

The House hit back at Otedola, saying they were not convinced the procedure that caught the lawmaker was a sting operation and that Otedola was as guilty as Lawan.

“The giver [of bribe] is as guilty as the taker,” said a spokesperson of the House.

On the morning of April 24 during the House Plenary Discussion on Subsidy Report, the House had reportedly voted to have Otedola’s companies delisted from the original, but quickly re-listed Zenon Oil for investigations after the scandal broke, a decision Otedola described as a “celebration of corruption”.

A scandal that won’t go away

There is a line in the late Kofi Awoonor’s poem ‘Songs of Sorrow’ that reads: “The affairs of this world are like the chameleon faeces into which I have stepped / When I clean it cannot go”.

Lawan-gate or Otedola-gate may have faded from the consciousness of Nigerians, especially because too many others have happened since then and Nigerians have lost count, but this is one scandal that has left a permanent scar. Regardless of whether Lawan is eventually found innocent or guilty, he has clearly stepped into Awoonor’s chameleon faeces which he cannot easily clean off.

After initial attempts to prosecute Lawan, the fireplace apparently grew cold and nothing was heard again. Even Nigerians weren’t listening anymore because they had in the past watched such high-profile cases end in futility.

But like an angry ghost that won’t rest in the grave, the case has recently been reopened by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC). The case appeared before the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Lugbe, Abuja, on February 2, 2016, but the presiding judge, Justice Angela Otakula, adjourned till February 9. On February 9, the case was again adjourned till March 7 and 8 to enable the first prosecution witness, Boniface Emenalo, to conclude his evidence.

Emenalo was initially charged along with Lawan with respect to the bribery charge. Both of them were first arraigned before Justice Mudashiru Oniyangi, then of the FCT High Court on February 2, 2013. But a later amendment to the charges by the ICPC saw Emenalo’s name removed as a defendant. Lawan is now the sole accused person in the case, while Otedola is scheduled to testify against Lawan as the second prosecution witness.

The case was reassigned to Justice Adebukola Banjoko after Justice Oniyangi was elevated to the position of a Justice of the Court of Appeal. The case was further reassigned to Justice Otakula of the FCT High Court, Lugbe Division, following the withdrawal of Justice Banjoko from the case in November 2014. The amended charges, comprising three counts instead of the previous seven, now indicated that Lawan corruptly asked for $3m from Otedola and did corruptly collect $500,000 from the businessman. The offences are said to be contrary to sections 8(1)(a) and 17(1) (a) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000 and punishable under sections 8(1) and 17(1) of the same Act.

When the case reopened on March 7, Emenalo told the court that he collected $100,000 from Femi Otedola as part of the alleged $3 million bribe promised to the then chairman of the committee, Farouk Lawan. Emenalo, testifying as the first prosecution witness before Justice Angela Otakula, said he collected the sum of $100,000 from Otedola in $100 bills.

“I came across Femi Otedola during this assignment on April 24, 2012. I received persistent calls from Mr. Otedola in the morning and reported to Lawan and he asked me to play along with him, that he was with him (Otedola) the previous night,” he told the court.

“When Otedola called again, he asked me to come over to his house. He gave me the description (of his house). When I got there, he also confirmed that he was with my chairman the previous night. He gave me two bundles of dollar bills in $100 denomination. Each bundle was $50,000 making it $100,000 that were not converted. When I got back to the office, I wrote a memo forwarding the money to my chairman that same April 24, 2012, which he took from me,” he further said.

A copy of the memo was tendered before the court and marked Exhibit PW1 C. The defence, led by Mike Ozekhome (SAN), did not object to the admissibility of the document. However, Ozekhome sought an adjournment to serve the prosecution with a notice to produce an additional statement made by the witness as contained in the prosecution’s proof of evidence. The case was adjourned till April 12 and 13, 2016 for continuation of trial and cross-examination.

At the resumed trial on April 13, the case was again adjourned to May 18 following the prosecution’s failure to produce its witness before the court.

End of a political career?

Farouk Lawan’s gubernatorial ambition might have been scuttled by the bribery scandal, but it could not prevent him from seeking and obtaining a ticket to make a fifth bid for the House of Reps, notwithstanding the eyebrows raised by PDP stalwarts in his constituency.

But his people of Shanono/Bagwai Federal Constituency of Kano State thought differently. And they showed Lawan the door by choosing a greenhorn, Sule Aliyu Romo, instead. At the March 28, 2015 presidential and National Assembly elections, Lawan went home with 18,864 votes, while Romo, who was until the election the secretary of Bagwai Local Government Council, got 48,548 votes.

Whatever happens hereafter, analysts say the 2012 bribery scandal may yet be the end of Lawan’s otherwise sterling and promising political career. They add, however, that he will always be remembered for bringing the name of his constituency to limelight as well as for his quality contributions in lawmaking processes at the lower chamber.

Buhari, the tortoise and the iron that grew cold

CHUKS OLUIGBO

“Strike while the iron is hot” is a popular dictum. A Google check of the meaning of this aphorism reveals a lot, but let’s stick to just two.

The first, from http://www.urbandictionary.com, says: “Act quickly while the opportunity is still available. Blacksmiths working iron by hand heat the iron in a fire to red-hot making it malleable. The smith removes the iron from the fire and shapes it with blows from a hammer. They need to work quickly before the iron cools. Once the iron is cool, it becomes brittle and the opportunity to hammer it into shape has passed.”

The second, from https://en.wiktionary.org/, says: “1. (literally metallurgy) To strike a hot piece of metal, especially iron, with a mallet or other tool before it cools, while it is still hot enough to be shaped. 2. (idiomatic) To act on an opportunity promptly while favorable conditions exist; to avoid waiting.”

We shall return to this matter later. For now, let us share a story.

One of the popular English textbooks used in most primary schools across South-Eastern Nigeria in the mid to late 1980s was Day By Day English Course. It was a series published by Longman Nigeria Limited and had, if I remember very well, Pupils Books 1 to 6. I can’t remember much about its authorship now, but the story is that in one of the series, I think Book 5, there is a poem about the tortoise that goes this way:

“Have you ever seen a tortoise / Crawling slowly on his way / Slowly crawling, slowly creeping / Fifty yards in half a day?

“Why so slowly, o so slowly / Does he creep from place to place / With that very, o so very / Tired look upon his face?”

As Nigerians across different social cadres continue to vent their frustrations over the hardship that has practically become their daily meal in the past months since the coming to power of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, my mind goes back to May 29, 2015, Buhari’s inaugural speech.

After listing “enormous challenges” facing Nigeria – insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages, which he identified as “the immediate concerns” that his government was going to tackle “head on” – Buhari expressed confidence that “we can fix our problems”, “modernize and uplift Nigeria”, and that the task may be daunting but “it is by no means insurmountable”.

“With depleted foreign reserves, falling oil prices, leakages and debts, the Nigerian economy is in deep trouble and will require careful management to bring it round and to tackle the immediate challenges confronting us, namely, Boko Haram, the Niger Delta situation, the power shortages and unemployment especially among young people. For the longer term we have to improve the standards of our education. We have to look at the whole field of medicare. We have to upgrade our dilapidated physical infrastructure,” Buhari said in his inauguration speech.

“No single cause can be identified to explain Nigerian’s poor economic performance over the years than the power situation. It is a national shame that an economy of 180 million generates only 4,000MW, and distributes even less. Continuous tinkering with the structures of power supply and distribution and close to $20bn expended since 1999 have only brought darkness, frustration, misery, and resignation among Nigerians. We will not allow this to go on. Careful studies are underway during this transition to identify the quickest, safest and most cost-effective way to bring light and relief to Nigerians,” he added.

He further said he would frontally tackle unemployment, notably youth unemployment, which features strongly in the manifesto of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

“We intend to attack the problem frontally through revival of agriculture, solid minerals mining as well as credits to small and medium-size businesses to kick-start these enterprises. We shall quickly examine the best way to revive major industries and accelerate the revival and development of our railways, roads and general infrastructure,” President Buhari said.

“I cannot recall when Nigeria enjoyed so much goodwill abroad as now. The messages I received from East and West, from powerful and small countries are indicative of international expectations on us. At home the newly elected government is basking in a reservoir of goodwill and high expectations. Nigeria therefore has a window of opportunity to fulfil our long-standing potential of pulling ourselves together and realizing our mission as a great nation,” he further said.

And he ended on a confident and optimistic note: “We have an opportunity. Let us take it.”

Buhari’s speech raised the hopes of not a few Nigerians, even the cynics. Analysts began to highlight the opportunities in the economy, pointing to quick-wins that the administration could tap into to retain its goodwill among the populace while working on the longer-term issues.

Mary Iwelumo, a partner in PwC Nigeria and head of strategy and operations, PwC West Africa, writing in May 2015, noted the fresh wave of optimism that was sweeping across the country as the newly-elected president – a man known for his zero tolerance for corruption and whose major campaign promises centred on “improving developmental indices (poverty reduction, employment, security, etc.), tackling corruption, insecurity and diversifying the economy” – prepared to take over the reins of power.

On the back of the outcome of the 2015 polls and subsequent events, Iwelumor wrote, “Nigeria saw its stock index rise by 8.3 percent and its currency, the naira, rose by 7 percent against the dollar in the parallel market”.

“Suddenly, the business environment is showing a bullish stance after months of lull and inactivity. In coming months, better economic indices such as lower exchange rates in the official market would imply lower costs for businesses and companies would be more willing to meet financial obligations,” she wrote.

But immediately after his inauguration, President Buhari and the APC, the party on whose platform he rode to power on a change mantra, became like the tortoise in our Primary 5 Day By Day English Course. Buhari, apparently unprepared for and overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead, began to crawl slowly on his way, doing fifty yards in half a day with very tired look upon his face. Nigerians quickly gave him a nickname – ‘Baba Go-Slow’.

We began to hear lame excuses, tales of an empty treasury, bandying of gargantuan figures allegedly stolen by officials of the immediate past administration, too much talk and little action on anti-corruption, how the new government was unable to work because of lower oil prices, and how even world-best economists from Harvard and Cambridge would not be able to turn around Nigeria’s economic fortunes if invited.

But while the Buhari administration dithered, Nigeria’s economic woes multiplied. Today, the story is that of widespread scarcity and of prices that have hit the roofs – scarcity of food, foreign exchange, petrol, electricity, water, essential goods and services, and virtually everything. 

Opeyemi Agbaje, a renowned public policy analyst, wrote recently that the petrol scarcity, for instance, is simply a consequence of incompetent policy and missed opportunities and that the country was by-and-large mentally prepared for downstream petroleum sector deregulation by May 2015 with global oil markets ideally suited for the policy as well.

“So far Buhari’s only clear policy anchor is anti-corruption, and while there is a lot of motion, momentum and rhetoric on that front, ten months into the administration, there is yet no single conviction. The anti-corruption agencies’ strategy appears to be long on propaganda and media trials, but significantly short on the careful forensic investigations and evidence gathering that facilitate successful criminal prosecution. Meanwhile, as we fight the past corruption of PDP administrations, the current FX regime (with a N120 arbitrage opportunity between official and real exchange rates) has created probably the largest officially-sanctioned corruption scam in Nigeria’s history,” Agbaje wrote in a recent article.

“On the economy, the results are an unmitigated disaster. We did not have a cabinet for seven months and we yet do not have a rational economic policy framework; there is no 2016 budget as at April 5, 2016 and minimal economic activity as the economy is starved of resources, petrol and electricity; unemployment and under-employment are rising rapidly even according to official data, as GDP growth slows to just above 2 percent, with per capita incomes falling and poverty increasing; and foreign direct and even domestic investment are grinding to a halt. We are unable to take simple policy decisions regarding output, subsidies, markets, taxes, exchange rates and investment, and the policy and economic outlook has weakened significantly,” he said.

Rafiq Raji, managing director of Macroafricaintel Investment Limited, a Lagos-based Africa-focused macro research and investment consultancy, was also unequivocal in stating that the economic difficulties Nigeria faces today are due to Buhari’s bad policy choices.

For Sam Ohuabunwa, a renowned industrialist, the president’s inaction on a number of very crucial fronts is to blame for the hardship in the country today. He specifically pinpointed the following areas: no action on deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector, no firm decision on subsidy, no action on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), no action on the need to enthrone a progressive foreign exchange pricing policy, no action on privatization in the last one year, no action on the Agriculture Transformation Agenda (ATA) and the Industrial Revolution policy introduced by the last regime, no action on the increasing menace of the Fulani herdsmen, no action on the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference, and slow action on the 2016 budget.

This brings us to our opening dictum: strike while the iron is hot. Clearly, the Buhari administration has allowed the iron to get cold. Now it is trying to hammer a cold iron into shape, which requires harder labour, is more time-consuming, and may not necessarily achieve the desired result – or any result at all. Is it possible to put the iron back into the fire to re-heat and start the process afresh? Maybe. Some analysts have spoken about rebooting the country. This may be possible, but I am no longer confident that it can happen under the present Buhari administration. Meaning that we may have to wait until another administration comes in 2019 before anything can get better, because President Buhari and those around him seem at a loss regarding where to even begin.

In concluding his recent piece, Rafiq Raji said, “President Buhari is courageous, honest and has the will and intention to do good. Unfortunately, that is not enough. He has to be pragmatic as well. While his anti-corruption stance is laudable, it should not take all of his time. His primary priority should be how to reboot the economy, create jobs and return Nigeria to the path of prosperity. And in this regard, time is the resource he has little of, not money.”

This also brings us to the concluding verse of our tortoise poem: “It’s not because he’s lazy / Or because he’s old and slow / If you were carrying a house / How quickly would you go?”

That President Buhari is carrying the Nigerian house – or rather the broken pieces of the Nigerian house – is not in doubt. This house needs great intellect, tact and speed to rebuild. Time is of great essence. Does he have the capacity to rebuild this house? If not, why did he accept to carry it in the first place?

Where do Nigeria’s top graduates go?

CHUKS OLUIGBO

 
Sidney Hook, an American philosopher of the Pragmatist school, once contended that “the teacher is the heart of the educational system”. If this is so, shouldn’t nations desirous of developing high-quality human resources strive to attract and retain the best brains in the teaching profession? The answer, in my opinion, is that they should. For, as Lee Iacocca, the American automobile executive who spearheaded the development of Ford Mustang and Pinto cars while at the Ford Motor Company in the 1960s, once quipped, “In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.”

Some countries of the world are already walking this path. In an article “Raising Teacher Quality around the World”, Vivien Stewart, senior adviser (education) and former vice president at Asia Society, reckons that “as countries face the challenges of a global knowledge economy that requires them to develop higher levels of knowledge and new capacities in their students, they are focusing intently on ways to attract high-quality candidates into the teaching profession”.

"High-performing countries build their human resource systems by putting the energy upfront; they concentrate on attracting, preparing, and supporting good teachers and nurturing teacher leadership talent," she writes.

Finland and Singapore are at the forefront of this drive. While in Finland teaching has become a highly sought-after career – in fact, the number one choice of Finland’s best and brightest students – Singapore selects prospective teachers from the top one-third of its secondary school class. In these countries, “strong academics are essential, along with a commitment to the profession and to serving the nation's diverse students”. In Finland (and Singapore and South Korea), 100 percent of teachers are from the “top third”. 

This can be replicated in Nigeria – across all levels of education. Indeed, available evidence suggests that this was once the practice in Nigerian universities, where top-of-the-class graduates were offered automatic employment as graduate assistants, from where they proceeded to earn further degrees and grew through the ranks. But not anymore. 

Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, in a recent article “What do the Nigerian people want?”, writes: "During our time it was the most brilliant minds who remained to teach in the universities. The average ones went into banking and the oil industry. When the universities were brought to their knees by the semi-literate military junta, the best minds fled abroad while a good number went into banking and the oil and gas sector. Ominously, the plodders became the professors. It is a dangerous development. These were the kind of people who felt nothing about selling grades and handouts and pestering young female students for sex in exchange of grades. Throughout my years as an undergraduate of Ahmadu Bello University, such a thing was never ever heard of. The system collapsed after our time and the citadels of learning became, sadly, an open cesspool of cultism, whoredom and violence. Today, some of those who call themselves ‘graduates’ cannot pass the most basic of international literacy tests.”

But the rot goes even deeper. A pilot ICPC/NUC University System Study and Review (USSR) of corruption in the university system in 2012 identified a series of infractions including admissions racketeering, misapplication and embezzlement of funds, sale of examination questions, inducement to manipulate awards of degrees, direct cheating during examinations, deliberate delays in the release of results, victimisation of students by officials, lack of commitment to work by lecturers, and above all, sexual harassment and exploitation of students by lecturers.

However, the country may be on the path to getting it right if the recently announced National Youth Service Corps policy of deploying Nigerian graduates with First Class degrees to tertiary institutions as lecturers is properly implemented. 

At a two-day pre-mobilisation workshop for the 2015 Batch ‘B’ NYSC programme in Kaduna recently, the NYSC director-general, Johnson Olawumi, announced that in order to properly mobilise the right manpower to boost the education sector, “All corps members who graduated with First Class honours, Distinction degrees and Diplomas will be posted to tertiary institutions for effective utilisation of their manpower. The posting policy of the scheme is being vigorously implemented for the achievement of the desired impact. I, therefore, appeal to the authorities of all tertiary institutions of learning to reciprocate this gesture by accepting and offering them permanent appointments after service.”

This policy will not clean up the whole mess in the tertiary education system, no doubt – partly because First Class graduates are not necessarily saints, and partly because the issues go beyond just quality of teachers – it is nonetheless a first necessary step in a journey of many thousand miles. Let's first get the right quality of teachers. Our institutions of higher learning are today replete with accidental lecturers – some of whose only recommendation is that they knew someone who knew someone who knew someone – while some of our best brains on whom the responsibility of raising a sound generation should naturally fall are wasting their brains in sometimes unimaginable jobs and places. Same goes for other levels of education.

It needs to be stressed that building a high-quality teacher workforce does not happen by accident; it requires deliberate policy choices. Nigeria must therefore look to Finland, Singapore, and perhaps South Korea, for the best examples. No doubt, in a multi-sectoral economy where education has to compete with other sectors for talent, attracting the best brains to the teaching profession is not enough; efforts must be made to retain them. Of course, those efforts will come at extra cost. And why not? As Bob Talbert has let us know, “Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.”

Nigeria: No more of these accidental leaders

CHUKS OLUIGBO

Reading through Governor Babatunde Fashola’s remarks at the 2014 Christmas Eve party of Island Club/Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos the other day, something struck me: the vote of confidence the Lagos State governor passed on Akinwunmi Ambode, the man whom his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), has chosen to succeed him – that is, if elected at this year’s governorship election in the state.

“Akinwunmi Ambode served with me as accountant-general for six years. He worked in the local government for many years. He was part of the building process. He understands how government works; he will not be guessing on day one if you elect him as my successor because he is experienced. The alternatives to him will be an experiment with your lives, your businesses and the future of your children,” Fashola had said.

The above statement is very instructive. What it says, simply, is: experience counts. Chinua Achebe’s assertion in his 1983 book, The Trouble with Nigeria – that “the trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership" – has become some kind of singsong among Nigerians. Everybody agrees. And not many pundits will dispute the fact that part of this leadership problem is the lack of preparedness among the leaders we’ve had in this country since independence. Experience does matter a lot. And with it comes preparedness to lead. Though it can be argued that even with all the experience in this world some leaders still fail, yet inexperienced, ill-prepared and accidental leadership is worse.

There is a generally held view that Nigeria since independence has lived with the curse of accidental and unprepared leadership – from Balewa through the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan – and this has been the bane of our development. As Tajudeen Alabede, a commentator, wrote in a September 2010 article, “Accidental ascendancy to leadership is a big gamble. It often comes with bitter consequences. We have not been blessed with capable and well prepared leaders whether under democracy or military rule. We have only had flashes of great performers on the centre stage. With not too many glittering moments, the memories have been fleeting indeed.”

To buttress this point, I refer to an article by Reuben Abati when he was still on this side of the fence. Entitled “The speech Jonathan shouldn’t have made”, the article was a reaction to a speech made by the then newly-elected President Goodluck Jonathan at a pre-inauguration lecture on May 26, 2011. While responding to a presentation by the guest lecturer, Ladipo Adamolekun, Jonathan reportedly declared that four years were too short for a president or a governor to embark on any meaningful programme because “it takes about a year or two before the administration settles down even with the right set of ministers or commissioners. Then, if the latter turn out ‘not to be good’, after one year or two, the president or governor is compelled to reshuffle his cabinet and by the time the new cabinet settles down, it is time for another election, and everyone is busy trying to win an election”.

To the above claim, Abati responds point-blank: “It is not true that four years ‘is too short’ for a president or a governor to make a difference. The president didn't get it, and it is important that he does. The period appears too short because many of our elected governors and presidents (well, we have had only a few) begin to think of what to do only when they get to office. They have no blueprint, no clear understanding of what is required; they do not even listen to the people well enough, and the parties that brought them to power have no manifesto, no plan of action, no defined contract with the Nigerian people. Given such background, the complexity of bureaucracy and the enormity of official powers could prove so intimidating that the typical overnight man of power could find himself or herself completely ill-prepared for high office. But this is what we want changed. In states where the governors are prepared, we have seen so much done in four years.”

Then he goes on to cite Gbenga Daniel, Bola Tinubu, Babatunde Fashola, Rotimi Amaechi, Emmanuel Uduaghan, Bukola Saraki, Mohammed Goje, Adamu Aliero and Godwin Akpabio who, in his view, made great impressions and strides in their first four years. Whether you agree with Abati or not on this list is all up to you, but I think the point is clearly made.

And he goes on to offer a piece of advice. “We all know it takes a while for the wrong kind of ministers and commissioners to settle down, and that such persons can waste everyone's time, but those are not the kind of ministers Nigerians want. Nigerians want President Jonathan to choose his cabinet wisely. He must avoid failed politicians who lost elections and are looking for another job in government by any means, PDP chieftains who expect to be rewarded for their contributions in their states, and definitely not the wives, sons and daughters of self-appointed godfathers and political entrepreneurs. Nigerians don't want ministers who will take two years to settle down. They don't want the federal cabinet to be turned into a classroom where ministers have to spend a whole year learning what a policy means, while they collect fat allowances and do nothing.”

Finely put, you would say again. And that goes for all those who will emerge at different levels in the 2015 general elections. At this stage, Nigeria’s democracy can no longer be referred to as nascent or fledgling. A child born 16 years ago should be in an institution of higher learning by now. If such a child is female, she might even be considering marriage – that is, if she is from those parts of the country where early marriage is the norm. So, for a country that needs leapfrogging in many aspects of its economic and social life, Nigeria can no longer afford the luxury of time-wasters.

Perhaps it is time for those elected to lead to take the issue of succession more seriously. I’ve always subscribed to the saying that success without successor is equal to failure. While I do not support imposition of any kind, even if it comes in the form of enlightened despotism, I believe, however, that a good leader should be able to groom a number of possible successors so that when the time comes for him to bow out, the people would have a bunch to choose from. Isn’t it interesting to hear Fashola say that “almost all of the aspirants have worked in our government and with me in building the progress we now have”? That’s the way to go if we are to have true leaders who will hit the ground running from day one.