Strictly Personal
Nigerian judges and ASUU by Lasisi Olagunju
Published
2 years agoon
While standing before a judge, any judge, you are a ‘petty man’ even if you are a professor of law. I am not being rude. You shouldn’t have any problem getting my drift if you go back and read William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene II). You meet Cassius telling nobleman Brutus how imperial Julius Caesar is bestriding “the narrow world like a Colossus;” how Brutus and himself are mere “petty men (who) walk under (Caesar’s) huge legs and peep about to find (for themselves) dishonorable graves.” Nothing demeans and devalues a ‘real’ man more than knowing how small he is; very small, cheatable and expendable. When your seed is that disadvantaged, what are you going to do? You struggle and argue with your situation or you surrender to destiny? Cassius has an idea. He tells Brutus the exact thing realists hold against fate: “Men at some time are masters of their fates…the fault…is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
There is a way in which career choices limit one’s position in life: Doctor; lawyer; teacher; judge. Judges are very privileged people whose word is law, literally. Teachers, from primary to university, are not that blessed. Even if they are professors, they are hardly seen as authority figures. What we see are colossal dwarfs made by Nigeria to walk under giants of iniquity in search of hope and justice. But why? Let us go back to the above scene in ‘Julius Caesar.’ Cassius asks Brutus to pronounce his name ‘Brutus’ and pronounce ‘Caesar’— and then asks his man what is so special about the emperor’s name that the whole world bows at its mention?: “What should be in that ‘Caesar’? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em, ‘Brutus’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘Caesar.'” That is an incitement to envy – even to treason. Or what else do you think it is? Now, let me ask: what is it that is in ‘teacher’ which makes its pronunciation rancid, stale and tasteless?
The last time Nigerian judges had their salaries reviewed was more than a century ago. Their workplace and their personal situation compete with the most appalling in hell. Nigerian public university lecturers and their workplace suffer same fate too, and, because of this, they speak a lot of grammar and have been on strike since February this year. But judges would not go on strike; they cannot. That is what their calling demands of them. They must never be seen saying or doing what ASUU says and does every year. If they ever dream of stopping work, the world will, that day, come to a crashing end. But, because several footpaths lead to the marketplace, impoverished Nigerian judges apparently listened to inciting voices like Cassius’s and possessed their fate. They did self-help – or rather, were helped to prop up their collective destiny by someone who was not even in their confraternity. A senior lawyer went to court – took judges’ predicament to a judge to redress – and it was done. What else is the dictionary definition of self-help? Three months ago (July 2022), Justice Osatohanmwen Obaseki-Osaghae of the National Industrial Court (NIC), Abuja, in a case brought by a lawyer, held that salaries and allowances of judicial officers in the country were embarrassingly low. She, therefore, ordered a new salary structure for the Nigerian judiciary. She commanded the federal government to commence a monthly payment of N10 million salary to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN); N9 million to other justices of the Supreme Court. She ordered that the president of the Court of Appeal should be paid N9 million per month. Every month, N8 million should be the salary of Court of Appeal justices; same for Chief Judges of both federal and state High Courts, President of the National Industrial Court, Grand Khadis and President of Customary Courts, and N7 million to judges of federal and state High Courts.
In making that order, Justice Obaseki-Osaghae noted that salaries of judges and justices had been stagnated for over 14 years. Her words are particularly sweet to hear: “There is no doubt that from evidence adduced before this court, salaries payable to judges as well as their conditions of service, have been greatly altered to their disadvantage…Judicial officers are daily impoverished by the devaluation of the naira. They have suffered financial hardship and embarrassment owing to their poor pay. It is a shame to the country. In spite of this, our judges have continued to carry out their statutory duties. Justices are themselves victims of a great injustice. What an irony,” she quipped. I understand that the decision has been appealed against and it is before My Lords at the Court of Appeal. It will be so nice to hear what the justices will say in this case which is about their own welfare.
I do not understand why our lecturers have not gone to the same industrial court to benefit from the judges’ self-help. Go there; show the court that the facts are similar; ask the judge to follow their own precedent and give your life a breather too. Would the court say no and thus confirm Nigeria as an iniquitous farm where some animals are more equal than the others? Judges are lions who rule with principles and doctrines. And there are very many of these credos of justice. They talk about precedent; stare decisis; apply the law in the same manner when cases are on all fours with each other; attend to cases with similar facts similarly; hit the gavel with the same force when dealing with similar legal issues. University teachers know so much and teach so much. They teach law; they teach logic; they teach economics and psychology and everything a man needs to escape the snares of the fowler. But our knowledgeable university lecturers hardly benefit from their knowledge. If there was an agreement with the government and the government breached that agreement, where else should the cheated go to demand performance of the duties imposed by what they signed? The court is the place to go, not the renegotiation table, ASUU’s favourite solution room. Let the court pronounce the government as the wrong party which must make restitution or be damned. But no. Whenever heaven offers our teachers a rose, they always insist on their ancestral cabbage of undying old habits. They still have not seen the wisdom in grabbing the divine lifeline which the judges’ salary case provides. If I were ASUU, I would ask the goose of the judiciary to do for my gander what it has done for itself. But the court is not a Father Christmas; it gives only to him who demands.
What do you call a person who does not keep his word? Someone asked that question and he got quite interesting answers. One responder said ‘reneger’; another said ‘traitor’; one bad person said ‘politician.’ Nigerian lecturers may be stuck in the last century; their nemesis are very up-to-date and that is because those ones live by breaking covenants. And you must not tell the unfaithful that they are dishonest; the way to get them is by setting the law to get them. That is the wisdom embraced by the judges through a lawyer. That wisdom has eluded the ivory tower.
It is an irony that the deer of the pact-breaking Nigerian government now pursues the hunter of ASUU. Two months after issuing the order for new pay packages for judges, the same National Industrial Court (not the same judge) on 21 September, 2022 ordered “impoverished” striking university teachers to go back to work empty-handed “in the interest of the nation.” Justice Polycarp Hamman made the order while delivering a ruling in an interlocutory injunction motion brought by the Federal Government. The order, according to the judge, was made in line with the provisions of Section 18 of the Trade Dispute Act which empowers the court to make such order in the interest of the nation. Justice Hamman, in ordering the lecturers back to the classroom, held that students had a fundamental right to education which needed to be protected from ASUU’s interminable no-work action. Do not blame the court; it acted on what was brought before it. Where was ASUU before the devil took the initiative of approaching the court first? Dissatisfied ASUU sought a leave of the Court of Appeal to appeal that ruling. It also filed an application for a stay of execution of the trial court’s ruling and then withdrew the application last Friday. The Appeal Court’s response to the applications was a grant of the leave sternly conditioned with an order that the union should, with effect from that moment, obey the order of the Industrial Court by going back to work. ASUU has not obeyed that order of the Court of Appeal. And the order is final.
The Nigerian government and its operatives are lustrous gods of vengeance. They may be lost in the maze of ineptitude but they competently protect their space with uncommon rage and passion. They may have no answer to questions from their victims but they know how to dip ASUU’s stubborn ass in hot water. Almost simultaneous with the legal challenge, two rival unions have been registered to contest the universities with ASUU. But the questions won’t go away: When is this long night of strikes ending? The tragedy that has robbed our children of one whole year of their lives, where is the plot taking us? How many acts are we destined to witness in this ASUU-Government tragedy? The plot lengthens daily with unconventional acts. A perfect Aristotelian tragedy has a character who moves from prosperity to perdition; from grace to grass – there is no road to redemption. Aristotle wrote about desis and lysis (binding and unbinding; complication and denouement) as the acts of a play. Some other critics think the act of drama should have more than just a problem and a resolution. The Nigerian tragedy has catastrophe as the final act of its drama.
A friend reminded me that the strike won’t resolve the issues in the sector even if it lasts till the end of the world. He was insistent that the education sector was not different from all other sectors in Nigeria. I agree. Nigeria is too damaged to be remodeled or repaired by forces locked up in isolated silos. Because we were born as free as their Caesar, we can and should tackle the winter induced by the Nigerian Caesar. We are asking existential questions of Nigeria. ASUU has worked hard, fought and won many battles since its birth. It should now leave its compartment and join in asking those global questions we ask about Nigeria and its future. Medical and environmental historians tell us of the human ancestors who moved north from the warm African heartland almost 24,000 years ago. The ancestors left their zone of comfort and ran into the killing chill of the ice age; they had their existence threatened. Then they used their brain, adapted and “devised rudimentary clothing”, fought off the big freeze and consequently lived to preserve their branch of creation. Nigeria’s current reality is the political version of the ice age. Its inclement sheet kills and it will kill. It will take big brains and a lot of adaptation and maneuvering to survive it.
However this season ends, the trial of ASUU teaches a lesson: The baby sired by the world is what the world carries (omo tí ayé bí ni ayé n pòn). That is an ancestral counsel on pragmatism. Achebe’s “Eneke the bird says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching.” If Eneke had taken his survival lessons from ASUU and had predictably sat on same branch from morning to morning, he would have been long dead.
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Strictly Personal
African Union must ensure Sudan civilians are protected, By Joyce Banda
Published
3 weeks agoon
October 25, 2024The war in Sudan presents the world – and Africa – with a test. This far, we have scored miserably. The international community has failed the people of Sudan. Collectively, we have chosen to systematically ignore and sacrifice the Sudanese people’s suffering in preference of our interests.
For 18 months, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have fought a pitiless conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions, and triggered the world’s largest hunger crisis.
Crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed by both parties to the conflict. Sexual and gender-based violence are at epidemic levels. The RSF has perpetrated a wave of ethnically motivated violence in Darfur. Starvation has been used as a weapon of war: The SAF has carried out airstrikes that deliberately target civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The plight of children is of deep concern to me. They have been killed, maimed, and forced to serve as soldiers. More than 14 million have been displaced, the world’s largest displacement of children. Millions more haven’t gone to school since the fighting broke out. Girls are at the highest risk of child marriage and gender-based violence. We are looking at a child protection crisis of frightful proportions.
In many of my international engagements, the women of Sudan have raised their concerns about the world’s non-commitment to bring about peace in Sudan.
I write with a simple message. We cannot delay any longer. The suffering cannot be allowed to continue or to become a secondary concern to the frustrating search for a political solution between the belligerents. The international community must come together and adopt urgent measures to protect Sudanese civilians.
Last month, the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan released a report that described a horrific range of crimes committed by the RSF and SAF. The report makes for chilling reading. The UN investigators concluded that the gravity of its findings required a concerted plan to safeguard the lives of Sudanese people in the line of fire.
“Given the failure of the warring parties to spare civilians, an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians must be deployed without delay,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission and former Chief Justice of Tanzania.
We must respond to this call with urgency.
A special responsibility resides with the African Union, in particular the AU Commission, which received a request on June 21 from the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) “to investigate and make recommendations to the PSC on practical measures to be undertaken for the protection of civilians.”
So far, we have heard nothing.
The time is now for the AU to act boldly and swiftly, even in the absence of a ceasefire, to advance robust civilian protection measures.
A physical protective presence, even one with a limited mandate, must be proposed, in line with the recommendation of the UN Fact-Finding Mission. The AU should press the parties to the conflict, particularly the Sudanese government, to invite the protective mission to enter Sudan to do its work free from interference.
The AU can recommend that the protection mission adopt targeted strategies operations, demarcated safe zones, and humanitarian corridors – to protect civilians and ensure safe, unhindered, and adequate access to humanitarian aid.
The protection mission mandate can include data gathering, monitoring, and early warning systems. It can play a role in ending the telecom blackout that has been a troubling feature of the war. The mission can support community-led efforts for self-protection, working closely with Sudan’s inspiring mutual-aid network of Emergency Response Rooms. It can engage and support localised peace efforts, contributing to community-level ceasefire and peacebuilding work.
I do not pretend that establishing a protection mission in Sudan will be easy. But the scale of Sudan’s crisis, the intransigence of the warring parties, and the clear and consistent demands from Sudanese civilians and civil society demand that we take action.
Many will be dismissive. It is true that numerous bureaucratic, institutional, and political obstacles stand in our way. But we must not be deterred.
Will we stand by as Sudan suffers mass atrocities, disease, famine, rape, mass displacement, and societal disintegration? Will we watch as the crisis in Africa’s third largest country spills outside of its borders and sets back the entire region?
Africa and the world have been given a test. I pray that we pass it.
Dr Joyce Banda is a former president of the Republic of Malawi.
Strictly Personal
Economic policies must be local, By Lekan Sote
Published
3 weeks agoon
October 24, 2024With 32.70 per cent headline inflation, 40.20 per cent food inflation, and bread inflation of 45 per cent, all caused by the removal of subsidies from petrol and electricity, and the government’s policy of allowing market forces to determine the value of the Naira, Nigerians are reeling under high cost of living.
The observation by Obi Alfred Achebe of Onitsha, that “The wellbeing of the people has declined more steeply in the last months,” leads to doubts about the “Renewed Hope” slogan of President Bola Tinubu’s government that is perceived as extravagant, whilst asking Nigerians to be patient and wait for its unfolding economic policies to mature.
It doesn’t look as if it will abate soon, Adebayo Adelabu, Minister of Power, who seems ready to hike electricity tariffs again, recently argued that the N225 per kilowatt hour of electricity that Discos charge Band A premium customers is lower than the N750 and N950 respective costs of running privately-owned petrol or diesel generators.
While noting that 129 million, or 56 per cent of Nigerians are trapped below poverty line, the World Bank revealed that real per capita Gross Domestic Product, which disregards the service industry component, is yet to recover from the pre-2016 economic depression under the government of Muhammadu Buhari.
This has led many to begin to doubt the government’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund-inspired neo-liberal economic policies that seem to have further impoverished poor Nigerians, practically eliminated the middle class, and is making the rich also cry.
Yet the World Bank, which is not letting up, recently pontificated that “previous domestic policy missteps (based mainly on its own advice) are compounding the shocks of rising inflation (that is) eroding the purchasing power of the people… and this policy is pushing many (citizens) into poverty.”
It zeroes in by asking Nigeria to stay the gruelling course, which Ibukun Omole thinks “is nothing more than a manifesto for exploitation… a blatant attempt to continue the cycle of exploitation… a tool of imperialism, promoting the same policies that have kept Nigeria under the thumb of… neocolonial agenda for decades.”
When Indermilt Gill, Senior Vice President of the World Bank, told the 30th Summit of Nigeria’s Economic Summit Group, in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, that Nigerians may have to endure the harrowing economic conditions for another 10 to 15 years, attendees murmured but didn’t walk out on him because of Nigerian’s tradition of politeness to guests.
Governor Bala Muhammed of Bauchi State, who agrees with the World Bank that “purchasing power has dwindled,” also thinks that “these (World Bank-inspired) policies, usually handed down by arm-twisting compulsions, are not working.”
What seems to be trending now is the suggestion that because these neo-liberal policies do not seem to be helping the economy and the citizens of Nigeria, at least in the short term, it would be better to think up homegrown solutions to Nigeria’s economic problems.
Late Speaker of America’s House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, is quoted to have quipped that, at the end of the day, “All politics is local.” He may have come to that conclusion after observing that it takes the locals in a community to know what is best for them.
This aphorism must apply to economics, a field of study that is derived from sociology, which is the study of the way of life of a people. Proof of this is in “The Wealth of Nations,” written by Adam Smith, who is regarded as the first scholar of economics.
In his Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of “The Wealth of Nations,” Andrew Skinner observes: “Adam Smith was undoubtedly the remarkable product of a remarkable age and one whose writing clearly reflects the intellectual, social and economic conditions of the period.”
To drive the point home that Smith’s book was written for his people and his time, Skinner reiterated that “the general ‘philosophy,’ which it contained was so thoroughly in accord with the aspirations and circumstances of his age.”
In a Freudian slip of the Darwinist realities of the Industrial Revolution that birthed individualism, capitalism, and global trade, Smith averred that “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principle in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasures of seeing it.”
And, he let it slip that capitalism is for the advantage of Europe when he confessed that “Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty (the so-called Invisible Hand), occasions… inequities,” by “restraining the competition in some trades to a smaller number… increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be… and… free circulation of labour (or expertise) and stocks (goods) both from employment to employment and from place to place!”
Policymakers, who think Bretton Woods institutions will advise policies to replicate the success of the Euro-American economy in Nigeria must be daydreaming. After advising elimination of subsidy, as global best practices that reflect market forces, they failed to suggest that Nigeria’s N70,000 monthly minimum wage, neither reflects the realities of the global marketplace, nor Section 16(2,d) of Nigeria’s Constitution, which suggests a “reasonable national minimum living wage… for all citizens.”
After Alex Sienart, World Bank’s lead economist in Nigeria, pointed out that the wage increase will directly affect the lives of only 4.1 per cent of Nigerians, he suggested that Nigeria needed more productive jobs to reduce poverty. But he neither explained “productive jobs,” nor suggested how to create them.
In admitting past wrong economic policies that the World Bank recommended for Nigeria, its former President, Jim Yong Kim, confessed, “I think the World Bank has to take responsibility for having emphasized hard infrastructure –roads, rails, energy– for a long time…
“There is still the bias that says we will invest in hard infrastructure, and then we grow rich, (and) we will have enough money to invest in health and education. (But) we are now saying that’s the wrong approach, that you’ve got to start investing in your people.”
Kim is a Korean-American physician, health expert, and anthropologist, whose Harvard University and Brown University Ivy League background shapes his decidedly “Pax American” worldview of America’s dominance of the world economy.
Despite his do-gooder posturing, his diagnoses and prescriptions still did not quite address the root cause of Nigeria’s economic woes, nor provide any solutions. They were mere diversions that stopped short of the way forward.
He should have advocated for the massive accumulation of capital and investments in the local production of manufacturing machinery, industrial spare parts, and raw materials—items that are currently imported, weakening Nigeria’s trade balance.
He should have pushed for the completion of Ajaokuta Steel Mill and helped to line up investors with managerial, technical, and financial competence to salvage Nigeria’s electricity sector, whose poor run has been described by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of Africa Development Bank, as “killing Nigerian industries.”
He could have assembled consultants to accelerate the conversion of Nigeria’s commuter vehicles to Compressed Natural Gas and get banks of the metropolitan economies, that hold Nigeria’s foreign reserves in their vaults, to invest their low-interest funds into Nigeria’s agriculture— so that Nigeria will no longer import foodstuffs.
Nigerians need homegrown solutions to their economic woes.
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