Strictly Personal

Nigerian judges and ASUU by Lasisi Olagunju

Published

2 years ago

October 10, 2022

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

Budgets, budgeting and budget financing, By Sheriffdeen A. Tella, Ph.D.

Published

3 days ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The budget season is here again. It is an institutional and desirable annual ritual. Revenue collection and spending at the federal, State and local government levels must be authorised and guided by law. That is what budget is all about. A document containing the estimates of projected revenues from identified sources and the proposed expenditure for different sectors in the appropriate level of government. The last two weeks have seen the delivery of budget drafts to various Houses of Assembly and the promise that the federal government would present its draft budget to the National Assembly.

Do people still look forward to the budget presentation and the contents therein? I am not sure. Citizens have realised that these days, governments often spend money without reference to the approved budget. A governor can just wake up and direct that a police station be built in a location. With no allocation in the budget, the station will be completed in three months. The President can direct from his bathroom that 72 trailers of maize be distributed to the 36 states as palliatives. No budget provision, and no discussion by relevant committee or group.

We still operate with the military mentality. We operated too long under the military and of the five Presidents we have in this democracy, two of them were retired military Heads of State. Between them, they spent 16 years of 25 years of democratic governance. Hopefully, we are done with them physically but not mentally. Most present governors grew up largely under military regimes with the command system. That is why some see themselves as emperor and act accordingly. Their direct staff and commissioners are “Yes” men and women. There is need for disorientation.

The importance of budget in the art of governance cannot be overemphasized. It is one of the major functions of the legislature because without the consideration and authorisation of spending of funds by this arm of government, the executive has no power to start spending money. There is what we refer to as a budget cycle or stages. The budget drafting stage within the purview of the executive arm is the first stage and, followed by the authorisation stage where the legislature discusses, evaluates and tinkers with the draft for approval before presenting it to the President for his signature.

Thereafter, the budget enters the execution phase or cycle where programmes and projects are executed by the executive arm with the legislature carrying out oversight functions. Finally, we enter the auditing phase when the federal and State Auditors verify and report on the execution of the budgets. The report would normally be submitted to the Legislature. Many Auditor Generals have fallen victim at this stage for daring to query the executives on some aspects of the execution in their reports.

A new budget should contain the objectives and achievements of the preceding budget in the introduction as the foundation for the budget. More appropriately, a current budget derives its strength from a medium-term framework which also derives its strength from a national Development Plan or a State Plan. An approved National Plan does not exist currently, although the Plan launched by the Muhammadu Buhari administration is in the cooler. President Tinubu, who is acclaimed to be the architect of the Lagos State long-term Plan seems curiously, disillusioned with a national Plan.

Some States like Oyo and Kaduna, have long-term Plans that serve as the source of their annual budgets. Economists and policymakers see development plans as instruments of salvation for developing countries. Mike Obadan, the former Director General of the moribund Nigeria Centre for Economic and Management Administration, opined that a Plan in a developing country serves as an instrument to eradicate poverty, achieve high rates of economic growth and promote economic and social development.

The Nigerian development plans were on course until the adoption of the World Bank/IMF-inspired Structural Adjustment Programme in 1986 when the country and others that adopted the programme were forced to abandon such plan for short-term stabilisation policies in the name of a rolling plan. We have been rolling in the mud since that time. One is not surprised that the Tinubu administration is not looking at the Buhari Development Plan since the government is World Bank/IMF compliant. It was in the news last week that our President is an American asset and by extension, Nigeria’s policies must be defined by America which controls the Bretton Woods institutions.

A national Plan allows the citizens to monitor quantitatively, the projects and programmes being executed or to be executed by the government through the budgeting procedure. It is part of the definitive measures of transparency and accountability which most Nigerian governments do not cherish. So, you cannot pin your government down to anything.

Budgets these days hardly contain budget performance in terms of revenue, expenditure and other achievements like several schools, hospitals, small-scale enterprises, etc, that the government got involved in successfully and partially. These are the foundation for a new budget like items brought forward in accounting documents. The new budget should state the new reforms or transformations that would be taking place. Reforms like shifting from dominance of recurrent expenditure to capital expenditure; moving from the provision of basic needs programmes to industrialisation, and from reliance on foreign loans to dependence on domestic fund mobilisation for executing the budget.

That brings us to the issue of budget deficit and borrowing. When an economy is in recession, expansionary fiscal policy is recommended. That is, the government will need to spend more than it receives to pump prime the economy. If this is taken, Nigeria has always had a deficit budget, implying that we are always in economic recession. The fact is that even when we had a surplus in our balance of payment that made it possible to pay off our debts, we still had a deficit budget. We are so used to borrowing at the national level that stopping it will look like the collapse of the Nigerian state. The States have also followed the trend. Ordinarily, since States are largely dependent on the federal government for funds, they should promote balanced budget.

The States are like a schoolboy who depends on his parents for school fees and feeding allowance but goes about borrowing from classmates. Definitely, it is the parents that will surely pay the debt. The debt forgiveness mentality plays a major role in the process. Having enjoyed debt forgiveness in the past, the federal government is always in the credit market and does not caution the State governments in participating in the market. Our Presidents don’t feel ashamed when they are begging for debt forgiveness in international forum where issues on global development are being discussed. Not less than twice I have watched the countenance of some Presidents, even from Africa, while they looked at our president with disdain when issues of debt forgiveness for African countries was raised.

In most cases, the government, both at the federal and state cannot show the product of loans, except those lent by institutions like the World Bank or African Development Bank for specific projects which are monitored by the lending institutions. In other cases, the loans are stolen and transferred abroad while we are paying the loans. In some other cases, the loans are diverted to projects other than what the proposal stated. There was a case of loans obtained based on establishing an international car park in the border of the State but diverted to finance the election of a politician in the State. The politician eventually lost the election but the citizens of the State have to be taxed to pay the loan. Somebody as “Nigeria we hail thee”.

Transformation in budgeting should commence subsequently at the State and federal level. Now that local government will enjoy some financial autonomy and therefore budgeting process, they should be legally barred from contracting foreign loans. They have no business participating in the market. They should promote balanced budget where proposed expenditures must equal the expected revenues from federal and internal sources. The State government that cannot mobilise, from records, up to 40 percent of its total budget from IGR should not be supported to contract foreign loans. The States should engage in a balanced budget. The federal government budget should shift away from huge allocations to recurrent expenditure towards capital expenditure for capital formation and within the context of a welfarist state.

Sheriffdeen A. Tella, Ph.D.

Strictly Personal

African Union must ensure Sudan civilians are protected, By Joyce Banda

Published

4 weeks ago

October 25, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The 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.