On the Easter period just ended, I reflected on the mindless quest for materialism by Nigerian Christians, especially our pastors and priests. It is worrisome what this tendency is doing to our collective sense of values.
Christians are united in the person of Jesus Christ. The Christian faithful is called upon to model their lives after the life and example of Christ, and thereby act in accordance with the greatest of the commandments – to love God, and to love our neighbour.
Christians are divided on the third dimension – the self: If we are told to love God and to love our neighbor, what about ourselves? The traditional church provides a clear, unequivocal answer: we are to deny ourselves, because there is nothing in this world that follows us to the grave; the things of the world are ephemeral, transient, and vainglorious. Although the new movement understands this truism about the transience of possessions, it is often noted that the Almighty carried our cross and the same Almighty gave man the earth and all of its fullness for his possession; so what can be wrong with a man attempting to possess his possessions and live a better life?
Both explanations may be right, but there is more to this, in my view. The Christian world is divided into pastors and laity, and each has been given clear instructions on how to fulfill their various mandates. Here’s how I see it:
The world that existed when Christ assumed flesh was a world of injustice. The Roman Empire had conquered and ruled Palestine; the people were subjugated and made unwilling citizens of Rome. Within the country, the people further subdivided into a class society, with influential elite groups seeking to control thought, politics, and religion. Among these elite groups were the wealthy tax collectors representing the colonisers, an educated class that represented the state and served the interests of two sets of aristocrats – the puritanical Pharisees and the aristocratic Sadducees. These elite groups used the instruments of state to deal with commoners that did not obey laws and conventions that they extracted from existing religious and secular sources and often distorted for their own ends.
This was not how it was in the beginning, when the Israelites returned from self-imposed exile in Egypt. In sharing the possessions they found in their Promised Land, one Israeli tribe was dispossessed. This priestly tribe was created and set apart, stripped of all material possessions including landed property, and made to be the responsibility of the people for their daily upkeep and other material sustenance. The people did not want this tribe to be distracted by the search for material possessions in fulfilling their pastoral mission.
Nevertheless, the Bible records how, within this class, sons of priests later sought to escape this mandate by helping themselves to the temple offerings, and how God reacted to this sacrilege. It was not as if the sons of priests did not understand the rules – they sought a different interpretation of how to possess their possessions, just as the Pharisees and Sadducees were doing at the time that Christ took human flesh and waged His Battle of Salvation.
The Battle of Salvation sought to throw away old discredited ideas propagated by the religious aristocrats, without distorting the original Laws of Moses. One of the ways that this was eventually accomplished was the installation of a new type of priesthood that fulfilled the original plan. Most of those that Christ chose for pastoral missions were commoners, and his instructions to them left no room for ambiguity: In their journeys of evangelization, they were to travel light, shun material possessions, and depend for their sustenance solely on the goodwill of the people to whom they preached this Good News. For this group, there would be nothing like material demands from parents, brothers, sisters, relations, or neighbours; all such demands would be filtered through their willingness to listen to and subscribe to the Faith.
How did Christ’s chosen ones, our founding fathers in the pastoral mandate, the apostles, discharge their mandate? Virtually all suffered their master’s fate for daring to speak truth to power and insist on justice for the poor. Peter was martyred in Rome, Andrew and Philip were crucified on a cross, King Herod put James to death by the sword, Bartholomew was whipped to death, and John the Evangelist miraculously survived after he was immersed in burning oil. And so on.
What about the followers? They were also given clear and elaborate instructions on how to ensure that, in the search to possess possessions, justice and fair-play prevailed. Christ also had words of consolation for those unable to make it, asking them not to worry because the Almighty knows and would supply their basic needs. He also warned of the injustices and evils that accompany inordinate attempts to acquire wealth.
Christ could have been speaking to our countrymen today. In our search for wealth and power, we literally sacrifice fellow mortals, shoot enemies and competitors to death, poison, disable, or tear reputations of office colleagues to shreds, and subject the poor faithful to unimaginable indignities and injustices. Are these not the lot of Nigeria’s avaricious politicians, grasping entrepreneurs, ambitious civil servants, and prosperity preachers who align with the god of wealth? In Nigeria, our latter-day apostles are divided between those consistently pleading the cause of the poor by decrying injustices in economic and social order created by mindless scramble for our national patrimony, and those who side with politicians and captains of industry to accumulate vast wealth, milk their poor congregation dry through tithing and seed sowing, and use the proceeds to live ostentatious lifestyles exemplified by opulent mansions, exotic cars, and private jets.
These latter-day apostles have transformed into a jet-setting elite with flourishing businesses, educational institutions, and other commercial ventures that put them far and above wealthy members of their congregations. Their tendencies have contributed to the devastation of our sense of values.
Will these last? I remember Gamaliel. I am also mindful of history. In the Americas, from where material Christianity originated, great congregations, often husband-wife partnerships, have collapsed from scandals bordering on infidelity, financial fraud, and fake miracles. In Europe, the Anglican Church has almost collapsed from its approval of Sodomy and the decision to allow gays as heads of congregations. It would appear that the Catholic Church, the last bastion of rigid biblical theology, is going to be caught up in this embarrassment, judging from unhappy stories of its priests exposed as pedophiles and sex maniacs.
These are unhappy reflections on Christendom for the Easter period just ended. Mind you, I have not set out to judge priests and pastors. I do know, however, that the life and example of Christ indicate that wealth is often the first temptation for pastors on the journey of evangelisation. Wealth is attractive and magnetic, for it symbolizes prestige, power, luxury and authority and, as shown in Matthew 4:9, is one of the three powerful tools that Satan uses to draw pastors away from this mission.
Musings of a suitably mystified Nigerian, mystified at the way that the continent of Africa and its peoples manage to often snatch defeats from the jaws of victory.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Power Mongers & the Rest of Us
I like the simple and the ideal, and I love keeping to a gentleman agreement. And so, at the risk of going against the current tide of public propaganda, I would like to toe a different line, to remind us of where we are coming from, and what we ought to have done at this hour of political need in Nigeria.
There are laws and conventions that could have been used to rescue Nigeria from her current crisis of governance. There are also persons and institutions that, in my view, failed woefully to take advantage of these laws and conventions, in order to save the nation from her needless political troubles. These persons are our President, members of the Federal Executive Council, members of the National Assembly, and members of the National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It has become obvious that, rather than use either the law or the convention of the PDP to resolve the problem, these individual and corporate persons have been busy chasing shadows, and thereby plunged this country into an avoidable political crisis.
I am sure the average person likes tasks that are simple, uncomplicated, and easy to execute. Both Sections 144 and 145 of the 1999 Constitution that the National Assembly is rushing to amend are all of these. They could have been invoked to help us out of our current political problems without this amendment, if the National Assembly, as well as Dora Akunyili and her colleagues in the Federal Executive Council have mustered the political will.
Section 145 encourages the President to transmit a letter of notice to the National Assembly, if he is proceeding on an extended medical trip. Once the National Assembly receives this letter, Goodluck Jonathan automatically becomes “acting” president. He is thus empowered to carry out the executive functions of the absent President, but in an acting capacity.
The issue here is that this Section 145 does not force the President to transmit this letter under any circumstance – it is the President’s choice whether he wants to do so or not. And so, we can accuse the president of bad faith, we can accuse him of being insensitive to the demands of governance, we can heap a host of moral accusations on our president, but we cannot accuse the President of violating the constitution, should he fail to transmit this letter.
If he fails to transmit this letter and the country is burning, what options are there in the constitution, then, to deal with such a leader who has decided to take the symbol of his presidential authority to a hospital bed and asked the country to await his return before serious and pending executive decisions are taken?
It is only members of the Federal Executive Council of the Federation that can checkmate the President, if he is found to be incapable of executing his mandate, and does not want to let go. The FEC is empowered, under Section 144, to declare that a President is incapacitated, and to transmit such a declaration to the National Assembly. On getting this declaration, the Senate President is mandated to constitute a medical panel to prove or disprove what the declaration says. If the medical team corroborates the FEC declaration, the Vice President automatically moves up to become, not an acting, but a substantive President!
From the foregoing, those who have failed the country are (a) the President of the country and (b) members of the federal executive council. For the avoidance of doubt, there is nowhere in the two sections (144 & 145) where the 1999 constitution empowers the National Assembly to play a lead role in making, or unilaterally doing anything that would transit Goodluck Jonathan either to an acting or to a substantive president.
The National Assembly unilateral power to act resides elsewhere, in Section 143. This section empowers the National Assembly to impeach the President for act(s) which two-thirds of its members consider as “gross misconduct in the performance of the functions of his office.” Thus, if the Senate had wanted to make Jonathan a substantive president, the president’s action – leaving the nation in limbo for 90 days with no one at the helm – could very easily have qualified as “gross misconduct.”
The President is in error by not transmitting the letter; members of FEC dithered over what to do, and the National Assembly exceeded its bounds, and went outside its brief to invoke a strange, illegal, and unconstitutional resolution, which the FEC in another bizarre twist accepted, in order to make Goodluck Jonathan the “acting” president of Nigeria.
Having apportioned blames where they are due, I would still go ahead to show understanding with the actions and inactions of the President, the National Assembly, and the Federal Executive Council. They are unwilling actors who are being variously called upon to grapple with and resolve an inherited problem. That problem is the north-south leadership question, which the PDP constitution sought to resolve by its power rotation principle.
In my view, this power rotation principle, for the so-called North and the amorphous South, worked well in the legislative branch during the Obasanjo presidency. For instance, we witnessed the spectacle of senators from each of the five states in the South East (where the position of Senate President was zoned) successively having a taste of the Chair. It was instructive that once a senate president was felled by the proverbial “banana peels”, Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu was never asked to step up and occupy the chair. The same zoning arrangement worked in the House, where the first speaker, Salisu Buhari, was disgraced, and Ghali Na’Abba took over from him as speaker, rather than Chibudom Nwuche who was then the deputy speaker. When Na’Abba failed to return to the House in 2003, the position still went to Aminu Masari from the same zone. For many of us, this was a strange arrangement, but it turned out to resolve the leadership struggle. I also recall that whenever any crisis of confidence over this arrangement erupted, the PDP faithful would quickly rally and stoutly defend their power rotation convention, fending off critics by insisting that it was a “family affair.”
This “family affair” strategy also worked in the executive branch, even though with hitches. In 1999, all three parties (AD, APP and PDP) fielded Yoruba politicians as their presidential candidates. Both AD and APP settled on a common (AD) candidate, Olu Falae. The entire country nodded in agreement to this unwritten agreement to benefit the South West - and the south in general. After the election, General Obasanjo, a Yoruba, was given the first shot at the Presidency in order to compensate this ethnic block for the Abiola Presidency that was denied by a band of power mongers.
It is also instructive that in 2007, the three major parties (AC, ANPP, and PDP) once again fielded only northerners as their flag bearers, thus indicating a tacit support of the PDP power rotation principle. This does not downplay the fact that there were hitches, mostly prompted by what many saw as OBJ’s lust for power. The first hitch was in 2003, when President Obasanjo was expected to yield the presidency to the North, but bulldozed his way to a second term of office. Not content with this, he (or his acolytes as he said) pushed for a third-term of office, and it took the heroic challenges of Vice President Atiku, the human rights community, the Nigerian press, and the National Assembly to nip this ambition in the bud.
Looking back at this period when this gentleman agreement on power rotation was respected (despite occasional executive power mongering), it would have been “normal”, ideal, and constitutional if the same “family affair” strategy was applied in the present case by the PDP, in any of the following ways:
• By prior arrangement, the Vice President resigns his office, the Federal Executive Council declares the president incapacitated, and whichever northerner eventually emerges as president re-appoints Goodluck Jonathan as Vice President to complete the tenure;
• The PDP-dominated National Assembly impeaches both President Yar’Adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, thus paving the way for either the Senate President (a northerner) or the Chief Justice (another northerner) to mount the throne in order to organize a quick election at which a northerner would probably be elected to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure, with a south-south governor as running mate. This would have been a quick way to dispense with the trouble that was dumped on us by the departing OBJ.
Both strategies would not have violated the 1999 constitution, they would validate the PDP power sharing agreement under which the country has been governed in the last 10 years, and they would have saved us from this needless dangerous drama. It may not be the best arrangement, but it would have secured peace and harmony for us, until such a time that we would eventually outgrow our parochial tendencies in our perpetual struggle for selfish power in Nigeria.
I like the simple and the ideal, and I like people who keep their words and respect gentlemen agreements. But I am also mindful that we live in a nation with a few privileged, deceitful individuals who would cheat, given half a chance. And this, to me, is at the root of our current political problem.
There are laws and conventions that could have been used to rescue Nigeria from her current crisis of governance. There are also persons and institutions that, in my view, failed woefully to take advantage of these laws and conventions, in order to save the nation from her needless political troubles. These persons are our President, members of the Federal Executive Council, members of the National Assembly, and members of the National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It has become obvious that, rather than use either the law or the convention of the PDP to resolve the problem, these individual and corporate persons have been busy chasing shadows, and thereby plunged this country into an avoidable political crisis.
I am sure the average person likes tasks that are simple, uncomplicated, and easy to execute. Both Sections 144 and 145 of the 1999 Constitution that the National Assembly is rushing to amend are all of these. They could have been invoked to help us out of our current political problems without this amendment, if the National Assembly, as well as Dora Akunyili and her colleagues in the Federal Executive Council have mustered the political will.
Section 145 encourages the President to transmit a letter of notice to the National Assembly, if he is proceeding on an extended medical trip. Once the National Assembly receives this letter, Goodluck Jonathan automatically becomes “acting” president. He is thus empowered to carry out the executive functions of the absent President, but in an acting capacity.
The issue here is that this Section 145 does not force the President to transmit this letter under any circumstance – it is the President’s choice whether he wants to do so or not. And so, we can accuse the president of bad faith, we can accuse him of being insensitive to the demands of governance, we can heap a host of moral accusations on our president, but we cannot accuse the President of violating the constitution, should he fail to transmit this letter.
If he fails to transmit this letter and the country is burning, what options are there in the constitution, then, to deal with such a leader who has decided to take the symbol of his presidential authority to a hospital bed and asked the country to await his return before serious and pending executive decisions are taken?
It is only members of the Federal Executive Council of the Federation that can checkmate the President, if he is found to be incapable of executing his mandate, and does not want to let go. The FEC is empowered, under Section 144, to declare that a President is incapacitated, and to transmit such a declaration to the National Assembly. On getting this declaration, the Senate President is mandated to constitute a medical panel to prove or disprove what the declaration says. If the medical team corroborates the FEC declaration, the Vice President automatically moves up to become, not an acting, but a substantive President!
From the foregoing, those who have failed the country are (a) the President of the country and (b) members of the federal executive council. For the avoidance of doubt, there is nowhere in the two sections (144 & 145) where the 1999 constitution empowers the National Assembly to play a lead role in making, or unilaterally doing anything that would transit Goodluck Jonathan either to an acting or to a substantive president.
The National Assembly unilateral power to act resides elsewhere, in Section 143. This section empowers the National Assembly to impeach the President for act(s) which two-thirds of its members consider as “gross misconduct in the performance of the functions of his office.” Thus, if the Senate had wanted to make Jonathan a substantive president, the president’s action – leaving the nation in limbo for 90 days with no one at the helm – could very easily have qualified as “gross misconduct.”
The President is in error by not transmitting the letter; members of FEC dithered over what to do, and the National Assembly exceeded its bounds, and went outside its brief to invoke a strange, illegal, and unconstitutional resolution, which the FEC in another bizarre twist accepted, in order to make Goodluck Jonathan the “acting” president of Nigeria.
Having apportioned blames where they are due, I would still go ahead to show understanding with the actions and inactions of the President, the National Assembly, and the Federal Executive Council. They are unwilling actors who are being variously called upon to grapple with and resolve an inherited problem. That problem is the north-south leadership question, which the PDP constitution sought to resolve by its power rotation principle.
In my view, this power rotation principle, for the so-called North and the amorphous South, worked well in the legislative branch during the Obasanjo presidency. For instance, we witnessed the spectacle of senators from each of the five states in the South East (where the position of Senate President was zoned) successively having a taste of the Chair. It was instructive that once a senate president was felled by the proverbial “banana peels”, Deputy Senate President Ibrahim Mantu was never asked to step up and occupy the chair. The same zoning arrangement worked in the House, where the first speaker, Salisu Buhari, was disgraced, and Ghali Na’Abba took over from him as speaker, rather than Chibudom Nwuche who was then the deputy speaker. When Na’Abba failed to return to the House in 2003, the position still went to Aminu Masari from the same zone. For many of us, this was a strange arrangement, but it turned out to resolve the leadership struggle. I also recall that whenever any crisis of confidence over this arrangement erupted, the PDP faithful would quickly rally and stoutly defend their power rotation convention, fending off critics by insisting that it was a “family affair.”
This “family affair” strategy also worked in the executive branch, even though with hitches. In 1999, all three parties (AD, APP and PDP) fielded Yoruba politicians as their presidential candidates. Both AD and APP settled on a common (AD) candidate, Olu Falae. The entire country nodded in agreement to this unwritten agreement to benefit the South West - and the south in general. After the election, General Obasanjo, a Yoruba, was given the first shot at the Presidency in order to compensate this ethnic block for the Abiola Presidency that was denied by a band of power mongers.
It is also instructive that in 2007, the three major parties (AC, ANPP, and PDP) once again fielded only northerners as their flag bearers, thus indicating a tacit support of the PDP power rotation principle. This does not downplay the fact that there were hitches, mostly prompted by what many saw as OBJ’s lust for power. The first hitch was in 2003, when President Obasanjo was expected to yield the presidency to the North, but bulldozed his way to a second term of office. Not content with this, he (or his acolytes as he said) pushed for a third-term of office, and it took the heroic challenges of Vice President Atiku, the human rights community, the Nigerian press, and the National Assembly to nip this ambition in the bud.
Looking back at this period when this gentleman agreement on power rotation was respected (despite occasional executive power mongering), it would have been “normal”, ideal, and constitutional if the same “family affair” strategy was applied in the present case by the PDP, in any of the following ways:
• By prior arrangement, the Vice President resigns his office, the Federal Executive Council declares the president incapacitated, and whichever northerner eventually emerges as president re-appoints Goodluck Jonathan as Vice President to complete the tenure;
• The PDP-dominated National Assembly impeaches both President Yar’Adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, thus paving the way for either the Senate President (a northerner) or the Chief Justice (another northerner) to mount the throne in order to organize a quick election at which a northerner would probably be elected to complete Yar’Adua’s tenure, with a south-south governor as running mate. This would have been a quick way to dispense with the trouble that was dumped on us by the departing OBJ.
Both strategies would not have violated the 1999 constitution, they would validate the PDP power sharing agreement under which the country has been governed in the last 10 years, and they would have saved us from this needless dangerous drama. It may not be the best arrangement, but it would have secured peace and harmony for us, until such a time that we would eventually outgrow our parochial tendencies in our perpetual struggle for selfish power in Nigeria.
I like the simple and the ideal, and I like people who keep their words and respect gentlemen agreements. But I am also mindful that we live in a nation with a few privileged, deceitful individuals who would cheat, given half a chance. And this, to me, is at the root of our current political problem.
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