Troubling data from our prisons

‘74% of prison inmates un-convicted’

About 35,000 (representing about 74 per cent) of the over 48,000 inmates languishing in Nigerian prisoners are un-convicted while majority had spent years in jail before their trial commenced, a rights group has said.

The Legal Officer, African Program of Open Society Justice Initiative Professor Chidi Odinkalu made the remarks yesterday at a press conference organized by the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre (REPLACE) in Abuja.

I wonder if these statistics are true. I do not trust the government's numbers, but I am just as dubious of numbers introduced by NGOs and multilateral agencies. It is quite unfortunate because accurate statistics are vital for economic planning.

It would not be so bad if the government were using real statistics in its internal planning while feeding we the people rosy-but-fake statistics. Unfortunately, I fear our government deceives itself every bit as much as it deceives us.

As for the NGOs and multilateral agencies, lets just say that I am continuously amazed at their ability to project population (and health, education, etc) figures for Nigeria when we have never had a fully credible census at any point in our history.

Nonetheless, this NGO, the Rights Enforcement and Public Law Centre, makes a very important point. It doesn't matter if the "real" percentage is 74 or 54 or 94, the truth is the majority of citizens languishing in our prisons have not been convicted of anything. And many of them, who might actually be innocent, end up serving more time awaiting trial than they would have been sentenced to if they had been found guilty.

Inland Waterways to become Inland Superhighways

Dredging of the River Niger from Baro to the coast is mostly complete. The Federal Government has insisted from time to time since July that there are plans to dredge the River Benue as well. It is apparently part of the Ministry of Transportations "Nigerian Transportation Masterplan"

The dredging of the two major rivers is part of a drive to use the inland waterways as commercial corridors, as shown in the map below (click to enlarge):

[Disclosure: I got the map from the Nigeria pages of SkyscraperCity, though I can't recall which specific thread I got it from]

Business Day's Asuquo EB on recurring crises in Jos

Culled from the excellent publication Business Day 15th September 2011.

Scapegoating "non-indigenes"

Governor Theodore Orji of Abia has just been criticized for "disengaging" (i.i. sacking) non-indigenes in the Abia State Civil Service.

Governor Fashola of Lagos State "deported" (as though they were citizens of a foreign country) 3,029 non-indigene "beggars" to their "states of origin". (If you don't trust The Nation, here is a link from NEXT).

This sort of thing has happened frequently over the decades, in every state. For the most part, you cannot predict when a state governor will whip out the "scapegoat non-indigenes" card, except when new states are created from old states; the tendency is for the old state to sack all indigenes of the new state who remain in what had until recently been a shared state bureaucracy.

I complain rather frequently that not much discourse or debate occurs before policy is implemented in Nigeria. But it is not just a before-the-fact problem, it is an after-the-fact problem too. We go around in circles on issues (for example electricity) not simply because not much thought went into the policy in the first place, but because after the policy has failed nobody really gives much thought to why it failed. The popular thing is to classify the failure as being the result of "corruption" or "the Nigerian factor" or blame whichever region/ethnicity/religion of the country we do not belong to, blah, blah, blah.

Then a few months or years pass, and we do the same thing again, with the usual fanfare (and lack of discourse and debate), only be be shocked, shocked I tell you, when the thing doesn't work as well as promised.

Let me ask a question.

What was the effect on important statistics (e.g. unemployment, poverty, crime rate, etc) of sacking non-indigenes from your state civil service or deporting "non-indigene" beggars to their states of origin?

I don't just mean in the present instance (Orji and Fashola) but historically. Our states have done things like this so many times that we have (or should have) built up more than enough data to make an empirical, peer-reviewable set of findings on the efficacy of scapegoating non-indigenes in the name of serving indigenes.

Do you know of any studies of said effects?

I don't.

Yet our states keep doing it.

I am not going to pretend that I have the hard data. Nobody does, because far too many people don't care, and the few of us who do (me, for example) can have no access to the data because none of our state (or federal or local) governments keeps any such data. If you ask them, they will insist that the programme had fantastic and wonderful effects ... but then our governments lie to us so unabashedly that it has actually become counterproductive for them, in the sense that nobody in Nigeria really believes the government even when the government is telling the truth (assuming they ever do).

So no, I won't pretend to have the data.

But using my ordinary human powers of observation, it occurs to me that scapegoating non-indigenes has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the welfare of indigenes. It is not that it makes their lives worse or makes their lives better, it is that IT HAS NO EFFECT.

It is cruelty for cruelty's sake.

The political/economic powers-that-be and leaders of thought, rather than admit they have no idea how to improve their state, distract and misdirect people by labeling non-indigenes as the source of the state's problems. Getting rid of the "foreigners" (their Nigerian citizenship counting for nothing) is portrayed as the only solution available to the "Action Governor", who duly take action.

In the warped world of our public discourse, this actually garners them popularity from a section of their state's population; lets face it, human beings in general are rather prone to this type of argument. Indeed, the saddest part of the saga is that those sacked or deported are the lucky ones; the unlucky ones become the targets of violent mobs of unemployed, unemployable, destitute youths who see what possessions the non-indigenes have as having been taken at the expense of "sons of the soil" like themselves.

On a different but similar note ....

Former FCT Minister Nasir El-Rufai rendered as many as (or more than) 800,000 people homeless by bulldozing their dwellings in and around Abuja. According to him, "Abuja is not for everyone," by which he meant the Capital City of the Federal Republic was not meant for the poor. It was not built for poor economic migrants, people El-Rufai thought should go back to their states of origin instead of messing up his shiny-shiny Abuja with their dishevelled presence. The people who should have questioned El-Rufai, be they legislators or the Nigerian commentariat, were full of praise for him for trying to reimpose the outdated, obsolete, unrealistic-from-day-one Abuja "masterplan".

But seriously, does anyone think that any amount of bulldozing will stop poor people from migrating to Abuja? And does anyone think the high cost of accommodation in the city won't inspire the creation of "informal" settlements?

If you don't masterplan for poor people showing up, that won't stop poor people from showing up. Why was there no debate and no discussion of replacing the unrealistic masterplan with a new one that took REALITY into consideration?

I just don't understand how and why it is politically and socially acceptable to try to deport Nigerians from Abuja or any other state in which they live. Because that is all they are doing ... trying.

Eventually, the people return, and in bigger numbers.

You can adapt your development planning model (assuming any exists) to reflect rational and realistic expectations in terms of the influx of economic migrants, or you can continue trying to deceive people that you are doing something by harassing, discriminating against and or deporting non-indigenes.

Central Bank

You've probably heard by now that the Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Asset Management Company have "nationalized" four banks.

I've been an advocate of forthrightly and determinedly fixing the mess in our banking industry ... but I hope someone, somewhere is keeping a tally of the cost. We've spent billions so far, and it looks like we will spend billions more.

I am on record, on this blog, as saying the Federal Republic could probably afford to spend $10 billion (=N=1.5 trillion). At the time, this seems the most trustworthy estimate for the amount of "toxic assets" on our banks' books. This being Nigeria, I am not sure what we have spent so far; I would like to know if we have breached the $10 billion barrier -- because if we have, my opinion on the continued bailout will change.

In other Central Bank news, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor, wants =N=2 trillion in pension funding unlocked so it can be used as capital to finance infrastructure projects.

Let me choose my words correctly.

The thing about Sanusi is he is a politicians masquerading as a Central Banker. Wait, wait, before you get the wrong idea, I mean it in the best way possible.

When he was first appointed to head the CBN, I was happy about the appointment.

Most public figures in Nigeria are "blank"; as a citizen, you have no idea what is in their mind. We shouldn't be surprised, because most of them don't have anything in their mind beyond the acquisition of money, power, women or some combination of the aforementioned. I am frequently dismayed by the realization that people in positions of economic and political power do not seem to have spent so much as one second thinking deeply about the issues.

When they are forced to express an opinion, they just regurgitate, as though it were fact, one of several colloquial assumptions that float around in Nigerian public discourse. The decisions we make, and actions we take, based on these assumptions have generally led us down the wrong path. Yet, no one ever truly interrogates these assumptions, or subjects them to empirical analysis.

Sanusi, on the other hand, was someone for whom I could say I had some idea of what his thought-out opinions were on the issues. I had been reading his essays and transcribed speeches for years before his CBN appointment. Sometimes I agreed with him, sometimes I did not, but you could always tell that he was thinking and not simply regurgitating.

He always sounded like a politician (hence my comment above, which was meant, as I say, in the best possible sense). He never, too my knowledge, wrote about the intricacies of the banking system or of national/continental/global finance. It was mostly sociopolitical and sociocultural commentary, and his comments on economic issues were less the data projections of a banker and more the talk of a politician advocating a development agenda.

Thus, I am not surprised that Sanusi has been using his CBN position to interject himself in economic policy areas that lie outside the constitutional remit of a Central Bank governor.

He has intervened in the Agricultural industry. He has intervened in the Electricity industry. And he is intervening in Infrastructure. And while I am still for the most part supportive of his interventions in the Banking/Insurance/Finance sector, I will be honest and tell you that I think some of his actions should have been policy decisions of the federal executive and legislature in tandem ... and not the decision of a single man.

I'd like to say that Central Bank governors are not elected, and that certain kinds of decisions are appropriately left to branches of the government that are elected ... but it is a difficult argument to make when those branches of government are intellectually moribund. Whatever is "constitutionally" proper, the unfortunate "practical" reality is if Sanusi waits for the Aso Rock and the Assembly to generate/initiate and legislate/approve strategically necessary initiatives, he (and we the people) will be waiting forever.

But this, ironically, is my problem with Sanusi's desire to unlock the pension funds for the purpose of infrastructure investment.

Entities like the IMF and World Bank are wrong when they say we should make the investment environment suitable for "foreign investors".

Our strategic priority is, was, and will always be making the investment environment suitable for domestic investment. Nigeria will not be saved or transformed by outside investors; if anything those foreign investors will only arrive in bulk to join in chopping after we Nigerians have already done all of the heavy lifting of economic transformation.

As such, it would of major benefit if we could unlock pension funds for investment in capital infrastructure.

The problem is Nigeria's political, constitutional, legal and policy framework are ... problematic. The way we handle major infrastructural projects, even in supposed showcase states like Lagos, is ... problematic. Our regulatory framework is ... problematic. Our law (and contract) enforcement is .... problematic. Our system of documentation and data-gathering has produced a country that thinks all of its football players are over-aged, and that doubts every Census that has ever been held.

In fact, Sanusi knows the environment is problematic. If he didn't, he wouldn't be trying so hard, and so often to bypass the Federal Government and essentially dictate Nigerian development policy from his perch at the Central Bank. Everything that Sanusi does is a loud announcement of his lack of confidence not only in the executive and legislature, but in the judiciary too. Heck, Sanusi has become the judge, jury and .... the man who sacks errant bank bosses who should probably be behind bars.

Do we really want to pour our PENSION funds into such an environment?

George W. Bush, the ex-president of the United States, suggested investing his country's pension assets in the stock market. Had his plan succeeded, the US social security fund would have taken a massive hit. Yes, this is a simplification of what Bush planned, I know, but you get why I am concerned.

We shouldn't put the cart before the horse.

Reforms first. Investment later. Without the reforms, the investment will likely be wasted.

Sanusi should have run for President. And he and his allies should have built a multi-ethnic political faction to fill enough Assembly seats and state governor's mansions to put a reform agenda squarely in practice ... as a prelude to subsequent massive investment in infrastructure.

PS: It has not escaped my attention that the =N=2 trillion that Sanusi is seeking to unlock for Infrastructure is roughly equivalent (when converted) to the $12 billion that Nigeria gifted the Paris Club in exchange for what was called debt cancellation. I have argued (in less detail on this blog; in greater detail elsewhere) that Nigeria would have been better off spending that money on Infrastructure, using it to leverage even more investment than the $12 billion corpus. Alas, in Nigerian "democracy" there is no real debate about issues; things just happen without anybody inquiring empirically as to whether there is a better thing we could have done with the resources. Say to anyone, "but this is a waste", and they will say to you "Well, if they didn't spend it on XYZ, it just would have been stolen anyway." Which says a lot. All said and done, Nigeria borrowed something like $19 billion from the Paris Club, but paid the Paris Club something between $55 billion and $60 billion -- this being Nigeria, the exact numbers are unclear.

Asuquo E.B.

This image is culled from BUSINESS DAY.

I am a daily reader of the excellent newspaper Business Day. For the record, they have paid me nothing for the "endorsement".

Nor have I received anything for telling you this: "Asuquo E.B.", their resident editorial cartoonist, is quite good at his craft. His jabs are pithy and well-directed 98% of the time.

Per the other 2%, well, he did something I don't think anyone in his position should do -- he took sides during the 2011 Presidential Election. He is a citizen, fully entitled to cast his vote for the candidate of his choice, but there is a difference between a satirist and a political propagandist, and Asuquo's election-season bias affected his work.

Still, no two people agree on everything all the time.

I look forward to enjoying Asuquo E.B.'s work for years to come.

And just in case anyone is wondering, I am NOT opposed to interest-free banking (a.k.a. "Islamic Banking"). We should do whatever it takes to bring the majority of Nigerians into the banking system. Indeed, we should forget about what other countries do or do not do and stop trying to mimic Europe, North America or West Asia (a.k.a. the "Middle East"). A proper banking system suited to the environment of Nigeria would be a mix of forms that are otherwise considered "formal", "informal", and "traditional". Somehow, we have to draw it all together into a larger, stronger whole. And if the introduction of interest-free banking will spur on a deepening of the capital market in parts of the country that are currently "under-banked", then I am all for it.

Explain it to me

Someone I know accused one of our state governors of staging a robbery. State funds meant to pay off workers in a sector disadvantaged by state government policy were taken from the ministry building by "armed robbers".

Someone else I know got angry about what he felt was a baseless accusation.

They began to argue.

I kept quiet and observed.

I find that when I express my views on Nigerian issues amongst my fellow citizens, I am always the statistically negligible minority viewpoint. Let me put it like this, if we were in the First Republic, the only way to unify the supporters of the NPC, AG, NCNC, UMBC, COR and NEPU would be to ask me to speak on the issues facing the First Republic -- instantaneously, they would all gang up to shout me down. And so we would march toward Civil War.

But I digress.

I won't say the governor's name, because this blog post is not about the governor. It is about we the people, we the citizens of the federal republic, as exemplified by these two arguing acquaintances.

The first guy stuck to his guns, insisting Governor XYZ was a crook who obviously staged the robbery so he could pocket the funds, and then issue new funds for the payoff.

You would think the second guy would restrict his argument to telling the first guy that he had no proof and was merely contributing to the ever-growing stack of rumours inundating Nigeria. This would actually be a conclusive, indisputable point.

But no, that is not what he did.

The second guy, instead, said to the first guy "Governor XYZ would not stoop so low" as to stage a robbery.

This baffled me. No, I should say I was flabbergasted. It was without a doubt the stupidest thing I had ever heard.

Let me explain. Governor XYZ won the 2011 gubernatorial elections after a lot of violence, vice and avarice. The "vice and avarice" were camouflaged, but the violence was not. The capital city of the state witnessed, in broad daylight, a running battle between thugs loyal to the Governor and thugs loyal to the Governor's former godfather. They set buildings and vehicles on fire, among other things.

And this is the man that the second guy says "would not stoop so low" as to carry out petty theft?

So let me get this straight.

Governor XYZ will gladly involve himself in mindless, thuggish violence, endangering the security of the citizens of his state, and promoting communal violence .... but is too good for petty theft?

That doesn't make a shred of sense. And he is not alone. It is bad enough that so many of my countrymen doggedly defend their favoured politicians, but what I don not understand is how they bring themselves to believe certain things about those politicians when we can all clearly see by their in broad daylight actions that they are nothing like what their supporters profess to believe them to be.

People will see a politician who has been corruptly looting his entire political career, and tell you they expect him to lead the fight against corruption. That doesn't make sense.

People see a politician who is part of the reason armed militia and communal violence are so pervasive, and tell you they expect him to improve public security. That makes no sense.

People see a politician who would be in prison if our police force, prosecution services and judiciary were efficient, and tell you he is the man to reform all those institutions. Why would you think that?

He wouldn't stoop so low? This from a man who saw the same thing I saw? The same thing everybody saw? My brother, he has already in your full view stooped lower.

Politics, Politicking and Politicians

[NOTE: This post should have gone up last weekend]

Weekly Trust just published an interview with new Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha. It is your usual, standard, run-of-the-mill political interview, with the usual question and the usual answers, except for one thing -- the first question:

In the past twelve years you have changed political parties like eight times. Does that mean we’ll see you ditching APGA anytime soon?

Governor Okorocha's response was ... what you would expect him to say. But the things our politicians do in search of power bespeaks the ultimate question of what they really stand for. There is pragmatism, and then there is blowing anywhere the wind is blowing as opposed to building an institutional structure that keeps people safe. The wind tends to blow powerfully in the wrong direction, and part of the reason people create government is to protect them against the wind.

As a side note, Daily Times reports Reuben Abati will take over as President Jonathan's official spokesman.

If you don't know, Mr. Abati is on the editorial and management staff of the Guardian and is a long-time, influential columnist on the paper. Sometimes his columns make sense and sometimes they don't (a bit like my blog, some of you might say).

On a serious note the Nigerian media industry suffers because of its financial dependence. The federal- and state-owned media are controlled by the governments, which limits their editorial freedom. Alas, the privately-owned media are bankrolled by powerful plutocrats and politicians, which limits their editorial freedom too. The politicians and the plutocrats have similar interests, so while the private press have a longer leash than their government-owned counterparts, there is only so far they can go in criticizing the status quo -- and there are specific individuals they are not free to criticize.

One of the private newspapers has vociferously criticized everything CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has done. At first I couldn't figure out why they were so opposed even to relatively uncontroversial things ... until I discovered the newspaper was owned by the brother of one of the banking chiefs Sanusi threw out. The woman had stolen from her bank and essentially bankrupted it, but that didn't matter to her brother's paper, which is still on a mission of vengeance.

The political preferences of the paper owners also explains why some politicians are praised despite doing awful things, while other politicians have their dirty laundry washed in public. That, and "brown paper bag" journalism.

In any case, one of the most cynically amusing aspects of politics all over the world (and it does happen all over the world) is when a person gets a lucrative government job and starts defending the very things they criticized when they were outside government. As soon as he settles in, Mr. Abati will start intelligently explaining to us all why everything he used to claim was bad is in fact really quite good.

Diezani's dodgy deals

You should read this investigative report from NEXT.

I suppose everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but I am cynically amused that Femi Falana has been retained to defend the interests of the beneficiaries of this reportedly dodgy deal. There is a reason most Nigerians don't take the protestations of "progressives" seriously ....

Former minister of petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke, (L) shakes hands with then acting President Goodluck Jonathan after taking the oath of office during the swearing-in ceremony of new ministers in Abuja, April 6, 2010.
Photo Credit: NEXT

Soba back on seat

Back in March of 2011, I wrote this blog post titled "Convivial Form, Violent Substance". At the top of the post is a picture of bruised and battered Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani, a female politician from Kaduna State who was brutally beaten up by party political thugs on the orders of Barrister Musa Soba, Kaduna State Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

Nothing happened to Barrister Soba. The police did not arrest or investigate him. His party did not sanction him. Society did not ostracize him.

Part of me wants to be angry with we the citizens of Nigeria, because it seems like we do not care about important things like this. On the other hand, part of me realizes that things like this are NORMAL in our federal republic. For most citizens, getting upset at this is like getting upset at the sunrise, the sunset and the change of seasons. It is part of the natural order, and frankly the only thing that would have surprised people would have been if Barrister Soba did not behave the way he did.

I bring him up again because the Kaduna State ACN suspended Barrister Soba last month, not for his criminality, but because the party didn't do well in the State. It is bad enough that this is the only reason they would suspend him ...

... but what makes it worse is the national ACN (a euphemism for ex-Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos) "nullified the suspension", as reported by the newspaper NEXT.

So, Barrister Soba is back in charge of the Kaduna State ACN.

Sorry, Hajiya Halima Aminu Tijjani. It seems nobody but me gives a damn about you.