British Airways has been criticised over its handling of a forced deportation and its treatment of Nigerian passengers on a flight from Heathrow airport. Passengers on board the 27 March BA flight to Lagos began to protest about the manhandling of Augustine Eme, a Biafran independence activist, who was allegedly being restrained by up to five police officers while pleading not to be sent back to Nigeria where he feared he would be killed. (Eme's brother has already been killed and his wife and children are missing.)

The former governor of Nigeria's Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has challenged the fraud and money-laundering charges brought against him by the anti-graft commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC]. The anti-graft agency has filed a 51-count suit against the former Ekiti governor at the Federal High Court in Lagos.

Nigeria's supreme court has begun hearing an appeal by opposition leaders against the victory of Umaru Yar'Adua, the country's president, in last year's elections.
Atiku Abubakar and Mohammadu Buhari, two opposition candidates, have asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling that upheld Yar'Adua's victory in the April 2007 vote.

On the 7th anniversary of the pledge by African Union member states to allocate 15% of national budgets to health, Nobel Prize Winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Africa Public Health Alliance 15% Now Campaign of which he is Honorary Chair have urged African Heads of State and Government not to in any way revise, drop or further delay implementing the Abuja April 2001 commitment.

For centuries, Western governments and business interests have viewed the African continent as a source of natural resources ripe for extraction. While states and other dominant actors in the global North have made linking the exploitation of the region’s unmatched natural wealth to human development a public relations standard practice, the economic benefits of mining and other resource industries still flow overwhelmingly away from the African people. This study looks at oil in the Niger Delta.

There is a good deal of reason why we should be perturbed with the rather flippant manner in which the Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhre, is treating the issue of the introduction of Genetically Modified Crops (GM crops) into Nigeria's agrarian system. At a two-day round-table meeting with stakeholders on the subject recently, the Minister clearly jumped the gun in announcing that, "the meeting is intended to produce a blueprint for the introduction of Genetically Modified crops into Nigeria.

An armed group in Nigeria's southern oil-producing region claims to have sabotaged a major oil supply pipeline belonging to Anglo-Dutch oil group Shell. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said that it had carried out the sabotage operation on Thursday evening in Rivers state, in a statement on Friday.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the World Bank's energy portfolio still fails to reap the double dividend of renewable energy technologies that would tackle both energy poverty and climate change. Nigerian economic policies shaped by World Bank and IMF recommendations, policy agreements and conditionality have so far lead to a dysfunctional electricity privatisation process, a heavy and as yet unfulfilled reliance on reform of the gas sector, and the failure to make any widespread practical progress on pro-poor, decentralised renewable energy.

Of the 50 million seedlings planted every year in the 11 northern Nigeria states worst effected by desertification, 37.5 million wither and die within two months, environmental officials say. “The 12.5 million seedlings that make it to maturity are not enough to create a deforestation-reforestation equilibrium, especially given the fact that a large number of the trees that grow are later chopped down,” Kabiru Yammama of the National Forest Conservation Council of Nigeria [NFCCN] told IRIN.

Violence was relatively low in the run-up to local elections on 29 March in Nigeria's oil-rich Rivers State but with evidence emerging of massive voting irregularities in favour of the ruling party, human rights groups warn the worst may not be over.

Jegede Ademola Oluborode looks at various marginalized groups in relation to human rights in Nigeria.

INTRODUCTION

"Burdened in the midst of hope!"

With the wave of democracy sweeping across Nigeria once again in 1999, and more fundamentally since 2003, efforts have been made towards institutional development aimed at laying political foundation for Nigeria to realize its potentials. Basic freedoms in the form of political and civil rights, whether sincere or otherwise, at least appear to have featured predominantly in these efforts. Little or no attention is however being given to economic, social and cultural rights so well encapsulated in several international and regional instruments to which Nigeria is signatory.

In a regime of neglect to crucial rights, Marginalized Groups, and their category is ever growing, suffer more. This is perhaps because, apart from contending with inattention which appears to be common fate of all, the harms and injuries faced by these groups, due to inadequate legal framework and political leadership commitment to their concerns, are gradually emerging and may dominate human rights discourse in the coming decades. Using the marginalized group as a barometer, attempt is made here to appraise human rights violations in Nigeria and predict its future situation. The Essay concludes on the note that unless there is a renewed commitment to embrace and apply human rights as vehicle of positive change, the future may only be remarkable for intense agitations and bitter protests of the marginalized.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND MARGINALIZED GROUPS IN NIGERIA

The human rights concerns and needs of Nigerians, particularly the Marginalized Groups remain unaddressed. The approach adopted below is to define and describe the human rights situation of the marginalized by variables such as disability, sexual orientation, religion, region and gender.

DISABILITY

Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria guarantees the right to freedom from discrimination in all its forms against any person. The provision may be considered applicable to persons with disabilities. Prior to 1999, the Nigerian with Disability Decree of 1993 made copious provisions for the protection of human rights of persons with disabilities. In its Section 3, provisions were made for their human rights and privileges while Section 14 established a National Commission for Persons with Disability. As beautiful as this piece of legislation is, nothing concrete has however been done to match its provisions with action. To date, the National Commission for persons with Disabilities has not taken off. Contrary to section 9 of the Decree, transport is not free for the disabled, national news and official broadcasts do not provide sign language for interpretation in accordance with section 19, while it has been difficult in the circumstance of our electoral process for the disabled to exercise their rights to vote and be voted for. In spite of the social rights guaranteed under the Act, most disabled live off begging on the city streets.

Two significant Bills for persons with disabilities were introduced at the National Assembly in year 2000 namely; (1) A Bill for an Act to provide Special Facilities for the Use of Handicapped Persons in the Public Buildings and (2) A Bill for an Act to Establish a National Commission for the Handicapped Persons and to vest it with the Responsibility for their Education and Social Development and for the Connected Purposes . Nothing significant came out of these Bills.

Nigeria has signed the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its optional protocols. At a Forum to sign the Convention, the then Minister of External Affairs, Mrs. Joy Ogwu, noted that Nigeria was in the process of signing a Disability Law . Except for the National Disabled Trust Fund (Establishment Bill) presented in 2004 by Senator. Chris Adighije which is still dragging at the National Assembly, no such Law appears to have been passed till date. Section 21(1) of the 1999 Constitution provides that no treaty between the Federation and any other country shall have the force of law except to the extent to which any such treaty has been enacted into law by the National Assembly. Lack of political commitment to appropriate legal framework and implementation of the existing laws underlies the violation of Disability rights in Nigeria.

By 2018, events are more likely to reveal that it requires more than a piece of legislation or endorsements of international conventions to realize the rights of person with disabilities in Nigeria. Appropriate legislations will benefit from Human rights education and advocacy in the coming decades. Human rights activities in this regard will also be complemented if there is an upgrade of legal education to accommodate Disability Rights.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION

Section 214 of the Nigerian Criminal Code penalizes consensual homosexual conduct between adults by fixing 14 years as punishment. Similar position appears to be taken in the Sharia Codes against sodomy . The effect of this framework is that relationship and marriage ceremonies between the people of the same sex are criminal in Nigeria. In a letter routed through the Human Rights Watch by a network of national and international NGO's, the foregoing trend has been criticized as inconsistent with international legal regime which emphasizes that granting lesbians and gays the basic rights of expression and association is a good public health measure capable of boosting government efforts to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS .

It does appear that the greatest challenge in the struggle for lesbian and gay rights activism in Nigeria presently is the lack of understanding of major policy and law makers about the public health significance of gay and lesbian rights. Predictably, this trend may continue in the coming two decades and may be characterized by a clash of two views; public morality and public health. One can only speculate about the dominant view in the future. One thing is certain though, behavioral and social practices can not be shaped by a piece of legislation without other tools of public health education to complement, more so by pieces of legislation which tend to undermine gay and lesbian rights.

RELIGION

The secular nature of the Nigerian State is well captured in Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution which provides that the Government of the Federation shall not adopt any religion as State Religion. Islamic law has however come into operation in the northern part of the nation such as Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Jigawa, Yobe, Bauchi, Borno, Zamfara, and Gombe with extensive jurisdiction covering criminal cases. People have been tried for different manners of offence and received sentences based on the provisions of the Sharia. The Sharia provisions on sentences have been subject of international condemnation lately as amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including death sentences, amputations and floggings. The manner in which Sharia is applied violates women rights to freedom from discrimination, particularly in adultery cases where standards of evidence differ based on the sex of the accused.

Christian groups notably Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has consistently asserted the threat that rapid islamisation of the northern part of the nation portends for the minority Christians. The plank of their position has been that such trend may occasion inter-religious crises and reprisal killings in different parts of the country. Lack of judicial pronouncement and federal position on the issue of the nation’s secularism heighten the anxiety of the minority and discourage them from taking advantage of their right to freedom of religion.

In the coming two decades, controversies, particularly in relation with religion and constitutional provision on secularism of the nation will increase. Agitations for Sharia law will likely continue in the nation with increasing protests by members of other religious groups notably, Christians. Clashes as well as reprisal attacks along religious grounds are not ruled out with the minority suffering the most in the majority’s efforts at domination.

REGION

Underlying the hydra-headed conflict situation in the Niger Delta region (Ondo, Edo, Delta, Imo, Abia, Bayelsa, Rivers, Cross rivers and Akwa Ibom States) is the perceived grave violation of human rights of the communities in the region. The situation has its roots in the discovery of oil in the region by the Royal Dutch Company in the late 1950s and has continued till date. The allegation of the people from the Niger Delta-Region in Nigeria is that attempts by Government to alleviate the regions problems have been insincere.

It has been observed by the Human Rights Watch, and rightly so, that the Federal Government policy towards conflict in the Delta has vacillated between heavy-handed attempts at imposing order and attempts to bring reconciliation . In September 2005 federal authorities arrested Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) leader Asari on charges of treason. In what seems to be a reconciliatory move, charges against him were later dropped by the new administration of President Musa Yar’adua who had earlier indicated an interest to convey a National Summit to address Niger Delta question. Meanwhile, hostage taking and kidnapping still continue to characterize the conflict face of the Niger Delta region.

Lack of an a-political comprehensive blue print development programme for the region as well as political commitment has over the years accounted for the deep human rights crisis of the Niger Delta region. In the coming decades, issues of self determination, police brutality, illegal occupation and detention will bitterly rage in the Niger- Delta region and may degenerate into humanitarian crises unless political leadership realizes the need for a review of the legal regime of ownership and control of oil resources vested in the Federal Government through legislations such as The Petroleum Act 1969 and Land Use Act to accommodate the concerns of the communities in the areas.

GENDER

The legal framework for the observance of womens rights remains hazy in Nigeria and it is a major bane to the realization of their human rights. The argument in this respect has been whether the Constitution as it is, entails a comprehensive set of provisions on human rights capable of supporting the emerging body of womens rights particularly, reproductive rights embodied in international instruments such as (The Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) of 1981) to which Nigeria is signatory and the consensus of Conferences such as (International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD),1995) which Nigeria approved.

The provisions on human rights in the 1999 Constitution do not provide for, the rights to health, a standard of living adequate for health and well being and the right to enjoy scientific progress and to consent to experimentation as envisaged in the World Health Organisation Bill on Sexual Rights. Issues such as health, economic and social rights are only accommodated in the Fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy in sections 13 to 24 of the constitution.

The consequence of the foregoing is that whereas the provisions on human rights are actionable in court, the 1999 Nigerian constitution does not make provision for the enforcement of fundamental objectives of the state or for accountability of the same. It merely provides for policies and directives to be made on such matters. In line with these directives, the government has made several policies including the following:
- National health policy (1996)
- National Women Policy (2001)
- National Reproductive Health Policy (2002)
- National HIV/AIDS Policy (2002)

However, these policies are merely directive and neither confers on any individual a right that is actionable nor the duty to hold government accountable for their performance in Nigeria. Equally too, certain rights in the Constitution are abstract and too narrow to avail protection as reproductive rights. These are as follows;

- The right to be free from discrimination: this imposes criteria which is rather onerous to establish.

- The right to dignity of the human person: it apparently does not envisage the broader issues of child labour, female genital mutilation or the concept of ‘marital rape’.

Apart from the foregoing lack of basic legal framework for reproductive rights which calls into question the relevance of government service to women, the representation of women in governance remains a major challenge. Although Obasanjo’s administration appears to have made an appreciable success in this regard, much still remains to be achieved.

In the coming two decades, gender gaps in Nigeria will evolve still in a dynamic version. Foreseeable gender inequities in the future may not necessarily feature between groups but within the same group.

CONCLUSION

In describing the future of Human Rights situation in Nigeria, some hope could be sensed, but the question to anticipate is how political leadership in Nigeria can take advantage of its new breath of democracy in gaining the confidence of its diverse and marginalized citizenry. Using a human rights-based approach in reforming all its vital systems and sectors of government remain the major strategy for positive change. Otherwise, the coming decade may only be remarkable for intense agitations and bitter protests of the marginalized with all its attendant human rights wrongs. This is a great burden which is greatly to be feared!

* Jegede Ademola Oluborode is a legal practitioner and a human rights activist in Nigeria.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Chronic gang warfare will return to Nigeria's oil-producing south unless President Umaru Yar'Adua brings to justice local politicians who have fuelled the unrest, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday. Gangs behind kidnappings, oil theft and other violent crime in the Niger Delta were going unpunished partly because of their connections to local politicians who first hired them to intimidate opponents or rig elections, it said in a report.

The risk of renewed violence in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta is increasing because militants are frustrated by a lack of concrete results from peace talks, a key negotiator said on Wednesday. Kingsley Kuku, a senior member of a government peace committee who also has close links with militants, said the government still had an opportunity to avert violence but it had to start delivering on promises of development for the delta.

Kola Ibrahim analysis the recent ASUU strike in Nigeria and argues that it is symptomatic of an education system that puts profit before learning; one that works aggressively against the working class.

The recent directive of the Yar’Adua government to heads of universities that no-work-no-pay rule should be applied to all lecturers who participated in the last warning strike is condemnable and provocative. It again knock a big hole in the pretentious posture of the current administration as a pro-masses organization. For a government that claims to be pro-people to use this archaic and backward policy of union breaking against striking lecturers fighting for improved and cheap educational system and justice for their colleagues further shows the anti-worker, neo-liberal character of this government.

The lecturers under ASUU had embarked on a one-week warning strike to compel government to return to the round-table on the issue of retrenched UNILORIN lecturers who were sacked since 2002 – most of whom have been living in penury since. It is instructive to state that the sacked lecturers met their unsolicited sabbatical when they participated in a national strike called by their parent body to compel the insensitive Obasanjo government to honour its agreement with ASUU on proper funding of education by at least 26 percent (as prescribed by UNESCO), improved salaries for lecturers and democratization of decision making in our ivory towers. It is noteworthy to state that practically none of these demands have been met, yet the lecturers that participated in the struggle are still made scape goat for demanding better educational system. It is morally debasing for government to think of punishing lecturers for reminding it (the government) that some of their colleagues are still outside the system despite the fact that their traditional demands were not met or even attempt are being made to meet them.

To further show the neo-liberal pro-imperialism character of this government less than 8.5 percent of the budget was earmarked for education in the 2008 budget yet UNESCO prescribe a minimum of 26 percent. Yet, the same government could provide extra billions of naira for jumbo pay for political officers. In fact, a significant part of the meagre education budget will be provided through loans especially from World Bank with its neo-liberal, obnoxious conditions such as usage of a large chunk of the budget for expatriate-oriented consultancy service and a deep cut in social service budget. Already over N110 million was to be used in the education budget for AIDS campaign – that is to support the condom and contraceptive industries’ campaign while over $200 million will be borrowed from World Bank to fund science and technology projects – mostly consultancy services. This simply means that the current government is least committed to education development and in fact human development; it will only continue the ruinous policy of the Obasanjo government – that is being a conduit pipe for imperialism. In a country where less than 20 percent of the youth population is in school; where less than 3 percent of the tertiary aged-youth is in school and where virtually all facilities in schools have collapsed such that most of our post-graduate students seek visas in US and Europe before they can have meaningful research work; the present posture of the Yar’Adua government to ASUU demands is bemoaning.

Already, many of our institutions are increasing fees as a result of government’s policy of under funding education while several school managements have to employ brute force in order to prevent students’ protest against deteriorating living and studying conditions. The case of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) where three students leaders were detained, thirteen others suspended indefinitely and the union purportedly and illegally proscribed over students’ agitation for better welfare, easily comes to mind. The excuse by the government that the case of the UNILORIN lecturers is in court is ridiculous. In the first instance, it was not the government that went to court, it was the lecturers after several years of waiting for evasive justice. If the government that claim to be abiding by rule of law has any dignity, it should immediate commend the effort of the lecturers for waiting so long and immediately reinstate them. Moreover, going to court is a reflection of the failure of government to resolve basic issues; therefore the Yar’Adua government should bury its face in shame for using court case to deny the lecturers justice. Furthermore, the government has lost virtually in all the stages of the case in question, why will government not accept defeat and recall these lecturers and wait for Supreme Court ruling.

While lecturers demanding properly funded, democratically run, cheap and affordable educational system are locked out of job, corrupt politicians who have looted the nation treasury dry are allowed to walk free in Aso Rock. It is pertinent to state that the same government that ask long suffering lecturers to wait ad infinitum for justice wait for no one to compensate the hatchet man who sent the lecturers to labour market – Prof Abdul Raheem Oba, who has been nominated by the Yar’Adua government for chairmanship of Federal Character Commission. This same man was to be given a ministerial post earlier save for the protest from the vigilant public. The same “rule of law” government deem it fit to confer a national honour on erstwhile vice chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Prof. Wale Omole who was fingered in the cult attack on students which led to the death of five students including the secretary of the union then, George Iwilade, on 10th July, 1999 among other atrocities including graft and highhandedness. At least that is a moral boost to the current management. The real reason why government has failed to reabsorb the lecturers is that ASUU is seen as a radical union which needed to be killed if the anti-poor, neo-liberal education commercialization, cut in education funding and fee hike policies of the government is to see the light of the day in the educational sector.

The Yar’Adua government want to provoke ASUU to a prolong strike so that the mood of the general public can be swayed against it and a final onslaught can be launched against it. Furthermore, the commendation given to ruthless university administrators through awards and post is meant to embolden current school administrators to be more ruthless in attacking students’ and workers’ rights and for a ceaseless implementation of the neo-liberal policies in the education sector. The overall aim of this arrangement is to scare the working and toiling people away from challenging the present government I its attempt at implementing neo-liberal, IMF/World Bank-inspired policies of privatization, commercialization, liberalization, retrenchment, fuel price hike, etc.

This is why all working class and progressive organizations must condemn the government’s posture towards ASUU strike. The blame of a prolonged strike should be placed at the door step of the Yar’Adua government. However, the current situation calls for a working class solidarity, especially in the educational sector. The demands of ASUU are encompassing therefore, it must carry along all other unions both within the educational and non-educational institutions (especially the central labour unions) such as NUT, NASU, SSANU, COEASU, ASUP, NLC and TUC, the students’ movement, among others on a collective demands for massive funding of education by at least 26 percents, democratization of decision making organs and processes in the education sector (involving all the workers’ unions), adequate wages and working conditions for education workers, free, qualitative and functional education at all levels, among other demands.

Towards this end, there is need for a EDUCATION STAKEHOLDERS’ SUMMIT involving all the workers’ unions in the education sector and students’ movement. Such summit will carry the views of local branches to the national summit. This summit will analyzed all the problems facing education, chart the way out and draw out a collective plan of resisting government’s neo-liberal onslaught on the educational system and workers’ organizations. Otherwise, each union will be gradually stiffen to death as was witnessed during the Thatcher years in Britain.

Conclusively, the working and toiling people must realise that the current Yar’Adua government, despite all its grandstanding cannot resolve any problem facing the masses. It is an offshoot and continuation of the old ruinous anti-poor, pro-rich government of Obasanjo. Save for its saint-like look, it will continue to serve the interest of the rich few in business and power while masses will be given doses of retrenchment, commercialization, fuel and electricity price hikes, suffering and misery. Unless the working poor build a pan-Nigerian, radical working class political platform that will wrestle power from the corrupt political class and enthrone a government that will be committed to massive funding of free, qualitative and functional education system, free and efficient Medicare, massive expansion of public utilities – electricity, road network, housing, drainage system, tourism etc, adequate and secure job for all able bodied citizens with adequate and living wages and pensions, massive investment in cheap, efficient and environmental-friendly transport and communication system. None of the political class can undertake these if their profit-making system is to survive. This is task before serious-minded and genuine labour and working class leaders.

*Kola Ibrahim is a member of the Democratic Socialist Movement, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

A Nigerian rebel group from the oil producing Niger Delta accused the government on Friday of denying their detained leader access to lawyers and relatives despite a court order that he should be allowed to see them. Henry Okah of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) was arrested in Angola on September 3 and handed over to Nigeria on February 14. His detention in a secret location by Nigerian authorities has raised tensions in the delta.

A Nigerian tribunal has dismissed both opposition petitions asking that President Umaru Yar'Adua's election last year be annulled. The panel of five judges unanimously rejected them, saying they did not contain enough evidence. Lawyers for both losing presidential candidates, Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, say they will take their cases to the Supreme Court.

Pius Adesamni looks at the recent Raila Odinga visit with Obasanjo and argues that African ruling classes are so prodigious in the production of political farce that all one needs to do is read African newspapers for absurd realities that no African writer has as yet to match.

Give it to politicians, the military, and other professional hijackers of the state in Africa! They are able to squeeze the juice of comedy out of the stone of unspeakable tragedies they routinely visit on their people and the continent. The most unfortunate victim of the inexhaustible creativity of the African political class, their cynical mastery of the resources of the proscenium, is African fiction. The political class in Africa constitutes the most potent threat to the health of African literature. Simply put, our politicians are driving our writers out of business.

Why do I need to spend my hard-earned money on Wizard of the Crow and Petals of Blood when Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki have manufactured realities in Kenya that Ngugi wa Thiongo’o’s brilliant imagination simply cannot match? All I need is regular internet access to Kenyan newspapers to avail myself of a direct taste of Kenya according to her politicians.

Why do I need Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and T.M. Aluko’s One Man, One Matchet in my seminar room when the blood and flesh versions of Chief Nanga and Benjamin Benjamin in Abuja have turned Achebe and Aluko into dwarves in the business of fiction? The Nigerian ruling class is so prodigious in the production of political farce that all I need do is read Nigerian newspapers for quotidian realities that no Nigerian writer has the imagination to match.

That African politicians are constantly and permanently ahead of hapless African writers was brought home by two recent events. Ogaga Ifowodo, one of Nigeria’s best poets, wrote an essay in which he imagined a meeting between Mwai Kibaki and Umaru Yar’Adua. What did Yar’Adua tell Kibaki, Ifowodo asked? To create his hypothetical situation, Ifowodo deployed the full arsenal of his trade: sarcasm, hyperbole, allusions, and the like. At the end of the essay, Ifowodo was sure he had delivered his message effectively and unambiguously: the Nigerian presidency is so diseased, so morally compromised, that the possibility of the Nigerian government having a say in the Kenyan debacle can only exist in the realms of fiction and the most outrageous imagination. Given the rotten political pedigree of the people in charge in Abuja, Nigeria’s involvement was so improbable that Ifowodo treated it as fiction, something better left as material for the exclusive use of the African writer.

As is sadly often the case in Africa, Odinga, the politician, was miles ahead of Ifowodo, the writer. Odinga did not wait for Ifowodo’s ink to dry before hopping on a flight to Nigeria last week. His mission? Wait for it: to consult with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria’s immediate past president) and persuade him to convince Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, current president and Obasanjo’s puppet, that it was time Nigeria got involved in fashioning an African solution to Kenya’s political impasse! It has taken Ogaga Ifowodo more than twenty years of sustained production of brilliant poetry to establish his reputation as one of Africa’s leading users of the imagination. Raila Odinga and his Nigerian hosts have eclipsed this record in a couple of hours.

When I read about Odinga’s trip to Nigeria, I had a tough choice between laughing and crying. I settled for the former. To grasp the tragedy in all its unpleasant ramifications, one has to unpack Odinga’s company in Nigeria: Obasanjo and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) machinery. Of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, the least said the better. Writing about Obasanjo here would turn this piece into an exposé on unbridled corruption and the defoliation of Nigeria’s destiny in two tragic installments: 1976 – 1979, and 1999 – 2007. Whenever tails are mentioned in a discussion, the toad hurriedly suggests changing the topic and moving on to other issues! So, let’s leave Obasanjo and move on to Yar’Adua and the PDP.

History’s final verdict on African political parties would be hard pressed not to record the PDP as the most vicious, most corrupt, and most visionless political organization ever to bestride the Nigerian – and African political landscape. It would be sheer travesty of justice if the National Party of Henrik Verwoerd and Pieter Botha fared worse than Nigeria’s PDP in the reckoning of history. Ever since its unfortunate formation, the PDP has been home to the worst elements of Nigerian humanity. Although it loves to delude itself as Africa’s largest political party, the truth is that the PDP is Africa’s largest assembly of funny characters with zero moral capital. Excellence in political thuggery, treasury looting, and election rigging are key attributes of membership and upward mobility in party ranks. It is significant that in a supposedly democratic dispensation, the PDP has surpassed Sani Abacha’s record of unresolved political assassinations. The rate of intra-party assassinations became so breathtaking at a point that the inimitable Wole Soyinka baptized the PDP as a “nest of killers”. Soyinka forgot to add that the PDP is also a lair of Africa’s most gifted thieves. To go through the list of party leaders – Party Chieftains in Nigerian parlance – is to be in stark contemplation of the tragedy of modern Nigeria: Olusegun Obasanjo (self-appointed Father of modern Nigeria), Olabode George, Ahmadu Ali, Lamidi Adedibu (stark illiterate, recently designated Father of the PDP!), Andy Uba, Chris Uba, and thousands of other birds of similar feather, looting the state dry in rigged political positions.

That these low-quality characters and their scions have hijacked the Nigerian state is a precise indication of the abysmally low depths to which Nigeria has fallen. Among the many sins of this dishonorable cabal and their dishonorable party, the 2007 election pretty much takes the cake. Nigerians are in agreement with the international community that the PDP’s 2007 electoral heist ranks among the worst in human history. It is unnecessary to rehash the details here. Suffice it to assert that Umaru Yar’Adua, Nigeria’s current president, is the morally compromised custodian of a purloined mandate who has been unable to rise above the debased values of his cabal and do the right thing. Rather, he has ignored the festering leprosy his diseased party has foisted on Nigeria while hypocritically making a show of his determination to cure negligible ringworm infections.

This is a snapshot of the kind of company Raila Odinga went to keep in Nigeria. The story of Nigeria’s sorry pass in the gangrened grip of the PDP cartel is globally ubiquitous: not even a blind and deaf kindergarten pupil in Siberia can claim ignorance of the Nigerian situation. What part of this narrative did Raila Odinga not understand? The ways of the African politician are truly perplexing! How did Raila Odinga arrive at the conclusion that Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and his PDP government, morally compromised perpetrators of the worst electoral heist in human history, are in any position to advise him on the way forward in Kenya? How did he determine that Nigeria’s forty thieves deserve a place at the table of serious African conversations on credible elections, good governance, and democracy? Who are Odinga’s handlers in Kenya? How could all of them have missed the fact that the people he was going to consult in Nigeria practice a version of democracy that consists in assassinating your opponent or rigging your way to political office? Do we need to translate “nest of killers” to Swahili before Mwalimu Odinga can understand that simple expression? By going to consult the worst Nigeria has to offer, Odinga has spat on the graves of the Kenyans who have lost their lives so far and added to our frustration and helplessness as ordinary Nigerians.

Nigerians are in a particularly sensitive phase of their national life. We are a beautiful country of beautiful people who have had the extraordinary misfortune of being held hostage by the worst among us. Although we once contributed exemplary characters to Africa’s leadership pool during the nationalist and immediate post-nationalist eras, we have never known democracy in any real sense. The closest we came to it was on June 12, 1993 when ‘we, the people’ voted in the only free and fair election we have ever known. Our hopes and aspirations were quashed by the same vicious enemy-cabal that aborted our dreams of post-independence nationhood and have held us hostage ever since. Sometimes, this cabal comes in army fatigues; sometimes it wears flowing civilian robes but it is the same rotten organism that perpetually recycles itself. When people who should know better invite the worst we have to offer to the table, the wound cuts deep in the Nigerian psyche. It reminds us painfully of Frostian roads not taken. And in this case, we are much more certain than Frost of what could have been had the right people taken the roads not taken.

It bears repeating: the Nigerian state, currently held hostage by a dishonorable cabal and a bloodthirsty, kleptocratic political party, does not qualify to be consulted or invited to the table when good governance and credible elections in Africa are in the agenda. If Raila Odinga was so desperate for Nigerian advice, all he needed do was ask and we would have supplied him names of Nigerians who qualify to be at the table. Nigeria has more that a hundred million names that could have given Odinga advice from an eminently moral high ground since members of the dishonorable enemy-cabal are, thankfully, in the minority and in no way represent what we have to offer as a people. If Odinga had consulted serious people before embarking on his worthless trip to Nigeria, one would have given him such meritorious names as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Gani Fawehinmi, Patrick Utomi, Edwin Madunagu, Odia Ofeimun, Okey Ndibe, Omoyele Sowore, just to mention a few. These are among our very best, the kinds of people who still make it possible for Nigerians to defy the rape of their humanity by the jokers in the PDP and identify proudly with their nation.

If, however, Mwalimu Odinga insists on getting his advice on how to move Kenya forward from discredited African sources, we can also help him. Let him return to Nigeria and consult with all the corrupt PDP governors currently facing embezzlement charges. On his way back home, he may want to stop over in Libreville and Yaounde for consultations on credible democracy with Omar Bongo and Paul Biya. A stopover with Eugene Terreblanche in South Africa will spice up things nicely. He may then return to Nairobi and tell Kofi Annan that he has received superior advice from more credible sons of Africa!

* Pius Adesanmi is Associate Professor of English and Director, Project on New African Literatures at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Apart from his academic work, Dr. Adesanmi publishes opinion articles regularly in various internet fora. He runs a regular blog for The Zeleza Post where this article first appeared. He has contributed to Counterpunch, Slepton and Chimurenga online.

** Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org This article first appeared at The Zeleza Post.

In a strategic move to combat corruption and engage young Nigerians in the promotion of responsive and responsible governance, Independent Advocacy Project (IAP), the nation’s leading anti-corruption group is advocating that anti-corruption education should be included in the subject curriculum of elementary schools in the country.Corruption is a major driver of bad governance in Nigeria, as such, there is an urgent need for the design and introduction of a well thought out integrity education in elementary schools, which is naturally the formative years of young Nigerians, IAP said in a statement released in Lagos.

Kola Ibrahim argues that unless the Nigerian students and workers take on the government and make it rescind its commercialization of education, it will be become exclusive to rich.

For those who still nurse the illusion that the present Yar'Adua's government will be different from the past should be having a rethink as the current capitalist government is bent on continuing the neo-liberal economic policies of the past especially as it concerns the education sector. Just few weeks ago, the minister of education, Igwe Ajah Nwachukwu was quoted in two forums reiterating the government's decision to hike fees in all Nigerian universities. The new policy will see already impoverished students coughing out tens of thousands in a country where over sixty percent are officially recognized as living in penury; and where government find it a onerous task to pay N11, 000 minimum wage for workers.

This new policy is to say the least anti-poor and incoherent. It is anti-poor because it will definitely deny thousands of youth access to university education while placing the burden of funding education on parents and students many of whom are from poor working class, peasant and wounded middle class background. It is incoherent because it failed to justify the logic of government’s so-called increased budgetary allocation. If the federal government claimed to have increased budgetary allocation - which in the real sense is a ruse - why then is the need to further place burden of education funding on poor parents and students since the increased (?) budgetary allocation is meant to, at least, lessen the burden of parents and students, and to improve standard. The new regime of fees to be introduced could hardly resolve a single of the problems confronting the education sector. The hypocrisy of the government is further shown by the fact that no public probe has been made into billions being squeezed out of the pockets of parents and students, and the huge billions being budgeted for education yearly but looted through crooked means making most of the facilities in our schools at all levels continue to rot despite increased charges.

The real reason why the government cannot undertake a serious and holistic probe of the education fund is because the budget itself, drawn up in the boardrooms of IMF/World Bank officials are built on the sandy foundation of neo-liberalism which means acute cut in social spending vis-à-vis education, health, etc and concentration on policies that will enhance the profit of the business community and the international moneybags in Nigeria, that is through budgetary allocation for bailing out big private businesses – who have been engaging in rapacious exploitation of the resources of the country especially the human labour – after they might have run into competition crisis. The rest of the budget is used to invite the foreign experts through consultancy projects that have little on no impacts on the lives of ordinary Nigerian. This is why a huge chunk of the education budget is allocated to seminars and lectures on issues such as AIDS/HIV when in actual facts many young ladies are taking to prostitution as a result of the failed education sector.

As against the so-called much lauded thirteen percent of the budget being allocated to education, the real education budget is less than 8.8 percent. The thirteen percent that has received unprecedented applause from our "respected" public analysts and the media is only for the recurrent/over head cost which does not cover the developmental projects such as expansion of facilities. To further show the hypocrisy of this government, the 13 percent does not include increase salaries especially for teachers (majority of whom are living in abject poverty), reduction in fees paid by poor students, etc. already the university lecturers are already bemoaning the stagnation in university special grants. In the real sense, the increase in recurrent budget is meant for consultancy service. Even, the highly anti-poor Obasanjo government budgeted about 11 percent for education at its inception. The capital budget that could have expanded the facilities in schools received little or no increase.

Therefore, the budget is a continuation of the old ruinous policy of cut in education budget in a bid to maintain fiscal balance for non-existent investors. Coupled with this is the continuous commercialization of education especially in order to lay the basis for its total privatization which has been achieved in the primary education sub-sector. Is it not instructive that all governments, especially state and federal government have laid the basis for private takeover of secondary schools as this sub-sector has witness unprecedented rot with mushrooms of private secondary schools – mostly owned by public officials and their acolytes –growing of the rot. In the University sub-sector, the same process is going on with public universities being under funded while private ones charging hundreds of thousands continue to increase. The new agenda is to commercialize public education to a point where public education will be totally unattractive to the people and thus lay the basis for their eventual privatization. This is what is being planned for the Law Schools and the Unity Schools. While the law school fees was hiked 100 percent to N230,000, which has denied hundreds of law students access to this year's law school programme, new generations of students are not allowed into the unity schools so as to justify their rottenness and thus eventual privatization. Already less than ten percent of university-aged youth are currently in schools or have graduated. Nigerian resources if judiciously used could fund free and qualitative education but the neo-liberal, pro-rich, anti-poor market-oriented policies which subsequent Nigerian governments have committed themselves to will not allow this.

Between 1999 and now, Nigeria has accrued nothing less than over N10 trillion naira with practically nothing to show for it than opulence for the few. This money is enough to lay the basis for massive development of the country economically and politically but the neo-liberal ideology teaches Nigerian leaders to subject provision of social service such as functional education, affordable healthcare, massive transportation development (road, rail, water), job creation, food and energy supply, etc to market forces, that is the law of the survival of the fittest which gives the service to the highest bidder. These policies have meant that it is the rich that will be buying up the country’s resources at token while majority will not be able to afford the huge cost needed to access social service. This is in addition to the mindless looting of the nation’s wealth by the unproductive Nigerian ruling class and their private collaborators, both local and foreign which itself is facilitated by the market idea that deify the ruthless private sector. All societies that have developed does so based on government massive intervention in the provision of basic facilities for the industrialization of the country including social services. Even the much glorified Asian Tigers were massively supported by the US as a counterweight against the fast developing ‘communist’ China. Also in Nigeria, the little development, universities, research institutes, health institutions, road and rail constructions, etc that we have had was products of the massive investment in developmental projects by past governments of the 1970’s and ‘80’s. in fact, introduction of top up fees contributed to the early and inglorious exit of Tony Blair in Britain.

Unless the NIGERIAN students and workers are ready to take on this government and make it rescind its anti-students education commercialization, education will be made the exclusive preserve of the rich. It is unfortunate that no students' union or NANS structure in the country has taken any step to stop this policy not even on the law school fee hike, yet students' unions are being destroyed in preparation by university administrators for the introduction of this policy while various state governments have already begun the process, for instance Lautech (N6,000 to N40,000), UniOSun (Between N160,000 to N300,000), Tai Solarin University (N50,000), etc. Crisis are already brewing in many campuses where education are being or are going to be commercialized – UniAbuja, ABU, OAU. Those institutions which have destroyed students’ unionism such as UI and UNILAG have turned the campuses to ghost of themselves with students being in serious insecurity and living under unfavourable living and studying conditions with no students' body to agitate for them.

It is funny that a government that wants to create an industrialized economy by 2020 is not ready to dedicate not even 20 percent of its budget to education when UNESCO prescribed 26percent for a developing economy. It is unfortunate that many students' unions have turned themselves to the extension of their various managements. Notwithstanding this, students across the country must pressure their local students’ union leaderships and NANS leaders to declare “days of actions” to include press campaign, rallies, lecture boycott, protest marches to demand for proper funding of education by at least 26 percent of the budget as prescribed by UNESCO for developing economies coupled with DEMOCRATIC running of the education sector to include education workers’ unions and students' movements. If the NANS leadership fails, genuine radical students’ unions and organizations must build a radical pan-Nigerian students’ platform to lead this campaign. They must reach out to workers’ movements and link their demands with that of other oppressed strata in Nigeria as a basis of building supports.

The current ruling class is ready to defend its class interest through neo-liberalism, unless the workers, students, peasants and the oppressed through their organizations such as NLC and TUC, students’ unions, ASUU, market men and women organizations, community movements, etc must resist this by fighting for their own class interests through the struggle for an egalitarian society which can only be achieved through nationalization of the commanding height of the Nigerian economy under the democratic control of the working and toiling people themselves. This raises the need for a radical, socialist-oriented, working people’s political party that will fight for powering order to enthrone the working people’s government which will develop the vast resources of the country.

*Kola Ibrahim Activist from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife Member, Education Rights Campaign (ERC).

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Equality Now, an international human rights organization has urged United States member states to make specific commitments to end sex trafficking. In a statement, the group said it was concerned that the issue of sex trafficking had been marginalised at the forum to Fight Human Trafficking now holding in Vienna, Austria.