The
concept of Man of the Year (changed to Person of the Year in 1999) was
developed by Time Magazine in 1927 to recognise and feature a person,
group, idea or object that “for better or for worse…has done the most to
influence the events of the year.”
It took me only a few minutes to decide
that there was no single person in Nigeria in 2013, who “influenced the
events of the year” to the point of being named Man of the Year. True,
there were notable individuals who made significant splashes, but there
were even more interesting developments for which groups of individuals
were responsible. Although each of the developments was specific to a
particular sector of our national life, many citizens were affected
beyond those sectors. The four major developments, which dominated the
news “for better or for worse” in 2013, are: Corruption in the economic
sector; terrorism in the security sector; 2015 politics in the political
sector; and the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities in
the education sector. Most events in 2013 were influenced by one or more
of these developments.
Corruption scandals dominated the
economy in 2013, despite reported gains in economic growth. The scandals
included the fuel subsidy scam; the Stock Exchange scam; the pension
scheme fraud;Oduahgate; record high extrabudgetary spending of N1.17trn
in Service Wide Vote; and lavish spending on housing, transport,
entertainment, and transport especially by the executive and legislative
branches of government. So dominant was corruption throughout the year
that it occupied centre stage in the letters to President Goodluck
Jonathan by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Governor of the
Central Bank, Lamido Sanusi, as well as a highly charged public
statement by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu
Tambuwal. Besides, many editorials and columns highlighted corruption
and its effects throughout the year.
If the disclosures by highly placed
Nigerians and the press are considered political (which some of them
certainly are), what about the finding by the Transparency International
in the 2013 Corruption Perception Index, which rates Nigeria among the
most corrupt nations in the world? In any case, no one needs to wait for
the CPI rating to recognise the debilitating effects of corruption at
federal, state, and local levels on infrastructure, education, health
care, and citizens’ welfare.
The lust for a share of the national
cake by hook or crook by the top one per cent has produced an
“it-is-our-turn-to-chop” political philosophy, which underlies most
political struggles at federal, state, and local levels. That’s why
posturing for the 2015 presidential election by various politicians
began in earnest during the second half of 2013. Today, 2015 politics is
defined by several related events, including the Nigerian Governors’
Forum chairmanship election; the Show of Shame in the Rivers State House
of Assembly; the shenanigans associated with the election of the
national executive for the Peoples Democratic Party; the coalition of
several minority parties to form the All Progressives Congress; the
split within the PDP; the formation of the “New PDP” and the defection
of aggrieved party members, including governors and legislators, to the
APC; Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan, the latter’s response, and numerous
reactions to them. It has been suggested that these developments
underlie Jonathan’s reluctance in replacing sacked ministers since
September because he no longer knows who to trust.
The critical question is: If the polity
began to “heat up” in 2013 ahead of the 2015 election, what kind of
election would we have? This is where the third development listed above
comes in. It will be recalled that Jonathan’s election in 2011 was
preceded by physical and verbal thuggery and followed by the worst
post-election violence in the nation’s history. His subsequent
inauguration ushered in the escalation of terrorist activities. Wanton
killings and the destruction of property by Boko Haram continued even
after the offer of amnesty and the declaration of a state of emergency
in three Northern states. Today, the nation remains insecure as armed
robbers, kidnappers, pirates, and pipeline vandals continue to piggyback
on the government’s inability to curb terrorism. The Fund for Peace,
which publishes the Failed States Index annually, sees these
developments as indications of the state’s inability to control its
territory. In the 2013 FSI, the loss of territorial control, corruption,
poor infrastructure, poor governance, and inadequate provision of
necessary political goods, pushed Nigeria to the league of war-torn
countries on the verge of failure.
While the three developments discussed
above, namely, corruption, 2015 politics, and terrorism, continue to
have debilitating effects on the state and its citizens, the fourth
development brought mixed blessings. It is the ASUU strike, which kept
millions of students out of public universities for nearly six months.
Since politicians, policymakers, and even many of the striking
professors send their children to private universities at home or to
foreign universities abroad, the burden of taking care of the students
evacuated from university campuses during the strike fell largely on
farmers, artisans, market women, petty traders, and other working class
families, whose children predominate in public universities. Yet, these
are the parents most affected by the economic strangulation caused by
corruption, poor infrastructure, and weak governance.
Incidentally, these same factors are
responsible for the government’s neglect of the education sector, which,
in turn, precipitated ASUU’s strike. To ASUU’s credit, the strike
succeeded in two significant ways. First, for the first time in history,
the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was dragged to the
negotiating table. Second, the Federal Government committed over N1tn
over four years to the development of infrastructure and other necessary
facilities in public universities, beginning with an initial deposit of
N200bn with the Central Bank of Nigeria. At the end of the day, the
fruit of the strike is expected to boost the quality of higher education
in the country, provided the Federal Government keeps its promise.
It is this expected positive
contribution to the development of higher education in the near future
that inspired me to name ASUU, the Man of the Year 2013. But this is a
crown ASUU must wear with the utmost caution as the ball has now fallen
into the court of university teachers to also make their own
contribution. They must become ready and effective teachers. True,
things will not change overnight with the poor facilities now in place.
However, the time for university teachers to begin to change their
attitude to work is now. Simultaneous employment in two, three, or more
universities must stop. Teaching without prepared lectures must stop.
Sex for grades must stop.
There is also another challenge before
ASUU. If the Federal Government keeps its part of the agreement, public
sympathy will be hard to come by in the near future should ASUU embark
on another strike. It is therefore necessary for ASUU to develop a
strategy, other than a strike, for getting the government
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