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Tag: Usman Sarki

  • A word in favour of “Native Authority”(3), by Usman Sarki

    A word in favour of “Native Authority”(3), by Usman Sarki

    I believe it is necessary that Nigerians should pause for a while and collect their thoughts even in the stress of day-to-day living, and reflect on the governance situation to find ways by which better use can be made of every available opportunity to improve their conditions. I also believe that the bane of many of us is the perception that modernity and progress are one and the same thing, and that they only come about by rejecting inherited values and systems and substituting them with the so-called modern systems of governance.

    The fact that the traditional system also has its merits and consisted of the separation of powers of the executive, the judiciary and legislative arms, does not seem apparent or important enough to many of us.

    The ethics, ethos and values that established and sustained the traditional system were also perhaps seen as tenuous and insubstantial, therefore of little relevance in modern requirements of the country. These thoughts may be admissible but they also fall short of the ideal since they remain to prove the inadequacies of the traditional system and convincingly demonstrate that it should no longer play any direct or substantive role in the governance and administrative structures of the country.

    I believe these were some of the considerations that convinced the Political Bureau that was established by former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in 1987 to fashion out a political system for the country. The Bureau emphatically rejected any direct or substantive roles for the traditional authorities on the grounds that they were not elected and that they represented a caste or class-based dispensation.

    That may be so, but they did serve to represent the grassroots so to speak in more persuasive and acceptable manner than the apparently modern political arrangements in the country. What we are offering here is neither an apology nor a justification for the wholesale return to the old pre-colonial system of governance across the board. What we are suggesting is to give further thought to the idea that the traditional system also had some merits and continuing with its better aspects could have added more advantages in the dispensing of services in areas like the administration of justice, maintenance of law and order, land tenure systems, the extension of basic education and effective revenue generation among many other functions that could be devolved on the system.

    It is in this light that I recall the wise advice that Mr. Morel gave the British colonial administration in Nigeria in 1911 when he asked: “Will they be brought to understand all that is excellent and of good repute in this indigenous civilization; to realize the necessity of preserving its structural foundations, of honouring its organic institutions, of protecting and strengthening its spiritual agencies”?

    This sympathetic understanding of the utility of the traditional system shown by a foreigner 114 years ago contrasted sharply with the terminal and dismissive consideration of the same institution by Nigerians in 1987 when they submitted in the Political Bureau report that “as regards traditional rulers, we cannot see in which way their inclusion can provide a unifying force… they compete against the nation for allegiance, represent a force against the principle of popular democracy and are dysfunctional reminders of national differences.”

    Let Nigerians judge for themselves if their country would not be better served by an infusion of tradition and culture in government as represented by the “Native Authority” system, and advocate for its reintroduction in our administrative arrangements. That, to my mind, would be a better and more rewarding exercise than some of the perennial issues that are raised by some Nigerians with regards to alterations to our Constitution and “restructuring” the country. Right now we are grappling with the intricacies of democratic governance in the country and seeking ways to advance the purposes of civil rule in all its functions.

    The issues of identity, citizenship and what constitutes the “state”, have become central to discourses in our country, especially under the ongoing democratic dispensation. Concurrent with the notion of the state is the idea of the citizen and citizenship which today have become issues of far-reaching significance, and are proving to be the sources of acrimony and disquiet in many communities. Attached to these two principles are the general conduct of politics and governance, and where there is relative peace and quite and happiness, a coincidental convergence of positive attributes in the exercise of sovereign power will have been demonstrated. On the other hand, it can be asserted that where there is a high degree of unease and disquiet in a community or groups of communities, such a convergence of positive ramifications of governance and administration have not been manifested, hence the prevalence of negative trends and tendencies that tend to undermine or circumscribe the tranquility and peace and security of the community or communities concerned.

    It is in this sense that the role of the traditional institutions become apparent and more palpable. The traditional system of government may seem as too superficial, loosely arranged and less sophisticated to the casual observer of today. However, when seen from the perspective of longevity, effectiveness and suitability, it can be argued that it received more respect and affection than the system enforced by the British which subsequently metamorphosed into what is obtaining in our country that

    The traditional system enjoys a closer sense of affinity and identification than the so-called modern system of government. The idea of loyalty can easily be transferred to the traditional system with the Emir or Oba or Obi or Chief as the case may be, who is seen as a father figure whose right to rule has been affirmed by the practice of centuries and religious affinities.

    Hence, rather than remaining distant and aloof from participating in government, the traditional system offers the majority of the people regardless of their identities or origins, the opportunities of active participation in the day-to-day determination of their affairs through their community leaders.

  • Rebels rising and the new era of state capture, by Usman Sarki

    Rebels rising and the new era of state capture, by Usman Sarki

    When the Taliban forces swept across Afghanistan and entered Kabul on August 15, 2021, the world held its breath and pondered upon the consequences of such a major geopolitical tremor in that part of the Asian continent. But when the forces of the greatest military power the world has ever known, the United States of America, were seen retreating in chaos and disarray, abandoning the country to the rebels, the world resigned itself to live with a new order of rebels rising and seizing power in countries by the sheer might of their arms and audacity. Revolutions and discombobulations within nations may occur in fixed circles and in given eras. However, their occurrence in this day and age presents a dilemma to the hopes of democratic takeover of governments, and the establishment of constitutional orders of succession.

    The so-called January 6, 2020 “Insurrection” in the United States of America that led to the seizure of Congress and willful destruction of the symbols of American democracy by disgruntled elements, brought into sharp relief the racial and class dichotomies existing in that country, and the polarisation of its population along lines of separation that cannot be bridged through persuasion or accommodation. The aftermath of the second coming of Donald J. Trump to power is being felt already across America and much of the world, where established orders of interstate relations are being overturned and the stability of countries and regions are being threatened. The present climate of anxious uncertainty might lead to the emergence of forces that may not find it convenient or even reasonable to operate within the democratic process and order, but seek to impress their identities and achieve their objectives through unorthodox means, such as coups, rebellions and armed insurrections.

    Yemen came under effective rebel control when the Houthi insurgency in that country translated into the successful capture of the capital Sanaa. According to Wikipedia, it took 10 years, two months, four weeks and one day for the Houthis to come to power from June 18, 2004 to September 16, 2014. As a result, Yemen today is split between the two regimes in Sanaa and Aden, throwing the country irrevocably into division and chaos. A similar scenario had worked itself out in Libya also. The Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East threw several countries into chaos and unrest, with Libya experiencing some of the most dramatic and disturbing crisis in its history. The anti-regime protests that began in August 2011 snowballed into full-fledged revolution that overthrew the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in October of that year. The civil war that has been raging in that country since 2014 is still unresolved and the country remains divided along tribal and regional affiliations.

    In Syria, the speedy and dramatic fall of the Bashar Al-Assad regime and the triumphant entry into Damascus by the rebel forces on December 8, 2024, left the world both shocked and surprised. It was a shock occasioned by how a supposedly well entrenched regime backed by powerful allies like Russia and Iran could crumble and topple over so quickly without any visible resistance. Surprise in the sense of how the rebels could be so mobilised and made effective to traverse from Homs, Hama and other locations, seize Aleppo and march on Damascus virtually without any credible opposition. The world forgets incidents very quickly. Less than 20 years ago, these same forces rampaged around the Middle East from Iraq to Syria and beyond, bringing death and destruction of apocalyptic proportions to everywhere that they took control of.

    The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, or Da’esh, Al-Qa’ida and what have you, coalesced around a common ideology of resistance to established authorities in the countries of the region, and adopted the heinous policies of killings and executions that instilled a sense of fear and trepidation throughout the region and beyond. Today, elements of these forces have become the effective rulers of Syria, and they are being received with open arms by governments across the region. What better encouragement can there be to other rebel forces with the means and ability to form and overthrow existing orders in their countries or anywhere else for that matter? What happened in Syria is also on the verge of being replicated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, that vast country that has been a theatre of violent and bloody conflicts and unrest for several decades, perhaps predating its independence.

    The rapid march by the forces of the M23 and its coalition partners with the alleged support of Rwandan national army elements, took both the United Nations and African peacekeepers as well as the forces of the DRC by surprise, ending in the capture of Goma at the end of January 2025 and the westward advance of the rebel forces. The threat to march on to Kinshasa and bring the whole of the DRC under rebel rule is palpable and not to be shrugged off under the circumstance. What is taking place in the DRC is also playing out in Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Mozambique. In the last count, 20 African countries were said to be confronted with the threat of war, internal rebellion and insurgency. Most of these unrests are driven by discontents with the status quo and entrenched regimes with dubious antecedents and questionable legitimacy. A lot of the conflicts are also fuelled by resource exploitation and illegal profits from such ventures.

    With these developments, a trend is now being established that seems to be a throwback to the 1960s in Latin America and Africa, when rebels and national liberation forces emerged and took over the mantle of leadership of their countries by overthrowing dictators and colonial regimes, thereby freeing their countries from odious and reprehensible systems of overlordship. Whether in today’s climate of global democratic aspirations such measures would be necessary or desirable is a different matter, especially viewed against the spreading discontents around democracy and the global liberal order. Much of the grievances of peoples are around their physical security and economic opportunities both of which are denied to them by the forces of liberalism and negligence. Corruption and maladministration in most cases have thrown people into despair and regretful of their attachment to empty and meaningless slogans around democracy, human rights and freedom, which seldom translate into equal opportunities for them.

    The jubilations with which rebel forces were welcomed into Damascus and Goma, and the popular exultations that followed the takeover of government by military forces in some countries in Africa of recent, testify to the precarious and tenuous hold that democratic ideas and liberal ideologies have on the people’s minds. A reset on what democracy should mean is urgently and desperately needed today if we are to continue to have faith in this order of government of the people, for the people and by the people. Unless this is an empty slogan even when it was first pronounced by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, more efforts are needed to be put into translating the ethos of democracy into practice so that its benefits can become tangible and meaningful in the lives of everyone, especially the vast majority of peoples everywhere.

    The disparities in wealth, opportunities, comfort and security between nations and among peoples around the world, make it rather difficult to adhere to a principle of government that perpetuates such dichotomies and fails to redress such grievances built around the suffering of people while elevating inequality as a fact of life. Democracy must mean something realistic and tangible for the people if it needs to remain relevant and of any value in the arrangement of our societies. Factors like elections and the organisation of political parties must mean the difference between hopelessness and hopefulness for the people. Herein also lies the urgent need to assess the efficacy of liberal democracy, especially in Africa, in the era of state capture by putschists, rebels and insurgents.

  • Toward the democratisation of education in Nigeria and the role of the State (2), by Usman Sarki

    Toward the democratisation of education in Nigeria and the role of the State (2), by Usman Sarki

    The Nigerian state, by necessity and its very essence, should be the guarantor of the well-being and welfare of all Nigerians without exception or discrimination. The doctrine of the state and its principal purposes as outlined in Chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution, provide the normative frameworks on which the provision of services to Nigerians are predicated. Although

    not enforceable, they nevertheless aspirational principles that should be factored into the foundation of the Nigerian state and fabrics of the government, so as to create the necessary conditions for equitable access to education among other vital services.

    The attempt at the democratisation of education therefore, should be both a legal and an administrative object, whose purpose should be the creation of common outlooks towards the acceptance of the fact that all Nigerians belong to one nation and have a common patrimony. This in essence, means having a unified outlook towards the extension of the privileges of being educated to each and every Nigerian regardless of his or her place of birth, ethnic or religious background, social or material conditions, age or gender.

    This may be a far-fetched assumption or supposition, but upon reflection and careful consideration, it might be the much needed panacea to the challenges now confronting our country on several fronts, principal of which are poverty, the downward slide in the quality and standard of living, unemployment, illiteracy, insecurity, and a host of other negative factors.

    With the democratisation of education and the provision of a level playing field for as many Nigerians as possible, the conditions will be created for the achievement of a near egalitarian society based on common outlooks and shared interests, underpinned by patriotism and love of country. At a certain level, enforcement of certain objectives like enrolment into schools, recruitment of qualified teachers, rooting out of corruption in

    The Nigerian state, by necessity and its very essence, should be the guarantor of the well-being and welfare of all Nigerians without exception or discrimination. The doctrine of the state and its principal purposes as outlined in Chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution, provide the normative frameworks on which the provision of services to Nigerians are predicated. Although

    not enforceable, they nevertheless aspirational principles that should be factored into the foundation of the Nigerian state and fabrics of the government, so as to create the necessary conditions for equitable access to education among other vital services.

    The attempt at the democratisation of education therefore, should be both a legal and an administrative object, whose purpose should be the creation of common outlooks towards the acceptance of the fact that all Nigerians belong to one nation and have a common patrimony. This in essence, means having a unified outlook towards the extension of the privileges of being educated to each and every Nigerian regardless of his or her place of birth, ethnic or religious background, social or material conditions, age or gender.

    This may be a far-fetched assumption or supposition, but upon reflection and careful consideration, it might be the much needed panacea to the challenges now confronting our country on several fronts, principal of which are poverty, the downward slide in the quality and standard of living, unemployment, illiteracy, insecurity, and a host of other negative factors.

    With the democratisation of education and the provision of a level playing field for as many Nigerians as possible, the conditions will be created for the achievement of a near egalitarian society based on common outlooks and shared interests, underpinned by patriotism and love of country. At a certain level, enforcement of certain objectives like enrolment into schools, recruitment of qualified teachers, rooting out of corruption in

    the school systems, etc, will have to be consciously adopted by the state, as its primary responsibility in the democratisation of education. Various attempts that have been tried in the past and found wanting for different reasons, might perhaps have worked if the deliberate and conscious application of the might of the state has been brought to bear in the regulatory environment.

    It is actually a contradiction and a paradox, to see the state enforcing regulations in business and commercial ventures but manifestly failing to do so in the most important aspect of every nation, which is education of its citizens. We have seen how the regulatory environment is tightly controlled and supervised in the collection of taxes, the telecommunication industry, the sale of petrol and electricity and other commercially oriented services, where increases in tariffs and prices are enforced by the state while no room was allowed for the citizens to express their reservations about such arbitrary increases even if they are necessary.

    Opposed to these developments, the education section has been left open, with parallel services being provided by governments and the so-called private sector proprietors, where the distinction in quality and accessibility are glaring and manifestly skewed against the less privileged members of the society. In such an environment, it is questionable whether there is any intention to achieve egalitarianism in outlook and attachment to the sense of nationhood, when people are deprived of the most basic and the most essential of all services which is education.

    Enforcement can only be the function of the state and its instruments of coercion and its capacity to establish a functioning and credible regulatory environment. Local governments, state and federal authorities therefore have responsibilities in providing the conducive environment for educating of our people at all the relevant levels. Herein lies the crux of the matter, and the defining role of the state in the provision of

    relevant levels. Herein lies the crux of the matter, and the defining role of the state in the provision of education in Nigeria. It is not enough to simply “deregulate” the environment and open the educational sector to all comers, thereby commoditising this vital service and rendering it out of reach of the vast majority of the citizens.

    It is not enough also to allow the curriculum and general administration of education to be established by proprietors without taking into consideration the broader aspects of accessibility, equality, quality, affordability and inclusivity as the basis of a democratised educational system in our country. In the long run, the democratisation of education should proceed in tandem with the democratisation of ownership and control of the country’s means of production, which is actually one of the key aspirations of Chapter 2 of the 1999 constitution which has never been addressed or even discussed rationally.

    Socio-economic governance and the role of the state within the contexts of both domestic regimes and of international law and human rights, are structured around rights and entitlements of citizens and the civic spaces in all countries that aspire to be democratic and progressive in both outlook and substance. The essence of globalisation is actually to narrow down global and national dichotomies and level the playing field in terms of a universal framework for the enjoyment of rights and privileges such as social, cultural, political and economic rights. International normative frameworks like the Universal Declaration of

    As we noted earlier, the principles on which the democratisation of education should be based should include issues of accessibility, quality, affordability and inclusivity. While these can be legislated upon as acts of state, it is also important that actions should go beyond these to include the provision of relevant infrastructure across the board in all local government areas and states, to cater for the educational needs of all Nigerians. It is also imperative that policies around functional measures like distance learning and online education, community schooling, adult and women’s education, special schools for persons with disabilities, vocational and skills acquisition centres etc, are factored into the overall national appropriations policies to ensure the provision of enough resources to support such indispensable services.

    Lastly but not the least, a unified and progressive curriculum development based on the needs and purposes of communities and the nation, must be considered a vital aspect of the democratisation of education in Nigeria. Alongside this, teacher training and the production of highly motivated and empowered teaching cadres would be an absolute necessity in the advancement of education in Nigeria to be at par with global best practices.

    Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Convention on the Rights of Migrants, the Social, Political, Cultural and Economic Covenants of the United Nations and various other universally applicable human rights regimes, have provided the legal basis for the treatment of citizens in humane and civilised ways, including in the provision of the conducive environments for their mental, spiritual and cultural development. It is only an enhanced and widespread programme of the democratisation of education driven by state policies that can deliver all these aspirations and root them in the civic culture of any nation.