Adebayo Olukoshi,

Abridged Lecture Delivered at the Wole Soyinka Centre, Lagos, 13 July, 2011 as part of Activities to Commemorate the 77^th Birthday of Professor Wole Soyinka

I feel highly honoured to be a speaker on this occasion of the 77^th birthday of one of Professor Wole Soyinka and on the platform of the Soyinka Centre that is devoted to the worthy cause of investigative journalism. The life and example of Professor Soyinka has been an inspiration to at least three generations of Nigerians. I count myself among the legions of people inNigeria,Africa and far beyond who have been inspired by him as much for the sheer power of his intellect and erudition as for the political commitments he has consistently stood for and the unalloyed courage he has always displayed – even in the face of personal danger.

As a student at Federal Government College, Sokoto, in the 1970s in what was then the Northwestern State, and which, after the subsequent creation of additional states in the Nigerian federation, came to be known as Sokoto State, my bosom friend, Akin Olaoye and I, among other peers, were fired by the breadth of Soyinka’s knowledge and the versatility he displayed in his scholarship. Our introduction to Soyinka’s wriotings came through the Trial of Brother Jero but once haven tasted of the power of his pen, there was no stopping us in terms of the range of writings that flowed from him which we tried to digest. So eager were we to be like Soyinka that we enthusiastically worked on a letter which Olaoye wrote out and sent to him, outlining the qualities we admired in him and seeking his advice on how we too could become like him.

The elation which Olaoye and I felt knew no limits when we got a short reply from Soyinka himself, signed personally by our legendary and incomparable hero himself! I know I was not the only one who memorized the reply and recited it as often as the opportunity arose. But that was when the post office still worked as an important institution in the community and a key instrument in the effort to build solid bridges across theNigerandBenuein all directions. It was also the time when the investment in the educational sector by state and society was considered as a matter of priority, complete with efforts at building a curriculum that could contribute to the strengthening of civic identities and a sense of personal dignity.

When, after my first degree at Ahmadu Bello University,Zaria, the time came for me to choose a school to go to for my postgraduate studies,Leeds University was a natural choice for me  – for Soyinka had been there and I stated so in my application papers as one of the motivations for my choice. Although the topic of my doctoral research was industrialization in Africa and the primary department within which I was to undertake my advanced studies was Politics, one of the first places I visited was the Leeds theatre studies Department where I had tea with a most welcoming Martin Banham, Director the Theatre Studies programme, who remembered Soyinka well with the pride that only experienced teachers are capable of displaying, and lapped up his words of encouragement on how the Soyinka example could be emulated.

I have gone into some of these personal reminiscences principally to underscore a point which is relevant to us today as a nation and to this assembly that has congregated to re-evaluate local governance inNigeria. The point I seek to underscore is that no nation can thrive and prosper without public figures whose lives and examples sum up the ideals that its citizens seek to uphold in the onerous task of state and nation-building. In so doing, those figures become examples for others to emulate, reproducing the high ideals and values by which great nations make and remake themselves in an unending flow of history. My generation is fortunate – and I consider myself singularly lucky – to have the likes of Soyinka, Achebe, and other men and women of letters as standard bearers of the Nigerian, pan-African and humanistic ideal from whom we could draw inspiration and who, unknown to them, helped by their work to shape our future by the path they had trodden, by their challenge to us to dream dreams of a tomorrow in which Africans and all peoples of African descent will find their rightful place in the comity of nations.

Democracy is an ideal and the core values that underpin it are universal. However, it is the actions of people, organized as citizens, that make the democratic ideal a living and on-going experience that unfolds from generation to generation, propelled, to paraphrase Frantz Fanon, by the discovery which each generation must make of the historic mission that it must fulfill or betray. It is the combination of individual and group action that makes democratic change in the quest for the ideal of democratic development possible.

The basic role and place of the media in the democracy project is now well-established in theory and practice to merit any extensive discussion here. Alfred Opubor and his colleagues in Lagos and elsewhere have devoted a part of their investments in the building of mass communications research and training in this part of the world to underscoring the essential duty of the media in the promotion of civic identities and democratic governance. What is important to keep in mind today, in the framework of our reflection on local governance, is the question of the combination of tools and methods by which the media might play its role in a robust and effective manner as to contribute to the deepening of the roots of democracy and the extension of its branches. This is by no means an easy question. Indeed, arguably, it is a question for which no fully satisfactory answer has been found in the praxis of democracy-building itself. Nevertheless, there is a broadly shared agreement that the investigative culture and capacity of the media are central to its ability to play its role in helping to assure that systems and processes of governance are not only representative of the citizenry but also accountable to it and participatory.

Investigative journalism is a powerful tool of governance precisely because in holding power accountable and keeping it constantly reminded that sovereignty belongs to the people, it is both a tool of empowerment of the self and others – and a very risky enterprise. I submit that no democracy can be considered to be healthy which does not have a robust culture of investigative journalism built into its media landscape. In holding power accountable, investigative journalism also empowers the citizenry, nourishes the public policy process, and complements other forms of citizen action to make the democratic ideal a living, everyday experience.

The history of the quest for effective and participatory local governance in Nigeriais as old as the history of political communities in the area that came to be constituted in 1914 into the country we know today. Political communities, understood as an aggregation of people organized into a recognizable or defined geographical space within which structured authority is legitimately exercised, have existed in the Nigeria area for centuries, comprising an admixture of republics, city-states, kingdoms and empires with fairly differing structures of power that range from the most basic to the most elaborate. A generation of nationalist historians, a significant proportion of them congregated in the old Ibadan School of History, has bequeathed us with rich accounts of the making, consolidation, dissolution and renewal of these political communities as part of the battle which it waged against an earlier racist colonial historiography that claimed that Africa had no history – at least not any that is worthy of note – before the arrival of the white man on the continent.

A careful and critical reading of the historical accounts on the nature and workings of the old-established political communities that existed in theNigeriaarea would suggest clearly that:

1. The state system is as organic to the African world as it was to other regions;
2. The history of the state system long predates the arrival of the first Europeans to the African continent;
3. A system of local governance was integral to the organization of power and structuring of decision-making, and this was as true for centralized political systems as for decentralized ones;
4. Local governance played a central role in the mobilization of legitimacy for rulers and the generation of consent from those whom they ruled, including among groups that were initially forcefully integrated into a political community by war and conquest;
5. The depth of local governance and the extent to which it was representative of local communities was integral to the overall unity and integrity of political communities; and
6. The objectives of the devolution of responsibility – and the powers that correspond – as part of a strategy of local governance were multiple and included the establishment of a pan-territorial presence, the cultivation of legitimacy, and the generation of consent.

On the face of things, following the onset of colonial rule, the logic of consent and legitimacy that was built into local governance appeared to have been maintained by the new imperial authorities. However, the principle underpinning local governance in the colonial administrative system represented a radical departure from the pre-colonial experience. The blueprint for colonially-sanctioned local governance was laid out in Frederick Lugard’s Dual Mandate and the principle of Indirect Rule around which his thinking was built. Indirect Rule had been tried out in India prior to its importation to Africa whereNigeria served as a prime site for its application. The Indirect Rule system purported, in effect, to leave the pre-colonial structure of authority more or less intact under the “protection” and oversight of the colonizing power. It was out of this system that the colonial native authorities within which “traditional”/ “natural rulers” exercised authority in the name of the colonial power was created.  Indeed, over the period leading up the amalgamation of 1914 to the 1930s, “traditional” rulers in fact functioned as (sole) native authorities. It was only subsequently, during the 1930s and 1940s, that the notion of the chief-in-council was introduced.

The theory of Indirect Rule might have proclaimed the existence and exercise of a dual mandate in the exercise of colonial affairs. In practice, however, Indirect Rule and the local governance sub-structure that was built into it represented one of the most repressive experiences of administration in Nigeria’s history. The reasons are many and can be summarized as follows:

a)     Given the colonial foundational structure on which it was erected, it served as a means for the extraction of taxation and other revenues without offering any possibility of representation for the “natives”. Indeed, the “natives” were legally defined as the subjects of a foreign sovereign;

b)      The notion of “native law and customs” that underpinned the Indirect Rule system was a stylized one which removed checks and balances in traditional authority systems such as they existed and disproportionately concentrated power in the hands of chiefs who were effectively reduced to local colonial enforcers. Where authority did not previously reside with a symbolic chiefly figure, the colonial authorities did not hesitate to invent them along with corresponding traditions;

c)       A local policing service was introduced to accompany traditional authority in the enforcement of the new colonial administrative and fiscal order; its work was reinforced by a court system that was as renowned as the native authority police for its oppressiveness; and

d)     The subjection of whole swathes of the “native” population, particularly those in the rural area to customary as distinct from civil law, with implications for access to the basic civic liberties which citizens ordinarily ought to take for granted.

It is little wonder then that Mahmood Mamdani, taking stock of the experience of local governance during the colonial period, characterized it as an exercise in decentralized despotism operationalized within the framework of a bifurcated state that erected its own Wall of China between the civic and the customary the better to dominate the colonized. Peter Ekeh was to point to the long-term alienating effects of the colonial governance model and its legacy of two publics, the one civic, the other primordial. Franz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and other thinkers similarly pointed to the alienating effects of colonial rule both generally and with specific reference to its approach to local governance that produced an admixture of declasses and deracines.

Resistance to decentralized despotism was widespread across colonialNigeriaand took various forms, including immediate violent rejection, sporadic uprisings, and mass migrations. It constituted a recurrent feature of colonial rule and was witnessed in all parts of the country. Some of the better known episodes include the Satiru uprising, the Egba protests, and the Aba Women’s “riot”. In time, the pressures arising from domestic resistance to the colonial system of local governance translated into a concerted nationalist anti-colonial movement which gathered steam after the Second World War. The bid to manage, even contain the growing tide of anti-colonial nationalism resulted in the establishment of a number of commissions aimed at effecting legal-administrative reforms that will increase the “native” voice in the overall administration of local affairs. In this connection, elections were organized in the late colonial period in which natives were allowed to participate. These elections were mainly held over the period between 1950 and 1955 inLagos, and the Eastern and Western regions; change, such as it was conceived came more slowly to the Northern Region. The various reforms were, however, too little, too late; the train of independence had become unstoppable.

Looking back on the 50 years since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, it can be convincingly argued that one of the dominant themes in the post-colonial agenda of politics and policy-making is the reform of local governance.  Through the various shifts that have occurred in the structure of the Nigerian federation over the years, the changes in the balance of power among the tiers of government in the federal system, and the impact which prolonged military rule had on national-territorial administration to the various efforts at post-independence constitution-making, the emergence of the oil economy and its impact on revenue generation and allocation, the role and place of local administration in the overall architecture of  post-colonial governance has been marked by twists and turns that could be said to comprise an admixture of progress and regression.

Scholars ranging from Billy Dudley, Oyeleye Oyediran, Ladipo Adamolekun, Alex Gboyega, and A.D. Yahaya to Dele Olowu, A.Y. Abdullahi, G.O. Orewa, Akinyemi Savage, and Otive Igbuzor, to cite a few of them, have metioculously chronicled and analysed the weight of the various reforms, direct and incidental, which were carried out during the lead up independence and in the years since then. The 1976 local government reforms pronounced by the Murtala-Obasanjo military administration and the subsequent debates on local governance that took place in the Constituent Assembly that drafted the constitution for the Nigerian Second Republic; the integration of the principle of elected local government into the 1979 constitution; the 1992 decision by the Babangida military administration to abolish ministries of local government, make direct resource allocations to local governments, and introduce the principle of the separation of executive and legislative functions at the local level; the 1998 nation-wide elections held into the 774 local government councils as part of the lead-up to the inauguration of the Nigerian Fourth Republic in May 1999; and the 2003 Sanda Ndayako Commission on Local Government Administration enabled by the Council of state have all been captured in the literature as representing some of the most significant – though not necessarily decisive – developments in the post-colonial quest for a more effective system of local governance.

There is a broad agreement among the leading scholars that in spite of all the efforts that have been deployed, Nigerians are still an appreciable distance away from enjoying the ideal of a system of local governance that is:

a)      An integral and substantive part of the social contract that frames the rights, entitlements, privileges, duties and responsibilities of the Nigerian citizen;

b)      Representative of the citizenry as individuals and communities;

c)      Participatory in a manner that ensures the active input of the populace in the exercise of policy choices and the making of decisions;

d)     Accountable to the citizenry both in the technical and political senses;

e)      Empowered to be a legitimate driver in the national development project; and

f)       A site for the pursuit of everyday democracy.

Oyeleye Oyediran captured the mood of most students of the Nigerian local governance system when he observed that all of the efforts at reform had helped the country to sight Canaan but the road ahead to the desired destination was still long and treacherous to a point where it could not be taken for granted that it will be reached. Why has this been so? The explanations that have been proffered in the literature are many and varied. They include the:

a)      Failure of post-independence governments to depart radically from the colonial logic of local administration;

b)       Adverse impact of prolonged military rule on the Nigerian federal system, including the over-centralization and concentration of power in the federal centre;

c)      Flip-flops in policy and orientation, including a rapid turnover and inconsistency, that is both reflective of the chronic instability of the Nigerian political system and is destabilizing of local administration;

d)     Absence of substantive autonomy for local governments, and their effective subordination to other tiers of government within an overall structure of power that consigns them to a residual position;

e)      Inadequacy of mechanisms of accountability in the local governance system through which officials could be held responsible by citizens for their performance;

f)       Ambiguities in the 1999 constitution with regard to the functioning of the local government system;

g)      Widespread corruption that takes place in the local government system; and

h)      Non-viability of most local governments as autonomous economic units, including their low internal revenue base and near-total dependence on statutory federal allocations.

The various explanations that have been advanced for the inability of local governance inNigeriato fulfill its potentialities and promise to the full are not individually and collectively without an element of validity to them. However, they appear to be partial in some cases and simply symptomatic of larger problems in a number of others. To come to grips with the crisis of local governance in Nigeria such as it has been expressed in the many of the studies that have been carried out, it will be necessary to revisit the entire project of post-colonial state and nation-building with a view to imbuing with a coherent, clear and comprehensive vision of democracy and development in which the citizen is at the centre and the community constitutes a prime building block. Democratic governance is propelled by active and empowered citizens and their communities.

Across the Nigerian political system, the case for taking local governance much more seriously as the bedrock of quest for democratization at the national level can be hinged on the following arguments:

a)      It could allow for deeper grassroots participation in the administration of the affairs of the community;

b)      It serves as a veritable breeding and training ground for future leaders to cut their teeth before going onto to the national stage – and beyond;

c)      It offers a viable and sensible framework for citizens to enjoy the benefits of democracy first hand, including the efficient supply of various socio-economic dividends;

d)      It could provide a foundational platform for exacting accountability from public officials and political office holders;

e)      It is the primary site at which a new social bargain between the Nigerian state and the citizenry must begin to negotiated; and

f)       It is the layer of governance that touches or has the potentiality to touch all citizens and, to that extent, it is the site where the quality, relevance, and even long-term health of the democratic system can be effectively experienced and assessed.

The importance of the media in the struggle which must be waged in all contexts of democratic transition cannot be over-emphasized. Of particular importance here is the role which the media itself could play directly through investigative journalism. But also critical is the necessity for the media to give visibility and voice to local communities through the reporting of their concerns and, where viable, the opening up of opportunities for community journalism. An investigative media anchored in the aspiration of communities for a system of governance that is democratic and developmental is a prerequisite for the flowering of an active citizenship and an enabler of everyday democracy.

BY

ABUBAKAR MOMOH

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

LAGOS STATE UNIVERSITY

LAGOS

Introduction

It should be stated that local governance had existed prior to colonial rule inNigeria. The local people, called the native by the British colonial masters, ruled themselves in ways that were strange, unknown and unacceptable to the colonial masters, through their locally constructed institutions, mediated by culture, tradition, religion and values. As a result of this the colonial masters called the African peoples natives, to distinguish them from settlers-who were the white people. This was how they created the Native Authority (NA) system, as a form of governance of the natives with the Chiefs, Hakimis, and Kings (Emirs, Sultan and so on) at the top mediated by colonial offices as umpires who superintended over tax collection, Native courts and Native governance. Increasing, the transformation of a segment of the population into an educated elite, forced such elite to move into towns and to seek to be accommodated by white tradition rather than native authority. The dual system which resulted from this was Civil law and customary law. Mahmood Mamdani (1996) best captures this: customary law was meant to serve the subjects (natives), and civil law was meant to serve the citizens. Civil law was meant for settlers and customary law was meant for natives. Civil law was superior to customary law which meant that citizens were superior to subject. What is worse, the natives were under two forms of law-native and customary laws, whilst the settler could only be tried under civil law. That made Mamdani to conclude that the natives were under dual oppression and therefore Indirect Rule meant nothing other than “decentralized despotism”.

With constitutional reforms of 1951 and the subsequent self-government that followed in form of regional government, the Native Authority system which was so well consolidated in Northern Nigeria was not democratized neither was it  reformed, rather it was further consolidated as an instrument of repression of the people. The most important conclusion to draw from the Native Authority system as a form of local governance is that it was highly autocratic, oppressive and anti-democratic. The local people were fearful and dreaded the Native Authority and local forms of governance. This continued under the rule of Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) until 1966. The Civil war between 1967 and 1970 did not allow any room for any form of reforms.

Dasuki Local Government Reforms

It was not until 1976, that the Federal government constituted a Committee under Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki to reform the entire local government structure inNigeria. This reform, for the first time, made the Local government a Third Tier of government.

The 1976 Local Government Reform defines a local government as:

Government at local level exercised through representative council established by law to exercise specific powers within defined areas. These powers should give the council substantial control over local affairs as well as the staff and institutional and financial powers to initiate and direct the provision of services and to determine and implement projects so as to complement the activities of the State and federal governments in their areas, and to ensure, through devolution of these functions to these councils and through the active participation of the people and their traditional institutions, that local initiative and response to local needs and conditions are maximized (Guidelines, 1976, cited in Mudasiru, 2009: 2).

The implication of this is four fold:

(i)            It means that the key officers to govern the local government, both as executive (Chairman) and legislative (Councilors), will be elected. Early officials of local government following the reforms in 1976s, produced candidates and politicians  who later became very prominent on the political map of Nigeria during the 1978 transitions  to civil rule process. And the local governments introduced profound reforms that impacted on the local people.

(ii)           The local governments were to have legal personality, meaning that they distinct from other tiers of government-federal and state; they  could sue and be sued

(iii)          They have statutory functions, roles and powers defined, prescribed and inscribed in the constitution ofNigeria. Hence their actions are lawful and justiciable

(iv)         They encourage local participation and initiative in governance.

The realities of Local Governance

There is a difference between local governance and community governance. Local government is carried out by elected officials of the Local Government Councils and their bureaucracy, while community governance is the way the communities have governed themselves in their various forms of associations and social life, in spite of government. We shall return to that, presently.

Traditional rulers and key stakeholders in local communities have become the key patrons of Local government; they take them captive and collude to siphon the little resources that accrue to the local governments. All sorts of people from traditional rulers, to religious/spiritual leaders (North) to youth leaders (Niger Delta) to God fathers (all over the country) are on pay   roll of many Local governments which leaves little room for social development in communities. Members of communities prefer their personal problems to be solved by elected officials of local government, rather than for social development programmes /projects to be implemented.

The nature of statutory allocation of funds from Federation Account simply makes Local Governments the custodians of Primary school salary (courtesy of UBEC) and Local government staff salary. The meager resource that is left is simply stolen through dubious contract awards and corrupt practices.

State Governors also comer Local Government funds, they arbitrarily divert or appropriate whatever they please from the allocation from the  Federation Account, without even having a dialogue with Chairmen of Local governments. Many former State Governors are currently facing charges before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) because of this. And more often these monies run into billions of Naira.

Politically, aspiring/prospective Local government Chairmen are now determined, nominated and imposed by incumbent state Governors. Within the various political parties, there is often no internal democracy to nominate who should run for election, neither is there room for the best candidate to emerge. Everything is imposed form the top. Additionally, the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) are in the pockets of   incumbents state Governors. It is therefore little surprise that there is no state in the federation where the Local Government Chairmen and Councilors are not at least 80% members of the political party in power.

De-Democratization at the Local Government Level

There is a difference between local government and community governance. Everywhere through Community Based organizations (CBOs) and other forms of community organizing, the local people are trying to empower themselves by organizing in thrifts, cooperatives and other forms of cultural and traditional groups, including age-grades, ethnic, developmental and associational life. Through these groups they make decisions, set standards, and define rules of governance for themselves. Nobody violates such rules, else they are sanctioned.

This form of community governance is different from the rule by traditional rulers who most times work in tandem with Local government officials and state governors to subordinate, alienate and oppress the communities.

All over, communities are demanding rights of participation and inclusion. They are complaining of lack of access to micro-finance, primary health care as contained in the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978. They area struggling for implementation of social development, decent public schooling for their children and the need for decision making to be more inclusive and participatory at the local level.

However, because many Local Government Chairmen were benefactors of so-called Godfather syndrome, they are as a result so alienated from the people and even afraid of the people. They can not go near them because they are unable to deliver on any thing. Many of them have no manifesto, no programme and therefore can not formulate people-focused policies. When election approaches, they go to their Godfathers to assist them in rigging. They believe more in their Godfathers than in the electorate. The people are disenfranchised and alienated from the political process.

Local government politics is also often characterized by violence. Politics becomes “do or die” or a form of warfare or war. Rather than allow ideas to contend, it is AK47 that hold sway; it is a matter of who has more weapons of violence in abundance that is likely to win an election.  This is because violence empowers election riggers at the ballot box and disempowers genuine believers in free and credible elections. As a result, violence has been the greatest basis of the disempowerment of the electorate in Nigerian politics. And INEC is an umpire waiting to declare the Victorious “War General” rather than who genuinely won the highest number of votes. Money continues to play an important factor in disenfranchising the Nigerian electorate. It should be stated however that violence much more than money has been the basis of the disenfranchisement and disempowerment of the Nigerian electorate at the local level. This is because people are still wiling to collect money and yet vote their conscience. However, the “votes do not count”. INEC simply has pre-arranged results they declare. The Court rulings inEdoand Ondo states are instructive and I urge everybody to read them.  Party hoodlums led by prominent  politicians and incumbents abuse the security privileges and paraphernalia during elections; they arbitrarily plunge into any polling station and dislodge party agents, electoral officers and voters to the glare  of Policemen deployed in those polling stations. Everything takes place in lightening speed, because every thing is well rehearsed and orchestrated. It is a mafia-like episode that is unprecedented anywhere in the electoral history of the world. This has cultivated fear, pain, agony, apathy and a spirit of despondency in the electorate and would-be political aspirants.

It is little surprise that election petitions litter everywhere. After the General Elections of 2003, there were 527 petitions that went before the Federal Court of Appeal, as compared to the 1,527 that went to the Court after the General Elections of 2007.

Local governments are treated with utter disrespect, disdain and insensitivity by State Governors and the federal government, their strategic role in social and economic development at the local level is not appreciated. Similarly, many local government Chairmen, merely view their positions as that of regular disbursement of public money to State Governors, Traditional rulers, political mentors, their so-called Godfathers and/or patrons/hangers on. Hence, all forms of development that ever take place at the local level often come from either the state or federal government. What is generously described as development is in form of provision of feeder roads, primary health care and so on. Issues in which community labour is crucial and important, but form which the local communities are alienated and excluded. Whereas the communities are able to identity and define local needs, because they live in and have experience of community life and livelihood. There is also another technical problem that makes the local government unable to do much-constitutional constraint. Most functions and responsibilities in the Exclusive, concurrent and residual list ought to go to local government. There is a technical flaw in the constitution which a fundamental constitutional review to empower local governments should be the solution. The Budget of Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York is also most the size of the Annual Budget of Nigeria. Yet, Bloomberg himself is the 8^th richest person inAmerica. He was formerly a member of the Democratic Party and then ran as an Independent. He replaced the ultra-Right Wing  Rudy Giuliani of the Republican Party, and of the 9/11 fame,  who later contested  the Presidential primaries of his party in 2007/8 and was forced to withdraw after his disastrous performance in Florida where he had placed his hope of making dramatic bounce back of the “Comeback kid”.

The most fundamental problem of local governments is that most of them owe their allegiance to State Governors and state officials who are their benefactors and mot the people of the community. Hence the issue of service to the people or inclusion of he people is seen both as an anathema and an unacceptable intrusion. Hence, the problem of the local government with respect to participatory democracy arises from the mindset of local government politicians and officials and their disposition to democracy and their beholding attitude to state politicians. Their attitude is also because many of them look up to higher political positions which they believe can only come through if they were beholding to state Governors and Godfathers. Ditto for those who wish to keep their positions as Chairmen and Councilors.

With all this taking place, local government-community engagement does not take place. Local government-community dialogue takes place in form of a monologue-a top bottom order or instruction. That is, local government officials simply assemble key community officials and “pass” information to them; they do not create room for dialogue over such information. Neither do they allow local participation in decision making; they are not sensitive to community demands and how to input and process them in process new decisions/policies at local government level. This creates alienation, disempowerment and disinterest in political participation at the local government level, on the part of the people. However, the local government officials prefer this form of political apathy of the communities, as it gives them political space to continue with their arbitrary and unchecked form of administration.

Mentoring is also not taking place at the local government level. This is a big blow to the advancement of democracy.  In many other countries, many young politicians state from the local level and learn from mentors and exemplars. The bane of Nigerian politics is that such political mentors to give tutelage to young and upcoming politicians are in decline.

In many advanced countries where responsibilities and resources are given to local government, they are able to wield great powers and leverage, and they command respect among the communities. The case of Mayor Bloomberg ofNew Yorkhas already been mentioned. There is also the case of Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, and a firebrand Leftist and well respected/dreaded politicians in British Labour Party. The challenge forNigeriais how to make local governments more functional, have financial autonomy and to also build bridges and also reach out to the communities to include them and make them participate in decision making processes of the local government. Having local Government Councilors is not enough. After all, when planes get missing, the first to discover them are the local farmers and fishermen; this happened in the ADC crash inLagosin 1996, in the Bellview crash in 2002 and so on. In the end no body even as much as thank these communities not to talk of compensating them for their patriotism and challenging act. For instance, FAAN was busying claiming that ADC flight may have crashed inIlorin, whereas the crash took place less than 5 minutes after take off around Ota, in Ogun state! The communities have a lot to teach us about democracy and we should be humble enough to learn from them. Sand if democracy is about the “people”, they the people should not be excluded from democratic practices.

Devolution and Deconcentration in Local Government

Philip Mahwood and Philip Maddick have most popularized these concepts in the study of local government. By devolution they mean granting powers from state and federal powers to local government to perform, for and on behalf of those tiers of government. Their performance, indeed, comes with grants and financial support. On the other hand, deconcentration means giving the local government the right and the space to practice democracy from below. However, while the experience of many western and North American countries have shown a remarkable conformity with the latter principle.

What should be known about the communities is that it is at the communities that majority of the women first connect to politics; that is where they are first mobilized for political participation, unfortunately, that is where they are instrumentalised and manipulated. Many women live in the rural areas, they are rooted to the informal economy, they are socially and economic ally active in thrifts and cooperatives, in local markets, trade and commerce. They are also active in social development programmes of communities. Yet, they are politically disempowered. Deconcentration as a tool of political empowerment in the local government has not been in use inNigeria. There is need for fundamentally re-look how to design policies and programmes that will make this tool an effective tool of empowering the communities ns more especially women and youth.

Political Accountability in Local Governments and De-Democratization.

Political accountability begins with popularly secured electoral mandate. This is the basis upon which the convent and compact with the people is signed. Where the “elected” representatives are neither elected nor represent the interest of the people, then there is no basis for political accountability. Hence, the first form of accountability starts with genuine electoral victory at the ballot box. Where the will of the majority of the electorate is denied or stolen at the electoral box, then there is crisis. The people get alienated from the “elected representatives. This also happens at the local government level, where majority of the elected offices are totally disconnected from the people. Hence they do not feel the need neither are they obliged to be accountable to the communities. They believe that their allegiance is to State Governors, state Houses of Assembly and God fathers. The role of civil society organizations and Community Based Organizations should be respected and incorporated into local governance. The point being made is that at present, local governance and community governance are antagonistic because of the various interests and stakes of each side. However, the way out is for there to be more political inclusion and this is the only way to institutionalize processes of governance.

Since there is little political participation, it then means that political accountability will be less. Democracy is not merely about electing representatives, it is also about getting the citizens to participate in governance, participation in decision making processes, sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of the people, putting the citizens first, by taking active interests in political process, debate, public hearing, recall, referenda, party political education, party mobilization, reorientation of the citizens about their civic responsibility and the respect for public opinion.

There ought to be openness and transparency in governance. This will allow for the people to see how they are led and governed.

Next there must be equity and fairness in governance, where the rights of the communities are respected and protected and where the rights of women and youth, and children are also respected. In this regard, the progressive of the National Youth Policy, The Convention on Human Trafficking, Democracy and Good Governance are domesticated and actualized at the local level.

The local government bureaucracy should also be made to work and effective too. Sat present, the local governments bureaucracy have become instruments of corruption, blocking all avenues of exposing corruption in local governments

Budgets should be socially determined and reflect the peculiarities of the majority of the people. This is the meaning of the “public good” and public interest. Majority of the time, local government budget are designed without the input of the communities. State Governors do not even allow local budgets to be prosecuted. Rather they merely determine, most times without discussion how much should go to their pockets and how much the local government Chairmen should loot whatever is left, after paying salaries.

Many local government staff are either poorly trained or fresh graduates are often recruited with weak qualifications and certificates in some local governments. Indeed, political balancing and patronage often determine such recruitments. There is need to improve the capacities and skills of local government staff, that is the only way they can improve service delivery at the local level and also assist local government Chairmen some of who do  not know their roles and responsibility. This sis the way to make local government efficient and functional.

Political accountability also means that at all times; the local government should open its books to public scrutiny and public accessibility. Budget liens should be followed, and budgets should be monitored by the citizens. If the people pay tax, they must also know how their tax is spent.  The experience of Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS), under Governor  Raji Fashola , shows that after Pay As You Earn (PAYE), the only major segment of the people who pay their taxes promptly are the market women, with kiosks, and those who lay their goods on the floor in the streets of Lagos. These men and women know and appreciate the meaning of prompt payment of tax. They therefore deserve to ask questions about how the tax payers’ money is expended, and more importantly where their taxes should be expended. If the tax regime inNigeriabecomes more efficacious, the citizens are alive to their civic responsibility and make political demands. Western countries are  apolitical and apathetic about elections the last EU parliamentary elections attest to do, so does the US Presidential election of November 2009, in spite of Obamania. What this tells us is that being apathetic about elections does not mean that citizens should also shrike their civic responsibility. InNigeria, both politicians and citizens, tend to confuse both.

No one person has all the ideas or wisdom to solve common problems of society. Unity and consensus building at the local level makes not only for participatory and inclusive process, but it allows for nation-building from the grassroots. That many of the people of the communities are illiterate does not make them ignorant or bereft of quality and enriching ideas to improve local governance. In the core North of Nigeria, many people are learned in Qur’an education and not in western education. Can these people be called illiterates? Can Arabs taught or educated in Arabic be called illiterate because they do know a word in English language/

There has been over reliance on foreign NGOs and domestic donor driven NGOs to develop the communities ofNigeria. Hence many SEEDS and LEEDS programmes, all derived from the NEPAD country programme of NEEDS, designed for Nigeria have looked not to the people but to foreign donors to impalement their programmes. These have also alienated the people and created avenues for looting and corruption.

De-democratization is a process where by democracy is used as a cover up for authoritarian rule. Olusegun Obasanjo was not only the person who used this strategy against State Governors. The various state Governors used it in the absolutist control of Local Governments, financially and politically. Local Government Chairmen in turn used it against the communities. In the end, the ordinary people became the victims of de-democratization.

Participatory Governance

Participatory governance is the most effective way to include the people. So far, there are many types and approaches to participatory governance.

First, it allows for community driven projects to be mainstream in policy process. Second, it allows for a variety of people to take part in decision-making processes Third, it allows for peoples ownership in policy making and implementation.

Fourth, it allows for both technical and allocative efficiency (Osmani: 2008: 4). Allocative efficiency entails who allocates projects   and how projects are allocated, is it by politicians and bureaucrats alone or it entails the people? Allowing bureaucrats to use so-called expertise to exclude the people can lead to many dangerous, if not selfish and insensitive projects being implemented. It can also lead to misleading information/justification being provided for execution of such projects.  Technical efficiency entails success in ensuring that resources are allocated in accordance with what the community prefers. It also overcomes information asymmetry which is common with the top-bottom, one-way approach to decision-making. Additionally, it  overcomes the “hidden information” problem, whereby those politicians and bureaucrats who take decision, do not have the full information on an issue before making such decision. Here, the community is able to avail all the information needed and prevent wrong decision from being taken. It also avoids the problem of “hidden action” this results from information asymmetry. As a result of the fact that there is precise and concise information to act upon, it then becomes  difficult for action taken on a project to be faulty. Because the process is participatory, it allows for “peer monitoring”, which overcomes the issue/complaint of negligence. Peer monitoring also ensures inclusiveness, and  accountability in financial use and public service delivery. It also ensures efficient outcomes.

Accounatbility results in many outcomes including: 1.Efficiency and equity.2. Protection of the weak and marginalized, elite vs. mass decision making: empowerment vs. disempowerment. 3.. Empowerment. 4.  Development of social capital both bonding (tie people of same social status) and bridging that (closes gap between social classes.5.. Participation: both expansion and empowerment of social capital-lead to efficiency and equity of outcomes

Participation often varies in scope and intensity and is effective, depending on the stage of policy cycle in which  it is used. What is important is whether it leads to efficiency in outcomes. Institutional and social contexts also determine the quality of participation such as: the manpower of officers and their personal disposition, the structures and offices created to handle specific tasks; the number and quality of people involved in decision making; the normative goals to be achieved. The context and specificity of what is to be achieved therefore affects the outcomes and how efficiently it is carried out.

To allow for community participation two things need to be done: Top-bottom decentralization of administration and Bottom –up growth of community. This will allow for inclusive monitoring and evaluation of projects; and accountability in public service delivery. It will allow for participatory management of common property. This will improve cooperation among members of the community.  Through community -managed projects tension and conflict will reduce over what was or was not done well, in service delivery. It will also make communities to become aware of the problems of the administration and not engage in undue criticism that is not based on the facts. Its also allows for self-enforcement of rules, without requiring an outside force or body. It may also reduce  corruption to a   minimum.

What should be done?

1. There is need for constitutional review to grant more political and financial autonomy to local governments
2. Local Governments should review their methodology and seek to incorporate the people in decision making processes. All that is required is the political will.
3. Better means and channels of communications and dialogue with the communities through their organized groups and not merely “government approved” community groups.
4. Community media and information dissemination mechanisms should be created, in that way a symmetrical channels of information flow from the people to the local government and vice versa will be created.
5. Mentoring at the local level should be encouraged for aspiring politicians particularly women and youth aspirants.
6. Training and re-training should be given to local government staff on the meaning and the hows and whys of inclusive/community participation.
7. The facilities and infrastructure of the local governments must be modernized and made efficient and effective.
8. Public service delivery should be the goal of local government officials.
9. Local government programmes and budgets should have the input of the communities and ownership. These programmes should have a high level of social development content such that can benefit majority of the people.
10. Monitoring and Evaluation should be conducted on projects at the community level by experts and community representatives of the people.
11. Justice delivery at local level should be fair to all. Local customary and cultural that oppress the people especially widows, women and youth should be checked, and this will further improve the quality of participation at the local government level.
12. The Nigerian constitution should be explicit about the roles and functions of local governments, including tenure of local government office holders. Quite often Caretaker Committees are used by incumbent Governors or newly sworn in governors who feel  that either some local government Chairmen are not from their political parties or may seek to work to undermine their political interests as  Governors. To be sure, Local government Chairmen have been treated with utter disrespect by State Governors. But the reasons for this are not farfetched. Hence the Local Government Chairmen also need to reform and be more ethically sensitive to the principle of best practices.
13. Finally, there should be shift in attitudes and mindset at the local government level. Elected representatives need to know that dialogue and consultation are indispensable to their success, just as rebellion does not pay, it will only make the communities ungovernable. And government is supposed to be for the people.

Conclusion

There is a Chinese proverb that states that knowing a problem is to half find the solution to it. I have tried to explain why local governments inNigeriahave not been participatory and   accountable practices in local governments inNigeria.  The key problem is lack of political will on the part of those who govern. Since this is the case it behoves the communities to give a push for participatory democracy and an accountable polity. It should be noted that there is difference between Local Government and community governance. Local government officials have been hostile to community governance. However the major way to ensure participatory democracy and accountability is to create an inclusive system that relies heavily on community governance.

It should be stated that community governance is not government by Traditional rulers and their retinue of palace chiefs, Baales, Ezes and Hakimis. Community governance is what takes place at the level of the ordinary people in various localities, how they are coordinating and administering themselves in order to empower themselves through economic, thrift, cultural and health systems to which they are accustomed at the grassroots level. They are using local knowledge and experience of the environment which they have mastered so well to empower themselves. It is in the context of this experience that democracy means a lot to the people. They find democratic means of coordinating themselves holding regular meetings and demanding accountability over the levies and weekly and monthly collections they make. Local Government can benefit immensely from this.

Change should begin with the individual. Mirror yourself and criticize what image you see, before you criticize others-are you accountable? Are you a democrat? Do you tolerate others view point? Each of us must change in our values and attitudes. It is ideas that change society. That change should not be delayed, it must take place NOW. Community governance and participation is possible and it is a sure way of enriching and deepening our democracy.

He has been such a constant presence in our national life and our consciousness that we hardly noticed the passage of time in a life so rich in interest and incident. It seems only a few years ago that he was so startled by the appearance of his first grey hairs that he composed a poem to mark the event.

Devoting this Lecture to journalism rather than not literature and the arts in which Soyinka has attained global renown is not as aberrant as it may seem at first blush. We journalists also claim him as one of our own.

At the time the Nobel Prize for Literature was announced in1986, Soyinka was writing a fortnightly column for the weekly newsmagazine, African Guardian, in which he examined engagingly and often humorously the human condition. Editors and staffers immediately went into a lively debate about how the epochal achievement should be reported.

Obviously, the Nobelist’s affiliation with struggling magazine would have to be advertised, for it just might be the elixir that would not only propel it past its domestic competitors but catapult it to global reckoning. Several headlines were suggested, but the one that had the most appeal was “African Guardian Columnist Wins Nobel Prize for Literature.”

Soyinka, as he often seems to prefer, had no institutional affiliation at the time, and no fixed address. So, identifying him with The African Guardian seemed not wholly unreasonable, even if it was a bit of a stretch.

In that giddy atmosphere, some were still sober enough to counsel that Soyinka’s fortnightly contribution the magazine, procured through the good services of the Ever dynamic Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi, then a senior executive with Guardian Newspapers, was a tangential affiliation at best, and that to define him in those terms would amount to a stultification of the Nobel.

The sober ones won the day.

But if claiming Soyinka as one of our own in the profession of journalism seems self-aggrandizing, consider the first half of the title of this Lecture: “Telling the Nigerian Story.”

No person has told the Nigerian story more eloquently, more copiously, and more arrestingly than Wole Soyinka. He has told that story in poetry, drama, film, music, fiction, memoir, criticism, essays, lectures, radio, and of course in direct, militant action on the street, and most memorably, in a radio station.

He was only 26 years old when, on the eve of Nigeria’s independence, he wrote the dramatic work, A Dance of the Forests, in which he correctly anticipated the angst and the discontinuities that have bedeviled the Nigerian state to this day.

In a worthy cause, you could never have a stronger or more dependable ally than Soyinka. How often have many of us here, including the present speaker, enlisted his support in pursuing one objective or another, persuaded that his name and the authority that goes with it would make the decisive difference?

In an unworthy cause, you could never have a more formidable adversary. You can make every oblation, every supplication, but if Ogun has anything to do with the matter, that cause is doomed.

We all have heard, and perhaps in moments of frustration quoted with approval the statement, attributed to the Economist quoting an unidentified source, describing Nigeria as a land “where the worst never happens, but where the best is impossible.”

Bad things happen here frequently, but the best is no stranger to Nigeria. “June 12” happened. The MUSON Centre where we are gathered is a sparkling reality. His Excellency Habitude Fashola, Governor of Lagos State, will make a first-rate governor anywhere, without having to sign up for a crash programmed in public administration at Harvard. A great many of our compatriots present here and scattered all over the globe rank among the best anywhere in their fields.

And the man whose birthday anniversary we are celebrating today belongs among the very best writers who ever lived.

Thank you, sir, for the example you have set by your creativity, erudition, courage, and sustained engagement, of always speaking truth to power, and your unwavering commitment to justice and human freedom. I join all gathered here today and elsewhere to wish you very many happy returns of July 13.

The title of this Lecture, “Narrating the Nigerian Story: The Challenge of Journalism,” was chosen by its organizers, the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism. My broad task, as I see it, is to discuss how well the news media have acquitted themselves as chroniclers of the story of Nigeria, its triumphs, trials, tribulations and challenges.

But the press itself is part and parcel of the Nigerian story and inseparable from it. The chronicler is in itself a chronicle and part of a larger chronicle, with its own triumphs and trials and tribulations and challenges.

Over the next 45 minutes, I will try to sketch in outline these intertwined stories and suggest how the news media can tell the story more effectively.

First, what is Nigeria?

Nigeria began as an idea in the head and mind of the British imperial agent Frederick Lugard. He actualized the idea in 1914. Since then, Nigeria has been a picture we carry in our heads.

Nigeria is a place on a map, located, it is often said with more than a hint of derision, in the armpit of Africa. I usually remind those who dwell on this point that we had no choice in the media

It is inhabited by a patchwork of ethnic nationalities corralled into place by British imperial fiat. Nobody knows its actual geographical boundaries. The World Court at The Hague. I gather, awarded Bakassi to Cameroun largely on the evidence of official Nigerian maps which located the disputed territory unambiguously in Cameroun.

Just as nobody knows the actual geographical boundaries, nobody knows the actual population the nearest 25 million. Whatever the actual numbers, there is no disputing the fact that Nigeria is home to the largest number of black people in the world. The claim that every fifth person in Africa and every eighth black person in the world is a Nigerian has gone largely unchallenged.

The point that every fifth African is a Nigerian once caused a big family quarrel in Kenya, according to a story told me by a person of very high consequence. The man of the house wanted another a fifth child abut his wife would hear none of it. He pleaded and pleaded, but his wife was unyielding. For good measure, she took every precaution not to conceive another child.

The woman was relatively young and in good health. The couple had the resources to provide for an addition to the family. So, why not another child?

Because, said the woman, she did not want to give birth to a Nigerian. She had no doubt heard all kinds of stories about Nigeria and Nigerians – the kinds of stories that should have moved the authorities to embark on a spirited re-branding campaign decades before the energetic Professor Dora Akunyili, came to the rescue as Minister of Information.

Nigeria, as I was saying, is a place on a map, with a population that nobody knows to the nearest 25 million with confidence, and with international boundaries that nobody knows for certain.

It is a work in progress – not yet quite a century old since its creation, and one year short of 50 as a sovereign state. As countries go, it is has not even reached adolescence.

And so, like all works in progress, Nigeria is a promise and a possibility. It exists in the present, but it is future country.

Nigeria is, finally, an ideal, an ideal formulated during a period when a great future seemed not only splendidly visible but eminently attainable. I will return to this ideal in the final section of this presentation

What is the story of Nigeria?

Briefly, it is s a story of false starts, clumsy runs, and abrupt endings, of censuses that were no censuses, elections that were no elections. It is the story of ethnic strife and civil war and religious conflict. It is the story of how to accomplish the difficult feat of running a gold mine – in this case, a sprawling oil industry – at a colossal loss.

It is a story rich with intimations of a Sisyphean tale, in which battles fought and won decades ago have to be fought all over again. It is the story of a deluded quest to build democracy without democrats, of corruption in places high and low. It is a story of waste and drift, of misdirected energies, lost opportunities, under-performance and under-achievement, despite a prodigal endowment of human and material resources.

It is the story a retreat from electric power to the hurricane lantern and the oil lamp as the primary source of illumination. It is a story of a land where public service is the surest route to wealth and privilege, where policy-making at the highest level is seen as a hardship that must be compensated lavishly.

It is the story of how, by means overt and covert, the Nigerian Federation was shorn of the core elements of federalism and the country turned into something between a centrally administered state and a quasi-federation. The festering insurgency in the Delta is just one of the more dramatic consequences of this distortion.

But the Nigerian story is also a story of post-war healing and reconciliation in manner that drew praise around the world. It is a story of astonishing resilience, of equanimity in the face of crippling deprivations, shuffering and smiling as the legendary Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti phrased it, a story of hope and faith in the possibility of a better tomorrow. It is the story of a people gifted with extraordinary inventiveness. It is the story of a land and a people marked for greatness if only they would put first things first.

And what is the story of the Nigerian press?

In a strict sense, one cannot talk about the “Nigerian press.” It is not a monolith. Like Nigeria itself, it is an amalgam. Even in its earliest phase, it spanned the political spectrum from the downright conservative, such as Kitoye Ajasa’s Nigerian Pioneer, to the unapologetically radical, like Herbert Macaulay’s Lagos Daily News, with progressive newspapers like the Weekly Record of John Payne Jackson and the Daily Record of his son Horatio Jackson in between.

The story goes back 150 years ago, to 1859, when a missionary of the Anglican Church, the Rev. Henry Townsend, established Iwe Irohin in Abeokuta – the same year the first secondary school, the CMS Grammar School, was established in Lagos. (Congratulations to the Old Grammarians in our midst.)

It is the story of an institution with a “glorious ancestry,” according to Obafemi Awolowo, one of the elders of the fraternity of the pen. It is the story of an institution whose exertions, according to Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the greatest journalist of his time, were “identical with the material and intellectual development of Nigeria.”

It is the story of what the historian Fred Omu has called, in its early phase, “the most distinguished intellectual forum in Nigeria’s intellectual history,” one in which “the high standard of debate cannot fail to fascinate the modern reader.”

It is the story of a marriage between press and politics in a single-minded pursuit of self-government from colonial rule and the assertion of black dignity; the story of fragmentation along party and regional lines in the run-up to independence, of descent into partisanship in its rawest form after independence, a partisanship that must be accounted a factor in the failed attempts to establish democracy on a firm footing in Nigeria, despite a quantum leap in quality and sophistication of the press that began in 1983 and has continued apace since then. The story of the press is a story of persecution and perseverance. Persecution took many forms, including the following:

Prosecution and imprisonment of journalists on sedition charges – sedition being any the colonial authorities, and later the authorities of independent Nigeria found disagree

Closure of newspapers, often without an enabling law.

Flogging, of a journalist who ruined a military governor’s birthday by reporting a strike by teachers demanding payment of their salaries, and for good measure, shaving his head with broken glass.

Beating, by aides of a military governor, of a television reporter on duty –a beating so severe that the reporter’s leg had to be amputated. But not before gangrene had set in. The Man Died – the man who inspired the title of the prison memoir of the man we are honouring today.

Laws demanding greater reportorial accuracy than is feasible even in the physical sciences, and under which journalists were jailed for publishing a story that was only 99 percent accurate;

Seizing the wives of journalists on the calculation that if they were held long enough, their husbands being sought by agents of national security would give themselves up. It did not matter whether, as in once case, the wife was eight months pregnant or, in the other case, that she was plucked from her infant children in the dead of night and the children left to fend for themselves.

Murder by parcel-bomb, with threats of more of the same if the media did not stop asking: Who killed Dele Giwa? To which we should add: Who killed Bagauda Kaltho?

Jailing journalists for life on false charges of being “accessories” to a phantom coup plot.

Forcing journalists to choose between being shot on sight and exile.

Impounding the entire print run of newspapers or magazines as they rolled off the presses, or intercepting their distribution vans on the highway, the object being to prevent the publications from being read;

Occupying the premises of newspapers to prevent them from publishing, and, for good measure, keeping the homes of editors under surveillance with a view to seizing them if they ventured thither;

Torching newspaper printing plants;

Abducting journalists.

The press survived these ordeals through sheer perseverance. It resorted to satire Cartoons blossomed. I recall a cartoon that supplied 53 synonyms for a suitcase.

It took to what the political scientist V. O. Key called “Afganistanism,” the habit of talking candidly about remote places while avoiding the dire reality at home. But in the Nigerian adaptation of Afghanistanism, it was always clear that the remote places reviewed and analyzed forthrightly were metaphors for the situation at home.

Sections of the press perfected the art of guerrilla journalism to evade censorship and suppression.

When their offices and homes were turned into “no-go” areas, they resorted to carrying out every aspect of their craft on the fly – from story assignment to distribution of the editorial product

The risks were daunting. Yet, they never missed a single issue.

The story of the press is also the story of indigenous enterprise. It was perhaps the first indigenously-owned industry in Nigeria, and although the attrition rate is high, the rate of survival is remarkable. Although the character of the Nigerian Tribune has changed over the years, how many business organizations can lay claim to 60 years of unbroken existence?

Paradoxically, it was during its greatest period of repression 1984-93, that the press underwent the greatest expansion in its history. The ranks of the independent press, of which The Punch was the sole exemplar, swelled with the entry into market of such titles as The Guardian, Vanguard, Champion, Trust, ThisDay, Newswatch, TheNEWS, and Tell, and Trust.

As the ranks of the independent press swelled, the ranks as well as the influence of government-owned newspapers shrank. Many of them expired altogether. A few survived, but only as pale shadows of what they once were, bereft of serious influence and prestige and authority.

A similar revolution took place in the electronic media. The official television and radio networks and its affiliates in the states had become so brazen in their partisanship that the public lost faith in their credibility and tuned off in large numbers.

Following the introduction of private broadcasting in the 1990s, electronic media outlets have grown rapidly. Though lacking the wide reach of the official network, these outlets are run with for the most part with the professionalism that the official media never fully embraced

How faithfully has the Nigerian press narrated the Nigerian story?

In the period stretching from the 1890s to the late 1940s, the press served as a militant nationalist vehicle for mobilization against colonial rule, asserting the validity of the indigenous cultures, speaking for the most part with one voice against what it regarded as a common adversary. It played watchdog, kept the colonial authorities on the defensive, and drove the public policy agenda.

It is no coincidence that those who led the nationalist awakening in Nigeria – Herbert Macaulay, Ernest Sessei Ikoli, John Payne Jackson and his son Horatio, H.O. Davies, Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro, Dutse Ali Mohammed, and the most famous of them all, Nnamdi Azikiwe – were all professional or vocational journalists, editors, and newspaper publishers.

The motto of Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, unquestionably the most influential newspaper of the period, encapsulated the overarching goal of the press: “Show the light, and the people will find the way.”

Self-government was the goal, and the press kept it splendidly in focus. Self rule did not necessarily mean beneficent rule, however. For as the Daily Service, the organ of the Nigerian Youth Movement asserted in an editorial. self-government carried with it the right of the natives to “misrule” themselves if they so desired. An influential paper of the period, probably the West African Pilot,has been cited as declaring in an editorial, “Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”

The carving of Nigeria into three regions in 1951 marked the regionalization of nationalism. The nationalist movement became formally structured in political parties, functioning within an electoral system.

Each regional government set up its own newspaper, ostensibly to publicize its activities and mobilize the people for development. In reality, the newspapers were organs of the ruling party financed by the public. These newspapers rarely made the vital distinction between the ruling party and the government.

And so, whereas in the early colonial period the press put the authorities on the defensive, served as a watchdog and helped the public policy agenda, the press after internal self-government became mouthpieces of the regional government, or the ruling party in a region, or the opposition party.

The watchdog role was carried out only to the extent that the press in one region under the control of one political party criticized or vilified the government of competing regions and thereby the leadership of those political parties.

It was with this polarized press, polarized along political party lines, with the parties themselves divided roughly along ethnic lines, that Nigeria entered independent nationhood in 1960

Two disputed national population counts in 1963 and 1964, the political crisis in Western Nigeria, and the 1964 general elections generated great tension across the country, leading ultimately to the military coup of 1966 that toppled the government. On these crises the led to the coup, press performance, according to the historian Omu, was “a remarkable example of overzealousness and partisanship.”

What obtained in Nigeria’s First Republic, according to another scholar, Lars Holman, was an “instrumental” press that provided neither the “facts” nor the feedback essential for formulating sound public policy, but functioned to strengthen the grip of regional leaders over their followers and thereby the fragmentation of the country.

The contemporary statesman Chief Anthony Enahoro, the youngest person to occupy an editorial chair in Nigeria, a journalist of the radical school, and Federal Commissioner for Information in the military government of General Yakubu Gowon, was speaking from the pulpit of authority when, in 1968, he said, the press “lacked the vision to recognize danger and oppose wrong.”

He pronounced the press guilty of sycophancy, of “unquestioning deferential support for rulers, flamboyant praise for mediocrity, popularizing excess and impropriety,” and of “a craven desire to bat on any winning side.

These failings applied with even greater force to the press of the Second Republic, with government newspapers controlled by the ruling NPN and MKO Abiola’s National Concord on the one-hand, and on the other, opposition newspapers, most notably the Tribune, battled each other daily, demanding no quarter and yielding none.

Thirteen years of military rule (1966 – 1979) eroded the instrumental orientation of the Nigerian press somewhat, but with the return of party politics in 1978, that orientation resurfaced. Radio and television were complete government monopolies and owed total allegiance to the various governments and the ruling political parties in each state.

With the annulment of the presidential election of June 12, 1993, Nigeria faced perhaps its greatest test since the end of the civil war in 1970, and so did the press.

While some newspapers in the so-called Lagos-Ibadan axis led by The Guardian and

Punch – and naturally, Abiola’s Concord – stood robustly and courageously against the annulment, others equivocated, or lined up to voice and traction to the contrived fears and ancient hatreds that a suborned political class conjured up to defend and sustain it.

The New Nigerian declared in an editorial that the misbegotten Association for a Better Nigeria that was not even a party to the contest was the winner. Why?

Because, said the New Nigerian, the ABN’s fabled 20 million card-carrying members, far more numerous than those who had voted for each of the two official parties, had stayed away from the poll.

The Plateau State government-owned Standard hailed MKO Abiola’s election victory enthusiastically one day, only to soft-pedal the next day. The Champion praised Humphrey Nwosu for having conducted a transparent election but could not bring itself to accept and defend the outcome of that election. Well before the details of the Interim National Government designed to seal the annulment were spelled out, the Tribune welcomed the proposal.

Commitment to the best democratic practices, it turned out, was not one of the virtues of a substantial segment of the Nigerian press any more than it was one of the virtues of the military authorities.

To its credit, the press was a vital force in halting a scheme designed to enable a president remain in office beyond the two terms mandated by the Constitution. It remains an open question, however, whether the press helped kill the scheme because of its desire to preserve the Constitution, or because it disliked the person who stood to profit most from the scheme.

The 2007 general elections, certified by local and international observers as the most fraudulent they had ever witnessed, precipitated a crisis of legitimacy that lingers to this day. This crisis permeates many state capitals, as was brutally dramatized in last April’s partial re-rerun of the Ekiti gubernatorial election, and as is being dramatized in Bauchi, where a governor on the platform of the ANPP is not content to cross over to the PDP but insists on forcing his deputy to decamp too, failing which a suborned state legislature is set to impeach him.

Seven weeks ago, Nigeria celebrated 10 years of unbroken rule civil rule. In those ten years, not just the substance, but also the possibility of democracy, has been in retreat within the political parties, and in the larger polity. Elections have been little more than cruel travesties in which winners were turned into losers and losers into winners, with the connivance an electoral commission whose designation as an independent body is itself a cruel travesty.

And so, once again, Nigeria finds itself mired in a crisis of legitimacy and a crisis of leadership, both of which translate into a crisis of democracy.

All this has happened at a time when the level of professional sophistication of Nigerian journalists has never been higher, when, to paraphrase Chief Enahoro, the press has seldom boasted more able and readable writers who can hardly be accused of nursing a craven desire to bat on any winning side, or of lacking the courage to oppose wrong.

Yet, the press rarely speaks with a common voice or to common purpose.

What role should the press play at a time like this?

At a time when newspapers all over the world are struggling just to survive, when the continuing viability of the newspaper as a cultural form can no longer be taken for granted, this question may seem urgent. The Nigerian press has no immunity against the forces threatening newspapers globally, but my reading of the situation is that, despite shrinking advertising revenues and rising production costs, it suffers from fewer structural constraints than the press in the developed countries and therefore must think beyond mere survival. Even so, survival must have a purpose.

So, what role should be expected at a time like this?

Where the Constitution is an authentic expression of the sovereign will of the people, the first task of the press should be to defend it and all institutions established under it, and to hold public officials accountable to it.

But where, as in our own case, the legitimacy of the Constitution is contested — some persons learned in the law have called the document a forgery – the press should defend it only with strong reservations, call attention to its defects and any abuses of its more acceptable provisions.

The press must also defend unequivocally the rule of law. Democracy and the rule of law are but the two sides of a single coin. But in defending the rule of law, the press must go beyond the form of the law or its mere existence to its substance, its content.

The apartheid authorities in South Africa did everything by the statute book. Still, the United Nations declared apartheid a crime against humanity.

So, the press had the duty to defend not laws that conform to the civilized usage, just laws justly administered, access to the machinery of justice, and equality before the law,

By now, the futility of trying to establish a democracy without democrats has become obvious. A constituency for democracy has to be built first, to serve as a foundation for democracy. The press is uniquely qualified to help build such a constituency. It can do this in several ways.

First, by emphasizing democratic themes, it can make the public think and talk about democracy. It can send the message that democracy matters; that, contrary to the belief in some quarters that democracy is a luxury to be pursued only after national development has been achieved, the best authorities hold the view that there can be no real development without democracy.

Second, the press can help strengthen the public’s faith in democracy by highlighting triumphs of the democratic method, commending acts that promote democracy and calling attention to acts that undermine it.

A third way in which the press can help nurture and sustain democracy is by supplying the feedback that enriches the conversation between elected officials and citizens, and between candidates and voters. What the press reports right now is for the most part intra-elite conversation.

Fourth, the press can help build a constituency for democracy by tamping down expectations that democracy is a quick fix for the problems of the moment. Instead, the press should make the public recognize that democracy is essentially a slow process, often cumbersome and sometimes frustrating, not something guaranteed to produce rapid results.

Fifth, the press can help build a constituency for democracy by lowering the temperature of political rhetoric. The language of politics is Nigeria is inflated, brutal, self-righteous and harsh, and usually contains more than a hint of imminent violence. It poisons the wellsprings of rational discourse and makes the search for common ground difficult. Democracy, on the other hand, thrives on discussion and accommodation, compromise. Through sober, well-tempered reporting, the Nigerian press can lower the temperature of Nigerian politics and thus help develop a democratic culture.

In every discussion of thre Nigerian condition, the failure of leadership, especially political leadership, invariably comes up as the core issue. Few persons will quarrel with this diagnosis. The story of Nigerian leadership has been for the most part a story of the encounter of the unprepared and the unforeseen.

As chief intermediary between candidates and the public, the press has a major responsibility to help recruit and test the leadership.

The press does not of recruit the leadership in any direct sense. It does so by subjecting candidates for public office to close scrutiny, beaming the spotlight on those who perform well or poorly in difficult circumstances, thereby raising public consciousness that such officials have shown or failed to show a potential for leadership in a broader context.

The press has been sorely remiss in performing this task. It failed to scrutinize Malam Umaru Yar’Adua’s record, and the nation was landed with a largely unkown person as president. In the same manner, it failed to scrutinize the records of gubernatorial, National Assembly and State Assembly candidates. This failure is in part responsible for the crisis of leadership that has crippled Nigeria at every level.

But the press must not rush to confer leadership or status on persons who have not earned it, as is increasingly the case. Reporters covering a beat think nothing of conferring awards of dubious merit on the persons of institutions they are covering. One newspaper even conferred an award on its own proprietor several weeks ago.

When the press proclaims a state chief executive as “governor of the year” or some product as “brand of the year” or some transaction on the Stock Exchange as the “offer of the year” — when journalists confer spurious prizes on the very officials and institutions they are supposed to keep in check, they become cheerleaders and boosters and enablers, and they put their credibility on the line.

I plead guilty myself to a species of the failing. When it was reported that the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Ekiti, Mrs Ayoka Adebayo, had vowed that she would not declare false returns as she was been pressured to do, I described her in my column for The NATION as a “true original.” Two days later, it would turn out that she was neither true nor original. That I failed the test does not invalidate the principle: Be slow to canonize, and even slower to demonize.

Leadership is not the exclusive province of elected officials or holders of public office. The press should also see itself as part of the leadership of the country, with a responsibility to instruct, to show the light and help the public find the way, as the the motto of Dr Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, enjoined.

This means that journalists must be very knowledgeable and must strive constantly to take every opportunity to improve themselves and the editorial product, to cultivate expertise as well as the experts in the subjects they report. The attentive audience in Nigeria is highly knowledgeable, and journalists must strive to be several steps ahead of that audience.

In the absence of reliable census data, it is difficult to conduct meaningful opinion polls in Nigeria. Nevertheless, some media organizations conduct surveys from time to time One newspaper even conducted an “exit” poll on an election that was still three weeks away. Polls conducted in the absence or =f reliable census data polls are shot through and through with error and must never be presented as scientific findings.

Journalism serves the public interest best when it is grounded on facts. Therefore, the press should engage in a relentless search for facts, and cultivate the nice sense of discrimination essential for distinguishing fact from rumour or gossip. Factual accuracy must never be compromised. If the details provided in a story are at variance with what readers of listeners know or witnessed, why should they place their faith in the reporter, or for that matter the organization that published the story?

A Freedom of Information Law that gives all citizens – not just journalists, as some of its opponents claim — access to non-classified information and documents will help the press do a better job of reporting public affairs. But even in the absence of such a law, the press should exploit the vast resources of the Internet to enhance performance. There is significant much out there, at least as much significant material as is available in unclassified documents.

All the same the campaign for a Freedom of Information Law should be pursued with all vigour. Senate President David Mark says that the draft bill before the National Assembly bill will not become law unless the press accepts his proposal to make defamation a penal crime, in which the truth or falsity of the publication at issue is immaterial. The only thing that counts is the fact of publication. The case begin and ends with the fact of publication.

Senator Mark’s stipulation is a measure of his commitment and of the commitment of the institution he leads, to open government and accountability, vital ingredients of democracy.

The only thing more outrageous than the stipulation is the award a newspaper conferred on Senator Mark the other day – an award he sent a junior aide to receive on his behalf.

In news work, some measure of self-censorship is inevitable and even healthy. One cannot report or write about everything that one knows.

But the press must also guard against the self-censorship that flows from closeness to power. Journalists are often torn between the pursuit of truth and their need and desire to be on good terms with the powerful, who are invariably the chief sources of news and intelligence, and the dispensers of favours, honours, and recognition. Closeness to power has its uses, but it is also the source of many kinds of temptation, among them the social climbing that constitutes, today, a form of corruption that is just as subversive of journalism as the storied brown envelope,” if not more so.

Closeness to power can blunt that skepticism, that critical edge that should be every journalist’s armour against seduction and co-optation. Therefore, journalists must maintain a certain distance, an air space, between themselves and the high public officials they cover.

The press must be a voice for the voiceless, the downtrodden in society, the disconnected, the “wretched of the earth” to borrow Frantz Fanon’s term, those who are often overlooked in the scheme of things. It should stand unequivocally in defence of human rights and justice. The political class may pontificate as much as it wishes wishes about national unity or other forms of unity. But it is justice that unites. Without justice, there can be no unity.

The press must follow up and follow through and sustain a narrative on the major issues facing Nigeria. The best reporting I have seen on the oil industry in Nigeria and the crisis in the Delta has come from the foreign media. Until many of the transactions carried out in the name of privatization unraveled, the press gave no indication of just how dirty, how subversive of the public interest, many of the deals were. The Nigerian stock market was a giant bubble waiting to burst but many a journalist was too busy cashing in to look beneath the surface.

It is not enough to hop from one event to another.

What is going on under the surface? What does it mean today, and what will it mean tomorrow? Is there a trend, a pattern? These are the kinds of questions journalists should ask and try to answer as they seek build a picture of reality that can reveal a society to itself and serve as a basis for sound public policy. This kind of reporting calls for nothing less than a sociological imagination.

It does not come cheap. And yet, without it, the press will be reduced to reacting to events when one of its major tasks, as media sociologists tell us, is to carry out surveillance of the environment, correlate its parts, and warn of approaching danger.

It is in recognition of the need for this kind of reporting that the man we honour today has endowed the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism. Various organizations also advance this kind of journalism by award prizes for investigative reporting and features. But much more is required.

To this end, I would like to propose the establishment of a Fund for Investigative Journalism, which will provide grants to assist media organizations or freelance journalists to report and write on significant issues of public interest and disseminate their findings to the public.

The Fund will seek support from civil society groups, and from Nigerian and foreign organizations dedicated to the promotion of democracy and good government. It will Be administered by an independent body set up by the Whole Soninke Centre for Investigative Journalism, with members drawn from all strata of society. To avert even the appearance of a conflict of interest, funds will not be solicited from government and governmental institutions, nor from the private sector, organized or unorganized.

Finally, I return to the polarization, the lack of common purpose that has often vitiated media effectiveness in Nigeria.

Media proprietors are not in the business of philanthropy. They establish newspapers, newsmagazines, and broadcast media to pursue certain objectives and defend certain interests. These objectives and interests vary from proprietor to proprietor, and it is still true that, when it really counts, the person who pays the piper will call the tune

Yet, some common ground can be found, some core national objectives that the media across Nigeria’s geo-ethnic fault lines can embrace and articulate with one voice.

That common ground was best encapsulated in the Second National Development Plan 1970-74 that few persons now remember.

The goals of the Plan were to establish Nigeria firmly as:

a united, strong and self reliant nation;
a great and dynamic economy;
a just and egalitarian society:
a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens, and
a free and democratic society

These goals constitute the sum-total of what led me earlier to define Nigeria as an ideal other things. It is an ideal worth striving for.

If the present political class cannot recover the magic of that era, the press should serve as a standard bearer for the common ground sketched so concisely in a document that stands as a monument to a time when Nigerians thought all things possible. I thank you Professor Wole Soyinka, to whom this day belongs, I thank the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism for counting me worthy of presenting this Lecture, and I thank you, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, for your time and attention.