SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - National Bureau of Statistics’ Exemplary Institutional Independence

​President Barack Hussein Obama's speech in Ghana on 11 July 2009 did not contain only "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions'' but he also urged African leaders to stop blaming the condition of their countries on their past and take the destiny of their countries in their own hands. Although Obama claimed to be African- American, his speech in Ghana, just like the speech of Jesus to the Pharisees, assured Caucasian Americans that he had ascended America's Presidential throne to fulfil the law of American imperialism in Africa and not to change it. Just as the American imperialist murdered the Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba and his close associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, in 1960, for wanting to control the destiny of their country, the same American imperialist under Obama  led NATO military invasion of Libya and murdered the President, Moamar al Kaddafi. Crude oil gushed out free from Libya to the Caucasian West with the effect that the international market price of crude oil per barrel fel from over $100 to $30. However, the weak president, Obama, surrounded by strong American institutions soon knew his mettle shortly after his Ghana speech when he said that a white police sergeant acted stupidly in arresting a black professor inside his home. It happened that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the eminent black professor of African American studies at Harvard, was returning to his home at Cambridge after a long trip. He had trouble with the lock on his front door and was therefore compelled to force his way into his own home. A passer-by saw professor Henry Louis Gates and called the police. When the police arrived and after exchange of words, Sergeant James Crowley, an American Caucasian police ordered the arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and charged him for disorderly conduct. Commenting on the incident, Obama said that the police Sergeant, James Crowley, acted stupidly in arresting and charging professor Gates to court and cited the long history of arbitrary arrest of African- Americans and Latinos by the US police. The Caucasian Americans denounced Obama for what they regarded as an attack on the white police and the following furor was so intense that Obama had to beat a hasty retreat. Obama did not only apologize to Sergeant James Crowley for having called his action stupid but also invited him and his victim, professor Gates (Jr.) to the White House for beer. A white American Police Sergeant is equal in status to, if not greater than, a Black professor. All African-Americans, and regardless of their educational and economic accomplishments in the USA have no rights that the Whites need respect which is in accordance with the Supreme Court judgment delivered by Chief Justice Taney in 1857. The Court declared that in the meaning of the words *people of the United States,* in the Constitution, Negroes - present day African-American - were not included in the people of the United States. That was the case of a weak Obama equipped with strong institutions. Professor Gates Jr. must consider himself lucky when compared with other blacks who were shot dead for no other reasons that they were black during Obama tenure. The climax to trigger happy whites making preys out of black Americans was reached when a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot dead in Sanford, Florida by a 28-year-old Caucasian, George Zimmerman. Black Lives Matter protests ensued over the murder of the unarmed black teenager but nothing happened to the white murderer in a country with strong institutions of which Barack Hussein Obama was the President.

​We have always had strong institutions in Nigeria but the absence of strong leaders have always rendered the institutions weak and workless. When Murtala Ramat Mohammed came to power on 29 July 1975, the institutions worked for the six months and fifteen days he was in power before he was assassinated in a coup d'état. After Mohammed had seized power from Gowon, all the twelve military governors that served under him, except Mobolaji Johnson of Lagos State and Oluwole Rotimi of Western State, were found guilty of corrupt enrichment and were all dismissed from the army and their corruptly acquired properties were forfeited to their respective state. Permanent Secretaries that failed to be in their offices by 8 am were sacked and physicians learned to be in their wards in time to attend to patients. The epileptic supply of electricity suddenly became constant. Commenting on the December 1975 demand of Henry Kissinger that nations of Africa should prevent Communist MPLA of taking over power in Angola after the retreat of the Portuguese colonialist, Murtala Mohammed said on 6 July 1976, "Africa has come of age. Africa is no longer under the orbit of any extra-continental power. It should no longer take orders from any country, however powerful. The fortune of Africa are ours to make or mar. For too long have we been kicked around; for too long have we been treated like adolescents who cannot discern their interests and act accordingly. For too long has it been presumed that the African needs outside 'experts' to tell him who are his friends and who are his enemies. The time has come when we should make it clear that we can decide for ourselves; that we know our own interests and how to protect those interests; that we are capable of resolving African problems without presumptuous lessons in ideological dangers which more often than not, have no relevance for us, nor for the problems at hand." On 13 February 1976, Murtala Ramat Mohammed was murdered in a bloody coup and in a radio broadcast by one of the coup plotters, Lieutenant Colonel Sukar Bukar Dimka, accused Mohammed of introducing Communism into Nigeria. His successor, General Olusegun Obasanjo assured the Western nations that his regime was not a socialist one. His foreign affairs Minister, Major General Joseph Garba, in an address read at a meeting with Ambassadors from Western industrialised countries in Nigeria held at the Institute of International Affairs, Victoria Island, Lagos, in May 1976, declared that the Federal Military Government had no interest in pursuing socialist goals. He assured the Ambassadors of the safety of Western investments in Nigeria. Murtala Mohammed did not only strive to uphold the strength of institutions in Nigeria but he desired that each country of Africa should control its destiny. He was prevented but Obama did not reflect on the outside powers who had been preventing African leaders like Lumumba, Mohammed, Sankara etc from taking the destiny of their respective country in their hands.

​Of Buhari, Farooq Kperogi wrote, "But in the nearly four years that he has been president, he hasn't only failed to build institutions or institute the basis for rational-legal norms in governance, he is destroying the existing one with viciousness that is unexampled in our political history. Nothing instantiates this better than the presidency's recent vulgar attempt to force the National Bureau of Statistics to fudge figure to sanitize the Buhari regime's fetid troubling unemployment record."

Had Farooq Kperogi visited Helsinki, in Finland, he would have seen a public statue and learned from the following inscription on it, "The recognition of realities is the beginning of all wisdom." The reality which Farooq Kperogi has failed to recognize concerning Buhari's regime is that for existing institutions in Nigeria to function and to build new ones, total co-operation between the executive, the legislative and judicial arms of the government are required. Buhari being the President in a democratic setting, in Nigeria, cannot singlehandedly make the institutions work without the collaboration of the Legislature and the Judiciary. Where was Farooq Kperogi when the national assembly was seized by the PDP members contrary to the result of 2015 elections that voted in majority APC? Where was Farooq Kperogi when the section of the constitution prohibiting political carpet-crossing was flagrantly violated by those elected on the platform of APC crossing to PDP and vice versa? Where was Farooq Kperogi when Buhari submitted an Executive Bill to the National Assembly in 2016 for the establishment of a Special Criminal Court clothed with the exclusive jurisdiction to try cases of corruption, narcotics and kidnapping, and including Proceeds of Crime Bill which automatically puts anybody to prove source of wealth and ownership of assets but the Bills were knocked into coma by the Legislators? Majority members of the National Assembly belongs to the same political party as the President but Farooq Kperogi is not outraged that the President's Bills were being sabotaged. Why? Does Farooq expect Buhari to make laws, approve and execute them by himself? From where did National Bureau of Statistics get its computed figures of unemployment in Nigeria which Farooq Kperogi is now raising to the high heaven? What qualifies the National Bureau of Statistics to compute unemployment figures in Nigeria instead of Ministry of Labour and Establishment that should be in possession of accurate figures job seekers in the country? And how are we sure that the title of Darrel Huff's book, How to Lie with Statistic, is not being made true by  National Bureau of Statistics?

​Farooq Kperogi wrote further, "Now imagine that the EFCC weren't the pitiful poodle of the presidency that it is and that the police weren't the unashamed tormentors of the president's opponents and protectors of his supporters that they are. Or that the Nigerian military weren't the unofficial armed wing of any political party in power."

The EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu was free and most of those charged in court for corruption in 2007 were mostly PDP Governors from the same party as President Yar'Adua and later President Jonathan. Nuhu Ribadu was subsequently chased out of office and the corrupt PDP officials who were facing trials in court got the permission of Yar'Adua to choose Ribadu's successor. Thereafter, Judges granted bails to corrupt PDP governors and officials in exchange for heavy cash as bribery which led to cases being adjourned indefinitely. Some even secured permanent injunctions prohibiting the EFCC or any investigating authority from arresting, detaining, interrogating and prosecuting suspected looters. When Buhari took over in 2015, most of the PDP looters on corruption trials had joined the APC with the hope that Buhari would influence the EFCC to withdraw their cases from the courts. Buhari gave EFCC under Ibrahim Magu free hands to act. None of the cases were withdrawn and Nigerians watched in silence when Senate members openly demanded that Ibrahim Magu should withdraw corruption cases affecting some of their members in courts in exchange for his confirmation as the substantive Chairman of the EFCC. His refusal to budge to the request of the Senators caused him to remain Acting Chairman till date. Therefore, Farooq Kperogi goofed when he stated that the EFCC is a poodle of the Presidency. Recently, the former PDP Governor of Plateau State (1999-2007) and a current Senator, Joshua Chibi Dariye, was jailed 10 years by the Appeal Court for looting his State the sum of N1.64 billion during his tenure as governor. He joined the APC with the hope of getting his case withdrawn but he did not succeed despite the fact that he is not an opponent of the presidency, politically. It is intellectually corrupt to advocate that those who are opponents of the government of the day should not be prosecuted if they have actually stolen public funds as Farooq Kperogi seems to suggest. Where Farooq Kperogi is lacking in integrity is when he refuses to question why corruption cases are being delayed for, at least, up to 11 years before conclusions and judgments. The case of Former Governor of Plateau State, Senator Joshua Dariye, began in London in 2005 when he was arrested and charged to court for money laundering. He jumped bail in London and fled to Nigeria where an attempt to impeach and remove him as a Governor, based on his London debacle, was foiled by the Nigerian court. If the judicial arm of the government is not so openly corrupt, institutions in Nigeria will not only be strong, but work well. Individual wealth in Nigeria has never been created in the absence of stolen government money with the judiciary protecting the thieves through their cash and carry justice. There is no reason why a corruption case from the High Court to the Supreme Court should exceed a year in Nigeria. Buhari only came to power about four years ago but almost forty-three high profile corruption cases pending in Nigerian courts were initiated in 2007 when Buhari was not in power. Farooq Kperogi should be awed that those cases are yet to be resolved by the courts after 11 years instead of dishonestly claiming that the accused treasury looters are Buhari's political opponents. 

S. Kadiri      

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Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 22 december 2018 06:25
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Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - National Bureau of Statistics' Exemplary Institutional Independence

 

Saturday, December 22, 2018

National Bureau of Statistics' Exemplary Institutional Independence

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

In his July 2009 speech to the Ghanaian Parliament, former US president Barack Obama famously said, "Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions." Inspired by my, in retrospect, misplaced optimism in the emergent Buhari administration, I challenged this notion in a May 16, 2015 column.

I pointed out that "strong institutions" are not self-generating entities; they require the foresight, intelligence, commitment, and willpower of "strongmen" to bring them forth. "[S]trong institutions don't come out of thin air; they are built by strong men through the strength of their personal example. I hope Buhari is the strong man who will build strong institutions in Nigeria with the strength of his character," I wrote.

When Buhari visited South Africa on June 16, 2015, exactly a month after my column appeared, he expressed sentiments about the nexus between strong leadership and strong institutions that mirrored what I wrote. "When US President, Barack Obama came to Africa… he said Africa, or developing countries, should have strong institutions instead of strong leaders," he said. "If he had come to Nigeria, he would have known that it was strong Nigerians that destroyed the strong institutions. And paradoxically, maybe another strong Nigerian will come and revive the institutions and make them strong again."

Someone from the Presidential Villa called my attention to what Buhari said in South Africa and added that it was inspired by my column. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," I said in response. But more than the satisfaction of knowing that the president read my column and was enthused by it enough to let it influence his speech in a foreign country, I was pumped up by the thought that Buhari was truly committed to building institutions and setting the stage for the depersonalization governance through the strength of personal examples.

Given his age (which should incline him to be consumed by anxieties about his legacies), the respect he inspired even from people who didn't like him, the mystique his personality radiated, and perhaps a heightened self-awareness on his part of the disaster of his first incarnation as a military head of state, I thought he really meant what he said when he echoed my column in South Africa.

But in the nearly four years that he has been president, he hasn't only failed to build institutions or institute the basis for rational-legal norms in governance, he is destroying existing ones with a viciousness that is unexampled in our political history. Nothing instantiates this better than the presidency's recent vulgar attempt to force the National Bureau of Statistics to fudge figures to sanitize the Buhari regime's fetid, troubling unemployment record.

First, the government starved the NBS of funds so that it won't be able to release what the government knew would be damning statistics of the grim job market in the country. When this fact got out in the international media (honchos of the regime only care if unfavorable stories make it to international news), they were shamed into releasing funds for the agency. (New York-based Bloomberg's November 13 report titled "No Money, No Jobless Data, Nigeria's Chief Statistician Says" was perhaps the most widely shared international story on this issue on Nigerian online discursive arenas.)

Then the president's spokesperson lied on national television that the NBS boss had agreed to tweak the agency's formula for calculating unemployment stats, and that the new formula would include some fictional 12 million rice farmers, which would paint an upbeat picture of the job market. "The NBS chief had addressed the federal cabinet and he made the admission that they had concentrated analysis over time on white collar jobs that they had not taken cognisance of job creation in areas of agriculture," presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said. "The rice farmers association of Nigeria made the open claim and nobody has challenged them up to the time that we speak that they had created 12 million new jobs."

The NBS boss immediately countered the falsehood. "I make it very clear that neither the statistician-general nor NBS ever made any such admission at any time to anybody," NBS boss, Yemi Kale, said on Twitter. The lying honchos of the presidency had egg on their begrimed faces.

Now the stats are out, and they are as disconsolate as we've always expected: 20.9 million people are now jobless, up from 17.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, representing a 23.1 percent increase. Youth unemployment has also increased exponentially. Since Buhari took over power in 2015, according to the NBS, unemployment has never declined even for a bit.

At this rate, a Buhari second term would ensure that nearly 90 percent of Nigerians would be unemployed by the end of his term. In other words, right from 2015, the Buhari regime has represented nothing but a relentless descent into the abyss of hopelessness and despair for everyday Nigerians. It would only get worse if his incompetence is rewarded with a second term.

Hats off to the National Bureau of Statistics for guarding its independence and freezing off attempts by the Buhari regime to bludgeon it into making up false statistics to make the president look good. The NBS is an example of what institutional independence looks like, the kind that Buhari said he would institute when he spoke in South Africa.

 Institutions that are independent of, resistant to and immune from the wiles and manipulations of the temporary occupants of power not only command respect and credibility but also deepen and sustain faith in governance. When next the bureau releases stats that are favorable to the government (that's assuming the NBS boss isn't fired or threatened to give up his independence or his life) they will be believed by a majority of Nigerians, and that's healthy for the country.

Now imagine that the EFCC weren't the pitiful poodle of the presidency that it is and that the police weren't the unashamed tormentors of the president's opponents and protectors of his supporters that they are. Or that the Nigerian military weren't the unofficial armed wing of any political party in power.

Well, that is what obtains in well-governed societies. America is able to weather the storms and strains of its rambunctious stormy petrel of a president precisely because of the strength of its institutions. Donald Trump is a Mobutu-like "strongman" who is only held in check by America's strong institutions. He is being investigated by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, which might bring him down. Can you imagine AGF Abubakar Malami investigating any loyal associate of Buhari let alone Buhari himself?

To be fair, this problem preceded Buhari, although his initial enthusiasm about using his "strongmanness" to build strong institutions instigated false hopes in some of us. Nonetheless, Nigerians need to study what it is about the NBS that has made it so admirably independent, that has made it to jealously guard its integrity since at least 2010 when I began to pay attention to it. This oasis of institutional independence in our desolate desert of impunity and personalized power, for me, is cause for hope.

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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