Time to scrap Information Ministry

By Abdul AzeezAbdullahi

The resignation of Professor Dora Akunyili as Information and Communication minister last week provoked all manner of comments from Nigerians with quite a number seeing it all as another deft move by her to continue to reap where she has actually not sown. She chose to contest for a Senate seat under the All Progressives Grand Alliance [APGA] platform instead of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] which honoured her with a ministerial appointment after her widely acclaimed performance as the head of National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control [NAFDAC]. Many have reasoned that being the opportunist that she has always been, she chose to capitalize on the popularity of APGA in the South East to attain her goal instead of staying the course and testing her popularity with the PDP.

Her resignation actually got me thinking in a different direction entirely: Of what relevance is the information ministry in this day and age? I may be wrong but I just cannot think of any critical role the ministry is playing in national development. All its so called functions, as far as I am concerned, can be effectively carried out by agencies under it if they are fully empowered to carry out their statutory functions without undue meddling by the so called supervising ministry. The Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria [BON], for instance can effectively regulate the broadcasting industry in the country just as the Nigerian Press Council can do same for the newspaper industry. The federal government could, if it so wishes, merge the two bodies and streamline their functions such they can adequately regulate the media industry as is the case in Britain which has a body called Ofcom that carries out that function. If the Nigerian Communications Commission is made independent and very effective, it need not be under the supervision of the information ministry to regulate the communication sector.

The information minister is regarded as the spokesperson of the government but that too is duplicitous as every president appoints a special adviser on media who everyone recognizes as the ofiicial spokesman of not only the president but of the government as a whole. This is the case in most developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom whose administrative systems we try to ape. Beside the White House spokesman, there is no other designated minister or secretary who speaks for the president or government of the United States. The same also applies to the United Kingdom and indeed many other countries around the world. Even South Africa does not have a ministry of information and I am sure many will agree with me that it is doing far better in projecting a positive image of that country than our own information ministry.  Part of the functions of the ministry which has to do with projecting a good image of the country could be effectively handled by a vibrant tourism ministry whose main objective has always been to tap the enormous tourism potentials of the country in order to attract not only tourists but also investments into the country. South Africa – as we saw prior to the World Cup – and many other countries are doing that successfully.

Historically, information ministries were mostly set up as propaganda agencies of governments to indoctrinate the policies – mostly dubious – of governments in the minds of the people. The most prominent perhaps was the ministry of public enlightenment and propaganda set up by the Nazi government in Germany under the dictator, Adolf Hitler. The ministry was founded in 1933 under the headship of the renown Dr. Joseph Goebbels. Its main objective was to implement and enforce the Nazi party ideology which it successfully did in the lead up to the Second World War and the eventual mass execution of jaws living in Germany. The Germans have long discovered such a ministry has outlived its usefulness and has since abolished it.

The United Kingdom also created an information ministry to serve a purpose during the first and second world wars under the leadership of Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Downham respectively. During the Second World War specifically, the main objectives of the ministry were threefold: press censorship, provision of adequate publicity at home about the war and provision of publicity abroad in allied and neutral countries. Like Germany, the UK also dissolved the ministry way back in 1946.  

Iraq, with the prompting of the United States, has also dissolved its information ministry which served as a propaganda machine for the Saddam Hussain government during the Gulf War and the its invasion by the allied forces led by the United States. Many of us remember the then Iraqi information minister, Mohammad Saeed al Sahaf, who was in office at the time of the invasion in 2003. He caught the world’s attention with his determined effort to present to the world a different picture to what everyone else knew about how the war was unfolding; which was the impending fall of the Saddam government. Before him, the Saddam government also provided the world with another prominent propagandist minister, Latif Jassim, who was at the helm during the Gulf War after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991. His famous words before the war were that “we will show the world that America is a paper tiger”. The outcome of that war is of course well documented. 

Like these countries that have gone through periods of war, the Nigerian government may be excused for setting up the information ministry after independence to garner support for the new indigenous government and also during the civil war to win the propaganda war against the renegade Biafran army, but in my opinion, the ministry has now become obsolete and should be done away with. Dora made all that noise about rebranding Nigeria with the attendant waste of resources when there is a National Orientation Agency in place that could have taken up that responsibility if indeed it was found to be that necessary. The point is: every function the ministry performs can be effectively done by one agency or the other if they are empowered to do so.  

In these harsh economic times that require the federal government to check excessive spending and save money to finance developmental projects that will make a difference in the lives of people, perhaps it will do well to scrap the information ministry and channel all that money wasted on financing the ministry, its two ministers an a whole lot of other baggage to better use.  

Excuse me, Governor Sule Lamido

Excuse me, Governor Sule Lamido

By Abdulazeez Abdullahi

Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State is really an intriguing fellow. While no one may doubt his commitment to transforming the lives of his people - which I hear he is doing very well - he sometimes betrays a sentiment that contradicts and perhaps undermines such disposition. Here is a man who, in the cause of his political career, has been identified as the defender of the talakawa but sees no qualms with subverting the constitution to grant the self serving wishes of former President Olusegun Obasanjo for a third term in office. It beats the imagination how he seems to allow his unflinching loyalty blind him to the demerits of whatever it is he believes in.

President Obasanjo’s eight-year tenure in his second coming cannot by any stretch of the imagination be seen as the best thing that has happened to this country like the Jigawa governor would want Nigerians believe. During those eight years, the country earned so much revenue from oil exports but there was little to show for it. The government was unable to meet the 4,000 megawatts of electricity target it had set for itself despite moving the target forward not a few times. The Obasanjo regime, which Lamido vigorously defends at every opportunity, was also unable to fully bring back on stream our ailing refineries which would have made a success of its deregulation policy despite the huge sums of money budgeted for turn around maintenances regularly. It was also under that administration that the nation witnessed such gross violation of the rule of law and a blatant disregard for court judgements.

 As we all remember, the Obasanjo government made it a habit to pick and choose court rulings to obey and those not to. It apparently did not give a hoot about the doctrine of separation of powers as it constantly meddled in the affairs of the legislature and succeeded in the removal of a number of its principal officers. Even when the then president was junketing all over the world in search of elusive foreign investors, the Jigawa governor, who was part of the junket as foreign minister, could only have kind words for his boss.

It did not of course come as a surprise to many that Governor Lamido is not in support of the candidature of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who recently emerged the northern consensus candidate and is set to contest the presidential primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party against President Goodluck Jonathan next tomorrow. After all, it was the former vice president who had the audacity to stand up to his boss when it became apparent that his boss [Obasanjo] would stop at nothing to unconstitutionally remove Atiku as vice president. Back then, Lamido never uttered a word of caution to his principal who was running roughshod over the constitution.

Governor Lamido seems to have carried that fight over to the present effort to determine who bears the flag of the PDP in April’s presidential elections. He, alongside the governors of Sokoto and Adamawa States have made it known that they do not recognize the selection of any northern consensus candidate. In a free country and in a democracy, they without doubt have the right to do so. The other two governors have not openly disclosed why they are opposed to Atiku’s selection - even though Governor Nyako’s could be deduced from the bitter battles he fought with the former vice president over the control of the Adamawa PDP. Governor Sule Lamido has however gone about doing exactly that.

His reasons for not backing AtIku Abubakar include the fact that the former vice president had waged war against the PDP in the past and therefore is undeserving of the party’s platform to contest for the presidency. While the governor is within his rights to back the candidate of his choice, I however find the reasons he has put forward in support of President Goodluck Jonathan quite unconvincing and re-enforces my earlier argument about how the governor often does not weigh both sides of the issue in an attempt to push an argument.

The governor was last week quoted in the press as saying that “From any angle one may look at it, there is no way we shall pass a vote of no confidence on a government sponsored by our party. It is against the tenets of democracy and morality especially under the circumstance which is not our own making. I would like to say that Dr. Jonathan is our man< only he we shall support in the forthcoming presidential nomination”. One is at pains to understand how it could be against the tenets of democracy to pass a vote of no confidence on a non performing government. If anything, that would as a matter of fact be upholding such lofty tenet. A leader whose government has failed to secure the lives and property of its citizens surely does not deserve to be voted back into office. Neither does such a leader who has consistently shown an inability to prudently utilize the country’s abundant resources for the good of all. I thought this is the greater good that should form the basis for the governor’s support for any candidate, after all the welfare of the talakawa ought to be accorded priority than any one individual’s desire for power.

The governor went on to say: “it is unacceptable to defeat the president at the party’s convention. If that happens, it will mark the end of PDP and its government”. Nothing can be farther from the truth than this coming from a governor who should know better.

While making a point about zoning after acknowledging that it existed in the party, the governor also said: “It was exclusively our affair to determine and resolve at our level”. I am not sure any body is disputing that zoning  is a PDP affair, what is in dispute is President Jonathan’s determination to vie for the presidency in violation of the party’s constitution which recognizes a two term power rotation agreement between the North and South Now the pro Jonathan camp can conveniently claim that Ya’adua and Jonathan contested on a joint ticket but we all know than on assumption of office, Jonathan did all he could to distance himself and his government from that  so called joint ticket. Governor Lamido also accused northerners of undermining the presidency of late Umaru Yar’dua saying they took him from the lowest courts to the Supreme Court challenging his election. Isn’t challenging elections in courts part of the democratic process especially an election that was widely acclaimed as wrought with enormous irregularities by local and international observers?

Some observers who are just as worried about the governor’s disposition to the Joanthan presidency have speculated that the president may have succeeded in getting to the governor through the EFCC. In September last year, the anti graft agency visited Jigawa and interrogated some commissioners and the governor’s son. Lamido did not take that lying low, he came out fighting declaring that he could not be intimidated by the government’s attempt to silence him afterwards, it is hoped that he was not eventually subdued

On muslim men and polygamy

On Muslim men and polygamy

By Abdulazeez Abdullahi

The center spread interview of this newspaper last Thursday which featured the wife of the Iranian ambassador to Nigeria, Fakrol Sdat Rezazadeh, made interesting reading particularly her views on polygamy. The envoy/s wife disclosed that polygamy was not fashionable in Iran essentially because any Iranian man who ventures into it will have difficulty catering to the needs of such a polygamous family. She said Polygamy in Islam is predicated on the ability of the man to ensure justice between his wives and that many men ignore this aspect when they decide to go into it.

While this may not be the popular view among many Muslim men – and even women - especially here in Nigeria, I am however of the opinion that there is some truth in her assertion. Many polygamous men particularly in this country tend to enter into it for the reasons which were not those prescribed in the Holy Qur’an. Majority of men marry more wives because their financial status has improved {for some it has even become a status symbol of sorts} or to satisfy their lust or in some cases because the wife cannot bear a child or she has intolerable flaws. While these may seem reason enough, they are however not among the conditions stipulated in the Qur’an for Muslim men to practice polygamy.

A man is permitted to marry more than one wife and up to four in circumstances where there are many widows in society who need a man to cater for them and their orphaned children. It was also made clear that if one fears that he cannot treat the women justly and equitably then he should stick to one as stated in Q3: V3:”If ye fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four, nut if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with them, then only one or the one which your right hand possess. That will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice”.

The reason for this was that back during the Holy Prophet Mohammad’s {SAW} lifetime and even afterwards, many wars were fought in which a lot of men were killed thus leaving their families without a father figure to look after them and the properties they left behind, While it could be argued that there are many widows and orphans in the country today which could justify why some men marry more than one wife, it is doubtful if many of these widows get picked by prospective polygamists. In most cases, men opt for younger women who are neither widows nor in need of any sort of care that only those men can provide.

Like I mentioned earlier, some men take additional wife or wives because they have come to find their lives with the first wife incompatible but this too is not a condition that warrants polygamy in Islam. The Quran states that if one finds a fault with his wife he should be tolerant of her because it may be that Allah has placed some good in that which he finds intolerable. But if a man reaches that point that he cannot bear such a fault, he is advised to divorce that wife and marry another but not keep her and take an additional one. Q3: V20 states:“Then if you hate them, it may be that you dislike a thing while Allah has placed abundant good in it. And if you wish to have one wife in the place of another and you have given them a heap of gold, take nothing from it “.

 Many proponents of polygamy are quick to point to the fact that the Holy Prophet led a polygamous life as such has provided a reference point for his followers as Muslims are strongly enjoined to follow his example. It is worthy to remember however that while some of the Prophet’s marriages were for political reasons, others were for compassionate reasons. None was entered into satisfy human desire or because he has come into some fortune. He remained married to only Khadijah - whom he married aged 25 until she died when he was 50.

After her death Prophet Mohammad married another older woman, Sawdah before marrying the much younger Aisha. Some accounts say the prophet moved to divorce Sawdah but she agreed to surrender her conjugal visits to Aisha to prevent that. His marriage to Zainab and Hafsah, daughters of Sayyidina Umar and Abubakar respectively were essentially to foster stronger political ties after their husbands were killed in the battle of Badr.

After her husband died in the battle of Uhud {about the same time Zainab also died}, the Prophet married Ummu Salmah and took her into his care along with her children. He also married Zainab who had earlier married his adopted son, Zayd. This marriage was decreed by Allah to assert the point that an adopted son does not have the same privileges as a biological son.

Ensuring justice among the wives is a critical condition for polygamy in Islam but most men are found wanting in this regard. Much as many polygamous men strive to create a semblance of justice and fairness amongst their wives, the fact remains that many fail to achieve it. Take for instance a man who lives with one wife in one city and has another wife living in another city. The fact the he spends more days with one wife is doing injustice to the other regardless of the agreement he and the wives may have entered into.

I am not making a case against polygamy but rather arguing that any Muslim man who wishes to practice it should endeavour to abide by the strict conditions spelt out in the Holy Qur”an for it to be practiced.