THERE were two events of note in Nigeria's media world last week; one was a virtual national conference called by Leadership Newspapers at Abuja, last Tuesday, while the other was the public presentation of Blueprint, also at Abuja, on Thursday. It is heart-warming that in spite of the declining fortune of newspaper publishing globally, a number of them in Nigeria are not only surviving but also creating platforms for interrogating Nigeria. At this rate, the world of newspaper publishing may have a lot to learn from Nigerian publishers on survival of newspapers in time of acute competition from television and the more instantaneous and interactive social media, terrible decline in readership in favour of viewership, dearth of journalists with the interpretative depth and narrative elegance capable of attracting and retaining readers and, in Africa, the high cost of the technological infrastructure underpinning modern printing.Common to both occasions is the irony of the leadership of military intellectuals in the interrogation of Nigeria. While General Theophilus Danjuma stole the show at the Leadership Newspapers' 'National Conference', with his coup against the governors whom he said are too powerful for the health of democracy, General Ibrahim Babangida did so with his postulations on 'Development and Economic Growth in a Multicultural Society' at the public presentation of Blueprint. It is interesting that military intellectuals are soaring at a time there is virtually nothing like intellectualism in the civil society, particularly among politicians and even the academia. Thank God, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Senator Bola Tinubu diluted the military take-over with their surprising interventions in favour of return to regions as a way of reducing over-concentration of powers in the president and scrapping of the Senate, respectively. Surprising is a mild word to use when a former vice president of the Federal Republic and, perhaps, a future president suddenly seeks miniaturisation of the office. Still, it is difficult to disagree with people like Atiku, Tinubu or Danjuma because they have seen it all. Danjuma in particular is a man who does his homework, who still reads and whose warnings rarely fail to come true. He warned Nigeria in 1978 against falling into the religious conflict trap. Today, Nigeria is facing a security challenge of a religious face. So, given his consistent concern with instability from a self-evidently philanthropic concern of a statesman, it is time to enjoin him to change the direction of his intervention. Now, what do I mean by that' Let us take his analysis that part of the problem is the over-lordship of governors. I am not a governor, I have no plans to be a governor and I don't have a contract from any governor or governors to open a defence for him or them. But I know that the problem is not the over-lordship of the governors, but the quality of materials that make it into governorship in Nigeria.A society cannot allow smugglers, ex-convicts, practiced swingers or desperadoes into office as governors or senators or local government chairmen and expect anything better from such collection. This is a simple in-put/out-put analysis. In this context, there are good and bad people and the society must do something to stop the bad people in favour of the good people. It is not democracy or equal opportunity to allow bad people to contest elections because democracy is not madness. It is not democracy or equal opportunity to fail to inhibit the bad guy from getting that office because that is like saying that two drivers, one of them drunk, should all be allowed to drive simply because they all have driving licenses. How can you say a bad guy should be given equal opportunity with a good guy when we can determine who is good and who is bad by a simple background check'Checking and stopping the bad guy is the task people like Danjuma and his ilk can help the society to perform because the society cannot help itself again. This would be more helpful than trying to dismantle existing structures or re-configuring the country into regions, something which the incumbent governors and senators will certainly block because they would not sit by and watch themselves being decreed out of existence. Atiku or Danjuma would be shocked by the instability that will follow rendering so many governors and potential governors redundant, particularly those who have tasted powers.Nigeria's level of development today is such that we need even more powerful governors, provided we get the right materials with the value orientation which can energise and supervise a developmental leap, the core of which would be the lifting of the human resources support base of the states. Truth is that most states in Nigeria do not have the human resources to run any of the democratic institutions like the state Houses of Assembly or the local government councils, if left without a profoundly democratic guardian like a quality governor. Most of those who vie for election into these two institutions have no elementary idea of democracy in any sense of it, not to talk of operationalising them. Even a determined governor in Nigeria today would have problem with his bureaucracy because that institution has degenerated to where writing memo is a problem in many states.
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