‘’Nor would he have been teaching his superiors, the people, that society has been outsourced to businessmen and the stock exchanges.’’
TUE, DECEMBER 25 2018-theG&BJournal-It just might make great sense if we returned to the festering Babatunde Fashola fiasco. One has to immediately admit that it is not part of Fashola’s sins that he has the ambitions of Caesar. It is only meet to record that like his psychic guide, Fashola too, wills to cross the Rubicon. And as is expected he too is in the game of wanting to install himself, his connections and successors thereof as an eternal line of potentates. Like Caesar too, Babatunde Raji Fashola is quite a behemoth. There are too many parts in his complicated whole. There is the sectionalist, intriguer, nepotist, lawyer, self-acclaimed philosopher, perhaps a new messiah under the African sun.
Luckily, it is just one small part of his mazy universe that interests us today. And it is about what he had to or not say about the darkness that is the nation’s lot under his supervision.
This time however, we shall be revisiting the Fashola subject with a world of sympathy. That is, while admitting to his foot in his mouth disease, we are more interested in his being largely a victim of his age. Fashola is a victim of an epidemic, if fashionable, ignorance that has overwhelmed his tribe. This is his tribe of scribal technocrats, or better lawyers, economists etc.
If only to maintain a sanitary distance, let us recap by quoting a third party. “Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola’s outburst blaming the private sector operators the other day over the intractable poor power supply may have put paid to any glimmer of hope of a turnaround in the sector. What a great disappointment from a government that has been raising hope of people, in this connection. In what appears as a clear admission of failure, the super minister, unabashedly, told Nigerians not to blame the federal government for poor power supply.”… Fashola’s unwarranted sophistry was a barrage of assault on the sensibilities of Nigerians who have suffered untold hardship from pigheaded decisions, actions and inactions of government, particularly, in the power sector. Fashola’s gaffe over poor electricity https://guardian.ng/opinion/fasholas-gaffe-over-poor-electricity/
And in an ensuing paragraph the authors go on to conclude: ”This is a public relations tragedy at this time of reckoning for the government that has been in power for three and half years of a four-year tenure.”
This in our opinion is where the pundit gets it right, but perhaps on the shinny surface. He didn’t go deep enough. Yes, it is a public relations tragedy, but that is just the skin of a deep seated rot if not cancer. The real problem is that that foot in the mouth disease of Fashola is a knowledge-gap ailment. But the greater point is that this Fashola-style ailment, is despite the many certificates that abound, a standard affliction of the Nigerian elite. And this knowledge gap mismatch, more than any other defects, contributes most to the rite of Nigerian underdevelopment. Fashola here is just an anchor or poster boy of such ignorance powered underdevelopment. Meanwhile, let it be on record that we are aware that Fashola is a lawyer, even a SAN. We repeat we are aware of those.
Now, the same report says as follows: ‘According to Fashola, “If you don’t have electricity, it is not the federal government’s problem, take the matter to the people who are operating the power sector, generation and distribution companies… But let me remind you, all of the assets that the Ministry of Power used to control for power have been sold by the last administration before I came”.
“And so, if you don’t have power, it is not the government’s problem. Let us be honest….”…. “Let us be honest; if your bank over-charges you interest;… So, let’s be clear, this is now a private business by Act of Parliament 2005.”
If you read this piece from him you will notice the repeated rhetorical assertions: let us be honest, let us be clear. These are stock phrases of a high moralist and professor over his morose or even brain dead and perhaps duplicitous audience. So it can be assumed that Fashola takes it that he Fashola is a bleeding genius or something, clarifying issues to his technically challenged if not stupid audiences. So he speaks of esoteric things like Acts of Parliaments, in tone of ”let us be honest.” Also it is important to him that his audience are in spite of themselves dishonest. And they have to be reminded of it. now, his assumption is that only he Fashola is both professor and holy imam. That is for a Fashola his own genius and honesty are assured. His problem is the near stupidity and duplicity of his audience, that is Nigerian electricity consumers.
But there are other details. The first is that despite the professorial postures of Fashola in this matter he is completely in a state of unknowing and error. First of all, law and acts of parliaments are technical devices to service society. That is to the extent there are laws and acts of parliaments, it is under a framework of society, an organic society.
And society in its modern form hires peoples like Fashola, who have nothing better to do, to keep its affairs in good and excellent repairs. That is the Fashola’s/politician’s duty as handed over to him by the society is to labour as drones towards the greater welfare of the society.
Next, these politicians as agents may through the tools of sub-agency hand over aspects of their briefs – that is achieving the welfare of society – to other third parties, say businessmen, crooks, prostitutes, lawyers, vote riggers, fools etc. However, one fact is insistent. It is that the society has no contracts as society with sub-agents. Yes, individuals in the society may, but not the society as a group, as an entity. So the problems of society are the briefs of her paid agents – politicians and such like persons as Fashola and his masters. They are not the briefs of subagents. Thus Fashola alone or his masters cannot be drawing his stupendous emoluments on us and be handing us over to stranger subagents. That is not their brief.
Let us illustrate. When the price of gasoline rises for American motorists, American governments [under Richard Nixon and Ronald etc.] have been known to cross borders and squeeze Saudi Arabia and even Nigeria etc. to up production and ease supply/prices in New York. American governments were not telling gasoline consumers that it’s ”market society stupid.” Or that the ”Seven Sisters” and other market players are in it for the blames, not governance.
So, the question is how did this simple truth elude Fashola? We shall hazard answers. It is in the wrong Americanization of Nigeria. Perhaps, since inception, American politics has been a hunting ground for its lawyers. And Nigerian lawyers seem to have learnt, sorry copied. But fact is that American legal education is not very related to the Nigerian counterpart.
To be a lawyer in America it is required you first take a degree in one other course. That is an American lawyer is by definition a two-disciplines mind. The fact of this gifts him with binocular, that is fuller understanding of things. So the American lawyer is wont to hesitate, is never in a hurry to proffer opinions in things he is not sure of. By the logic of his first line training, he gets to know that everything is not to be captured in the laws of evidence or even acts of parliaments. So lawyers in America and much of the Western world are happy to be humble scribal technicians and little else.
But down here in Nigeria it is something else. Let us take this from a university administrator who should have known.
“To lawyers, you have been endowed with a special training. A training that allows you, if well-absorbed, to participate in every part of the society with unusual distinction. Don’t allow anybody to categorise you. Don’t let them tell you that because you are a lawyer, you can’t be an administrator, an infrastructure developer or an outstanding engineer. You have been trained to have an open mind to be able to absorb information, distill it and use it properly. https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2018/05/14/babalakin-nigerian-intelligentsias-are-endangered-species/. Babalakin: Nigerian Intelligentsias are Endangered Species. This Day May 14, 2018
How does one explain this, except that the author is a lawyer, a made in Nigeria lawyer. What he is hinting at in other words, is that all other faculties are superfluous? Yet the typical Nigerian ”public office or affairs” lawyer takes the Babalakin thesis as a truism. And they begin to comment magisterially and in public on matters they are at best uninformed lay men.
This style Babalakin canard is the fare Fashola’s great ignorance, Socratic ignorance, feeds on. His, is the tragedy of a sophist not knowing the limits of his knowledge. Anyway to cure this style dilemma the incomparable British about 70 odd years ago developed a special discipline, the so called Politics, Philosophy and Economics, PPE. PPE is a go to course for British aristocrats who want a stint in politics. The idea is to give you a working knowledge of society as a polis, not a skein of laws.
The finer point is if Fashola had read first year philosophy or politics – in a structured manner – in any of the great faculties of Harvard, Oxford etc. – he won’t have slipped into the gregarious error of thinking law is everything and everything is law, not even as sophistry. Nor would he have been teaching his superiors, the people, in phoney professorial tones, that society has been outsourced to businessmen and the stock exchanges. For his or his masters’ profiteering? Fashola Ronu!
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