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Nigeria’s Public Space And Reason Embattled

- Pat Utomi


That, i...Read the full article.

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Absolute trash! No amount of talks can change the chameleonic image. Are you saying what the FG did to Jimoh Ibrahim and NICON could not have had adverse effect on the economy? Where were you then? Why the noise when it came to the turn of CBN and Soludo? And for records here is what you said earlier on power probe:


Power probe: Reps didn‘t ask the right questions – Utomi
By Biodun Sonowo, Semiu Okanlawon and John Ameh
Published: Monday, 31 Mar 2008
Management Consultant and eminent scholar, Prof. Pat Utomi, has said that many more sordid tales of wrongdoing are yet to be revealed despite the ongoing probe of the power sector by the House of Representatives.

He said if members of the House Committee on Power and Steel had asked appropriate questions during their ongoing public hearings, they would have unearthed many more scandals arising from the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Utomi said that given the opportunity to drill some of those under probe over the $16bn allegedly spent on power, some of the former ministers invited for questioning by the committee would confess to their shady deals.

He spoke with our correspondents in an interview in his office in Lagos.

He said, ”While I commend and congratulate the House of Representatives committee for their efforts, they have not done enough in terms of their homework, because they are not asking the right questions.

”If they gave me Olusegun Agagu, he would not be able to walk out of that room; he wouldn't.”

Agagu, currently the Governor of Ondo State, is a former Power and Steel Minister

”Why was it that a committee that the Bureau of Public Enterprises set up, with experts, suggested that the state in which many of the power plants were, was beyond repair, that we should just abandon them and go ahead and build new power plants; and the then President had accepted that recommendation?

”Agagu came in as a minister, convinced him otherwise; they spent a fortune and the things collapsed within months.

“Let him explain what happened to the cheques paid out. How can a person of that responsibility say that he doesn‘t know or that it is not his business to find out whether the companies that got the contract were registered or not.?

”The Reps need to do more of their homework before they come and face these guys.”

Commending the House for initiating the probe, Utomi said what Nigerians had heard concerning the manner in which huge funds were handled was a tip of the iceberg.

He said, "I believe that anybody who has anything like a conscience must feel bad about the kind of things that have come out of this House.

“Yet, what you are hearing there is a very small tip of the iceberg. I challenge anybody to do a serious diagnosis of the petroleum sector: that (the electric power sector) would be a child‘s play compared to the mess over there (petroleum).”

Utomi, who was also the presidential candidate of the Democratic African Congress in the April 2007 poll, said that he was not surprised that the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal ruled in favour of President Umaru Yar‘Adua.

He said that he never expected any positive outcome from the tribunal, adding that his lack of hope in the process discouraged him from challenging the result of the election at the tribunal.

He said, "It was clear in my mind that the judiciary will be making a mess of things; it‘s only a natural process. It was not a judicial problem, it is a political problem.

“There are certain things that you can adjudicate; there are certain things you need a certain (kind of) will to resolve.”

Utomi said it appears that Nigerians have put all their hopes for democratic redemption too much on the judiciary, adding that the fact that former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar won many cases in his bid to ensure he contested the presidential election was not enough to trust the judiciary to right all the wrongs of the election.

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=Robot;4295044396>Nigeria’s Public Space And Reason Embattled

- Pat Utomi

Whether it be the reporter not being deep enough to see beyond black and white, or the Diaspora based internet warrior raining down vituperations from the comfort of American suburbia, or beer parlor pundit calling everybody a thief just as he is pocketing that which belongs to his neighbor, the need to elevate the public space for Nigeria to make progress has never been greater.

That, i...Read the full article.

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Touché Prof....:smile: Your article is a masterpiece in understated repartee. I salute your intelligence and concede your logic. I do hope this is an indication that your recent reticence has given way to a determination to 'contest that public space'? If so... una welcome back sir.

Some of us are listening; we only reserve the right to sometimes question the premises or conclusions thrown into the public space. Unfortunately some lack the finesse to adequately communicate their ideas without descending to the gutter or 'beer parlour'.

So make una no mind the 'beer parlour' contenders:D:D Dem Dem get role wey dem play 4 public square: sometimes just comic relief and sometmes plain aggravated yabbis.

Ciao

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I agree that simplistic arguments, the stripes of the tribe of commentators that see issues only in black and white continue to torture elevated reason. I know it has made the promotion of civilized discuss extremely hard. We have all manner of charlatans invading the public square, a reason why most discriminating authors and insightful writers have departed it, and most critics of these articles are leaving their articles alone.

Yet , Prof the level of discuss as some of us are now realising has never been deep, even in the past.I have gone back to read some revered authors and journalists and browsing through their ideas, it showed we were duped and none of what many produced was well thought through.I think that is the bane of Nigeria.Many being worshiped lack substance.

I remember raising the issue of evaluation of of Dimeji Bankole's term on the thread that had his video interview using the method he has used to bamboozle people. Nigeria lacks many critical minds that what sells better now is emotion not reason.

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Who is fooling who?

It is only self-serving for Dr. Utomi to notice that the public square is being "aggravated and demeaned...." now that he is being taken up on his dissappointing statement.

What he said on the power probe as posted by Olusola above is in direct conflict with his statement made in connection with Soludo's AFCGATE. He wants the power probe to be more aggressive than that and for pertinent questions to be asked, he even thought that he could do better if put on the probe panel, but want the AFC probe to be jettisoned or relegated "because we-we are involved"

I will take those "beer parlor pundits" position before this voyage into crisis management and attempt at defending against the obvious. The genie is already out of the bottle Prof.

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Thanks A Million Prof. You're Part Of The Reason I Still Have Hope In The Future Of My Country.

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=olusola;4295044408>Absolute trash! No amount of talks can change the chameleonic image. Are you saying what the FG did to Jimoh Ibrahim and NICON could not have had adverse effect on the economy? Where were you then? Why the noise when it came to the turn of CBN and Soludo? And for records here is what you said earlier on power probe:


Olusola, you appear to have another agenda that is neither good for this square nor for our country.

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The daughter of Nigeria's former leader Olusegun Obasanjo has been jailed after handing herself in to a court looking into health ministry graft charges.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7408486.stm

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Dr. Utomi makes some good points. But his defence would have been a lot more persuasive without the combative and overly defensive tone, and certainly without the snide remarks about his critics. I have always stated that sometimes--not always--your critics are your best friends. You should listen to them more seriously than you listen to your unquestioning followers.

I would be wary of an admirer or supporter who never finds anything to disagree with me on. If Utomi would like to know, I supported him publicly and privately when he ran for president last year. He has been an inspiration to many Nigerians of my generation. But being such an inspiring tower of public intellectualism also means that when you falter, or are perceived to have faltered, the public disappointment, especially that of your supporters, is bigger. Utomi should simply have taken the widespread criticisms that greeted his recent comments as the natural disappointment of admirers who feel betrayed. He should not have regarded them as personal assaults or as reflective of a malicious desire to pollute or devalue the public space. Whether this sense of betrayal on the part of his admirers is founded on truthful and accurate media reporting of his comments is another matter and deserves its own debate.

Personally, I empathize with Utomi's argument that the journalists who interviewed him stripped his comments of their contextual underpinnings in order to fulfil their own need for controversy and sensationalism, or because they lacked the ability to comprehend his nuanced postulations. The Nigerian media's track record lends credibility to this claim. I agree with him that many media practitioners in Nigeria are not intellectually savvy enough to understand nuanced, complex contentions, nor do they possess the capacity to render them in accessible journalistic prose. I will give Utomi the benefit of the doubt here.

That said, I think Utomi's haughty dismissal of his critics as beer parlor pundits and Diaspora internet warriors, and the intellectual narcissism that this attitude represents, is a greater danger to the public space than the vitroil of critics. It illustrates the intimidation and arrogance of expertise that I critiqued in my last article. This attitude of dismissing critics as intellectual inferiors intimidates people into accepting mediocre ideas and performance, and from questioning the conducts of those they perceive, rightly or wrongly, as intellectually snobbish and intolerant of criticism. In one breath Utomi says he doesn't want to disparage his critics, and in another he declares them irrelevant to the public discursive space. It's like saying "I don't want to call you a fool, but you are a fool."

The problem with this write-up is that, although it containts nuggets of invaluable wisdom on its substance, much of it is devoted to a petty preoccupation with proving that Utomi is above and beyond reproach or error. Anyone can make a mistake or be misrepresented in the press. You apologize or clarify your point as necessary and move on.

Much as the write-up's substance is vintage Utomi, I don't agree with some things he said. We are all entitled to change our view regarding an issue as we become more enlightened or gather more information. The evolution of Utomi's view from uncompromising, strident advocacy of probe in the power sector (as evidenced by the story posted above) to a less than enthusiatic support for probes now is indicative of that sort of evolution.

Utomi's explanation that he was made aware of the "fundamental" problems of the power sector and that this tempered his enthusiasm for probes and refocused his gaze on the challenges of the present and the future is understandable. But it does not supplant the need for stock taking, for determining how $16 billion was spent without result or signs that there was a strategic vision to justify that expenditure. Only a probe can determine this and satisfy the public's right to know how their commonwealth was corruptly squandered with nothing to show for it. In this light, then, I prefer Utomi's earlier position (as reflected in the posted story) to his newly evolved position, although I agree with him that the motive and theatre of the probes deserve to be scrutinized. In fact let me say that I like his marriage of his old and new positions in the brief press statement he released last week, saying that probes of past misbehaviors should go on but should not become a diversion from or an alibi for non-performance in the present. That's a nuanced and elegantly progressive position. No reasonable Nigeria will disagree with it.

This is why I do not agree with his position that the AFC probe (or other probes for that matter) will damage Nigeria's investment climate in foreign eyes and discourage foreign investors. This is a euphemism for saying that the AFC probe is a bad idea. As I argued in response to his press release, probes can cut both ways. They can indeed create a perception of instability and inconsistency, which can be bad for investment. But they can also restore some confidence and reassure some investors that unbridled corruption, extortion, and other anti-business, anti-investment practices are not officially tolerated. This perception may be naive or misleading, but it may in fact attract some foreign investors who prefer to play by the rules and do not want to get in trouble with a future government or their own home governments.

Finally, I hope Utomi is not looking for groupies and people who are infatuated with his brilliance, people who respect him out of awe and amazement rather than out of a critical, serious, and principled engagement with his pronouncements and ideas. Those of us who criticize politicians for looking for and surrounding themselves with clueless yes-men should not replicate that vice. Criticism, as Utomi himself posits, causes you to reflect and think your ideas through.

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WHOSE REASON IS REALLY EMBATTLED?

'anybody who is familiar with my views will know i have always worried about obsession with yesterday to the detriment of tomorrow..' says Pat Utomi.

Very well said. Have you once wondered whether what may appear to you as 'obsession' may be what another reasoned mind would call ensuring accountability? Obsession or rather accountability of yesterday may be the habinger of good governance today or tomorrow. The lack of 'obsession' with ensuring transparency and accountability, unencumbered by time, is a major factor why unsavoury figures like Obasanjo and Babangida keep recurring as credible leaders in our embattled polity. Not holding these men to account in the past is exactly what emboldens one of them to say 'i dey kampe' and the other wanting another stint at the helms of our affairs. It is also the lack of obsession for accountability that has enabled a convicted thief to land the job of chief executive of the richest state in Nigeria with two terms to boot.

Doggedly pursuing the killers of Dele Giwa through treacherous terrain and unhindered by time could be classed as an Obsession by Gani Fawehinmi. This is what healthy obsession is all about and it has the potential to usher accountability, serve the cause of justice and enhance good governance. This 'obsession' has also not stopped Gani from engaging in other activities to ensure his people have access to a better life. My humble submission is that we can pursue transparency and accountability through properly set up independent judicial panels whilst other aspect of governance continues. It does not necessarily have to be detrimental to tomorrow as your brilliant mind suggests.

We cannot simply pack up shop and close courts charged with the trials of armed robbers simply because they have multiplied, become more brazen and appear to be winning their fight against innocent Nigerians. Ditto for the pen robbers and not to offend the sensibilities of some, let me quickly correct this to 'alleged pen robbers' before i am added to the list of beer parlor pundits. I personally prefer ODEKU thank you very much.