PART ONE

With several years of enduring under the combined yoke of military dictatorship, socio-economic and civil strife, the conceptual fairy-tale beauty and expectations of a civil society, in the West African sub-region, has been completely eroded. The prevailing circumstance, naturally is such that calls to question the theoretical and practical working definition of the concept of civil society.

Imperatively therefore, an academic adventure into rethinking civil society in the West African context, becomes a timely exercise in the right direction.

Therefore, in attempting to take part in a discussion of this magnitude, we’ll limit the scope of our argument to the shores of Nigeria. This is necessary so as to be objective and arguably focused in our chosen position, the consideration here being that of proximity to resource materials. More so as Nigeria is currently experiencing another attempt at democratic civil governance, an arrangement quite suitable for experimenting with the ideals of the civil society concept.

Also, we shall rely heavily on events from the 1999 inception date of the present nascent democracy till date, while they are still alive and kicking in our memories. We shall adopt a very straight-forward approach to the issues under consideration, by asking very simple but pertinent questions. We would attempt to answer those questions by taking a birds eye view of the prevailing situation, then we would theorize about what civil society should be in our thinking.

In its micro-perspective, the moral philosophy of the civil society primarily denotes a society where socio-politically, the country and the citizenry are not under any form of oppressive military governance, with the attendant obnoxious decrees and martial orders, but of a democratically elected civilian administration, legally recognized by law and working under a well defined and challengeable constitution. While socio-culturally, it simply denotes an orderly arrangement of people, their manners and events at any given time, within a given setting.

But in its macro-perspective, the sociology of the civil society, necessarily, encompasses a wider range of considerations that permeate every pore of the society and its socialization processes. These includes considerations such as the relationship between the government and the governed and the righteous observance of their natural obligations toward each other. On the part of the government, this involves the implementation of policies that would grease the apparatus of functional peaceful co-existence between the tribes of the society, and the provision of socio-economic incentives and environment necessary to achieve same. While on the part of the citizenry, considerations would be based on their character and social attitude towards themselves. The aptness of their words, thoughts and actions, in any given situation. Their respect for the common laws of the land and also for the constitutional rights and the ethno-religious wishes and affiliations of every individual, taking into consideration the peculiarities of our history.

So, if we are to adhere steadfastly to our expectations of the civil society above, and we are asked such a million bucks question as "what is the status of the civil society in Nigeria"? We would be forced to answer very simply, truthfully and emphatically that the concept of civil society in Nigeria as of present is non-existent. Dead and buried. In taking this position, some very glossy record of events exist to lend credence to our claim.

You see, the essence of the civil society in the context of Nigeria had long been bastardized by the twin forces of the government and the citizenry. By their insincerity of purpose, as in focused leadership and follower-ship. While we may have very decent minds that does not subscribe to witch-hunting, we must be permitted to randomly apportion blame among the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the citizenry, the four prestigious groups who in this case are our perceived spoilers of the essence of civil society in Nigeria. Recently, some actions and events of all the arms of government in Nigeria leave a lot to be desired of a civil society.

Take the legislature for example; they’ve not been in the best of working relationship with the executive. From the National down to the local governments, the legislatures have been in one loggerhead or the other with the executive. What kind of civil society is that, where the time that would have been gainfully spent in co-ordinating developmental policies and programmes, is rather wastefully spent in internal bickering and promotion of self greed.

The senate and the state houses of assembly are the primary suspects in the murder of our civil society. In the last two years, several of their undemocratic actions have gone a long way in rubbishing the ideals of civil governance. The floors of these honourable houses have been plagued with several undesirable occurrences that are beneath the expectations from honourable men.

Or are they honourable men? Honourable men indeed. Honourable men that have legalized the employment of barbaric methods in settling disputes. Honourable men that have turned the floors of the houses into battle grounds. Not the kind of battle that uses words as the weapon of reasonable, structural and civil disputations. But the real kind of battle that utilizes hi-tech weaponry of conventional warfare. Such that senators would easily divide themselves into two enemy armies at the slightest disagreement, pulling machine guns, brandishing bayonets, throwing fists, chairs and other such cudgels, upturning tables and file cabinets, trampling on drafts and copies of committee reports, creating a tableau of drunken vandals in a club fight. I tell you these men are not my models of honourable men.

Or how else can one explain the scenario where a certain one time senate president, for fear of the impeachment clause being invoked against him – a perfectly legal business of the house and civil responsibility of senators in a perfect civil society - would run away to his village with the senate’s mace, the symbol of authority and legality of the senate businesses. Therefore crippling the businesses of the senate and indirectly holding the nation to ransom.

Imagine, at the behest of the political greed of one person, the whole nation came to a stand still while the rest of the civilized world sped away on the speedometer of wall street dealings.

Imagine that kind of legislative irresponsibility! Removing the mace forcefully and illegally from the senate. Subjecting the sacred symbol to a tortuous journey, from the street-lit and well tended expressways of the federal capital, through the neglected, pot-holed and gully eroded ‘deathways’ that is a shameful characteristic of the southern and eastern roads, right down to his village. To be hidden either under the bamboo bed of his forebears and the watchful eyes of his personal chi, the bastion of faith of his kinsmen, or atop the rafter in his mother’s kitchen, to be smoked along with the basket of fish and rows of dry maize hung there till next planting season.

Whichever way, it was one hell of a safe hiding place. I tell you, for even the full command of riot policemen ordered by the executive to go invade the home of the senate president, ransack and recapture the mace, could not find and return it. Talk of an effective police force and you sure have one that couldn’t be used as an example.

Then at the satiation of the whims of the number three citizen, the embattled mace found its way back to the sacred sanctuary of the senate chambers, back on its regal pedestal, to be bowed down to in reverence by the "dishonourable" men. Well, if I were a honourable member, I don’t know what I would have done, but do know what I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t condescend to bow down to any desecrated mace.

On the part of the executive, their role in the death of civil society in Nigeria is basically in their lackadaisical approach to implementing meaningful and result oriented economic policies and programmes. You see, it is our belief that the state of the economy of any society, as it affects its members, is inextricable from considerations of whether or not the society is a civil society and its members civil minded. By this we mean that there can’t be a perfect civil society in stifling economic environment.

With the pride of the Naira nose-diving daily at international money markets, occasioned by the down turn in the nations economy and the government’s ineptitude at doing anything positive to improve the situation, it should be expected that the society could be many things but civil.

The economic situation in the country is such that does not allow the citizenry time to ponder about civil things or doing same. Everybody wants to survive. Such that some debased citizens would go to any length or do anything to survive, even employing diabolical means. Such that we are assaulted daily with decapitated and dismembered corpses littering our streets, as remnants of ritual killings. Imagine human beings freely trading in human parts just to survive. Yet we are supposed to be in a civil society.

Would you blame these ones wholly? Partly, I implore you, for I remember reading somewhere that severe hunger, desolation and hopelessness could drive the weak-spirited into mild mental disorders. The lion’s share of the blame should go to the government. We believe that if they had invested more time and energy into bettering the economy of the country and by extension the lives of the people, rather than spend sleepless nights and restless days plotting the elimination of their political opponents so they could perpetuate themselves in office – you see, all the elected officers of this present administration, from the councillors to the senate president wants a second term, so none would hear of any constructive opposition, even when they know from the depths of their hearts that they have been woeful failures – may be these psychotic citizens would have been civil minded enough to engage in civil means of livelihood.

Again, the security of lives and properties of the citizenry has not received deserved attention from the executive. The result being that the citizenry are forced to employ several indescribable methods to secure themselves, with an unwritten agreement that "your right to stretch your hand stops where my right to defend my eyes starts". In the end what do we have, a society of general lawlessness, where people freely take the law into their hands, interpreting same in a way that suits their purpose.

For instance, the people of Odi in Bayelsa state used quite an "uncivil" and unacceptable approach to register what protests they had against an ‘uncivil’ system which had denied them of some perceived rights, and in the process, twelve policemen lost their lives in a most gruesome manner.

Consequently, the full wrath of an angry father was let loose on errant children, such that a battalion of soldiers, in an equally "uncivil" and condemnable fashion, donned their fighting garb and, throwing the decorum of ethical soldiering to the dogs, marched on Odi, against a defenseless civilian enemy. The result was a bloody orgy of rape, looting and sodomy. What did the government do? Nothing. Other than to brandish the threat of a ‘state of emergency’ declaration, like the sword of Damocles of old, before a citizenry believed in the face of the present democracy, to be living in a civil society.

That we never seem to learn from history has always been a great mistake that severally have taught us bitter lessons. For the people of Tiv-Jukun, the lesson was a particularly scalding and traumatic one.

History was to repeat itself when some cannibalistic people of TIV-Jukun, as a result of some minor ethnic squabble that could – in an ideal society of civil minded people – be settled through effective dialogue, rather chose to thread the path of the new trend in communal clashes by hacking to death in a most savage way, nineteen uniformed soldiers sent there purportedly for peace keeping.

You see our kind of civil society? Combat soldiers drafted to maintain peace in a civilian situation just because a certain army general and ECOMOG tested peace keeper is from one of the disputing sides. Thereby usurping the duty of the police and riot police squads. I wonder if these uncivil minded people have ever heard the expression – division of labour.

So, vexed by the attack on the soldiers, trust the powers that be to kill an ant with a sledge hammer, they cried foul and unleashed the dogs of war on Tiv – Jukun. And like hungry dogs, with their breath spitting fire, with a glaring savage hunger in their eyes, they bored their fangs. See what they did at the turn of the century to civilization, in a civilian administration which is the major laboratory to practice the theoretical essence of civil society.

The soldiers made away with their spoils of a cowardly war leaving in their wake a running stream of blood to appease the gods if ethnic confusion and assuage the senseless pride of senseless statesmen, with over three hundred bodies as barbeque for the civic banquet in honour of the vultures sunlight festival.

Serves the Odi and Tiv – Jukun people right, so others may learn and be wise enough to know that it is a very ‘uncivil’ act to attack and kill uniformed men on peace missions. This ugly situation is becoming a recurring decimal in contemporary communal strife. You see, due to incessant police brutality that often go unpunished, the people have become cop-haters and apathetic to anything in uniform, no matter the colour, that symbolizes organs of government authority. Such that anytime these troops are dispatched to scenes of civil unrest, the first survival instinct that people would get is that of defense. And in their thinking, to effectively defend is to effectively attack.

Heard the latest fever in town? It’s the electoral bill fever. Time there was we had such contagious fever like SAP, WAI, ANNUL, IMPASSE, IMPEACH and so on, remember? Now it’s the electoral bill fever that is spreading like epidemic, which, if not checked, could strip our nascent democracy naked, so the world would see the kind of democracy practiced in our civil society.

We won’t go into the details of the electoral bill saga, since it is still raging. But the fishy aspect of the bill, which is common knowledge is that a certain paragraph (80) eighty mysteriously found its way into the bill and there was some monkey business in the manner of assenting it. The import being that other eligible political associations seeking registration as political parties would have to wait till 2007 to have a go at the presidential elections.

So who is to blame for that blatant attempt to turn the country into a one party state? The executive blames the legislature, the upper house blames the lower house, the lower house blames the executive president. Yes, the blame cycle goes round and about. Believe it or not there’s no problem with that. This is a peculiar trend in our peculiar civil society.

Well, I don’t know for you, but as for me and my household, we are forced to put this one blame pass our very dear president. You see, Mr. President may have a commanding knowledge of our proud traditional idioms, he may have a super mart stocked full of legendary wisecracks and may still posses his military instinct and drives, but for a man who is the champion of a fruitless anti-corruption war, a man who has been there before, is there now, and whom, in an ideal civil society, being there again wouldn’t be a do or die affair, I dare say that Mr. President couldn’t have stooped that low to conquer his presidential rivals by fraudulently corrupting the electoral bill. Or could he?

So you can see why I grinned mischievously when I read the January 14th, 2002 edition of the Insider weekly, which has as headline to its lead story – "ELECTORAL LAW FORGERY, WHY OBASANJO MUST RESIGN NOW", and a sub-headline credited to Femi Falana, Lagos lawyer and human right activist which says "HIS OFFENCE IS IMPEACHABLE". Yes, I have a good cause to laugh, even heartily at that, for these are right proposals at the wrong time of the season. These are perfectly civil actions which may be implemented in perfect civil societies. But lets not be naïve about it, I can assure you that there’ll definitely be no Watergate or Monica Lewinsky saga here. Our civil society is not civil enough for such honourable civil proposals. Period.

Sometimes I feel very fortunate to be a part of the Nigeria civil society crowd for the rare opportunities it offers one to witness unreasonable irresponsibility in unlikely quarters, like the civil service. A society so civil that the labour union does not have any regard for executive decisions nor sense of appreciation to the government for their little mercies.

Or why is it so difficult for the leaders of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to ever look beyond their noses to see if anything good could come out of certain decisive government actions on the long run. For instance, 1st January, 2002, as a New Year gift to the children from a benevolent father, government announced an increase in the pump price of fuel from N22.00 to N26.00. Reasons? Government says they’re gradually removing fuel subsidy, so they could permanently remove fuel scarcity. I say fine, that’s okay by me, and so does every other reasonable Nigerian, if only they could breathe the breath of life into the refineries by giving them physical Turn Around Maintenance (TAM), so that the refineries could live up to their billings and justify the hugely inflated resources invested in them. At least it would deprive some governments’ cronies the opportunity to starch away a greater chunk of the fuel subsidy fund for purposes of subsidizing themselves and their vain fantasies.

At least there’ll be fuel in the filling stations regularly, such that dubious oil Czars would no longer import adulterated and foul smelling fuel into Nigeria. Yeah, doesn’t it perplex you? That one of the largest producer of high-grade crude oil, with about four refineries, still imports fuel? It sure does amuse me.

But the idiosyncrasies of the labour leaders would not let them see things from that perspective. As far as they are concerned, fuel subsidy must stay put. So that government could have an inexcusable excuse for the endless queues that have become a daily chaotic scene at our filling stations. So that the black market racketeers could have a free hand to sale at whatever price their greedy minds would decide. Have you ever stopped to wonder why in times of fuel scarcity only black marketers have fuel and filing stations don’t? And desperate motorists eager to get on with their lives would buy at any price. After all the last time there was artificial scarcity, didn’t we pay (N500.00) five hundred Naira for four liters of fuel? And that is if we saw the commodity at all? Yes we did, and if I still remember my elementary one plus one, that would be a ‘paltry’ (N125.00) one hundred and twenty five Naira per liter at black market price as against the ‘whooping’ (N26.00) twenty six Naira only per liter government price, plus the guarantee that there would be fuel at the filling stations and regularly too. See their warped sense of preference? An upside down kind of preference. The logicality here is very illogical to me.

So, for the greedy labour leaders of a cosmetic labour union, a labour union full of fifth columnists, to engineer a stand still in the economic machinery, by ordering workers to stay at home because of a four Naira increase in fuel, and while negotiations are going on within government circles, to me is very annoying. It’s an affront on the collective intellects of the civil and objective minded people of the Nigerian civil society.

And to think that the labour union actually sent their paid goons to go out into the streets to cause mayhem against the civil populace and their civil business, against reasonable civil servants on their way to their civil duties, to lock up shops and disrupt markets, all under the pretext of enforcing their selfish stay at home order. I call that playing to the gallery, or what do you think?

One would have thought that in a model civil society, such ‘uncivil’ procedures are no longer fashionable in addressing such civil matters, when the inexhaustible machinery of dialogue has not been fully harnessed. If I’m allowed to express my candid views, this kind of thing should not happen again in the civil society, I mean the labour embarking on strike action every time the government farts an executive fart. If ever I was told, that a day shall come that the police could go on strike, I would have stupidly retorted – ‘that’ll be the day’, for with a faithful conviction I would have betted my right hand that that day shall never come in my life’s time. But sadly enough it has come to pass in our lives’ time, that the day actually came that the junior officers of the Nigerian police force went on strike. The police? Strike! Terrible.

When signals of the impending doom first came, we thought it was the wickedest joke of the millennium. Those of us who love to hear the sound of our voices were quick to scream blue murder, impossible. But it happened, and went a long way to show how naive we would be to think that there’s anything that is impossible in Nigeria’s kind of civil society.

It started from Calabar, where at the Atakpa police station, junior officers barricaded the entrance, armed with bags of pebbles they actually threw at any body attempting to enter the station for any business. At the State Police Headquarters it was the same thing, with junior officers carrying placards and chanting war songs that called for the head of the Inspector General – to be used for stew or pepper soup? Then it got to Lagos the following day, where junior officers sabotaged all Police radio channels, blocking any form of communication between headquarters and other commands, like a country under siege. Could this kind of thing happen in a civil society?

For our purpose we won’t dwell on the import of the police strike and the consequences, but on the remote causes of the strike. The junior officers complained about house allowance, lack of promotion and other incentives. They threatened to embark on strike and for over one week nobody was responsible enough to address them, look into their grievances so as to nip the impending face-off in the bud. Then when the strike began to draw general condemnation, authorities now responded by saying they’ve paid the officers entitlements into the bank.

That incident was an indictment on the government. And often this has been my quarrel with the system. Their attitude of pussy-footing with sensitive issues is always unnerving. They are wont to wait until things get out of hand before reacting. This kind of attitude is not desirable at all in civil societies. I’m not saying that we do not have a semblance of civil society in Nigeria at all, heaven forbids. I’m saying that in some ways we are a peculiar people and so we have a peculiar civil society. A society where the Nigerian medical Association (NMA) could, without a second human thought, call off doctors from the government hospitals on a strike action. I can’t begin to say how I feel about this without offending the very essence of this noble profession. Forgive my biases, but you see, I’ve had the privilege to wine, dine and tango with some doctors with human faces. So on this let us all find time to play a little game of creative imagination

Just imagine you or your child, critically ill and at the point of death or your wife in an unusually painful labour. You are taken to the hospital, only to find that nurses who should be going round the wards administering drugs and love, are rather painting their nails, gossiping or engaged in other forms of nurses vanities. There you are, propped up by your escorts, the nurses have seen you but don’t seem to notice you. When in desperation one of you dares to cut the ice, one of the nurses would snap at you, "no just worry me abeg, abi you no know say doctors dem dey strike?

Woken to the realities of the time, you look to your left, to your right and all around, and you noticed for the first time that other inmates are actually packing out. Suddenly it dawns on you that you are not alone in your state of general hopelessness.

Just imagine, the doctors going on strike, leaving the patients at the contemptuous mercy of nurses who have variously shamed the spirit of Flo Nightingale, by their ‘uncivil’ attitudes toward patients and the overdoses of profanities they readily dole out to same.

One thing though, the doctors strike is never without beneficiaries. Your see, these doctors would station their agents at the gates of the general hospital to advertise and redirect anxious patients to their private clinics where they are charged exorbitant fees and are simply turned back, even at the point of death, if they do not make their one hundred percent deposits. And these are the same doctors that swore to save lives at all cost. May be that their Hippocratic oath is a very hypocritical one.

So far, we’ve been trying to softly chastise the system for the woes of our civil society. But if we should tell it to the hungry hawk as well as the straying chicks, the Nigerian citizenry on their own are a hard nut to crack. They are a fertile research topic for a doctorate dissertation, with a natural library of abundant resource materials.

You see, quite frankly, there are two sets of citizens that make up the Nigerian civil society. For our purpose, we’ll simply call them ‘the reasonables’ and "the unreasonables". The former are the ones who know what is wrong and avoids doing them, who know what is right and make sincere efforts to do same.

While the latter, are the exact opposite of the former. Again for our purpose, we are not interested in the ‘reasonables’, after all Jesus Christ did not come for the righteous but for sinners. Rather, our searchlight would focus on the ‘unreasonables’, for these are the ones that have shamed our civil society to an extent.

You see, the average unreasonable Nigerian is like the she goat which must have its udder roughened a bit by the kids before releasing forth the milk there in. what are we saying? We are saying that they like to be pushed around. They like to be violently nudged, and so they would know what is right but rather do the exact opposite. And I would have thought that in an ideal civil society, it should be a thing of self-pride for the citizens to dare have the patience to do what is right once in a while.

But as far as the unreasonable comrades of the Nigerian civil society are concerned, you could say that again or go tell it to the birds. For them the best route to everything is the shortcut. So they would not have the courage to queue till their turn to buy fuel at the station or ticket at the cinema. Yet they came and met people there, but they want to be the first to buy, thereby causing chaos there.

You see, I cannot understand why some people could be so irrational and callous to think that where there is a visible "DO NOT URINATE HERE. BY ORDER" Sign, is the most convenient place to do so, to hell with the order. Anyway whose order? They ask. Where there is "NO PARKING", is the safest place to park and where there is a "NO DUMPING OF REFUSE", is the most hygienic place to create a mountain of waste and stench. Alternatively, they’ll dump the miserable remnants of their miserable existence into the gutters, blocking the drainage channels and causing erosion flooding.

Why not? When in a society as civil as ours – no sneer intended – one can hardly boast about well defined and strategic refuse dumps, talk less of a recycle bin. The money that could have been gainfully invested in erecting recycle plants would rather be used to finance bogus refuse collection or drainage clearing and re-channeling contracts. In case you never guessed, these contracts are awarded to political contractors as settlement of political debts or as superglue to permanently seal the lips of vociferous opposition.

These ones then would promptly disappear with the taxpayers money, with the job not done, with no questions asked, after all they are politicians. You see what I mean? If we were in an ideal civil society where government contracts are publicized so that taxpayers could monitor the progress of those contracts, wouldn’t these crooked contractors be sued?

But here in our society it isn’t so. Of course those government officials who should have preferred the case against these dubious contractors cannot do so conscientiously. They are also dubious. They’ve gotten their consciences emburdened by kickback and kickfront. They’ve been gratified with a tiny part of the taxpayers money, so the contractors could vanish with the mega part of the money for all the government officials care.

That reminds me, our kind of civil society is that where only the civil servants pay tax as at when due. Of course they get their taxes promptly deducted at source, thanks to the P.A.Y.E trap, otherwise they would have devised a means of evading it. Yes, tax  evasion is part of the accepted social norm here.

False declaration of asset by politicians and income earnings by contractors and businessmen, means that they would be under taxed, and that is if they don’t evade totally. Of course the Board of Internal Revenue is so vibrant that graft has eaten deep into its agents who would go out of their way to under assess their favoured clients for a fee. So government loses hard revenue that should have accrued from proper assessment and taxation. But these same tax evaders would be the loudest in criticizing the government for non-provision of motorable roads, adequate electricity, portable water health and education. Tell me are these social amenities not paid for by the taxpayer’s money?

Lest I forget, have you ever had an encounter with the prototype Lagos bus driver or conductor? If you haven’t, pray you don’t especially if you are a member of the high society. For instance, you are driving at cruising speed in your Mercedes Benz S. class, and a molue driver, in an attempt to overtake you so he could get to the next bus stop before his rivals, smashes your car.

Instead of the driver coming down to tell you he’s sorry and beg for your forgiveness, maybe he would have succeeded in making you blame the misfortune wholly on the gaping pot-holes on the road and not on his failed breaks, the bus’ conductor would choose to do that which is common place amongst his contemporaries.

He would come down to claim his rights - you see, in Nigeria everybody is always right, nobody is civil minded enough to accept a blame, so nobody is ever wrong – and if you did so much as raise an eyebrow, ah, I’m, sorry for you, if the culprit didn’t virtually grapple with the lapel of your treasured suit from Savile Row, you’d be rewarded with a barrage of invectives in a language you do not even understand.

Thus robbing you a rare opportunity of knowing how much you are worth in the eyes of a "common" bus conductor. A Sad pointer to the depth of contempt and consuming resentment that an average member of the lower class reserves for the aristocracy. And if this truth came from the bus driver, it would have been less demeaning, but from the conductor!

The level of indiscipline in a percentage of the Nigeria Civil Society is overwhelming and alarming.

Such that if one were to risk a suggestion on why the situation is so, one would have been tempted to attribute it to mass illiteracy. But this wouldn’t be fair comment. Apart from being a hasty generalization, it would be offensive and libelous.

The academic curricula may not have contained distinct courses on the philosophies of the classical civil society’s ways and means, and we may have lost some of our best brains to incidences of brain drain, but statistical evidence would prove that Nigeria is still the largest producer of graduates annually, in this part of the world. With almost one hundred universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, which in their combination churns out about one hundred thousand graduates for national service annually. Definitely this couldn’t be outright illiteracy at all, A percentage may have been half baked may be, but just a percentage. Well, back in the undergraduate days, some students may have been unfocussed and lazy enough to allow themselves to go through academic education without the essence of socio-cultural education going through them.

These may be the ones that form the bulk of ‘unreasonable’ members of our civil society. In earnest you couldn’t blame these ones entirely, when their constitutional rights to proper education had long been rubbished by incessant civil strikes by the academic staff union of universities (A S UU) and their non-academic counter parts (NASUU), a quite unreasonable and unnecessary action in a true civil society that places emphasis on qualitative education.

You see, the crass irresponsibility and social decay that has ruined the beauty of our civil society had also found its way into the educational sector. Such that unreasonably, government deny the lecturers their basic labour rights and entitlement, and equally unreasonably, the lecturers mutilate the academic calendar by embarking on strikes.

Poor folks, why shouldn’t they go home to rest? When government has refused to pay them grants for research, what new discoveries are they going to teach the students? So, we would excuse the lecturers their ploy of hiding under the guise of strike to go home and engage in the act of procreation and private commercial ventures. Catch the big joke? Lecturers who should be sweating profusely in the laboratories and libraries to write Nigeria’s name in the book of new academic finds, are now roaming the streets and offices vending wares.

To hell with the "your reward is in heaven" time overtaken slogan. If politicians and contractors could have their reward here on earth, the eggheads must have theirs too right here and now. Or are they not a part of the same adulterated civil society?

So I’m not against the lecturers trying to pressurize the system for their rights, say what is good for the goose is good for the gander. But I’ll always pick bones with the timing of their strike action to coincide with examination periods.

Couldn’t they choose another time of the day? I can hear somebody saying their points couldn’t be better driven home at any other time than examinations time. Talk of scratching where it hurts most.

Often, rumours of the impending verbal warfare starts flying around the campuses say about two weeks to the semester examinations, causing panic and deep concern amongst serious and academic conscious students, while the lazy one gleefully look forward to it. Finally, two days to examinations, after a week long of bluffing and calling of bluffs, they strike, so as to save their face and their integrity at the expense of genuine students who become pawns in the chessboard of greed and socio-moral insensitivity.

So I ask, would this kind of thing be a daily occurrence in practical civil societies? Permit me to say no, for in civil societies, I believe education is given its pride of place, such that government would not force lecturers to go on strike.

Consequently, the embattled students are given ultimatum to vacate their campuses or alternatively be tear-gassed and pushed about by armed riot police squads. And so the sent home students who should have been in school learning civil morals now stay at home to frolic in uncivil ways and means. And why not? Or is the idle mind no longer Lucifer’s laboratory?

And so having been touched by the devil and his fantastic but false promises, these students who would be leaders of their tomorrow, now return to the campuses packing guns, ammunitions, axes, machetes and other weaponry of chemical warfare, to engage in cult wars. Cutting themselves, shooting and attacking members of the rival gang with acid bathe and so on.

Generally turning the campuses into war fronts and making life unbearable for other serious and civil minded students. Thus destroying the sanctity and glorious myths of the Ivory tower and the academic robe as it were.

If you have never witnessed these inter-confraternity wars on the campuses, I can tell you that it is never a nostalgic scene to behold. It is a picture of utter confusion and helplessness. With books, journals and school bags flying about. With students and lecturers running helter-skelter. The rattling sound of gun shots that reigns the air urging them on, kicking up a whirl of dust as they scamper for safe hiding places inside the gutter, inside the book cellar of the library or in between book shelves, inside coca cola kiosks, inside the toilet, anywhere that could offer some respite. Like the invasion scene in some exotic western classics from the Wild West. Only this time there are no ‘film tricks’ or fantastic stunts, I’m talking about an on-the-spot-live-action, which, if captured on celluloid, could be a major box-office hit.

You see what these hooligans have turned the school system into? Unfortunately you can’t absolutely blame these ones for daily, when they watch the television and read newspapers, they are accosted by stories of worst exploits by the senators and honourable members of the state houses of assembly. Of course one Efik proverb succinctly concludes, that when you take residence beside the Iroko tree, that you’ll bathe of the dews from the Iroko tree. I tell you these ones have been steeped in the murky waters of corruption and ethnicity consciousness. So these ones would grow up to better the records of their forerunners by adding technological and artistic touches to irresponsibility and general incivility.

Such that my heart bleeds for lady Nigeria every time I stop to think about it, of what becomes the image of her ladyship when this set of goons shall become the masters of her tomorrow, when these ones shall be responsible for her fortunes and her destiny, when these ones shall mount the stage to play out their various roles as senators, MP’s, ministers, ambassadors, governors and I dare say president! I fear nothing shall remain of her quasi - civil society. As anarchy, misdirection and massive corruption would be the order of the day, and verily verily I assure you, these ones would not be accountable to anybody for their misdeeds. Yes, there would be no accountability whatsoever.

You see, the average Nigerian government official with a responsibility to manage fund, despise accountability with a deep passion. There’s no love lost between them.

Or how else could one explain a situation where participation in a meet-with-the-people radio phone-in programme would become a matter of choice for local government chairman. Whereas in a very civilized society, participation in this kind of programme would have been non-negotiable, as it offers the local government chairmen an avenue to tell the electorates about their glossy actions and be queried for their glaring inactions. Well, we’ve long agreed that ours is not a very civil society, such that some local government chairman could brazenly refuse to feature in the programme, while those who grudgingly feature would have the temerity to fix the show, making the whole exercise to be a worthless charade. This is how they do it.

You see, this is a phone - in programme, and naturally, it is which call gets through first that would be attended to. Getting through here would depend to a large extent on which type of phone set or line used – analogue or digital, box phone or cellular. So what these chairman do is to get their stooges, say about twenty of them, into one place.

Give them already scripted and fanciful questions on a piece of paper, with every stooge holding a sophisticated phone piece. So that from the signature tune of the programme till the end, these stooges would put their phone pieces on steady redial. This would block other genuinely aggrieved and concerned callers from getting through, while only the praise hymns of the stooges would do so, and the man on the hot seat would brilliantly give his well- rehearsed response. And if in a one to nine probability a foreign caller gets through, our man would borrow ‘Maradonaic’ cunnings to dribble and wriggle his way out of any tight corner that the nasty and unexpected question would have boxed him in. disheartening, isn’t it?

This tirade of melancholy would not be complete if we fail to scratch the hide of the judiciary for their role in what has become our civil society and the consequences.

The denial of the citizenry’s constitutional rights in several instances has led to a loss of confidence in the judiciary system. What with the poor man being detained for months without trial, against the provisions of the legal code which stipulates that no citizen should be kept in detention for more than twenty four hours without being charged to the nearest court of law.

Lest I forget, the courts of law are no longer held in high esteem by the citizenry. Of course even the most uninformed of the citizenry, is aware of the fact that the ideals of the judiciary system has been greatly bastardized by the executive. To the extent that judges who are supposed to dispense justice with blindfolded eyes, having been corrupted, now ply their trade with the hood promptly removed from their eyes.

So that they could clearly see who is above the law and who is not. Who should be given ‘veiled’ and price - tagged justice and who should be denied for not having the economic power to purchase deserved justice.

The direct consequence of this betrayal of trust, on the part of the judicial machinery, and lack of faith on the part of the disillusioned citizenry, is such that socio-militant vigilante groupings would spring up in all the ethnic cultures of Nigeria on a vengeance mission – to dispense justice in whatever bizarre and barbaric fashion their dimmed wits deems fit.

Like the legendary "Bakassi Boys" that rule the eastern states, who, aided by some mumbo-jumbo and unscientific revelations from some mechanical fetish objects of black magic, would readily dice a man into cubes of meat, on the often baseless claim of being an "armed robber with blood on his hands". They call it blood for blood and justice for all. Yeah, justice for all indeed, yet not the kind of justice to be desired in a civil society setting.

Like "the maddening crowd" of "Area boys" that metamorphosed into the ‘OPC’ scourge in Lagos, who on the mere mention of the words "Ole, Ole, Ole" – thief, thief, thief, would directly lynch a man to death and incinerate same with fuel and used car tyre. A dangerous system that could be used against political, business, social or just common enemies, after all the dead can’t speak in its defense.

Or like the "Nsidung Youths" versus the "Bayside Boys" in Calabar South who, after grazing on a field of marijuana and soaking in a drum of illicit gin, would engage themselves in a senseless street war just to establish which is the strongest band of local mercenaries available for political patronage.

The regrettable beauty of this their war is that the innocent citizen gets caught in the crossfire. Such that a civil minded individual, going about his civil business, on the streets of a supposed civil society, would have the windscreen of his car smashed in by a misdirected scud missile. Call that civil casualty in a civil society.

But are these ones really part of our civil society? To be sure, they are part of that same society. Call them dregs of the society if you please, but they are created by the same society that created the lawyers, doctors, engineers, dubious contractors, corrupt politicians, ministers, oil tycoons and so on. They may not eat from the same table or drink the same bottled natural spring water as these privileged ones, but assuredly they breathe of the same air.

They are a class in that same society. They may be of the lowest rung of the social stratification, a class long used, abused and ignored. Still they have their economic importance, as catalysts to either the socio-economic progression or regression of our society, with equal basic constitutional rights to life and fair hearing.

Rehabilitate them, budget for them, focus attention on them, give them a sense of belonging and recognition, allow them to at least lick the wrapping foil of the national cake by creating jobs for them, and you would have made a worthwhile investment.

But try to extirpate them from the society or to run them aground with a corrupt police, and that would be the devil’s alternative. The society would become ungovernable and uninhabitable by civil citizens. The society comes to a standstill. Fear grips the rich, life becomes meaningless for the upper class and the super-rich lose their freedom of movement or who wants to die and leave his ‘may be’ ill-gotten millions. Precedents have shown that at the end of such exercises, casualties are always recorded on both sides – on the side of the law and that of the outlaw.

Government would bury its own with caskets draped in the national colours. And believe you me, our dear outlaws would bury theirs too with fanfare and full militia honours, gun- saluting them as martyrs of their cause.

A cause to survive by any means necessary in an unfair society that has denied them of their basic rights and privileges without providing them with alternatives. A cause they daily risk their lives to defend. And why not? When out there in the jungle, survival is strictly for the fittest. Of course they have been conditioned by the social forces of their civil society to believe in themselves, their spirits of dare, instincts and strategies for survival. To live their lives only for today, and forget about tomorrow. Tomorrow shall take care of itself if it ever comes. So if they die today while defending a means of survival, that ends it. Or what next? Who cares? What hope of tomorrow do they have that they’re going to miss?

That may be their pitiable philosophy but I do know and believe that they are an integral part of the civil society. They are inextricable from the framework of the society. The government knows that too. That these ones are a necessary evil, you can’t live with them and you can’t live without.

Such that government would never go out of its way, with full federal might to either permanently weaken their rank and file, or rehabilitate them and better their lots. Of course, if government should do either, who would run the dirty errands and do the dirty jobs of the politicians and government’s top brass? Who would be used for political campaigns and thuggery? Who would set a whole edifice of national pride ablaze so as to burn delicate files and incriminating documents, in order to cover up a massive fraud? Yeah, its real, such things regularly happen in our civil society.

So you see, although they tend to draw our civilization backwards, the Area Boys, the OPC, Bakassi Boys, Nsidung Youths, Bayside Boys, Egbesu Boys, the Almajirins, the Mosop, the Massob, the Udawas or cattle bandits who, after gulping a large quantity of ‘burukutu’ – a local brew – would embark on a killing spree, sacking a whole village, and numerous other such ethnicity inspired militia that terrorize our collective psyches and assault the sanity of our continued corporate co-existence as a nation or a civil society – from the fringes of the Sahara desert to the belly of tropical rain forest, are all bona-fide members of our civil society as we know it today.