For those who may be lost about the word Mambayya, that is the name of Mallam Aminu Kano’s mother after whom his Kano residence was named. It is now a very modern complex following its take-over and the extensive renovation by the Federal Government which turned it into the defunct Centre for Democratic Studies, (CDS). Thereafter, it was transferred to Bayero University, Kano and renamed Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Research and Training. That is the formal aspect of Mambayya House.

The informal aspect is that, like Aminu Kano himself, the Centre is turning out to be the venue for ideologically charged debates on Nigeria and Nigerianity. On March 31^st, 2009, there was one on Nigerian Foreign Policy during the launching of the book, Gulliver’s Troubles: Nigeria’s Foreign Policy After the Cold War. On November 16^th, 2009, there was another, this time on Transparency. It was a real clash of Titans involving the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Bob Dewar who delivered the lecture titled “Governance: Why it Matters”; Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State who chaired the occasion, elder statesman Alhaji Maitama Sule and BUK’s VC, Professor Attahiru Jega.

Speaking in the typical fashion of marketers of liberal universalism, Dewar took the position that transparency is a universal standard that all democracies should be striving for in relation to economic development and the security of the future, especially for the young people.

There was no disagreement with Dewar’s Transparency essentialism but there was no agreement between the debaters when it came to the context and politics of Transparency. Soon, the debate engulfed other issues in Nigerian politics, brining about sharp divides.

If there was a kernel of Dewar’s lecture, it was where he stated that “Nigeria is a country blessed by its own resources, particularly oil, gas and agriculture, resources which bring revenue which can be used for investment and development for the public interest”. He went further in a prose that should be quoted again, “Each citizen …deserves public money to be used for their benefit in terms of services such as education and health and infrastructure. The precise priorities of such spending in any country are usually decided through dialogue between the Executive and the elected Assembly. The logic is that public money should be used for public benefit and not for private purposes. Taking public money for oneself is stealing”.

For him, this is where Transparency is helpful in the sense of open and truthful information about use of public money strictly for public interest. This, he said, is the commitment of the British Government in its partnership with Nigerian governments via the DFID and its engagement in this process through public financial management reforms. Subsequently, he declared, “We support fiscal discipline and transparent public procurement. That should be a priority for all states. We encourage states to tell their people where they will spend their money. How much will go towards schools, health, and roads, for example, and what benefits should people expect it to deliver. And by knowing how much is meant to go where the citizen can monitor and ask questions and hold the executive accountable”.

Though not questioning the linkage between identities and conflict, he sees even more linkages between poor governance and lack of fairness/exclusion and conflict, perhaps deadlier than ethno-religious differences. Transparency, he claimed, could build confidence, creating a virtuous circle by giving people the services they wanted. This, he said, is the basis of the support of his home government for the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, (NEITI), measures against money laundering as well as tackling powerful people involved in corruption.

The envoy concluded his speech in a set of market forces promotional questions which goes as follows: I know audiences in universities get tired of long speeches and like to interact, ask questions, debate. So, I would be interested in your feedback. What do you think? Will you be seeking more economic reform, more international standards? Will you be working to stop corruption? What information would you like to see in the public domain? Are you in favour of transparency?

The feedback came in torrents. The first feedback he got was from Sule Lamido who took charge of the lecture as the Chairman of the occasion, resisting any encroachment by the MC. As a sign of things to come, the Chairman who though agreed with the imperative for transparency nevertheless noted the democratic context of it, pointing out the fact that the liberal democracy exported into Africa from the West remains in conflict with certain traditional value frames. And that that conflict is made worse by certain duplicity by the same West, citing the case of Money laundering, for example.

According to the Governor-Chairman, all the morality, culture and laws of the West does not prevent them and their banks from accepting looted monies as deposits. And when the country from which these monies are looted advance to demand for it, Western governments would say that their domestic laws do not allow them to intervene in the banking process. Lamido stopped here so far and said he was yielding the floor to younger people, mostly BUK students, whom he said were bound to be more radical.

A number of questions followed from the students. Three elderly ones were noted to ask questions or make comments on the presentation. One of them was Professor Dandatti Abdulkadir, former VC of BUK and also former Ambassador of Nigeria to Libya. Professor Dandatti remarked, among others that Chairman Lamido had actually provoked certain questions and hoped there will be time to reflect on those questions. The second elder wanted to know from the ambassador if the British High Commission could not organise seminars where they will teach our politicians the nitty-gritty of transparency and aversion for corruption. Hmm! The last elder to speak was Alhaji Maitama Sule, the Dan Masanin Kano.

He started by saluting Lamido as “my dear governor, my dear son”. Then moved on to declaring Attahiru Jega “as a chip off the old block and a man of integrity’. Jega’s father was his classmate, he said. To the High Commissioner, he was happy that “you have come to this house, the house of Mallam Aminu Kano, the great African revolutionary”. The students cheered.

Moving on to the substantive theme, the Dan Masanin said the founding fathers of Nigeria were different from those of today. According to him, there was a report around 1962 which predicted that Nigeria, along with India and Brazil would become industrialized within 15 – 20 years. Today, India is a nuclear power, leading the computer industry, manufacturing missiles, planes and bombs, producing medical doctors almost far in excess of its own need. “India”, he said, “had made it”. And Brazil too, almost in the same respect. Instead of this level of development, Nigeria is groping. There is meaninglessness, chaos, immorality, frustration.

 For him, the trouble with Nigeria is leadership. He, therefore, prayed for more Sule Lamidos, “leaders instead of rulers, leaders who will accept in public what they would privately; leaders with fire in their belly to take difficult decisions but humanity in their hearts to temper ‘justice’ with mercy; leaders who are honest”.

When the microphone returned to the hands of the Chairman, he used the power of the Chair to fire agreeable broadsides in the direction of the elder statesman, describing his intervention as exciting but inciting. He pooh-poohed the example of India saying that India had never experienced the disruptive impact of military rule and so, they could plan.

Lamido was not done yet. He said the elder statesman was invoking nostalgia and that nostalgia is not enough because it was not as if the past leaders were saints. According to Lamido, they left behind a system which failed to carry the nation and which is today’s crisis. Illustrating this claim earlier, Governor Lamido had cited the fact that Nigeria started its life journey, for instance, without a national political party. “All the political parties in 1960 were appealing to ethno-regional and religious differences. NPC, for example, was purely for the North and so also the other parties”. Stretching the argument, he said it was only in 1978 that there were political parties talking about Nigeria as a whole. What this means to Lamido is that “even from the beginning, we had no foundation and we kept on tearing ourselves”.

Then he went comparative, wondering what democracy at 10 was like in the United States of America. For him, there was rigging there because “there can be no bigger rigging than exclusion of Blacks by law in democracies such as the US until that law was abrogated later”. Nigerian democracy should be allowed to grow, he maintained, advising all as far as the politicians are concerned to “take the best of us and discard the rest and from there, you begin to have reference point towards a system that can clean and correct itself”.

He said it was dangerous if students were made to lose confidence in themselves and left with nothing more serious for their reflection about the country than the “gbosa” attitude because, according to him, “gbosa doesn’t solve problems”.

Surprisingly, the same students cheering the Dan Masanin Kano were also cheering Governor Lamido. Could it that they did not understand the different points of entry of the two elder statesmen? Too bad!

Either way, it was, like Professor Jega said, an evening well spent.  He added his own dimension of the clash by making it known that theirs was a Chairman who could not be neutral in a debate upon which he was presiding, a remark to which all the people on the high table laughed, including Lamido. While noting how the Dan Masanin Kano had really inspired the audience today, the VC also said the issues that Lamido raised are issues that will continue to be addressed. Transparency in the Nigerian context is very fundamental to democratization and the contributions are, for him, thought provoking, for which he was very grateful to all. End of another Day!

Onoja wrote from Govt. House, Dutse