Restructuring: Is Nigeria’s Problem The Constitution Or Its Operators?

By Olu Fasan

The commonest riposte by opponents of the call for political restructuring in Nigeria is that Nigeria’s problem is not its political system or its Constitution but the operators. I refer to this as the “culture versus structure” argument in my forthcoming book In The National Interest.

Put simply, those blaming the operators of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself, subscribe to the “culture hypothesis”, which attributes a country’s poverty or prosperity to the culture and behaviour of its leaders and citizens, and not the kind of institutions it has. By contrast, adherents of the “structure hypothesis” posit that the nature of institutions, governance structures and political systems determines the success or failure of a nation. The nature/structure dichotomy is central to the restructuring debate in Nigeria.

Segun Osoba: No longer Waiting For Godot

By Banji Ojewale

“A man will turn over half a library to make one book”

—Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English critic and lexicographer.

Waiting for Aremo Segun Osoba’s book, BATTLELINES: My Adventures In Journalism And Politics, has been akin to the experience of the two characters expecting the arrival of someone called Godot who never arrives. In his 1952 tragicomedy, Waiting For Godot, Irish writer, Samuel Beckett presents the helplessness and an accompanying barrenness of an endless wait for a Godot who doesn’t show up. Joined by three other funny actors, these tarrying figures get further mired in a futile wait for the person they do not know. The play closes, tragically and comically, without Godot being revealed in the two-act work.

*Segun Osoba 

Mercifully, lingering for the autobiography of Osoba, former editor of Daily Times of Nigeria, who went on to become the paper’s Group managing-director and the governor of Ogun State, hasn’t followed the trajectory of Godot. Yes, there was a long expectation. But, as it turned out the other day in Lagos, it wasn’t a wait for Godot. Osoba’s own Godot arrived at the presentation of his book ahead of his birthday.