In order not to sound like a killjoy, let me begin by congratulating all the distinguished citizens of Nigeria, and “Friends of Nigeria,” who were decorated with national honours of various categories on Tuesday this week at the International Conference Centre, FCT, Abuja. In point of fact, this year’s list of honourees is refreshingly diversified across professions including musicians, star writers like Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie, foremost Humanities scholar, Professor Toyin Falola, influential diplomats Amina Mohammed and Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, alongside achievement-oriented public servants like Professor Ishaq Oloyede and Boss Mustapha. So, the regime of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) has upped the ante in terms of the widespread and value-setting nature of the awards.
It is not just that. We should be thankful for small mercies such as the fact that under Buhari, the nation transcended for once the conception of the national honours as a jamboree to be given annually to politicians and officeholders some of whom reportedly pay huge sums to be put on the list. Under his watch, and as Buhari himself remarked in his speech on the occasion, this is probably the second time in seven years in which national honours will be given at a public ceremony.
That said and the improvement in ethos and conception noted, there are still some reservations about the exercise as well as some musings on how to improve even further the quality of the event. Is it not possible, for example, to create better synergy between outstanding achievement and the appearance of one’s name on the list of awardees?
Buhari’s remark quoted in the opening paragraph to the effect that national honours should transcend decorative or ceremonial character to hint at germane contributions to national development and aspirations provides a jump-off point for my thought in this respect. To illustrate this, there are far too many names of serving public officials, and indeed former ones, whom it is not clear what they were being honoured for except that they occupied public offices. Take, for example, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, who was appointed in acting capacity in June this year and sworn in formally this week. It takes nothing away from the profile of the eminent judge to observe that he could not have been honoured for his contribution to the remoulding of the judiciary, considering that he is only a few months old on the job. If the answer to that poser is that he is being rewarded because he is Nigeria’s Chief Justice, then there is still a gap in that it begs the question of what a public servant needs to do to win the title.
To make the point clearer, it would show more gravitas if we make a habit and build a culture of conferring honours on public servants who have had the time to distinguish themselves and to ascend to hitherto uncharted heights. If you do not follow this path, the time may well come when every and any public servant who has held high public office is decorated with national honours, thereby returning to the mediocre ways of the past. Still on the justice department, the former Chief Justice, Justice Tanko Mohammed, left office in fairly controversial circumstances but this did not prevent him from making a gallant entry to the honours roll. That apart, there are not a few cases or instances in which one has to think deep or make diligent searches to understand the reasoning behind why they are being called up for honours. So, there is clearly a need to conduct an integrity test on those that successive administrations choose to put on the list if only to provide better fit between the objectives of the awards, as spelt out in Buhari’s speech and those who are actually serenaded on the occasion.
The issue may also be raised whether there is any need to hold the event as an annual ceremony in which a swathe of elite Nigerians, active in the political space, are coronated. Buhari began the journey to distancing government from the annual ritual, trailed by predictably lavish spending but nothing stops successive administrations from conferring honours on truly deserving Nigerians without necessarily mounting an elaborate ceremony.
If this becomes the culture, it will possibly eradicate or, at least, reduce to a minimum the pastime of lobbying in order to have one’s name on the coveted list. The credibility of the exercise is not enhanced by converting it into a far-flung chieftaincy title celebration but rather by giving them only to the deserving and to Nigerians who have gone out of their way to display strength of character, vision and statesmanship. A related point is that as matters stand we have overemphasised, the dramatic and visible aspects of the events and decorations without imbibing its spirit and character. That is why for example why some of our past heroes among them, acclaimed novelist, Chinua Achebe, and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, declined the honours because as they argued at the time, there is a disconnect between the state of affairs in the country and the spirit of the honours.
We can illustrate this further by saying that for a country’s national honourees to be so regarded it means that sanctions must be meted out to those who have wilfully violated the ethics and ethos represented by these honours. For example, what sanctions have been administered to those Nigerians who wilfully abetted the high-profile Kuje Correctional Centre attack a few months ago? So, you cannot, on the one hand, bury treasonable acts of some Nigerians while on the other elevating others on the basis of precisely those norms which the criminals and their accomplices flouted.
In this wise, lessons are taught nationally and even globally, not just by applauding those who excel but also by shaming and publicly rebuking those that transgress against the national ethos. If we do not do this, then the danger is that the roll will be no more than what Buhari warned against, namely, a decorative ritual conferred on those who have the right political connections.
Changing a nation’s values is a holistic pursuit that takes into cognisance a wide range of factors which entice leaders and citizens to comport themselves with dignity, fortitude and moral stamina. Good a thing, some Nigerians who uncharacteristically returned hefty sums of money which they could have made away with, entered this year’s list of honour. However, that value of honesty and transparency cannot register home until it becomes generalised.
The agenda and the vision is to de-link our national honours from its earlier predatory straitjacket which does not recognise the compelling need to preserve the award of distinctions by generalising the values they seek to watch.
Mercifully, and as broached earlier, Buhari has already begun the journey to the sanctification of the awards in order to achieve the status of batches of honour that they represent. That has not gone far enough. The succeeding government must carry the battle further by turning the honours list into an occasion for redemptive governance.
