It Is imPOSSIBLE Influencing Change In Nigeria

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REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT UDO JUDE ILO’S BOOK UNVEILING TITLED “IT IS imPOSSIBLE INFLUENCING CHANGE IN NIGERIA” AT THE SHEHU MUSA YAR’ADUA CENTER, ABUJA ON THE 14^TH OF OCTOBER, 2024

Protocols

It really is a special pleasure to be here today to be a part of the unveiling of “It is ImPossible – Influencing Change in Nigeria.”

And I must thank my younger brother, Jude and his team for the very kind invitation to be here. Jude has always been about big ideas and constantly pushing for bold and new approaches to addressing the challenges facing Africa and Nigeria so I wasn’t surprised when he discussed this project and said we are doing a   primer on how to influence change in Nigeria.

Well, what is a Primer? This is the problem with smart people like Jude, they assume that everyone knows what they are talking about, but as a teacher of many years, I prefer to be sure that we are all on the same page.

I have learned my lessons the hard way. I remember in my early years as a law teacher, I was taking tutorials in Criminal Law and one of the concepts in determining liability in Criminal Law is the “eggshell principle.”

The principle is to the effect that if you hit a man on the head with a ruler and his head breaks into two and he dies you cannot say, I am not liable because his head was too weak. The law takes the position that a man is entitled to carry his eggshell head around, if you hit it even if softly and it breaks, you are still liable. This is the eggshell principle properly explained.

But I asked my class what the eggshell principle was, one said, if you are careless in a market and you throw something and it breaks somebody’s eggs, you are liable. Another said legal experts have discovered that almost everybody you see has a weak head called an eggshell head. Another said there is a difference between raw egg and boiled egg, but you are liable if you break the head of someone whose head is like a raw egg.  So, from those early years, I learnt not to take anything for granted, and to make sure you explain things well.

So, what is a primer?

A Primer is a basic introductory text, a book or an article that tries to simplify or explain a particular subject. This primer that we unveil today is a book which seeks to explain how to influence change in Nigeria.

Permit me to tell a story about policy and practical change that I have been involved in. I will speak of my experience with judicial reform in Lagos State when I served as Attorney General in the civilian administration in Lagos State in 1999 in the administration of Governor Bola Tinubu’s as he then was, and now President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

There were two immediate challenges; the first was how to build a Ministry of Justice that was concerned with citizens’ rights, the rule of law and justice under a democratic constitution. This was important because we were coming out of years of military rule where the Ministry of Justice was more a Ministry of Law and Order enforcing decrees which sometimes violated civil liberties and fundamental rights.

The second was reforming our administration of justice system, which was beset with long delays and judicial corruption. We decided that we had to implement a justice sector reform and we engaged all possible stakeholders, especially civil society.

We had also developed a reform blue print before we were sworn in. We established a new department, called the Department of Citizens Rights, under it was the Office of the Public Defender, providing free legal services for citizens who could not afford legal fees, a Consumer Protection Unit and a Citizens Mediation Centre.

Immediately after the Commissioners were sworn in, we conducted a survey of the perceptions of 200 lawyers who practised in the High Court of Lagos State on the integrity of the judges. 89% of the lawyers responded that judges in the State were “notoriously corrupt.” Yet as of that date and since the State was founded in 1967, no judge or even magistrate had ever been reprimanded for corruption. So, I asked for a meeting of the seven most senior judges under the auspices of the Chief Judge.

At the meeting, I showed them the damning results of the survey, and opened discussions on how to reverse the trend. We began with a discussion on their remuneration. They were earning N67,000 a month then. We then asked some of them what their expenses were. School fees for three children, one abroad, and they had no medical insurance, no chance of building a home even on retirement. These were men and women with the power to order the death of a convict, or determine the livelihoods of many, it became obvious that there was no way N67,000 could even scratch the surface.

One of the judges tapped me on the shoulder and said “Learned Attorney, you know this exercise is rubbish, you pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Another told the story of a time when his daughter was seriously ill and was taken to a well-known private hospital as an emergency case. His wife called him to join her in the hospital and after stabilizing the girl, the hospital now demanded a deposit to admit her for further treatment.

When he arrived, he was asked to pay N17,000 but he couldn’t afford it, so he pleaded to have his daughter admitted while he went to raise the cash and return. The hospital refused. As he pleaded, a man tapped him from behind and said he shouldn’t worry that he would take care of the bill. Relieved, he thanked the angel profusely. The money was paid and his daughter was admitted. On his way to his car, his clerk who came with him asked him if he knew the man who paid the bill, he said no, and the clerk then told him that it was a particular litigant in a case before him.

On the issue of remuneration, we hired a good human resource expert to work out what would constitute a living wage and other emoluments and we eventually agreed on a sum almost 5 times their earnings then, including a good 4-bedroom house with service quarters in Lekki, Ikoyi or Ikeja GRA, which was theirs for life. They would also be entitled to a car and medical insurance.

The next issue we considered was appointment and discipline. We agreed that we had to have proper competency tests for judges, and mandatory training before new Judges resume. We also introduced the requirement that before a judge is appointed the Lagos and Ikeja branches of the Nigeria Bar Association must give us an opinion of the character and competence of the judge. And of great importance was the independent investigation of reports or complaints of corruption. We kept our word on remuneration and rigorously enforced appointments and discipline.

22 Magistrates were sacked for corrupt practices and three High Court Judges were sacked. We appointed 26 new Judges under the new dispensation, about half the number of Judges in service.  Many of the Judges were young, some barely 35, and two-thirds were women. The average age of Judges dropped from 55 to 44. We also arranged for a Judge during the vacation to sit with Judges in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, to get a sense of how the long-established and reputed British Courts work.

We introduced the multidoor courthouse system which provided a robust Alternative Dispute Mechanism, established the Citizens Mediation Centres where citizens resolved small claims mediated by trained mediators substantially reducing the volume of civil cases going before the Magistrate and High Courts.

We fundamentally reviewed our civil procedure rules to reduce the interminable delays in the judicial process. The Lagos State judiciary experienced the beginning of a transformation that went on in the following years and fundamentally changed the nation’s administration of justice system, especially regarding remuneration, the appointment of judges, radical civil and criminal procedure reforms and alternative dispute resolution. Many States adopted our new civil procedure rules, adopted our multidoor courthouse system, and several Ministries of Justice, including the Federal Ministry of Justice, established Departments of Citizen’s Rights.

Finally, we wrote all these into a policy document which was endorsed by all Judges at a judicial retreat we held in Ghana and approved by the Lagos State Executive Council.

So, what were the key elements that made our modest success possible? One was that we had clarity about what we wanted to achieve, a keen understanding of what the problems were and a firm commitment to what we needed to do to address the problem.

Secondly, we developed a blueprint and followed it strictly.

Thirdly, we built a strong partnership across civil society, media, academia, and other relevant government institutions. We understood that we needed a multi-pronged approach to tackle the problems. Different institutions and groups had unique roles to play, and we had to ensure that we benefited from that. We needed others, we could not do it alone.

Fourth, we built a strong narrative around the relevance of what we wanted to do. We needed the buy-in of the Judiciary itself including the Federal Attorney General, Chief Justice of Nigeria and Supreme Court Justices and the President and Justices of the Court of Appeal. All of them attended our Judicial reform summits where all our plans and ideas were robustly debated.

With our other partners, we had to find a common ground of collaboration since it was not possible to agree on everything.

And fifth, we planned around sustainability- ensuring that the reforms and changes we are putting in place endures beyond us.

Finally, we were very hands-on, I had meetings with the Chief Judge of the State, the CJN, and the Federal Attorney General regularly to get their buy-in and advice.

In 2007, we conducted another survey of lawyers practising in the High Court of Lagos, and found 0% now said there was corruption! A dramatic change.

Of course, some of our efforts failed, and huge challenges remain. Yes, there are still delays in the judicial process, more public defenders are needed for the greater numbers, and you still hear of judicial corruption, perhaps another survey will help. A lot remains to be done years after we left the Lagos State Government. However, it is evident that the administration of the justice system in Lagos is still the gold standard for State judiciaries.

So, while, we may never become experts at influencing change in society, we have plenty of information and wise guidance in what works and what doesn’t. There are numerous examples and several different scenarios of change made, change stalled and change failed. Some facts that emerge are the following:  first, there are no hard and fast rules to influencing change.

Second, because this involves humans, a notoriously difficult species, change will often be complex and even ambiguous.

Third, we must be prepared to live with ambiguity and a certain measure of uncertainty, we are not sovereign.

But what appears constant about change makers anywhere is passion and a never-give-up spirit. History as well as experience provide us with the right lessons and insights to nuance our peculiar circumstances.

Failure in influencing change has often led to despair, but the peculiarity of change is that failure might actually only be a building block and it could be a crucial one.  Most changes of real significance are hardly from a one-off activity.  They build on the many steps, many errors, and many small successes of the past.

The reality of bringing about real change is humbling. While the role of an inspired or inspirational catalyst may be vital, it is hardly possible as a solo effort. Collaboration and synergies are key.

Indeed, enduring change almost always requires an intentional or inadvertent development of an ecosystem of like minds. Understanding the role that others play or will play and an openness to diverse roles and players is an important lesson from many successful and failed attempts at change. But perhaps the most frightening thing about change is really that if we do not intentionally and positively influence it, there will be change anyway. Only that the change could be disastrous.

Consistently working at change against all odds is probably the only antidote to watching negative change unfold while we fold our arms.

This Primer on Influencing Change is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge on instigating, implementing and managing change. It takes on a huge challenge of explaining those processes in Nigeria, a country where as the primer explains, on account of the recursive one step forward and two steps backwards of her change journey, despair is rife.

By unpacking the many complexities and ambiguities of the subject, the primer helps our understanding greatly but more importantly gives hope.

Let me again commend Jude on the hard work that has gone into this. This primer is a testament to his optimistic commitment to moving our region forward. I am equally delighted that Thoughts and Mace Advisory, the firm that he envisioned, is firmly committed to providing knowledge and support to third-sector institutions to ensure a vibrant ecosystem for change in Africa. This primer I understand is the first in their primer series. We look forward to more of these kinds of efforts.

Thanks very much for listening.