By SUFUYAN OJEIFO

President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has approved the award of National Honours to 447 Nigerians and friends of Nigeria in various categories for the year 2022.  The number is quite princely. On Tuesday, October 11, the conferment of the National Honours would be consummated at an event that has been scheduled to hold at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.

Ten distinct categories of National Honours recipients would be canonised in the climax of the rituals that have been well conducted by the National Honours Awards Committee chaired by a former Supreme Court Justice, His Royal Highness, Hon Justice Sidi Bage, the Emir of Lafia with members of the committee drawn from the six geo-political zones. The Office of the Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Senator George Akume, supervised the process.

It is thus noteworthy that President Buhari has stamped his imprimatur on the rituals, which signification in their legal, historical and political contexts cannot be discounted. The attention the process and its outcome have attracted and the conversation around them have, indeed, accentuated the import of the privileges that the National Honours exemplify.  Beneficiaries of such national consideration must, therefore, be deemed to essentially deserve it.  It is for this reason that the contemplation of nominees is always subjected to public validation.

The publication of nominees affords members of the Nigerian public the opportunity to scrutinize the personas of the individuals that have apparently passed through the mills of character “deconstruction” to ensure they are fit and proper persons for such National Honours.

Perhaps, more significantly, the legal basis for the institutionalization of the Nigerian National Honours is well established in the National Honours Act No.5 of 1964 and these honours are a set of orders and decorations conferred upon Nigerians and friends of Nigeria every year. The honours were ab-initio instituted by the Act, during the First Republic, to honour Nigerians and friends of the country who had rendered service to the benefit of the nation.  The scale or standard of measurement, to wit: rendering of service to the benefit of the nation, in the processes of subsequent nominations for award of National Honours and conferment of the same, is thus writ large.  Nigerians can easily relate and engage with the process on the basis of that and reach certain conclusions about the nominees.

It is against the backdrop of the scenario painted supra that some reactions that have trailed the outcome of the process are not misplaced.  Some reports had insinuated sloppiness into the very act of allowing the first list of nominees comprising 437 personalities to escape into the public domain when it had not been perfected. Following its subsequent withdrawal, the final list of 447 nominees was released and widely publicized via advertorial in some national newspapers on Sunday, October 9, 2022. What this means is that some new nominees were added to the original list while some were removed.  For instance, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State was removed because he had already been awarded some years back the Commander of the Order of Niger (CON) for which he was erroneously nominated this time round.

Perhaps, what would seem to appear episodic in the coupling of the 2022 list of National Honours recipients is the non-inclusion of a former President of the Nigerian Senate, Dr Bukola Abubakar Saraki, whose emergence as Senate President in the 2015 race disrupted the original calculations by the leadership of the All Progressives Congress, APC. Saraki had deployed a rare political legerdemain in winning the coveted seat by entering into a strategic alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Caucus in the Senate, which saw to it that the position of Deputy Senate President went to the opposition party.  That novel arrangement had compelled Saraki as Senate President to work largely, so to speak, at cross purposes with the APC-led Federal Government such that the party was wont to lay the blame for its inability to achieve a lot in terms of policy deliverables that required legislative backing to Saraki’s oppositional politics within the APC government; albeit, this is moot.

If this is the reason Saraki could not successfully pass through the integrity test, would the screening process by the Sidi Bage Committee that recommended nominees be said not to have been fair in the political context of appraisal and appreciation or otherwise of Saraki’s role in government from 2015-2019? It is understood that the Office of the Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Government Affairs exercised through the Sidi Bage Committee  the responsibility of identifying Nigerians and friends of Nigeria that were deserving of national honours, of course sifting through names of Nigerians submitted by members of the public for the award of national honours, whereas it is the prerogative of the Office of the President to endorse the list as produced and submitted to it; and/or as amended by it for final action.  In other words, the President has the prerogative to honour anyone whom he deems fit and remove anyone whom he thinks is not deserving of National Honours, which are the highest awards that a citizen can receive for his or her service to the country.

Those things that constitute service(s) to country are as diverse as they come. They must certainly be something for which the country is proud: inventions and performance in an important job or assignment, among others. The objectives of the awards of National Honours are to appreciate awardees’ loyalty and patriotism to the country; reward the selfless service the individuals have rendered; and further encourage the people recognized to do more excellent work and meritorious services to the nation. The privilege is not only to recognize such achievements but also to encourage the culture of performance in private and public services.  It is a clear indication that the nation takes note of the labour of her emerging heroes and heroines at different intersections in the annals of national development.

If there is anything that is also worthy of interrogation about the award of the 2022 National Honours, it is the fact that none of the nominees has rejected the privileged consideration.  From the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) that parades the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, retired CJN, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director General, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Deputy Secretary General, United Nations and Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, Ms. Amina J. Mohammed and former President of the United Nations General Assembly of 74th Session from 2019 to 2020, Professor Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, through the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR) with 55 recipients and Commander of the Order of  the Niger (CON) with 64 nominees to Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) with 70 recipients, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) with 108 nominees, Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) with 74 recipients, Member of the Order of the Niger (MON) with 55 nominees, Federal Republic Medal I (FRM I) with four nominees, Federal Republic Medal II (FRM II) with four nominees and Foreigners with seven nominees, no one, as of the time of this publication,  had rejected their nomination.  That really speaks volumes about the sheer hard work, character scrutiny and sense of judgment that went into the process.

And as the Buhari administration has done, successive administrations would always decide which citizens get honours. Whereas, there may not be a consensus on who deserves national honours, sometimes some nominees may even decide not to accept it as had been witnessed in the cases of the late literary giant and three-time national award recipient in 1960, 1979 and 1999, Professor Chinua Achebe, who in 2004 and 2011, rejected President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan’s offers of national honours. Achebe had in 2011, in his statement published by The Guardian (UK), said: “the reasons for rejecting the offer (CFR) when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved.  It is inappropriate to offer it again to me.” He had further explained: “For some time now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay.  I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom.  I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.”

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In a similar corollary, the late human rights lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who would later be posthumously honoured with the GCON by the Buhari administration, had in 2008, rejected the OFR bestowed on him by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to protest the many years of misrule since Nigeria’s independence.  He had specifically accused the government of Yar’Adua of not fighting corruption and protested the removal of Nuhu Ribadu, pioneer chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.  “…how can I wake up in the morning and look at the insignia of honour bestowed on me under a government that persecutes anti-corruption efforts, particularly those of Nuhu Ribadu? A government that covertly and overtly encourages corruption has no honour in its arsenal of power to dispense honour.  Consequently, I reject the dishonour of OFR termed ‘honour’ given to me by the Federal Government.” Fawehinmi died nine months after the rejection.

In the case of Professor Wole Soyinka, he had in 2014 rejected the centenary award for which he was nominated along with the late General Sani Abacha on the grounds that he could not share honours with Abacha who he described as a “murderer and thief of no redeeming quality.” In a statement entitled: “The Canonisation of Terror”, Soyinka had said: “I can’t think of nothing more grotesque and derisive of the lifetime struggle of several on this (honours) list and their selfless services to humanity” and had declared: “I reject my share of this national insult.”

It is to the credit of the Senator George Akume-led Ministry of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs and the Sidi Bage-led National Honours Awards Committee that the Buhari administration and the nation have been saved those kinds of incidents. In this era of partisan frenzy, the opposition would have lapped up such razzmatazz as part of the build-up to the 2023 electioneering and polls with a view to trying to discount the administration’s claim to a substantial measure of public approval.

*Ojeifo contributed this piece from Abuja via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com

The Star