Palladium
It is not known who among the Nigerian Bar Association’s National Executive Committee suggested that Kaduna State governor Nasir el-c be asked to speak on the apposite subject of “Who is a Nigerian… A Debate on National Identity”. Mercifully, reason prevailed, and the invitation was withdrawn, undoubtedly to the chagrin of the governor, his friends, a few state NBA chapters and hordes of social media vagrants. The NBA should not bat an eyelid. They were unreflective to ask the governor to speak at their 60th Annual Conference; but they made quick and reasonable amends by unapologetically yanking him off the list oaf speakers. Mallam el-Rufai is a politician of modest gifts. He is least qualified to speak on anything, let alone on the subject of national identity, national unity or rule of law.
Vain, arrogant, divisive, intolerant and intemperate, Mallam el-Rufai has no iota of democracy in his blood, nor does he have any modicum of administrative acumen. Often he confuses building roads and bridges with managing the affairs of a multiethnic and multireligious society, and as his approach to the bloodletting coursing through Southern Kaduna indicates, he is besotted to half-truths and is perhaps the worst promoter of ethnic exceptionalism in Nigeria bar the disguised, suave and subterranean activities of the infamous cabal. Neither the NBA nor the country had anything to gain from the expositions of a governor whose hysteria and double standards reflect so badly in the vituperations of his family, chiefly his insolent son, Bashir, who insults everyone impatient with his father’s flagrant failings.
But in the face of the increasing predilection of the federal government to enact the worst forms of tyranny in Nigeria, Mallam el-Rufai’s loathsome approach to politics and administration is the least of the country’s problems. Obadiah Mailafia, a former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) deputy governor, may not be the most cautious of communicators, giving his glib assertions in a recent controversial interview about Boko Haram and its promoters, but the manner in which he has been hounded by both the Department of State Service (DSS) and the police is so reprehensible that it would be fitting to class Nigeria as a dictatorship, if not a failing state. Free speech is so repressed that even composing adversarial songs less strident than the inimitable Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s vintage compositions makes a composer and the broadcast medium liable.
Ruffled by his interactions with the DSS, Dr Mailafia came out prevaricating over his statement that a sitting northern governor was a Boko Haram commander. Similarly, last Monday, it was the turn of former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Na’Abba, to answer questions from the DSS on what he meant in a recent interview by Nigeria being a failed state. He too prevaricated a bit, cooing about how he and his DSS interrogators advised one another on politics and governance; but it is clear that the government has become unreasonably jittery about dissent. Arrests and interrogations will, however, only make matters worse, for whether the government likes it or not both Dr Mailafia and Hon Na’Abba reflect public sentiments on a grand scale.
It is disturbing that Nigeria is witnessing probably its worst moment of angst. Governance has been devalued by a deplorable lack of vision, wrong and pigheaded policies, presumptuous ministers and spokesmen, skewed security architecture that reflects the government’s one-sidedness, and unscrupulous methods of displacing unwanted public officials. These abysmal failings are compounded by idiot stooges of money and political power, such as the director general of the Progressive Governors Forum, Salihu Lukman, who are deployed for nefarious intra-party causes, clampdown on dissent and the rule of law by security agencies, including the army which now functions above the law and parliament, and sadly a Justice ministry dedicated to undermining the law. The government resents the truth, but the country may at last be staring into the abyss, an abyss not mitigated by the building of bridges and railway lines as sentimentally and sensationally claimed by the fawning Transport minister, Rotimi Amaechi.
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