The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Kanu: Stunt after stunt

    His disappearance looked like a stunt. His reappearance looked like another stunt. An October 19 online video showing the controversial leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, praying in Israel, extended an attention-grabbing drama that began with his disappearance on September 14, 2017. His reappearance 13 months after was as mysterious as his disappearance.

    The group’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, said in a statement that corroborated the video:  ”Fellow Biafrans, friends of Biafra, enemies of Biafra, men and women of goodwill and of good conscience across the world, we wish to reliably inform you that the Supreme Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, prayed today at the Wailing Wall in the Holy City of David in Jerusalem Live today, October 19, 2018.’’

    Kanu’s lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, reinforced the corroboration in a statement:  ”I received a direct confirmation from my client, hearing once from him after 13 months in captivity. I am very delighted therefore, to use this singular opportunity to announce to the world that my client is the very person seen in the pictures /video. That I can confirm authoritatively.”  Has Kanu been in captivity?

    Since Kanu disappeared while on bail, his sureties had been asked to account for his whereabouts, but they seemed not to know. Kanu was granted bail by a Federal High Court on April 25, 2017, after many sympathetic voices had called for his release from prolonged detention for separatist activities.  Kanu was facing trial for “alleged offences of conspiracy to commit acts of treasonable felony and other related offences.”

    Following Kanu’s disappearance, his lawyers had argued that the Nigerian army authorities should be made to produce him because he allegedly disappeared during an operation by soldiers. The operation was described as “a murderous raid, where live and mortar bullets were fired on unarmed and defenceless people, leaving 28 persons dead.”  They had said in their motion: “The invading soldiers who had direct contact with the applicant on this fateful day (September 14, 2017) should be in a position to produce the applicant before the court. It is either the respondent’s rampaging soldiers abducted the applicant during this raid or killed him in the process.” Kanu’s reappearance means that this was an opportunistic claim. A military exercise in the Southeast, “Operation Python Dance,” was ongoing at the time soldiers allegedly invaded Kanu’s house in Afara-Ukwu Ibeku, Umuahia, Abia State.

    After Kanu disappeared, a former governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, had supplied information about his whereabouts: ”Kanu was not taken away by the military. Kanu went to Malaysia from where he travelled to the United Kingdom… He was not arrested by anybody. He left the country on his own. One of his relations has spoken to me and explained everything because I wanted to see him and talk to him wherever he was and see how I could meet some Federal Government officials on his issue. I also wanted to see ways of talking to the President about him, and find common ground but his family told me that he has left the country, unless they are lying to me.” Kanu’s group and his lawyers rubbished this information.

    An announcement followed: “Mazi Nnamdi Nwanekaenyi Kanu, the former Director of Radio Biafra is hereby dismissed and removed as Director of Radio Biafra following extensive and intensive consultations.” The announcer named one “Mazi Ezenwachukwu Sampson Okwudili as Kanu’s replacement.” Kanu was accused of: “Personalisation of the Biafran struggle and derailing from the core objectives of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a grassroots movement.”

    There were other accusations against Kanu: “Kanu’s actions and his decisions to incite members of IPOB towards violence leading to the death of many innocent young people in Onitsha, Aba and Umuahia are totally unacceptable and grossly irresponsible. Kanu privately collected £14 million and another $22 million to purchase landed properties abroad in his name and that of his father, Igwe Israel Kanu, in a clear case of ‘monkey dey work baboon dey chop.’ He was also accused of failing to “drum up support for the release of his colleagues and co-detainees such as Chidiebere Onwudiwe, Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi.”

    IPOB rubbished the reported announcement in a statement:  ”For anyone to believe that faceless hitherto unheard of individuals can wake up one evening and announce the replacement of a man that commands 50 million people with presence in over 100 countries of the world, making him only second to Pope Francis as the personality with the largest cult following on earth, is plain stupid.” This characterisation of Kanu was striking for its hyperbolism.  Who was expected to believe this picture of Kanu’s alleged global stature?

    About three weeks before he disappeared, Kanu was characteristically rebellious when he addressed a crowd on August 27, 2017, at the Boys Technical College (BTC) on Faulks Road in Aba North Local Government Area of Abia State. According to a report, “He used the forum to reiterate that there would not be election in Anambra in November or any part of “Biafra Land” even in 2019, unless the group’s clamour for referendum got the blessings of government.”  He was quoted as saying: “I’m a Biafran and we are going to crumble the zoo. Some idiots who are not educated said that they’ll arrest me, and I ask them to come. I’m in Biafra land. If any of them leaves Biafra land alive, know that this is not IPOB.”

    Without Kanu, days to the governorship election in Anambra State on November 18, 2017, IPOB was still flexing its muscles. Members of the separatist group marched around with a death threat in Onitsha, Anambra State, on November 3, 2017.  They were quoted as saying: “If you vote you will die. Don’t go out, stay in your house. If you vote on November 18, you will die…There will be no election. We will not participate, we will not vote.” The Anambra State governorship election was lost and won, and Kanu was still nowhere to be found.

    What will happen now that Kanu has reappeared?  According to Kanu’s lawyer, “the shocking tale of how he made it alive once again will be made public in his scheduled world press broadcast to be beamed live” on October 21. It would be interesting to hear what Kanu has to say about what happened, where he has been and why he reappeared at this time.

  • Lagos: A plan matters

    A master plan is special, serious and specific. Its implementation demands a sense of concentrated commitment. The question of a master plan and questions about its implementation were at the centre of the October 2 All Progressives Congress (APC) Lagos governorship primary.

    Indeed, the issue of a master plan determined who lost the primary and who won it. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode had 72, 901 votes while Babajide Sanwo-Olu had 970, 851 votes.

    Why was the matter of a master plan so pivotal in the primary? A pillar of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, said in an illuminating statement on the eve of the primary: “Roughly 20 years ago, a corps of dedicated and patriotic Lagosians, put aside personal interests and rivalries, to put their minds and best ideas together for the good of the state. Out of this collaborative effort, was born a master plan for economic development that would improve the daily lives of our people. Bestowed on me was the honour of a lifetime when I was elected to be your governor in 1999. My administration faithfully implemented that plan. The government of my immediate successor, Tunde Fashola, also honoured this enlightened plan. Where state government remained true to that blueprint, positive things happened. During my tenure and Governor Fashola’s, Lagos State recorded improvements in all aspects of our collective existence, from public health to public sanitation, from education to social services, from the administration of justice to the cleaning of storm and sewage drains. Businesses, large and small, invested, hired millions of workers and thrived.”

    Tinubu provided an insight into the defining principles of the master plan: “All Lagosians were to fully participate and justly benefit from the social dividends and improvements wrought by this plan. From the common labourer, to business leaders, to professionals and our industrious civil service. We all were to be partners in a monumental but joint enterprise. None was to be alienated. None was to be left out. And none were to be pushed aside. This is especially true for those who contributed so much to our development, whether as a business leader who has invested heavily in Lagos, the homeowner who struggles to pay his fair share of taxes or as someone employed in the hard work of keeping our streets and byways clean so that others may go about their daily tasks unimpeded.”

    It is interesting that Ambode had acknowledged the master plan implementation by his predecessors in a thought-provoking article published last year. Ambode’s words: “I am sharing my thoughts in this article, not necessarily as the Governor of Lagos State but as a Nigerian; a Nigerian who wants to see progress and sustainable growth in our country. I have been lucky to be administering over a state that has been put on the right track by my two predecessors, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN). I do not think I have done anything special except to bring my own style of leadership, my own experience and my vision.” Ambode’s failure in the primary implied that his style of leadership, his experience and vision were out of sync with the master plan he was expected to implement.

    It is noteworthy that in 2017 Lagos was listed among the world’s 100 Resilient Cities (100RC). A project of the U.S.-based Rockefeller Foundation, the 100 Resilient Cities include places in Africa, U.S.A., South America, Europe, Asia and Middle East. According to a report: “President of 100 Resilient Cities, Mr. Michael Berkowitz, said out of the over 1,000 applications received and three rounds of selection process, Lagos was chosen for its innovative leadership, infrastructural strides and influential status not just in Africa but in the world.” The project has its definition of urban resilience, which provided a context for the listing of Lagos: “Resilience is about surviving and thriving, regardless of the challenge.”

    To what degree was this recognition ascribable to implementation of the master plan Tinubu highlighted? To Tinubu’s credit, he had remarked realistically, “I make no pretence that the master plan is perfect. It can always be fine-tuned,” adding, “However, whenever a government departed from this plan without compelling reason, the state and its people have borne the painful consequence of the improper departure.”

    The crux of the matter: “To ignore this blueprint for progress in order to replace it with ad-hoc schemes of a materially inferior quality contravenes the spirit of progressive governance and of our party. Such narrowness of perspective does not bring us closer to our appointed destination; it takes us farther from that destiny. For reasons unknown to me and most Lagosians, we have experienced such deviations from enlightened governance recently.”

    So, Ambode lost the chance for a second term. The lesson is that the importance of master plan implementation and the importance of having a governor who will demonstrate the desired intensity of commitment to the master plan cannot be overemphasised. If respecting the wisdom of the master plan was responsible for the positives of the Tinubu and Fashola administrations, disrespecting the blue print has been a costly adventure for Ambode.

    Tinubu’s decisive endorsement of Sanwo-Olu played up the master plan and his confidence in Sanwo-Olu’s grasp of its supremacy. Tinubu’s words: “I am encouraged by the emergence of a candidate in this primary who has served the state in senior positions in my administration, the Fashola administration and even in the current one. While possessing a wealth of experience and exposure, he is a young man endowed with superlative vision and commitment. Most importantly, he understands the importance of the blueprint for development. He esteems it as a reliable and well-conceived vehicle for the future development of the state. He also knows the value of reaching out and working with others in order to maximise development and provide people the best leadership possible.”

    It is creditable that the development of Lagos since the Tinubu era has been based on a master plan, allegedly downplayed by Ambode. It means that the city’s progress is planned. As Sanwo-Olu prepares for the governorship election, with the advantage of his progressive candidacy, he represents the superiority of planned progress.

     

  • Party primaries: matters arising

    Primaries by political parties for the forthcoming national elections have come and gone. But they left in their wake sour issues with wide repercussions for the growth and development of virile democratic culture.

    Even as the time frame for the conclusion of the primaries has since elapsed, the fallouts are yet to be conclusively resolved in some states. Reports from across the country beginning with the congresses of the parties during which they elected officers at the ward, local government, state and national levels spoke of impositions that denied ordinary members the right to partake in that basic civic duty.

    If reports of imposition at the level of the earlier congresses were minimal, that of the primaries was another thing all together. For parties using the indirect primary approach, card carrying members at the ward levels were expected to elect ad hoc delegates who will subsequently elect their candidates for the state houses of assembly, House of Representatives and governorship. But ad hoc delegates elected at the local government levels were to participate together with their statutory counterparts in the election of their presidential candidates at the parties’ conventions. But those using the direct approach required all card carrying members to vote at the primaries.

    The guiding principle is to actively involve the people who are the real owners of the parties in the running of their (parties) affairs and decisions as to the choice of those to represent them. Ordinarily referred to as internal democracy, it is a cardinal principle that stands out and gives value to democracy against other forms of governance framework.

    It also bears positive correlation with the social contract theory account of the evolution of modern democratic states. This theory conceives ultimate sovereignty as the prerogative of the people. It is this cardinal principle that is at test each time elections come up either in the form of congresses for the election of party officers at the various levels, primaries and conventions and general elections.

    Congresses, primaries and conventions therefore serve as the basic tests to gauge the commitment by political parties to the rights of their members to elect their leaders in a free, fair and transparent manner. It is also a measure of the level of respect political parties have for the sovereignty of the people as freely expressed at the ballot box.

    Whatever tendencies and dispositions parties exude at these basic levels of testing their capacity to allow the collective will of the people free reign are extrapolated as veritable signposts of what to expect at general elections. It can therefore be safely said that the extent to which political parties are committed to internal democracy mirrors their dispositions to free, fair and credible electoral contests.

    It is against this background that one is alarmed at the sordid outcome of the just concluded primaries of our leading political parties. The tone of events appeared to have been set with the controversy that embroiled the mode of primaries to be adopted by the parties. At the end of the bickering, the All Progressives Congress APC settled for both the direct and the indirect variants depending on the circumstance of each state. But the Peoples Democratic Party PDP and some others settle for the indirect option.

    Both options have things going for them. Their capacities to approximate the collective will of party members are not in doubt provided the rules of free and fair contest are neither abridged nor compromised. Ironically, the outcome of those primaries did not bear this optimism out. In many states across the country, imposition of candidates and impunity reigned supreme as party members were denied the right to elect their preferred candidates.

    Though the two leading parties: the APC and PDP are culpable in this, the malfeasance is more prevalent within the APC probably because it is the government in power. But some other smaller political parties especially those controlling one or two states are also in this mess. The case of the All Progressives Grand Alliance APGA in Imo State stands out distinctly. It has generated allegations of imposition among contestants for the governorship primaries threatening to tear the party apart.

    In Lagos, PDP members in the Alimosho local government area have protested alleged imposition of House of Representatives and state house of assembly candidates. They alleged that the state executive handpicked the candidates without holding any primary in the local government area.

    And in Zamfara, friction, bickering and threats of violence prevented the APC from holding the primaries. The national leadership of the party is locked in bickering with INEC which has written the party foreclosing its right to field candidates for any election in the state except the presidential poll. INEC letter stemmed from the inability of the party to conduct primaries in the state within the stipulated timeframe in keeping with provisions of the Electoral Act.

    But the APC citing threats of violence and friction among groups within the party claimed it later adopted the consensus option to generate a list of candidates it intends to forward to the electoral body. We are not as much concerned with the issues being traded by both parties as the fact of the APC’s admission that threats of violence, disagreement and friction debarred the primaries from holding.

    Zamfara is not alone in this. There were reports of three deaths in Ebonyi State when contending groups clashed at the primaries. These are in addition to the many unreported cases of violence and threats of it as the political parties filed out for their primaries. What all these go to underscore and very succinctly too is the fact that the primaries failed the true test of internal democracy in many parts of the country.

    And this is very unfortunate. If primaries which are internal affairs of the parties are that rancorous and lethal, one shudders at the likely turn of events at the general elections. Those who secured their candidacy by bending the rules will go at any length during general elections to win at all costs. Such negative dispositions will only heat up the political landscape and invariably produce outcomes that threaten the democratic foundation of the country.

    It is a sad commentary that political parties failed to allow free and fair electoral contest to hold sway at their primaries. The enormity of imposition and subversion of rules of the game, so much disappointed the wife of the president, Aisha Buhari that she publicly deprecated the processes employed during the primaries by the APC.

    Hear her: “it is very disheartening to note that some aspirants used their hard earned money to purchase nomination forms; got screened, cleared and campaigned vigorously, yet found their names omitted on election day. Many others contested and yet had their results delayed fully knowing that automatic tickets have been given to other people”.

    Mrs Buhari’s predicament mirrors vividly some of the imperfections of the primaries conducted by the parties. Imposition resulting in crises may have been more noticeable within the APC for very obvious reasons but it is not limited to that party. The PDP has been beating its chest celebrating its organizational prowess at its convention in Port Harcourt. Yes, the organization met the criteria for free and fair conduct. But that is not all there was to it.

    During the conduct of its primaries to elect ad hoc delegates, allegations of imposition and substitution of names with preferred persons at the national headquarters of the party were also freely traded.  That was in addition to the fact that delegates’ elections were not even held in many areas even as lists were generated by those very close to the party leadership. All these cast some slur on the final outcome of the convention for its abridgment of internal democracy.

    If democracy must survive in this country, the primacy of internal democracy in the conduct of party affairs must be upheld. And if these dysfunctional attitudinal dispositions are allowed to hold sway, they will inexorably lead to outcomes of catastrophic effect during general elections. That is the foreboding danger.

  • Sons of malice

    It was a mockery of a familiar scripture. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.” So Atiku Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo could sit together, after the firestorm of laughter a few years ago. They now see themselves as sons of God because they sat together to fulfil Atiku’s ancient ambition and pursue Obasanjo’s grudge. Both grudge and ambition embrace in the enmity of Muhammadu Buhari. In pidgin English, we call it jiga belle. Where is God here but bad blood, a coalescence of the sons of malice.

    So one said “I dey laugh o” and the other lashed back with “I dey laugh too o.” It was exciting headline fair for newspapers. When both foes folded into friendship, one thing was especially missing in the Abeokuta setting: laughter. Both miens bowed in frowns as though it was no happy moment, except Bishop Oyedepo, whose face kindled with a doubtful holy halo.

    Others present were Bishop Kukah, Gumi and, of course, the familiar Obj acolytes of Bode George, Ayo Adebanjo, et al. Adebanjo, the expiring politician as fuddy-duddy, once called Obj a whited sepulchre. So, what a necromantic hug he had with Obj. An Adebanjo, a nonagenarian, embracing Obj the corpse?

    Obasanjo clearly needed Atiku to save him from his self-spun scorn, from the disaster of his political party, the ADC. Its first litmus test was Osun, and Obj’s party was a yawning no-show. The Owu chief has collapsed into silence since he boasted he would craft an alliance into a party that would faze Buhari out of the throne. He needed Atiku as a prop, so he won’t fall facedown. His face is already down. The Owu chief has crashed, his body parts all over the floor like glass shards. Atiku is pretending to help him put them back together.

    The Owu chief also wants to pay back Buhari for snubbing him. He the Owu chief, the ebora. He who, in an air of remorseful royalty, tore his party card to enthrone him. He who campaigned and teamed up with his enemies, including his nemesis like Asiwaju Tinubu, in order to earn him a furry path to victory. Yet, Buhari dared to toss him aside. That is the megalomania of the Owu chief. He forgets two things. One, Buhari would have won without him. He came on board when victory flashed in the horizon. He has little electoral value. They made him a superfine passenger in the campaign, a flattery he could not know. Two, that his pedigree as kingmaker has always made him a little lower than an angel. Under Jonathan, he felt pooh-poohed. Yar’Adua never played servile to him. Buhari, a junior in the army, forgot to inflate him with the deserved salute.

    Atiku, the man he foreswore in the name of the Almighty to never forgive, suddenly turned Obj into a tender soul. This is Obj born again indeed. The man who never forgave anybody unless they lost their offices. Ask Okadigbo in his grave. Ask Wabara about his disgrace. Ask Audu Ogbe, who is back to grace as minister. The same Obj is now rewarding an arch foe by promising him the biggest office in the land. He called Atiku our next president. This is malice as desperado.

    This is no forgiveness. It is opportunism. The presence of clerics did not even give it the air of a divine blessing. All three were not there on behalf of the Ancient of Days but to settle ancient scores. Gumi comes from an old, even atavistic warfare with the Buhari clan. So, cancel the love of the people from his so-called reconciliation. Bishop Kukah has not hidden his regret over the sacking of his beloved Jonathan and his abhorrence of the probe of that era. He once asked the government to “move on.” Bishop Oyedepo loved Jonathan and he hardly accused his regime even on the pulpit of corruption while drumming up support for him and welcoming him to Canaanland. He loved his time as the president’s pastor.

    There is a wistfulness to these holy presences. Holy men in scripture have never been known to be perfect, and they have made mistakes from Abraham to Jonah, even Peter and self-confessed Paul. Hence Paul warned us not to heed even if they or an angel teaches what was not written. “Brethren, pray for us,” he once pleaded. So, in that gathering, we had the cleric, the money bag, and the politician. Where is the hope? I don’t know how they want to manage the optics if they say to their faithful that they are not partisan.

    Hence Bertolt Brecht, in his play Mother Courage, wrote, “Here they sit, one with his faith and the other with his cash box. Dunno which is more dangerous.”

    Obj also highlighted the virtue of Atiku as a business man. Some are saying that he will do well there because he is one of the great men of business today in the land. I like more elaboration on this. I want those who make this claim to explain to us if he made his money the same way business men like Gates, Fajemirokun, Dangote, Odutola, Ojukwu (the rebel’s father) or Dantata made their money. We want to know if he doubled money with a cutting-edge imagination or by taking advantage of the footloose rules in corporate Nigeria. Is he a racketeer as the Buhari crowd calls him, or a manager? Or are they just tarring him as the candidate of corruption fighting back? It will be instructive to hear Atiku speak on how he will curb corruption. Waiting!

    Again, Atiku will have to free himself from all the scandals: Siemens, PTDF, Haliburton, et al. Not just the scandal but the perception, which is even more potent. He might be innocent, but the public has its arbitrary court where judges and jury are on the street. If he does not want to brandish his mercantile credentials as his virtues, we can drop those and look elsewhere for his strength in 2019. Is there a correlation between those scandals and his wealth? This is election season and we need to scrutinise and let no one bamboozle us. Many Nigerian wealthy men are not classic geniuses of commerce but carpet baggers and opportunists. It is no qualification for turning a poor country into a commercial behemoth.

    Few business men have done well as presidents anywhere. Trump is riding on the steam of Obama economy. Even Trump has just been exposed as a carpet bagger who defrauded his way into his billions by tax subterfuges. He is being investigated. The other businessman as US president, Herbert Hoover, presided over The Great Depression leaking jobs and joy. Roosevelt, a soldier, succeeded him and brought back the boom. Clearly Buhari has not shown himself to be a Roosevelt in turning the economy around. But being a businessman is no sure-fire ticket to success. The US founding fathers ignored the wealthy man John Jay, who thought his wealth would win over his peers and make him the country’s pioneer president. They picked George Washington, the soldier-statesman.

    Atiku has also defined himself, probably partly in response to my column last week, by saying he is a living candidate while Buhari is dull. Buhari is anaemic for sure, especially on camera. But in camera, those who know him say he turns the ribs with his jokes. But Atiku is no better. His face is like what Americans called their Soviet counterparts in the Cold War era: doll within doll. His face, even his gait, is like an ignited mannequin. Like the character in Jerzy Kosinsky’s novel, Being There.

    Peter Obi, for all his feminine voice, gives character to the pair. The choice is curious though. Obi brings nothing to the ticket in a geopolitical sense. If Atiku picked an anonymous Obi from the street of Aba, he was going to sweep the southeast anyway. Again, this is Obi, who could not deliver his governor candidate in the last poll in Anambra State. Hence, I called him a statesman without a state. Atiku has ceded the Southwest. With Northwest and S

    outhwest off his plate, he may not have a prayer for victory. Unless, that is, an earthquake event tilts it for him. Nigeria does not have earthquakes though. Just tremors. And tremors do not bring down the house.

     

  • Money changed hands

    It was not only a game of money; it was also a show of money.  Those who gave money and those who received money were on the same page. Perhaps it was predictable, given the big political ambition of the big spenders.

    Reports of big spending by presidential aspirants to get the votes of delegates showed that the national convention of the  Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on October 6, was a travesty of democracy.

    A report captured the corruption: “Members of the Peoples Democratic Party, who were fortunate to be delegates at the party’s national convention… were said to have received thousands of dollars as bribes from some presidential aspirants. As early as Saturday morning, some of the delegates said they already had up to $9,000 each while they said that they were still expecting more.”

    The report continued: “A particular aspirant, who had taken part in a presidential primary before, was said to have first offered the delegates $2,500 each in exchange for votes. But when he heard that another aspirant offered the delegates $3000, he increased his own to $4000. Our correspondent however gathered that the first aspirant later offered same amount of $4000, an action that forced the man who offered $4000 to increase his own to $5000.”

    The report supplied more information: “Another aspirant was also said to have offered a mere $1000. It was also learnt that some aspirants gave out naira to the delegates, while a source said states with large delegates got N50m, while others with fewer delegates got less. However, investigations …also revealed that other aspirants had also offered unspecified amount of money to the delegates. Two delegates from the North-West… confirmed they received cash. One of them, who showed our correspondent the envelope that contained the dollar bills, said they decided to receive the gratification as a means of getting their share of the ‘national cake.’

    Who gave what? The presidential aspirants were a former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who won the primary; Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal; Governor of Gombe State, Ibrahim Dankwambo; a former Governor of Kano State, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso; a former Governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa. Others were the President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki; a former President of the Senate, Senator David Mark; a former Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Relations, Alhaji Tanimu Turaki (SAN) and a former Governor of Plateau State, Senator Jonah Jang. Also in the race were a former Governor of Kaduna State, Senator Ahmed Makarfi; a former Governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido and Dr. Datti Baba-Ahmed.

    Take Senate President Bukola Saraki, for example. He is a rich political player who further demonstrated his richness by playing a paymaster’s role in a recent case. With the 2019 general election approaching, the public should expect to see more of the things rich politicians do with their riches because they want power or because they want to remain in powerful positions.

    When Saraki reportedly paid 20 months’ unpaid salaries of 220 traditional rulers in his constituency, Kwara Central senatorial district, he showed that he had no qualms about using what he had to get what he wanted. The chiefs were mainly district heads from Ilorin East, Ilorin South and Asa Local Government Areas. A report said: “The affected local government councils could not meet their financial obligations to the traditional rulers because of the drastic shortfall in their allocation from the federation account.”

    Then Saraki provided N49.4m, which the affected traditional rulers received at a ceremony at the ABS Constituency Office in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on April 16. The Director- General, ABS Constituency Office, Alhaji Musa Abdullahi, said Saraki had set up a committee to resolve the non-payment of the salaries, and had acted on the committee’s recommendation ?to pay the unpaid salaries. Abdullahi was said to have advised the district heads “to continue to support the senate president to enable him attract more dividends of democracy to the state.”

    Here is the meat of the matter: Where did the money come from?  The answer to this important question cannot be left to speculation, and will likely lead to further questions. This is because a question may be answered and an answer may be questioned. In the end, there may be more questions than answers.

    Indeed, the same question should be asked in the case of the PDP national convention: Where did the money come from?  Could it be that the aspirant who gave more money than the others won the primary?  What will happen in the presidential election?

    It is noteworthy that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) reportedly said it was prepared to make vote buying impossible in the governorship election held in Ekiti State on July 14.

    INEC’s National Commissioner in charge of Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, and Oyo states, Solomon Soyebi, who represented the Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, at a stakeholders’ meeting on the continuous voters’ registration, in Ado Ekiti, had said that money was used to influence voters during the last elections in Edo, Ondo and Anambra states.

    “The elections in Edo, Ondo and Anambra states were largely monetised,” Soyebi had asserted. “We are aware of this. It was ‘see and buy,’ but it won’t happen in Ekiti.” He also said:  “It was N5, 000 per vote in Ondo and Anambra states. We are working with security agencies not to allow it to happen again. We even seized some cash in Anambra State.”

    Obviously, something needs to be done so that politicians won’t be able to use money to get voters to vote in their favour. Must politicians buy votes? Must they think of buying votes?  To think of buying votes and to buy votes means that there are people who are ready to sell their votes. There can’t be vote buying without vote selling. So it is not only vote buyers that should be condemned; vote sellers should be equally condemned. After all, it is said that it takes two to tango.

    The general election will show whether Nigeria wants a democracy of vote buyers and vote sellers.

     

  • Open duel

    It was first a grudge match. Atiku Abubakar was persona non grata at the Aso Rock, and the man with deep pocket and perennial ambition did not cherish it. Buhari and his men had placed him below the ladder. He grumbled and got tired of it.

    APC provided no way up the presidential tier. Atiku does not hide his ambition under the eaves. Why grumble when you can rumble across the aisle? To PDP, that is. He did exactly that about a year ago. He did it at the risk of being labelled a harlot, a peripatetic rambler. He wears that cloth of an asewo like a fashionista. On Sunday, it paid off. For the first time, Atiku will be a presidential candidate of a party that looks at victory with a rosy, unblinking eye.

    Now, it has transformed from a grudge match to an open duel. Atiku can now confront Buhari, face to face, rhetoric to rhetoric, barnstorm to barnstorm, money stash for money stash. In Port Harcourt, at the Adokiye Amaesimaka Stadium, he kicked the first ball. The applause did not roar. But from the cheers of the delegates, it betokened a battle of gunfire and splintered shards.

    But it did not seem automatic that he would be the flag bearer. Bukola “Eleyinmi” Saraki had looked good on paper. So did Kwankwanso. But reporters say it was not the ideas, or the charisma or the electability that swung it for the Adamawa man. It was naira and dollar. All of the dozen candidates sprayed, and eventually the top plutocrat won the day.

    Up to the time of writing, no candidate had raised a perfidious eyebrow. On the podium, Saraki stood, visibly crestfallen, with a wan-and-ashy smile, a feeble clap of the hands, his head swaying as though the wind tossed about. Kwakwanso’s face winced like one blaming the sunshine, his eyes squinting as though he should borrow Uche Secondus’ cumbersome goggles. David Mark looked demilitarised and former Governor Jang seemed dazed out of his depths.

    With his babaringa and dark glasses, Atiku’s mien and even tone camouflaged his triumphal glee.

    Nothing savvy about the speech, but I spotted a contradiction. He said the PDP had now rebranded, yet he looked back at his party’s time in power as model of governance unlike the suffocating poverty of the Buhari era. More potent was his beggary moment when he praised the Owu chief who has remained unforgiving of Atiku’s alleged treachery. Will OBJ take the olive branch or toss it into an Ota bush?

    More surprising to many was that Saraki came a distant third, and Tambuwal might have won the ticket if the Adamawa man had not turned pirouette from the APC. But that leaves Tambuwal, nonetheless, in one of the most inexplicable miscalculations. He loses governorship and gets nothing. Maybe it was because he never wanted to be governor anyway.

    In spite of the apparent weakness of the Buhari era, Atiku will have to rely on more than his money and his capacity to work the elite in a deal. He has never been a man of the crowd, a man who pulls the emotional springs of the people.  Against a government that claims to fight corruption, Atiku appears to be the wrong man to pit against it. A successful businessman, he has never been known to touch the culture, to tingle the sports fan, to appeal to a pious sentiment, to stir a social function. There is something curiously placid about Atiku that, beyond his money and ambition, he could just pass through the crowd without a jolt. Even when he yells, he sounds forced and uninspired. His voice hardly tingles, or even sings to, the ear.

    He may have to rely perhaps on local virtuosos to do that for him across the country. And he will need his money and elite consultations to push him up that path. I had thought the PDP saw Kwankwanso’s virtue as the man to counter Buhari’s charismatic strangle-hold on all of the Northwest and the much of the Northeast. The former Kano governor cannot play in the second electoral prize, the Southwest, because of his recent meddling in Lagos and Osun State when he lunged at the locals over Fulani fights. But he has a strong base in the Northwest, and would have chopped off some of Buhari’s cult following and used that as a launching pad and momentum. Atiku’s appeal is broad, not deep. Broad appeals do not wake up passion; just distant, even speculative, admiration.

    Buhari has a different sort of persona. He appeals to the talakawa of the North who would not probe his intellectual pedigree, or question his obvious contradictions or hypocrisy, or rile at acts of corruption in his government. He is a man of great Mohamedan piety, according to their lights. And that is sufficient for them. In some sense, his followers are like the shepherds of Trump who once claimed that if he shot a person on a New York road, his followers would not flag their support.

    Tragically, it will turn out to be another hotbed campaign season, but cool on ideas or soaring personalities.

    Obviously, for all his imperfections, Buhari is still the man to beat. Atiku will have to overcome his lethargic image, and that remains to be seen.

     

    Borno’s Mr. Marshall

    The man was a United States general. Our Borno man is a professor. The American took up the job as secretary of state, not as a soldier. Our Borno man took up the task as a commissioner, not as an ivory tower maven. Both looked at the scars of war and decided they would restore the broken places of the country.

    George C. Marshall began the task in 1948 after the Second World War. The project to restore Europe was named after the general and was designated The Marshall Plan.  Professor Umara Zulum, in 2018, is looking to take over that task not as a commissioner but as the helmsman of Borno State as successor to the cerebral, who has piloted the state with aplomb through fear and storm in the past seven and a half years. Umara Zulum has been the Mr. Marshall of Borno, getting his hands and feet dirty in the jungle, in the areas that Boko Haram had pillaged. He is the commissioner for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement. He defrocked this professorial toga, and has supervised not only brick and mortar, but to bring the mortals from the brink.  A lot of work has been going unsung over the years, the rebuilding and construction of housing units, schools, roads, markets, hospitals. The mortals on the brink have been gradually returning to their old lives, in spite of the sporadic renewal of Boko Haram onslaught.

    Governor Shettima made the point clear in an essay, showing how he picked him and why. It was the case of the man and the moment conjoining. According to the phrase redacted from Bible, “cometh the man, cometh the hour.” In soulful, persuasive prose, Shettima laid out like no one else the intellectual necessity of Zulum and his practical imperative. Cool-headed with clear diction, Zulum is poised more than anyone else in the Borno firmament to be the Mr. Marshall of Borno State as governor.

     

    No funeral wreaths, please

    A bullet cruised down through the roof into Nsima Ekere’s bedroom. His wife, Ese, and another person narrowly missed it. Whether by an act of God or providence, the APC governorship candidate and NDDC managing director had moved his scheduled meeting next door to the home of Umana Umana. It was clear: an assassination attempt. Whodunit?  Was the bullet just flying like a bird or was it shot? Technology shows that bullet only obeys the trigger man.

    Just a few days after he grabbed the APC ticket to duel Emmanuel Udom, the state governor. Not long before, Godswill Akpabio also survived another attempt, barely three months after dumping PDP.

    This coincided with Udom’s pardon to hundreds of daredevil hoodlums who had unsettled the state over the years. The polls in the state should not descend into blood duel. All we want is the will of the people. Ekere has lobbed at Udom over rising violence in some of the local government areas. You don’t address that by playing flower girl to them and handing the holy communion.

    Ekere’s warning might be seen as a political assertion, but should he be a victim before it is taken seriously? We abhor funeral wreaths ahead of elections. Let the people garland their choice.

  • Campaign funds’ tracking

    When the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, for assistance to monitor and track campaign funds spent by political parties and their candidates, it was an admission of inherent difficulties in carrying out this statutory duty.

    Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu told his anti-graft agency counterpart, Ibrahim Magu, when he visited the commission: “We want the EFCC which has the mandate and capacity to track and trace the sources of funds to work closely with us so that we can trace within the limits of the law”.

    He said cooperation would enable the commission enforce the provisions of the Electoral Act on electioneering campaign funding and ensure that election results are not determined by the amount of money a political party or candidate spends at the polls. Yakubu was apparently piqued by the practice whereby parties and their candidates go to the polling stations with sacks of money to induce voters even as he lamented that it compromised the rights of the people to vote freely for candidates of their choice.

    INEC is statutorily empowered to monitor all sources of funds of political parties. Specifically, sections 225 and 226 of the 1999 constitution assert the powers of INEC to monitor and assess parties’ sources of funding and management of same.

    They comprehensively deal with regulations to be enforced by the electoral body to make the political parties regularly financially accountable to it. Section 225(2) requires that all political parties shall “submit to the Independent National Electoral Commission a detailed annual statement and analysis of its sources of funds and other assets together with a similar statement of its expenditure in such form as the commission may require”.

    The 2010 Electoral Act went further to clear any ambiguity arising from monitoring of parties’ campaign funds by setting a ceiling of expenditure for political parties and their candidates for specific offices. The maximum for a presidential candidate is pegged at N1 billion, N200 million for governorship candidate and N40 million for the senate. The House of Representatives and state house of assembly are set at N20 million and N10 million respectively.

    Despite the wide powers of INEC to monitor and bring to book political parties and individuals that run fowl of extant regulations on campaign funding, the commission has been severely handicapped in this regard. Not only has it been unable to monitor and track electioneering campaign expenses of political parties and their candidates, it has not made much progress in monitoring and prosecuting the numerous electoral offences that have been a sad feature of our elections.

    It is the apparent difficulty in tracing and tracking electioneering campaign funds that compelled INEC to seek other ways to it.  Having admitted this handicap, it seeks cooperation of the anti-graft agency which has unlimited technology for monitoring and tracking the movement of funds. This would seem a new resolve and determination to overcome some of the limitations the electoral body encounters in compelling political parties and their candidates stick to extant regulations on campaign funding.

    The amount of funds political parties and their candidates spend during elections have remained vexatious. Even as the Electoral Act sets limits on campaign expenses, facts on the ground indicate that they are largely observed in their breach. The quantum of money that exchange hands during elections both on the side of the political parties and their candidates makes a mockery of the limits set by the Act.

    Not only has money assumed a prime role in swaying the direction of elections, it has prevented very credible and well qualified people without huge financial war chest from making themselves available for political leadership recruitment. This has impacted very negatively on the quality of leadership on these shores with deleterious consequences on the overall progress and development of the country.

    Elections have virtually turned into a market place where politicians and the electorate trade on votes with the highest bidder almost always having his way. And with a high level of illiteracy and poverty, the cankerworm has assumed a very pervasive dimension.

    It is good a thing INEC has sufficiently been agitated by the negative effects of the wrong deployment of money to sway the direction of elections. Money has come to play such pre-eminent role in our political process that the erroneous impression is being conveyed that democracy is for sale. Not only are politicians ever ready to compromise the electorate, the voters themselves have over time shown a very destructive appetite to trade their votes for a mess of porridge.

    This has had the net effect of not only compromising the sanctity of free, fair and credible elections but the rights of the people to elect their leaders without let or hindrance. Excessive deployment of money obfuscates the principles of representative democracy by infringing on the sovereignty of the electorate as freely expressed at the ballot box. It is nigh impossible for a virile culture of democracy which is a sine qua non for political development to grow and endure under such circumstance.

    Besides, the increasing role of money in determining the direction of electoral victory is inexorably linked to the high incidence of corruption in public places. Those who buy their ways to elective offices, see elections as investments from which they have to recoup with high profit margin. That is why such public offices have easily become the quickest means of wealth acquisition. Little wonder politics has turned into a very profitable business attracting all and sundry including impressionable youths that are deployed to risky and life threatening assignments.

    A new dimension to this is evident in the phenomenon of vote buying during elections. Though this is not entirely new, it seemed to have assumed very worrisome dimension during the last two governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states. Politicians were seen openly with sacks of money buying votes. The ability to pay for votes played a prime role in swaying the direction of those elections.

    What unscrupulous politicians required before parting with their illicit money was evidence of having voted for their party. It was partly to check this practice that INEC barred voters from using mobile phones as soon as they were handed over ballot papers. The calculation of INEC was that it will prevent voters from capturing their ballot papers on their phones with the aim of convincing agents of the politicians as to which party they voted for. Without such evidence, INEC believes vote buying will be reduced. But it cannot be entirely eliminated by that measure as there exist other ways of inducing voters albeit, monetarily.

    The important thing is that INEC has shown some commitment to checking the influence of money during elections. It is good that it is partnering with the EFCC which has comparative advantage in monitoring and tracking sources of funds. The synergy of this partnership will be of immense aid to the electoral body in tracking funds deployed by politicians and their parties during elections. Even then, it lacks the capacity and resources to prosecute election offenders.

    The role of EFCC is vital given that political parties and candidates source for funds during elections through known and unknown means. Much of the funds for which former National Security Adviser to former President Jonathan, Sambo Dasuki is facing trial were security votes allegedly diverted for the prosecution of the 2015 elections. INEC lacks the capacity to unveil such monies and others that may accrue from diversion of funds and illegal contracts.

    In carrying out this assignment, the two agencies must be fair to all political parties and their candidates. They must rise beyond partisanship and any shred of partiality if something positive is to come out of this partnership. They must resist the temptation of viewing corruption as a malfeasance only associated with the opposition. Since governments in power are heaviest spenders during elections, we look forward to seeing the agencies expose illegal deployments or diversion of public funds from this quarter. That will be a real measure of the success of the new understanding.

     

  • Democracy of dunces

    The reactions boiled over. As the informed columnist, I am accustomed to such vitriol, especially when they come from the isthmus of ignorance. My column last week simply inspired what was to come. When they did not know how to foil the magnitude of my logic, they resorted to vituperations. They admitted they had lost the argument. From Facebook, to Twitter, to phone calls to text messages. It was an outpouring of tendentious imbecility.

    It invokes the words of Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels. “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” I have always known that, sometimes, Nigeria can be a democracy of dunces. Last week, it reflected by the riot of insults on this column. Those who did not call me a disgrace to column writing described me as doing the bidding of paymasters. I wonder what they are thinking now that I saw tomorrow. They could not do to me what the prophet Amos wrote about those who gave the Nazarites wine to drink and commanded their prophets “saying, Prophesy not.” They could not shut me up.

    Last week, I was the prophet, noting that it made no sense to bring the State of Osun to the gyration of a thespian Adeleke. He would have turned dancing into the official body language of government. It would have been a government of dunces and dancers. He has been dancing, in season and out of season through the campaign. His feet became tired. He was like the masquerade in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart who danced himself lame before the main dance. By the same token, some of my traducers had been celebrating before the final tally. They ought to have learned from the American baseball player Yogi Berra who quipped: “It is not over until it is over.”

    The oligarchy of the mere mortals gave the verdict to Oyetola, and I thought it only made sense in a contest between a financial engineer and a semi-literate. I had prized knowledge over vanity, and had correctly described Demola Adeleke, who fell at the polls last week, as the wrong sort of guy to mount a governor’s chair. I noted that the dramatic hollowness of the man, the impresario of the feet, should be defeated. He belonged elsewhere.

    With F9 at WAEC, with his rhetorical stumbles, his supporters had made a huge mistake to pitch a tent with a hollow fellow who could not, in a manner of speaking, spell infrastructure. There was an American president who was bad at spelling. He was Andrew Jackson, the man who tortured Indians, glorified white superiority, and instituted the imperial presidency.

    He once asserted that he did not trust anyone who thought there was only one way to spell a word. At least, he had an intellectual justification for ignorance. Adeleke lay no claim to scholarship, except his insistence on attending school. He once promised to spray money to the people as though that amounted to sagacity and campaign manifesto. Even if, by accident, he could spell the word, his tenure would have spelled dysfunction.

    If we download what transpired for Oyetola’s victory, we shall unveil the nature of realpolitik. Omisore became, as it were, the custodian of the votes in most of the supplementary vote areas. It did not make him a monarch of the votes, but the influencer. It is an essential part of the democratic process. Not here alone, but everywhere in the history of democracy, including in ancient Athens, the birthplace of popular appeal. But what we call democracy is actually a republic. A democracy is close to a mob rule, where the majority imposes its will on the minority.

    But the concept of the republic calls for deal making, the institution of the rule of law over the majority instinct. It suspects the mob in a democracy, and trusts an enlightened elite to moderate and temporise. Modern scholars sometimes call it a democratic republic. So, Bukola ‘Eleyinmi’ Saraki bungled his mission just like his stage ancestor. The APC fellows gave the man a better deal. He called on his people to vote APC and the rest is history.

    In the United States, big-name endorsements drive presidential candidates to victory. Barack Obama wheeled from momentum into a movement after big names like Ted Kennedy and Colin Powell gave their voices to the man who popularised the phrase “Yes, we can.”

    The president called Omisore. The embassy of Ekiti State Governor-elect Kayode Fayemi to the ‘court’ of Omisore kicked off the momentum for a nocturnal meeting that had men like Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi and Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun. Of course, sprightly party chairman Adams Oshiomhole gave the defining handshake as the pictures show.

    Some of my critics made a big deal about Rauf Aregbesola, and complained over the salary arrears. They forget that most of the civil servants were never owed a penny. Workers up to levels seven or eight had their full pay. A few steps after that had 75 per cent, and the senior cadre had 50 per cent. This is one of the issues downplayed by many who did not understand what happened in the state. Most of the traducers were either ignorant or wilfully mischievous. I noted that Aregbesola made some mistakes but the preponderance of votes reflected that his brilliance outweighed his mistakes. Clearly, Omisore’s intervention would have amounted to nothing if the salary issue was so definitive. Influencers are powerful, but they have their limits. They also know it and would not push the people beyond their patience.

    It must be stated though that if Adeoti had not been let go, and Lasun wooed properly, the supplementary elections would have been unnecessary, for both earned many thousands of votes that they could have lapped up for Oyetola. No one would have spoken of salary deficit as a big factor. The injury-time desperation over Omisore would have been unnecessary if the APC top brass were not complacent over the mighty defectors.

    The critics underplay the strides in the past eight years, especially in the areas of education, infrastructure and human welfare. With the quickest uptick of school enrolment in a generation and enhanced facilities, WAEC performance leaped from about 15 per cent to over 50 per cent, unequalled anywhere in its improvement.

    Aregbesola came in as the activist idealist, but he miscalculated. Some may say he was naïve, but if the oil price retained its perch in the stratosphere for a few more years, he might be walking out the Osun stage in a messianic halo. But he is lucky that he has a man of a contrasting temperament and a financial engineer to take over. He can now build on the plantings of his predecessor. Just as Akintola on Awo’s and Fashola on Tinubu’s, Oyetola will now translate all that work into a fruition. Oyetola in a couple of years will enjoy a new financial berth as the bonds and loans will expire and free money for development. He becomes a translator as writers translate other writers. Alexander Pope wrote of Chaucer and Dryden, who translated the former: “such as Chaucer is, so shall Dryden be.” A great work needs a great translator, as Soyinka brought Fagunwa to the world.

    Oyetola also has a calm temperament appropriate for a man who takes over a feisty era.

     

  • Politics of peace

    HOW a discredited former president, Goodluck Jonathan, promoted peace has been highlighted again as an enduring lesson for political players in this political season. Though the story has been told in various forms since 2015 when Jonathan conceded defeat to then-challenger Muhammadu Buhari, it has now been retold in a more clarifying form.

    Jonathan shouldn’t have lost the presidential election if he hadn’t lost his sense of reality.  He underrated the response of the electorate to bad governance. The wave of change under the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) exposed how mind-boggling corruption corrupted the Jonathan administration. Jonathan’s 60th birthday last year was a time to think about the power of performance and the powerlessness of non-performance.  In the final analysis, democratic leaders are expected to pass or fail based on their performance and the evaluation of the electorate.

    Three years after Buhari’s historic victory in the 2015 presidential election, the National Peace Committee, on September 25, released an illuminating report titled “2015 General Elections: The Untold Story.”  The main point of the report is that the committee did not pressure Jonathan to concede defeat.

    According to the report, the committee had, in the evening of March 31, 2015, requested an audience with Jonathan at the Villa. The report said: “As it awaited confirmation for the meeting with the president, the committee chairman, General Abubakar, also put a call through to General Buhari, who informed him that President Jonathan had only minutes earlier called to concede the elections. He particularly asked the committee to please convey his good wishes to President Jonathan for his great act of statesmanship. Shortly after that, members of the committee, who were greatly relieved, headed to the Villa where they met privately with President Jonathan and thanked him for his great courage.”

    The report explained: “At this point, the Buhari Campaign team were yet to address the press on the historic development and as such, many Nigerians got the news of the concession from General Abubakar’s brief media scrum with State House Correspondents, which perhaps helps create the wrong, but widespread impression that the committee sat with President Jonathan at the Villa as the results came in and had directly prevailed on him to concede.”

    It is noteworthy that Buhari had also painted a picture of what happened.  He told State House correspondents during the activities marking his first anniversary as president in May 2016 that he was shocked when Jonathan conceded defeat so easily after the March 2015 presidential election.

    Buhari had said: “This is where I pay my respect to former President Goodluck Jonathan. This is actually privileged information for you. He called me at a quarter-past-five in the evening. He said, ‘Good evening, Your Excellency, sir’ and I said, ‘Good evening.’ He said, ‘I have called to congratulate you that I have conceded defeat.’ Of course, there was dead silence on my end because I did not expect it. I was shocked. I did not expect it because after 16 years; the man was a deputy governor, governor, vice-president and was president for six years. For him to have conceded defeat even before the result was announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, I think it was quite generous and gracious of him. Gen. Abdulsalami recognised the generosity of Jonathan to concede defeat and said we should go and thank him immediately and that was the first time I came here.”

    The 51-page report also drew attention to another significant happening that puts Jonathan in a good light.  The report said: “A meeting with Jonathan was held at the Aso Rock Villa in the afternoon of Wednesday, March 25, 2015. At the meeting, he (Jonathan) raised some issues concerning the state of the nation, the threat of violence by the opposition (APC) based on allegations that he (Jonathan) and his party were planning to rig the elections. He (Jonathan) noted that he took very seriously the threat by leading members of the opposition to form a parallel government in the event that they didn’t win the elections, but that he chose not to react to such apparent treasonable acts in the interest of peace.”

    It is unclear why the committee released its report at this time, three years after the event.  But, ironically, it is a timely release. With the 2019 general election within view, the report is food for thought. By conceding defeat, Jonathan demonstrated a desirable spirit of sportsmanship. The report is a reminder that he could have chosen another path, with consequences for the polity.

    When Jonathan was honoured with an award, 2015 International Person of the Year, by African Sun Times, his critics trivialised the recognition.  Jonathan had said: “We proved that nobody’s political ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian or any national of any country for that matter. That, to me, is a most worthy testimonial of the character of the Nigeria nation and the resilience of our people, which is why I dedicate the honour to them.”

    Politicians need to understand that politics is a stage and players will have their exits and their entrances. Whether they are exiting or entering, politicians must do so with a sense of what is sensible.

    It is commendable that the National Peace Committee has re-energised its efforts. It is a reflection of the political situation that General Abubakar told journalists  after the committee met  with the Independent National Electoral Commission chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, and the heads of security agencies in the country: “As you are all aware, we are approaching 2019 general elections and already you are very much aware of how politics has been heated as a result of which we decided to stop at nothing to ensure that there is peace in the country and that the politicians play by the rules of the game and also that security agencies and the INEC play their roles accordingly.”

    It remains to be seen whether the 2019 general election will be conducted peacefully; whether politicians understand that victory or defeat is not as important as peace.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Knowledge versus vanity

    So, in an election where over 700,000 people were to launch a new leader through the vote, it boils down to barely 3000 persons. The fate of millions of Osun State citizens caves in to the oligarchy of the people. Oligarchy often entails men of money, influence and power, wheel horses on the crest of society. But for Osun State, we have the oligarchy of mere mortals.

    Those who will on Thursday decide whether it is the PDP or APC will not be a crowd in a serpentine queue curling into the streets across the state. Whether it is the dancing fellow with the chef’s cap, or the quiescent financial wizard with a shy tongue, it is not the will of the collective people this time. It is the will of the people, all right. But a few, a micro politics determining the large macrocosm of the collective will.

    It may not be the moneybags, per se. Not the big-time business man. Not the bureaucrat. We may have a sprinkling of them. But it will be the owner of roadside market stall, a mechanic, a wizened teacher, the tottering old retiree, the amala peddler who will lord it this time. They are the strange oligarchs. It is a fleeting crown, owned in less than half a day, but an accolade of consequence.

    From now, the real oligarchs, the party mavens and warriors of political retailing, will turn them into the damsels of democracy. They will woo them, make horse trading for them. They will reach for the cavernous purses, coin the right language, bow where necessary, rise with them, paw, bribe, cajole, tease.

    These oligarchs will vote in the few polling areas cancelled by the professorial INEC umpires. This breed of democrats is rarely seen in history, unless we flash back to the Greek era or the turbulence of the Italian democracy in the age of Machiavelli. It sometimes is one person like Rosa Parks who ignited a revolution for not moving her feet, or Harriet Beecher Stowe who authored the earth-shaking, anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When she visited President Lincoln at the White House, he remarked: “So, you are the little woman that wrote the book that started this war”. Or a group like the few young black men and women who set the stage for the civil rights tempest in the United States. The late journalist David Halberstam documented that age in his immortal book, The Children.

    But they are not the typical oligarchs. Their power is basically passive. They won’t spend. They won’t hold nocturnal trysts. They will lose no sleep. They will wait for the persuaders, those who have stakes in APC and PDP. They are, in a sense, the jury men and women of the ballot, a few asked to decide where the people’s justice may lie. They are the filters and conscience of the over 700,000 who voted on Saturday September 22.

    Philosophers of democracy have often suspected the view that it depends on the majority. Whether we look at the evolution of the American system with his baggage of slavery, Jim Crow, the moral ambiguity on race and immigration, or the British system with the carefully choreographed topsy-turvy of its parliamentary system, or the seeming hybrid of the French, the fingers of a few loom large.

    But it may not be that simple. These little men may suddenly wake up to their power, the magnitude of their littleness. Politicians may now turn the few polling areas into new areas of command, knocking from door to door. As our politics goes, the new-minted politics of the stomach may pop into significance. Will it be free and fair from the point of view of those who collect money and cook for the day? Or will it be free and fair for the people. The little man wants to decide big. As Winston Churchill, who loved and hated democracy, stated, “at the bottom of all tributes paid to democracy is the little man.”

    But while all these are taking place, how much thought has gone into the biography or track records of the leading candidates, especially the chef-capped Adeleke? How many of the people think about his thespian proclivities, his penchant to dance, if uncreatively. How does a dancer become a candidate when he is an airhead, a mercurial entertainer, unable to rise as a student, and whose only badge of honour as a scholar is an F9 at school certificate, according to WAEC?

    How does a man with little knowledge become a hit with the little man? And how does he handle education and succeed a man, Rauf Aregbesola, who has raised the stakes in education for a generation in the state, not only with school feeding, but equipping and building some of the best in the land?  How does a dancer associated with a high flyer relative who can sing, and who speaks English that stumbles, understand how to pick a good handler of infrastructure, or youth empowerment, or health care system? Were his voters not conscious they were trying to enthrone an alawada as governor?

    It is one of the tragedies of democracy that knowledge is not as important as sentiment. Sentiment can be cloaked as knowledge. Some of the great supporters of Trump, or Erdogan or Duterte or even Hitler, Franco are not necessarily dumb. Knowledge has ceded its pride of place to nativist hysteria or quest for entertainment. They won’t concede they have no knowledge, rather they would think in the words of the writer Isaac Asimov that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

    Have those people reflected on the profile and achievements of Oyetola? Maybe not. Maybe they prize dramatics over mathematics, flamboyance over performance. Or they want stage performance as governance.

    The heft of Oyetola’s following only indicates that, in spite of Aregbesola’s challenges, many saw the brilliance over the mistakes, the infrastructural work, scores for education and health care, especially his triumphs in the areas of the welfare state unequalled in the country.

    So, September 27 will be the day of the little man to make the point. Will he vote knowledge over vanity? That is the question.

     

    Nigerian actress blazes London stage

    The city of London holds a special allure for me: its theatre. The old colonial enclave, with its memory of suffocating arrogance, accepts my forgiveness

    Omatseye (left) and Uwajeh
    Omatseye (left) and Uwajeh

    when I waltz into its histrionic chambers to see great plays. I saw quite a few in my recent sojourn there, including Oscar Wilde’s hilarious The

    Importance of Being Earnest. But one play I had read quite a few times that I longed to see in flesh and blood has been Shakespeare’s King Lear. It’s the bard’s best offering and its immortality shines even today with many demented men at the helm. King Lear, who loses his mind because he cannot see beyond the flattery of his fragile ego, sold out at the Duke of York theatre as most great plays in London. I had to pay to stand for a happy three hours. For me the highlight was not my weary feet but the flair of a Nigerian Actress, Anita-Joy Uwajeh, who played Cordelia, whose mollifying wisdom reigns in the end of the story, even if she dies with her father Lear. She energised the stage with her soul and the Times of London lauded her “self-contained” brilliance.