The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • A kingmaker and his choice

    When it comes to succession, there are kingmakers who don’t understand that kingmaking has its limits. It is interesting that Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha was quoted as saying to reporters on February 5: “If I show them my successor now, they will kill him. The politicians here are very wicked, but at the right time, when I disclose the identity of my successor, I will stand behind him to protect him.”

    So, Okorocha knows who will succeed him as governor. He sounded so sure of the identity of his successor. Okorocha will leave office next year after a second four-year term, and the person who will become governor after him is expected to be elected by the electorate.

    Going by Okorocha’s words and the way he spoke confidently about the identity of his successor, he may not be thinking about the electorate and its electoral power. He may well be thinking about his own power to pick his successor and ensure that whoever he picks succeeds him as governor. In other words, Okorocha is thinking like a kingmaker.

    “The governor we want is a man that will continue with what we have done, because my administration has laid a solid foundation for the next governor,” Okorocha said.  Of course, he is entitled to want the person he wants. The question is whether the person he wants is the person the voters want.

    When will Okorocha reveal his choice? When is “the right time”?  Does the person he wants know?  Why would his choice be targeted for elimination? Okorocha unfairly labelled politicians in the state as “very wicked,” and maligned them by saying they would kill the person he wants if he unveiled the person’s identity at this time.

    Interestingly, a week later, Okorocha endorsed his son-in-law, Chief Uche Nwosu, to succeed him as governor.  Nwosu is the Chief of Staff, Government House, under his father-in-law.  It is curious that Okorocha endorsed Nwosu who is yet to say publicly that he wants to be governor.

    When officials of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and leaders from Owerri Municipal Council visited Okorocha at the Government House and urged him to back Nwosu for the governorship of the state in 2019, it was like an opportunity the governor had been waiting for to publicly express his preference for Nwosu.

    Okorocha said: “Uche Nwosu is hardworking, and never gets tired. He is a very humble young man. Not proud. Not arrogant. So, power won’t enter his head. In spite of the position he occupies you can’t see him quarreling with anybody or maltreating anybody. He does not segregate against anybody whether from Orlu or Owerri or Okigwe zone. He relates with people enviously. I have checked him in and out; I have not found him wanting… The young man is a team player, who does not use his office to molest anybody. He has the qualities of a good leader. If he says he will run for governor, I will support him.”

    Okorocha didn’t sound like he was ready to wait for Nwosu’s expression of interest. He sounded more like he had already chosen Nwosu as his successor. He said: “Obviously it might be as a result of these qualities that most people are talking about Uche Nwosu for governor everywhere even when he has not declared for the governorship. It might also be the reason for the endorsements he is getting from all quarters. You see, you don’t hide a good product. And the joy of every leader is to have a worthy successor. You don’t mind political opportunists. We have done very well as a government and we should be concerned about what happens to the achievements after.”

    It is not surprising that this development generated complaints from all quarters. For instance, a number of youth groups in the state rejected Okorocha’s move. A report said: “Some of the groups – Imo Youth Council, the Agenda Vanguard (AV), Imo Youth Enlightenment Organisation (IYEO), Rochas Youth Alliance (RYA), APC Youth Vanguard (APCYV), Youth Equity Group (YEG), APC Youth League (APCYL) and Imo Youths Agenda (IYA) –  angrily stormed out of a meeting organised by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Youth Affairs, Kenneth Emelu, at the Imo Youth Centre to lobby for their support for the governor’s anointed successor.”

    The State Commander, AV, Comrade Ibeawuchi Nwannaeri, who spoke on behalf of the groups, told reporters:  ”We don’t want to make mistakes; youths of Imo do not support endorsement of an individual. Nwosu is a youth and a good man, but the interest of the party should be paramount. No matter what, be it Madumere, Nwosu, Ololo or Ejiogu, what we are saying is that they should emerge through the party primary.”

    This is the heart of the matter. Will Okorocha follow the path of democracy and allow the democratic process to elect his successor? The problem with kingmakers is that they are usually willing to do anything to bring their candidates to power. It is not clear how far Okorocha may be ready to go to ensure that his choice succeeds him.

    Okorocha’s thinking on succession shows that he may be no better than Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose. Okorocha of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are on the same page on the question of succession. It is noteworthy that Fayose had caused a stir last year when he named his deputy, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, as his successor. The state is expected to elect a new governor this year. Justifying his choice, Fayose had said during a thanksgiving service to mark his third year in office:  ”I wanted Kayode Osho, but the Lord said it is Kolapo Olusola and I had no choice but to obey.”

    Governors who think they must pick their successors appear desperate to remain in power after their tenure. It is contrived continuity. Again and again, outgoing governors want to impose their choices on the people, claiming that it is in the people’s interest.  Okorocha and his ilk should let democracy work.

  • Rogue snake metaphor

    Rogue snake metaphor

    Bizarre report of a snake swallowing N36 million in the vault of the Benue State office of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), made interesting headlines last week.

    A JAMB sales clerk, Philomina Chieshe stunned a high-powered fact-finding team when she told them she could not account for the money realized from sales of scratch cards because a snake crept into the vault and swallowed it. When prodded, she explained that her housemaid connived with another JAMB staff to ‘spiritually’ steal the money through a snake.

    And she would want her audience to believe the story. Why not?  After all, are such fables not commonplace in our national life? If she did not believe it could make sense to some people; if she had not seen people peddling and swallowing such mystic and occult stories hook line and sinker, perhaps she would not have come up with such concoction.

    Alas, she believed it could pull through. Hence the ease and seeming innocence with which she crafted a story that should ordinarily have qualified her for psychiatric attention. She is not alone in this kind of weird belief.

    In our daily social life, many well informed and even highly educated Nigerians promote this kind of thrash to deceive and hoodwink innocent citizens for some self-serving ends. So Philomina’s narrative, as naïve and unbelievable as it would seem, fits into an uncanny metaphor to illustrate the pervasiveness of corruption on these shores.

    It highlights the weird belief system many of our people have come to accept and live with. Promoted by all manner of preachers and mundane cultural practices, such tales have assumed a dominant role in explaining (albeit falsely) most of the challenges thrown up in our daily lives. All manner of places of worship and persons take liberty in accounting for and rationalizing human challenges through spiritual means. Even when there is no basis for these irrational explanations, such tales are invented by the unscrupulous and deceitful to achieve ends of mischievous and pecuniary nature.

    Sickness, misfortune and even deaths have been the worst victims of these supernatural and mystic explanations. And because of the vicissitudes of life in a predominantly illiterate and poverty stricken environment, many have come to accept such fetish and irrational explanations for some of the challenges they face in their daily lives. So Philomina was just exploiting the inherent weaknesses of our belief systems. Do you blame her when such stories are daily promoted in our television stations as real accounts of African life? Those who regularly promote disappearing and mundane relics of African culture in the name of ‘African Magic’ and similar programmes should share in Philomina’s confusion.

    But she goofed because snakes are not known to feed on currencies. Neither can one or a colony of snakes effectively swallow N36 million. She misfired because in this case, she will be required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that snakes could in all actuality swallow that amount of money. For her inability to differentiate between facts and fiction; normative beliefs and credible evidence, the snake rogue should be taken as a metaphor for the official in whose care the money disappeared.

    So it is not enough to peddle stories on the escapades of witches and wizards. Neither is it sufficient to seek escape route from the numerous ills that afflict mankind by attributing them to the unseen hands of some ghosts, the dead and the vampires. There is a limit beyond which such stories will no longer make sense. That is perhaps, the point that has been brought to the fore by the story of the rogue snake.

    Beyond this however, Philomina’s story illustrates the degenerate level into which corruption has irretrievably sunk in our national life. It is an acceptance that public funds can be frittered and all manner of ruse invented to successfully cover them up. That such a colossal sum of money could be left in the hands of a common clerk also speaks volumes on probity and accountability in our public life. And if one may ask, what happened to the bank account of that establishment that a whooping N36 million had to be kept in the safe such that we are now being told the ridiculous and lame story that it has been swallowed by a snake.

    As if this was not enough embarrassment, another state coordinator of the same establishment in Nassarawa State has come up with another strange story to cover up alleged fraud.  The official was said to have claimed his car got bunt together with N23million worth of scratch cards.

    Diligent investigations were however to reveal that the cards which the official claimed to have been burnt together with his car were actually used up by prospective students from Nassarawa State to register for JAMB within the same period. Obvious from the two accounts is the degenerate level into which corruption had sunk in the operations of JAMB. If the accounts of the two incidents are anything to go by then, it could be safely concluded that the establishment had been stinking in dismal corruption and corrupt practices all this while.

    It is also very confounding how colossal sums of public funds are left in the hands of some unscrupulous staff to manage only for them to fritter them away and cook up frivolous stories to cover up their tracks. Perhaps, if the current investigations had not been set up, the suspects would have conveniently covered up their tracks with the nation losing scare resources direly needed for developmental purposes.

    But that is this country for you. All these happened as the current administration was waging the war against corruption with fanfare. And if you ask them of their score card in the last three years or so, they will quickly brandish the war against corruption as one of their major achievements. The war could as well have recorded some measure of success in retrieving some monies looted by past political office holders. We have also seen a measure of progress in the recovery of some properties from both former political appointees and civil servants even as the target has mainly been those opposed to the government of the day.

    Events have however, shown we are yet to get at the bottom of the factors that propel and reinforce corruption in our national life. A former governor was reported to have said recently that corruption is the real problem of this country and not restructuring. He is partly right. But the proper way to put the matter is that corruption feeds from our inability to restructure. Corruption thrives because of our inability or refusal to restructure. Corruption is encouraged because of the awesome powers of the central government and its perception as an avenue from which the constituents should grab at will. That is why the two JAMB officials had no qualms inventing all manner of subterfuge to cover up the missing monies in their possession.

    That is the situation you get with such unwieldy national establishments performing functions that are better managed by smaller and more efficient organizations. If the universities were allowed to conduct their own examinations and set their admission benchmarks, an omnibus and ineffective institution like JAMB would have found no place. What is true of JAMB is no less correct of other national establishments. Decentralization or devolution of powers will promote more efficient and effective governance and reduce corruption.

    The much touted war against corruption will continue to remain a mirage as long as it has not touched the fabric of our society. The rogue snake denotes the lady under whose care the N36 million disappeared while in the raging fire can be found the man in whose care the N23 million was left. That is the metaphor of the unmitigated corruption that strides the entire gamut of our national life. That is how bad the situation has remained and a measure of success of the war against corruption.

  • Witch snake

    Witch snake

    We must not show surprise at the lying tongue of Philomena Shieshe, the conjurer of the thieving snake. We must admire not only her lies, but the fertility of her imagination. She has put the story of our war on corruption in perspective. She invoked a maid, a conspiracy, a large sum of money, and a snake. The corruption tale has come full cycle.

    Right in the heartland of animal impunity, she conjures the most enigmatic of creatures performing the most fascinating business of humans: making money. The herdsmen in Benue State – not the cows – growl and attack and make mincemeat of man. The herdsman is in the business of killing in the name of cows. The snake was making a killing in the name of money. Both do business, but the rest of us suffer.

    The woman is like the herdsman, the snake her cows. Thirty-six million is no small sum in any currency, so she’s no small woman. We have two lethal weapons in one state: one killing humans, the other swallowing their livelihood. Philomena and her maid are not interested in striking like a thief in the night. Hers is a snake but only to the spiritual eye. As Apostle Paul has said, the natural man cannot understand the ways of the spirit. When Jesus says to his Thomas Didymus that a spirit has no flesh, blood and bones, Philomena is paying attention. We have not seen but we should believe. She can conjure in the blaze of day, in the haze and in the blight of night.

    She has learned one or two about corruption and how to mock it. She has demonstrated, through the hiss and jaw of a snake, that the war on corruption is phony. How different is her story from the reels of lies we have heard from the EFCC targets. The Dasukigate, the MainaGate, the NNPC tale with Kachikwu and Baru have had versions of snakes swallowing money. A person is charged, he says he is not guilty. He comes with a tale of phantasmagoria.

    The billions disappear. Often the stories end up in obscurity even though they are clear to all of us. When the men are detained and questioned, they come out afterwards with one triumphal lie. The snakes in our anti-corruption war are manifold. The first liar is the defendant. He says he is not the thief. He or she followed the rule of law. The more we look, the less we see. The best way to steal is not by direct putting of the hand in the cookie jar. Not in secret. But in plain sight. All who must sign, appends their signatures, all the way from to the lawyers and contractors and permanent secretaries. Yet billions are being stolen.

    The SANs are their serpentine accomplices. The case takes on are sinuous pattern. It goes to the court, it follows to the appeal court and when it gets to the Supreme Court, we think it is over. But we have only just begun. They were only treating a superficial part. The substantive matter is still hanging and hiding like the billions. Like the snake, it takes a path back to where it seems hidden. How many corruption charges have yielded jail terms since 2015? Like Philomena, the snake has swallowed the money, but no one can see the beast. What you cannot see, you cannot hold.

    We started the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) to spike the serpent. But because it is spiritual, no one can strike it. A number of cases have followed the pattern of the swallowing snake. The Saraki case that has gone up and down, right and left like the adder on the alley. Or Patience Jonathan, who says the late mother owned the money and the EFCC is showing disrespect for our heroine past for her labours of love and profit in this land. Or the case a few years ago when top SANs defended two colleagues allegedly caught in the bribery scandal.

    Our money often assumes a lot of paths like the snake. They are stolen in Abuja or any state capital. They take a route to the bank. In the banks are many turns. It goes to a vault in Naira, meanders through files, and desks, slithers up to the offices of the bank directors and hisses in a disappearing act into another currency in the forex department.

    It reaches Europe in Euros, or goes to America in dollars, or other climes in their own currencies. They blend with the environment, look lush like the greenback of American dollars, or tawny like the desert sands of the Middle East. We search for them here in our banks, lawyers defending their thieves, whereas they have changed form and home. The “pepper has rested” elsewhere.

    In the case of Philomena and the N36 million, money is a spirit, it takes wings and disappears – into the bowels of the snake. In a few cases, a snake is caught. We applaud ourselves for such rare heroics. Like in some cases where some money has been returned to our coffers. But snakes have a way of escaping, like the re-looting of the Abacha $500 million. A big snake had vomited that. But another has swallowed it again.

    Nor is the snake the only victim of our lies. The goat, the stubborn mammal, bleats lies. Not long ago, children often lied when they failed exams and did not want their parents to know. They claimed, “Baba, I passed but the goat ate up my report card.” We may think the goat harmless unless when it sinks its teeth in an errant piece of yam. But the goat made news in 2009. One was prosecuted in Kwara State for stealing a car. The police arrested the goat, claiming that the real thief transfigured into the bleating beast.

    The Nigerian incident was foreseen by French writer Victor Hugo in his famous novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A beautiful woman, Esmeralda and her goat are arrested and hanged for sorcery. The author was taking a swipe at the Spanish Inquisition for canonising violence in the name of justice.

    For the witch snake, Philomena was only mocking us for our hypocrisy. If billions disappear on apocryphal tales from politicians and get away with them, it was time shadowy citizen gave us a witch snake with a conjurer’s twist. The latter was provided with good humour by Senator Shehu Sani, who materialised with snake charmers at the JAMB office.

    But snake charmers, by their nature, are also phony. They cannot charm a snake in the bush, only the ones they bring to the show. But our people steal strange money, so we need a new breed of snake charmers. EFCC does not seem equipped for this, not with their lawyers, or our SANs sans honour, or our judges on the take.

    We have been happy to take what we can from the looters, even if they are small compared with what the witch snakes have swallowed over the years. As they say where I come from in the Niger Delta, ‘at all, at all na winch.’

     

    The bard and the trance

    Writer Wole Soyinka gave us an interesting word last week to describe President Muhammadu Buhari. I am still trying to figure out what he means by trance. Does he mean Buhari is in an ethno-nepotistic trance, which means the spirit of his ancestors have so overwhelmed him that he sees only people from his clan  when doles out appointments? So, he is president of Nigeria, but that trance makes him see Katsina even when he is supposed to see Owerri? Is that why he asked his Benue men to embrace his neighbours?

    Or is he in a religious trance, and he sees only men and women on Friday prayers and when Sunday comes he rejoices Friday has come so soon, and so appoints as though it is a one-faith country? I am not sure that trance is always a good thing. What we need, if we are to believe the bard, is to look for men who can exorcise that spirit and bring our beloved president back to earth.

  • Camouflage of carnage

    Camouflage of carnage

    We saw truth and reconciliation in Rwanda, after daggers flew and a bleeding. In South Africa, it served as a rebuke of a monument to prejudice, the worst since Jim Crow in the United States and the era of slavery and slave trade.

    Truth happened to fling the door open for reconciliation. In Nigeria, we have never reconciled because we have never come to terms with the truth. We are cousins in perpetual contention, ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth, apology to Apostle Paul.

    Anytime a controversy engulfs our country, the first casualty is truth. When truth is buried, solution stands afar off, watching us in the impotence of disbelief. The herdsmen are one such tinderbox, and it is biting the nation’s fabric while we bicker.

    The reason is easy. While it is spinning mourning clothes in many homes, it is bringing bread to the table of others. Some feast but others see them as beasts. The feud festers. No one wants to take responsibility for the bloodshed.

    The herdsmen have become a source of great confusion. Some say the herdsmen are doing the killings. Some say it is not the herdsmen doing the killings but the Bororo Fulani, who are now jobless. Some say the same Fulani who have fled drought and famine from Mali and Niger and Chad have lost cattle and livelihood. So they roam our lands to steal cattle and herd them to Lagos, sell them and buy arms.

    The question is, why do they buy arms? Why are they angry? What did the locals do to them that they have worked up such wrath in their breasts? Why are they so blood happy, so appetized for other’s flesh and innocence?

    Some others say the herdsmen are angry because locals steal their cattle? But it has been proved more often that the cattle rustlers are more Fulani than locals. If that is the truth, why did 73 caskets of Tivs and Idomas cascade into the earth the other day?

    Is there some sort of misunderstanding between the killers and the victims? When the president, in his invidious naivety, ask the Tiv elders to embrace their neighbours, was it because he was out of tandem with the reports of his security officers in the DSS? If so, why has he not called for a comprehensive report?

    Even the DSS did not help the confusion when it asserted that it was the terror exports of the Islamic State working their furnace of faith in our communities. The Inspector General of Police, authoring an imbecile and wild tale of fiction, said it was mere communal misunderstanding?

    The minister of defence came out fuming the other day, and reeled off what many saw as an act of fanatical umbrage. Speaking without wisdom or knowledge and certainly without respect for his position, he sanctified the killings. He spoke with the hysteria of a hyena who eyed raw meat and blood dripping, and drooled for the prize. It still astounds me that such a human could say such barbarous inanity and be retained in office. He may be echoing the serene and vengeful piety of his fellow travellers. Otherwise, he ought to be arrested and questioned if he was in on the slaughter. After all, a Benue State DPO was arrested when seven Fulani were killed in cold blood.  If Mansur Dan-Ali says modernity has blocked the grazing routes, and so we expect the herdsmen to rebel in rage and rapine, so what does he know? Yet this is the minister of defence, acting with a footloose tongue and bloodthirsty register as though his job is not defence but offence against the people.

    If the people doing the killings are actually the foreigners, why did we hear the Emir of Kano and the Miyetti Allah explode in the defence of the herdsmen? Why did the mourners of Benue not receive the sort of condolence and sympathy they deserve, except meaningless routines of “sorry” that few accepted as genuine?

    If we send soldiers to keep the peace, it will work. But what we shall see is not peace but pacification. That was the favourite word of the British when they mowed down local resistance to their colonial rule. They imposed silence, but peace never thrived until they left.

    It is interesting that some of the Middle Belt leaders do not blame the “normal” Fulani herdsmen for the slaughter about the country. In my interview with the President of the Middle Belt Forum, Dr. Bala Takaya, a few points came out. He does not blame the herdsmen for the assaults but two culprits. One, what I will call the “shadow herdsmen.” This refers to the nomads from outside the country who steal cows and herd them as camouflage for carnage. In the interview that will air on TVC next Saturday morning, he contends that they pretend to be herders while they bear both arms and cows.

    Two, he blames the security forces in the country. He says they know the truth and wonders why the president continues to preserve them in their offices. What he has said contradicts what the Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom has filled the air with. Ortom is wagging the dog’s tail. He has been an abysmal failure as governor, owing about a year in salaries and presiding over Makurdi that still looks only a little better than a village in the 1980’s. The herdsmen crisis is an opportunity to ride to a second term. It is a boon for him from the enemy.

    All these stories tell us that the public has no clear truth to consume on the crisis. Hence we may not reconcile. We can never love each other so long as we doubt each other. Shakespeare wrote in his famous play Hamlet: “Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”

    We are not in a place of truth as yet. So, we cannot love, and without it reconciliation will elude us. So what is the truth? Is it Bororo in nomadic bloodthirst? Is it the real herdsmen but a few bad eggs? Is it some powerful forces up north in animal rage in defence of their cows? Is it ISL? The truth does not have to be simple, but we should know the facts. As Oscar Wilde noted: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” We have closet truths. The south truth, the north truth, the Christian truth, the Islamic truth, the middle belt truth, the DSS truth, etc. The deaf walls reign. We are hiding in camouflages.

    We have read reports of not a few herdsmen arrests. Why not prosecute them in public, get their confessions, trace their roots and lineages? I believe the security forces and their leaders owe us this much for the peace and concord of this nation. If they don’t, then Buhari should follow Takaya’s suggestion and fire them. The nation of over 100 million people is bigger than a menagerie of men inspired by a fringe ideology.

     

  • Fighting the fire

    Fixing the All Progressives Congress (APC) is a task that must be done to keep the party in power. It is reassuring that President Muhammadu Buhari has come to appreciate the need for party unity as the party prepares for the 2019 general election. Hopefully, it is not too late to heal the party’s self-inflicted wounds.

    It is interesting that Buhari has given the job of mending the collapsing party to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the political giant who played a pivotal role in the formation of the APC, leading to the party’s historic electoral victory in 2015. Against all odds, Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, inspired the party to defeat the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    When the presidency named Tinubu for the job on February 6, it was food for thought. Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said in a thought-provoking statement: “As part of on-going efforts to improve cohesion within the All Progressives Congress (APC), President Muhammadu Buhari has designated Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to lead the consultation, reconciliation and confidence building efforts. The assignment will involve resolving disagreements among party members, party leadership and political office holders in some states of the Federation.”

    Showing why Buhari chose Tinubu for the assignment, the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said in an interview: “Any effort to reconcile and put the party together is a welcome development because there is a lot of work to be done. It requires someone with experience and political skills to do well in that aspect. So, it is a welcome development and we want to commend Mr President for giving that a priority and for finding Asiwaju Tinubu worthy of that assignment. We also commend Asiwaju Tinubu for agreeing to accept the role for the betterment of our great party. We believe our party will come out stronger and united after the reconciliation process.”

    It is unclear how Tinubu will approach the assignment, but there is no question that he will bring his passion and conviction to the task. It is noteworthy that Tinubu spoke about how the APC was formed at the October 2016 launch of a controversial book by Prof. John Paden entitled Muhammadu Buhari – The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria.

    Tinubu had said at the book launch at the International Conference Centre in Abuja:   “The formation of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is an important event that the book addresses. The merger was the result of teamwork, belief in the democratic will of the people and a commitment to national purpose…So many people made contributions that made the historic merger possible. It would be impossible to give each person the accolades they deserve in a concise work such as this one. However, it is an account that we must begin to chronicle fully, and with care, for it is the story of when reform came to the land.”

    Things have happened since Buhari became president nearly three years ago, and the story has changed from optimism to pessimism. A picture of promised change that has turned ugly was painted in an address read by Dr. Ignatius Ayau Kaigama, the Archbishop of Jos and Conference President, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), when concerned Catholic priests visited Buhari on February 8.

    Kaigama said: “We thank you for granting us this audience, which affords us the opportunity to share with you, once again, our thoughts and concerns on some issues affecting our dear country, Nigeria…There is no doubt that when you came into office, you had an enormous amount of the goodwill of Nigerians, since many saw you as a person of integrity who would be able to bring sanity into a system that was nearly crippled by endemic corruption.”

    Then he delivered a blunt criticism:  “Nearly three years later, however, one has the feeling that this goodwill is being fast depleted by some glaring failures of government which we have the moral responsibility to bring to your notice. Else, we would be failing in our duty as spiritual fathers and leaders.”

    Only Buhari loyalists will disagree with the Bishops’ observations. Indeed, it is this observed depletion of goodwill that Tinubu’s mediation is expected to address. Ironically, the mediator will need goodwill to succeed. The party is divided in no fewer than 10 states, including Ondo, Ogun, Kaduna, Bauchi, Kogi, Oyo, Ekiti, Zamfara, Rivers and Delta. According to a report, “The division is visible with notable actors, such as governors, senators and ministers, playing significant roles.”

    This assignment will test Tinubu’s political stature and stretch his political elasticity. It is interesting that Buhari believes Tinubu can renew the party, considering that he has been on the receiving end of bad politics within the party.

    Party member in the South-South Barrister Frank Okon was quoted as saying: “How can you ask the number-one aggrieved member to lead reconciliation? The National Leader is the most aggrieved person in the party today. Who will reconcile Tinubu with the party’s National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun? Are you not aware that Tinubu himself is aggrieved? He also needs to be pacified, especially in his grievance against the President.”

    Another party member in Adamawa, Alhaji Yinusa Inuwa, was also quoted as saying:  “Tinubu has issues with many people in the party, especially those who went against him during the elections under the leadership of the National Assembly. He is fighting the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and many senators who supported Saraki. He is also fighting Yakubu Dogara and Governor Aminu Tambuwal over the speakership. Who will reconcile him with those lawmakers? Is he going to reconcile himself with them?”

    It is in the greater interest of the party to achieve party unity. By picking Tinubu to do the job, Buhari has demonstrated that he knows who is who in the party when it comes to resolving the internal crisis that may consume the party. But how did the party get into this crisis in the first place?

    Tinubu deserves commendation for staying on course, despite provocations. Those who caused the fire need to be told that they may not always get a firefighter.

  • Our son the minister

    Our son the minister

    The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole has puzzled a few people. Why has he not resigned when under his nose the president restored a man he fired for corrupt practices. Usman Yusuf was suspended as the executive secretary of the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme. He is still under investigation. But Adewole has kept a cowardly mum since.

    The man may be following the trajectories of a play written by Paul Ugede titled: Our Son The Minister. The whole family wants their son to take up the job as minister but he says he wouldn’t because they want him on the pedestal not to serve the people but family and friends. Adewole would not resign because his family would probably think him a fool. They will lose all the celestial glories of office: cash, travels, luxuries and prestige. The minister in Ugede’s play knows that ministers may be called honourable but many lack honour.

    In other societies, Adewole would not need to resign because Yusuf would be ashamed and sulking in the shadows over his public iniquities. While we call for Adewole to resign, what of the iniquities of those who restored him and the shameless boldness of him who agrees to return to his pedestal of shame?

    As Achebe wrote in A Man of The People, who would spit out a sweet morsel that good fortune tossed in his mouth! Adewole will be a hero if he resigns, but this is no longer a clime for heroes, but hero-worshippers. In a country of Igwe, Baba gan, Ranka dede, we cannot find heroes. Adewole will not resign for the same reason Yusuf was appointed. OBJ’s nepotism charge only gained traction, especially when eight other people from other parts of the country who were suspended from the same agency are warming their chairs at home fattening, farting and hoping against hope.

  • Between Obasanjo and Babangida

    Between Obasanjo and Babangida

    Before the open letters by Nigeria’s former leaders, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, it had become public knowledge that the Nigerian project was malfunctioning. Perhaps, the interest their letters generated is on account of the weight they added to raging feelings of distrust, despair and frustration.

    That was not the first time the two spoke out in times of great national apprehension and distress. In the hey days of the Boko Haram insurgency when that terror group bombed churches resulting in the killing of thousands of innocent worshippers, they had issued a joint statement in which they deprecated the situation and called attention to the slide in our national affairs and the urgency to halt it.

    They had said even those they regarded as patriots were fast losing faith in the basis for the unity and continued existence of the country. As it turned out, Boko Haram was soon to change tactics. It began to attack mosques and Muslim places of worship. Soon, their activities were degraded with its murderous onslaughts confined to the northeast.

    It became easy for some to argue that since the terror group kills both Christians and Muslims, it cannot be accused of harbouring a religious agenda against Christians even when the group has never hidden is theocratic mission. The successful outcome of the 2015 elections appeared to have restored some hope that the worst had been averted especially given the threats, tension and bitter altercation it generated.

    But, it was a matter of time for the same malfeasance to rear its ugly head again. This time, we are confronted by the same pass through acts of omission and commission by the incumbent president. Not only has the economy refused to improve, the country is more divided and fragmented along ethnic, religious and other primordial lines than ever before in its history. The life of the Nigerian is worth nothing any more as we have virtually been reduced to a killing field. And in the face of these killings, government’s response has at best remained suspect.

    When the two former leaders came up with their observations as to the direction of the ship of this country, they were only confirming, adding further weight and impetus to prevailing views in the country. Though there was initial controversy over the authenticity of the first letter released by Babangida’s Media Adviser Kassim Afegbua, events have since shown that the views expressed in that letter were actually authorized by his boss.

    Curiously however, the police authorities in their indecent haste were quick to accept the rebuttal by those who apparently felt uncomfortable with the contents of the first one. And in that haste to fault the first letter, they wasted no time in declaring Afegbua a wanted man even without a prior invitation. Ironically, the same police made no effort to get clarifications from Babangida but quickly presumed the rebuttal was the right one to accept. Whatever led them to that position remains largely cloudy.

    As events turned out, they were wrong in their presumptions as Babangida in an interview with a national daily, stood by all the contents of the release by Afegbua. The conduct of the police was not entirely surprising. It portrayed it jittery of the contents of the letter especially coming soon after the damning assessment by Obasanjo. For that, everything had to be done to discredit the one that is critical of the government.

    But that only exposed the bias of the police on the matter. It showed how overprotective of the government that institution is. There is virtually nothing in that letter that is not in the vortex of public opinion. There is not much in it that is a sharp departure from the views earlier expressed by Obasanjo. If there were gaps in their letters, the Catholic Bishops filled them in their presentations to Buhari during their visit also last week. The only point the police had was the purported rebuttal which it made no effort to establish the authenticity. In matters of such nature, the police ought to have got to the root of the matter before taking position.

    There was no emergency thrown up by the letter to warrant them reacting the way they did. But that is not the only instance in recent times the police reacted to issues of public interest in a manner that does not depict it as an unbiased institution. The running battle between it and the Benue State government is another ponderous case. Even after the Inspector General of Police IG, Ibrahim Idris had apologized to the people of Benue for his careless remark tagging the killings a result of communal clashes, the state governor, Samuel Ortom has again accused him of bias in handling the continued killings in that state.

    Ortom raised an issue the police must address. He alleged that the police usually arrest livestock guards employed by his government to monitor the implementation of the anti-open grazing law, display sophisticated guns purportedly recovered from them and label them armed ‘Benue militia’ in order to sabotage that law. He then contends, if the so-called Benue militia were that armed, how come Fulani herdsmen serially overpowered them slaughtering their people in their homes without resistance?

    That is the big question and until the police offer cogent response to this, it is difficult not to share in the position of the governor. Again, why is it so easy to arrest the so-called Benue militia with sophisticated guns and not the murderous Fulani herdsmen that regularly slaughter children, women and the aged with an air of invincibility? The most sensible thing expected of the police is to arrest those behind the killings in Benue. Parading the so-called Benue militia is no solution to the killings unless we are being made to believe they are responsible for murdering their own people.

    When Ortom therefore accused the police of seeking to change the narrative of the Benue killings, he is on serious point. It was not surprising that this bias has manifested in the indecorous language deployed by force spokesman in labelling the governor a drowning man.  He was right in a way irrespective of the strong exceptions taken by the House of Representatives on his ranting. After all, is Ortom not drowning in the pool of the blood of innocent and helpless people of his state regularly butchered by herdsmen without any help from the same police authorities?

    Beyond these and the dismal rating of Buhari, the two letters struck a common chord on the imperative for generational shift in leadership. They want leadership to be in the hands of a new set of knowledgeable, well-educated and visionary people in tune with the wider dynamics of the 21st century. Obasanjo wants that through his Coalition for Nigerian Movement. Babangida still has confidence in the two-party system. They want new approaches; new paradigms. You cannot toe the same old path and expect anything different. They are right.

    My reading of their positions is not that they want young people just because of their age alone. They want energetic young people of knowledge, experience and skills.  They are rooting for very exceptional and knowledgeable people and not the recycled leadership that has failed to serve our collective needs. They are looking for what Plato aptly tagged ‘philosopher kings’.

    But they failed to lead us into how such leadership will emerge given the very complicated power equation in this country. They ought to have gone further to factor the role of ethnicity and primordial proclivities in the emergence of such leaders. These are the irreducible decimals that shape and direct the pattern of political recruitment. Babangida came close to it when he talked of systemic and structural re-engineering. State police and ranching for herdsmen as canvassed by Osinbajo are only an infinitesimal symptom of the larger systemic dissonance. The resolution of all these dysfunctions should presage generational shift in leadership for it to endure.

  • Not less

    Not less

    His family gathered around him in a Lagos hospital, including his elder brother who is now an emir. After days of funeral fears, they thrilled to see him in bed. Some would not chat, others chattered. The man sat erect on the bed but he did not respond. He knew something was amiss. His visiting relatives were puzzled.

    He knew a few moments later what he feared when he started to recover. He had lost his sense of hearing, significantly. Tanko Al-Makura experienced the first signs in a bout of fever. He was attending Abacha’s constitutional conference in Abuja. It was the days of zero party, the dictator’s dubious experiment in democracy.

    Doctors zeroed in, and thought it was malaria. Later they diagnosed him for typhoid. Chloramphenicol came to rescue as the routine cure of the time. it turned out to be lassa fever. But before they could realise it, it had complicated into his hearing loss. He lost 70 percent of his ability to pick up a sound.

    The story of the Nassarawa State governor rose to public eye when he took part in a thousand-man march in Abuja a few years ago to raise awareness to a segment of society to which few pay attention. Not governors, not senators, not presidents, not even columnists.

    This week the state is playing host to President Muhammadu Buhari to open what will be the first of its kind in West Africa: A school for all kinds of disability. Those who cannot hear, see, walk. It also includes those like the governor who have partial abilities. It is a school, not a healing house. The lame may not walk, the blind may not see, and the deaf may not hear. But the point of the Comprehensive Special School in Lafia is to heal what is even more important than the senses: the mind. Greek philosopher Socrates said our senses deceive us, so we should place more premium on sensibility rather than the sense. So, we should think, and that was the beginning of what philosophy teachers call the Socratic Method.

    But the story is not just that it will admit about 400 people from around the country at the start, or that it is well-equipped, or that its free, or that it has recruited teachers who have graduated in special education. It is to muse on how or whether leaders with disability can transform their shortcomings to the greater good of society.

    What Al-Makura is doing is to remember his privilege. As I recall, perhaps he is the first governor we have had with disability.  Or maybe he is the first to confess it and rid it of its stigma. But does a leader with disability come to terms with it and turn it to the good of all?

    Some have it in office, others have it at birth. Al-Makura had it when he was 37 years old. Could he have shown this level of compassion if his ears did not fail him. Although he claims he had always shown compassion, we may never know if he could have built this sort of comprehensive institution.

    We had the story of Ibrahim Babangida when he was head of state, and IBB was then called Maradona, in homage to the football baron who wriggled through defences with his magic feet. IBB was called Maradona because of his pollical sleight of feet, playing conman with his decoys about his transition programme. The late Ogun State governor Bisi Onabanjo tagged him Maradona. It stuck. IBB caught an affliction in his leg. It was called radiculopathy.

    He left for Germany and he returned healed. IBB had suffered something serious. A press photographer caught him once frowning as he writhed in pain and reached down to the painful leg. But it did not change IBB as a ruler. He was still cynical about democracy, still egoistic about power, and he still clamped down on democrats. Maybe he might have redeemed himself if he built a hospital or showed some compassion for the vulnerable around us. IBB was not moved by his own disability.

    The former Yugoslavian leader and world war 11 hero, Josip Broz Tito, was held down with a bad leg and had to be amputated. In a country riven apart by ethnic woes, his sense of compassion stung the country together, he did not  love the Slav more than the Croats or Muslims. His sense of humanity for the father of non-alignment became even more acute, according to his biographers. He died a uniter and man of the world.

    In the United States, presidents have shown great empathy because of their handicaps. The founding president George Washington, a general, and the man that led the Americans against colonialist Britain, had a drawback as a child. His was an acute learning disability. Some of his biographers say it accounted for compassion even as a slave owner. For his time, he was liberal, giving many rights to his slave and freed all of them at his death.

    John F. Kennedy hid his from the public. But historians now say he was sick and that accounted for his sometimes scrawny looks. He was permanently on medication. JFK played important role in the birth of the civil rights movement that his successor, Lyndon

    B Johnson was to turn into the Civil Rights Act. JFK’s sister also suffered permanently mental illness.

    Perhaps the most acute of such stories is that of Franklyn Roosevelt, who suffered from polio. The leader who beat Hitler and introduced the New Deal during the Great Depression, had a patrician bearing because he was born to the country’s upper crust. Historian Doris Kearn Goodwin says his polio helped to humanise him and gave him the common touch.

    What Al-Makura is doing, should hopefully, bring more attention to leaders and empathy. Even though the president will open a comprehensive primary health care centre in Kwandare and a market first conceived in 1996, the highlight is the work for the least appreciated among us.

    We must treat them as we treasure legacy in the fashion of a father to his disabled daughter known as “poor fool” in the Nobel Prize winning novel A Good Earth by Pearls Buck. He treated her specially unlike the patriarch Kennedy treated his daughter. They are our equals.

    As autism spokesman Temple Grandin noted, “I am different, not less.”

  • Dakuku plays the blues

    Dakuku plays the blues

    As Boko Haram has retreated as an army and played up its cowardly role as suicide bombers, the militants in the Niger Delta raised their voices as if to say, “we are still here.” They are about to break the deal since the days of Yar’Adua and return to the violence of the creeks. Why, of course, because oil price is on the rise!

    That bring our attention to the security. As Conrad said in his famous novel, The Secret Agent, the first condition of wealth is security. An agency that comes to mind is NIMASA and the man that comes to mind is Dakuku Peterside. The last time he stole public attention was when he released the annual revenue. He joined Ishaq Oloyede and the customs chief and Senate tormentor as the executive who brought up annual revenues to unprecedented highs.

    Dakuku may have to step up his game again in the area of security. Our pipelines and oil rigs may be endangered again. Our part of the world witnesses the highest piracy attacks in the world, 50 percent of kidnapping, with seafarers as significant victims. His agency now has a few strategies like the acquisition of new aircraft, helicopters and vessels as well as greater alliance with the navy and air force as well as an array of equipment. It is part of what is called the Blue Project or Blue Economy. Dakuku is playing the blues for the maritime economy.

    As the price of oil tops $70 dollars per barrel, we should prepare for the irritants of prosperity. Here If Dakuku made the wealth, we expect him to secure it.

  • Obasanjo’s third force

    Obasanjo’s third force

    Much of the focus on recent open letter by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Buhari has for obvious reasons, centred on aspects dealing with reasons why the latter should not seek a second term. And in a political terrain where high premium is placed on the person who occupies that elated seat, the part of the country he comes from and other inchoate considerations, this should not surprise anyone.

    If discussions are largely tainted by these and others that hinge on the mundane and the most parochial, Nigerians are reacting true to type. It is not surprising that those who have joined the conversation have found themselves unwittingly influenced by some of these considerations.

    Obasanjo’s letter reminiscent of the one he did on the ambition of former President Goodluck Jonathan on the heels of the last presidential election has thrown spanners into the wheel of the three year old regime of Buhari. Given that his letter to Jonathan contributed to the turn of events that truncated that regime, there is the feeling that some domino effect may follow his current damning verdict on the performance of the incumbent government. Though the language of his latest letter was mild in comparison with the acerbic, tendentious and dangerous allegations peddled in the one to Jonathan, Obasanjo took time to adduce reasons why he thinks Buhari should shelve his touted ambition to run for another term.

    Recalling his earlier observations on Buhari’s poor understanding of issues relating to the economy and his weakness playing in the foreign affairs sector, Obasanjo regretted that Buhari failed to make use of the abundant pool of technical know-how in the requisite areas to excel. He accused him of nepotism and deployments bordering on clannishness, poor understanding of the dynamics of internal politics that has left the country more divided than ever before and buck-passing by serially refusing to take responsibility.

    These are very serious and damning observations that cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The issues are very clear and there have been wide spectrum of opinion on them before now. Perhaps, what Obasanjo did is to throw his with on them such that nobody can easily ignore again. So it is difficult to accuse him of any hidden agenda or bad faith in bringing these issues to the front burner. And even if he has some other hidden motive, the pervasiveness of the observed weaknesses provides sufficient cover for him.

    But perhaps, the most engaging and potentially explosive contribution Obasanjo made in the letter is his assessment of the two political parties – APC and PDP and their place in Nigeria’s political matrix. He disagreed that the PDP has weaned itself of its sordid past to be the harbinger for political re-engineering even as his assessment of the current performance of the APC also disqualifies it for that emerging national assignment.

    For him, the country is in a serious pass requiring some radical action to steer the ship of the nation aright. He bemoans the dearth of patriotic leadership, high inclination towards parochialism and tendencies that obfuscate nation-building and the attainment of greatness in the nearest future. For him, extant order denoted in the political leadership thrown up by the two big parties have become anachronistic and therefore incapable of serving the future interests of this country. That decadent and stale order must be dismantled to allow a new seed of leadership to geminate and flourish.

    His solution to this systemic decay lies in the emergence of a body of new leadership that is not tainted and corrupted by old persuasions denoted by the two leading parties which in his view, have outlived their usefulness. A third force – a group of patriotic and selfless Nigerians committed to the overall growth and development of the country will do the magic of re-inventing the country. His anchormen quickly launched the coalition last week in Abuja and explained the objective is to see a new Nigeria, give leadership of the country to knowledgeable and vibrant young men and women since the APC and PDP have not been able to meet the aspirations of Nigerians.

    Within this context, the promoters are rooting for the old order to give way in the fashion of the Kuhnian Revolution. They envision a new theory, new order or paradigm emerging to supplant existing theories.

    Following that tradition, Obasanjo wants us believe that the theoretical basis or foundation for the continued existence of the two leading parties has been flawed. But he failed to let us into the processes leading to such conclusions except relying heavily on his observations of their failings which at best, can only be consigned to the realm of educated guess. Educated guess is of very questionable empirical value. Moreover, he failed to establish how his concept of an amorphous coalition provides that suitable alternative.

    Yes, Obasanjo identified some of the problems buffeting the country including, poor leadership and primordial tendencies competing with the central authority for the loyalty of the citizens thus rendering nation-building a pipe dream. Their causative factors are both systemic and behavioural and cannot be remedied overnight through the aggregation of people of diverse persuasions into a make-shift coalition.

    A hurried arrangement in the fashion proposed is of very limited value in addressing the very fundamental institutional and attitudinal issues that have continued to be the country’s albatross. Ironically, Obasanjo is not comfortable referring to his coalition as a third force. He seems afraid of the radicalism implied in that terminology.

    But in shying away from that, he complicates the philosophical basis on the desideratum of an alternative change agent. That confusion runs through his letter and the explanation offered by his loyalists while launching the coalition.

    There is no clarity in stating that nothing stops the movement from satisfying the conditions for fielding candidates for elections and his vow to quit if the coalition morphs into a political party. How do you give leadership of the country to the knowledgeable and vibrant young men outside the platforms offered by existing political parties? How do you achieve that ambition and vision of a new Nigeria-a sharp departure from our decadent past through a motley assemblage of disorganized, disoriented and seemingly disgruntled crowd? And the people promoting the idea, how free are they from those systemic ills for which a new paradigm has to emerge?

    It is obvious there is some confusion on the original philosophical vision of the coalition and what we are now being made to believe. That vision collapsed immediately they repudiated the idea of a third force. It collapsed the moment they prevaricated on whether the group will morph into a political party and field candidates. It is also obvious in the discordant tunes by Obasanjo and his henchmen.

    The problem Obasanjo ran into can be understood. He left the PDP on his own choice and helped in the emergence of the APC. Then, he had hurriedly announced his disinterest in partisan politics. From his observatory, he found out that there is no difference between the two leading parties. Some form of intervention is therefore required to steer the ship of the country alright. It goes without saying. The current parasitic and oligarchic class of leadership that emerges on the basis of political exigency rather than competence and merit must to give way for the type of vision Obasanjo nurses to flourish.

    But the processes to it have to be more far-reaching and radical than gathering and aggregating people under a coalition with no clearly defined objectives on how they intend to take over power. A third force should offer more attraction than the current equivocation the coalition represents. The third force or coalition should champion the restructuring of the country.  Restructuring will substantially address the issues Obasanjo raised.