The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • The odd couple

    The odd couple

    If you sat down to pen the profiles of Nigerian politicians, the first casualty will be loyalty. They cast betrayal as realism. So, for most politicians, many Nigerians were wrong to see the recent Senate rumpus as a morality tale. The Nigerian masses and politicians inhabit antipodal universes. The masses live in the world of good versus evil. Politicians bask in the world of us versus them.

    It is more like a game. Whoever wins is not intended to go to paradise. He is master of this universe, not God’s. As for the loser, better luck next time. They play the game with the excitement of children, but with the soul of Lucifer. Because of this game, many die, businesses atrophy, careers collapse, families vanish, whole towns are set ablaze.

    Nothing reinforces this narrative as the alliance of Atiku Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo in the intrigues to install Bukola Saraki as Senate president.

    Saraki knew his indebtedness to both men. After his first session as Senate helmsman, he paid a visit of gratitude to Atiku. Barely a week later, he flew to Ota to pay homage to Obj. When was the last time both men agreed on anything?

    Last year, Atiku did not seek and Obj did not enlist his support for the Adamawa titan’s zeal to be president.

    Not too long ago, Obj mocked the Adamawa titan when he was reportedly adopted as the consensus presidential candidate for the North. In front of reporters, the Owu dramatist as politician zipped up his Vicks inhaler and sniffed on it. Then like a moment of mock erotica, he exploded: “I dey laugh!” That was in 2010. Atiku, also gloating in his fleeting glory, fired back: “I still dey laugh!” That moment exemplified the narrative of two men. Once friends, once confidants, once partners, once making sacrifices for each other, once fighting each other’s battles, once playing off each other’s humour, once at table for breakfast, lunch and dinner, once co-conspirators, once number one and number two citizens.

    This is the story of David and Jonathan in another universe. But in Nigerian politics, it is the story of Jesus and Judas, or Caesar and Brutus. Each of them can slink out of one role and be the other. They are no saints and never perjure to be saints.

    In a story of the Owu chief’s trying times, we learn that Atiku visited Obj at his Ota Farm to tip him off on his impending arrest over coup plot in the Abacha era. When Abacha men arrived, a livid Atiku railed at them, showing his disgust for the arrest of a good and innocent man.

    After the story of the coup and Obj’s freedom, the Owu chief rose from the ashes of near obloquy and oblivion to a sort of statesman. The world said he was the only man who could save the nation after the ruins and intrigues of June 12. He picked Atiku, then governor-elect, to serve as vice president. This was tag team, many thought. Obj worked well with him, and delegated much to the deputy, including leaving executive meetings for him to preside over. There were many instances of backslapping and high fiving between them.

    But the long blade did not last in the quiver.  Suddenly the Owu chief, known for his foxy ways, realised he had put a jackal in charge of his roost. David and Jonathan became Caesar and Brutus, and it was hard to tell who was Caesar, since Brutus dripped out of everything each did. Plots of impeachment, court rulings, underhand deals with friends and foes, regional alliances and counter-alliances laced this story of two friends who wanted to bring each other down.

    But both of them found a common cause in Saraki. So bad was their rivalry and malice that the enemies of each of their enemies were their enemies, just as we see in the internecine battles in Syria. Saraki’s cause brought them together. What happened is no love fest and no hate parade. They still despise each other and need each other. What happened was no marriage. Their divorce is as permanent as their marriage. Saraki knows that, having triumphed in a Machiavellian theatre. Their alliances are like how writer Oscar Wilde describes marriage. “In marriage, as in war,” the bard asserts, “it is permitted to take advantage of the enemy.”

    Nor is Atiku or Obj alone. Remember Goodluck Jonathan? His friends are deserting him now. When APC was in the making, all comers converged. Those who believed and those who didn’t. They came for spoils but not for the masses, most of them. It was the platform for carpetbaggers. Beware when everyone loves you. Trouble is coming. In the aftermath of the NASS elections, we are not sure what APC is now.

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s everybody and nobody refrain has presented him as an aloof chief executive. That leaves the field for lieutenants, party apparatchiks, go-getters, buffoons and leeches to stake their games.

    A Buhari administration may well bring out the Lucifer in our politicians who will now play politics at his expense while swearing in his name. They see it as a game. They will try various cards, options, stunts, etc. If this goes, they keep going until something else works. In Yoruba, they call it “eyi je, eyio je.” It is a cynical game and a source of great scholarship at a sublime level. It is called the game theory. It has fascinated scholars for over a hundred years and spun 11 Nobel prizes. Perhaps the most famous is John Forbes Nash, whose theory earned him a Nobel Prize for economic science in 1994. He and his wife, who inspired a film called The Beautiful Mind, died recently in a car crash. But the game theory has been used to heal bodies, install statesmen, solve economic crisis and anticipate the future. But the difference between the developed world and ours is that we apply it with the bile of Beelzebub.  In our politics, we sell our souls. Like the stock character of many plays and novels from Goethe to Marlowe to Hardy, our politicians are like Mephistopheles, the Faustian demon who helps people sell their soul to the devil. So, while our politicians speak colourfully in colourful clothing and dole out money and rams and chickens to the masses, they are playing the game and wagering their souls.

    Buhari, as Segun Ayobolu warned in his column last Saturday, should beware not to play policy without politics as he did in his first incarnation in power. The military men in politics outfoxed him. He had to wait over two decades to return.

    In a democratic era, they are more foxy and ruthless because they play like children and scheme like the devil.

     

     

    INTELS, our ports and monopoly

    The word “trust” conjures confidence from others. But in business, trust originally meant something larger. It denoted confidence among businesses that came together under one umbrella. But as greed creeps in all human affairs, so did it happen to companies called The Trust in the Second Industrial Revolution. It led to the Anti-trust laws intended to restrain their poisonous influences as monopolies and oligopolies.

    In Nigeria, a company called INTELS is working on a dubious directive from the Federal Ministry of Transport and transmitted by the Nigerian Ports Authority. It came out in the last days of the Jonathan era against the law. It allows INTELS to negate the 2006 ports reform law that allows cargoes to berth on any port of choice in the country. INTELS now wants to monopolise, by the directive, all oil and gas cargoes at Warri, Onne and Calabar where it operates. This is monopolistic greed. Every cargo should berth wherever it pleases. Both ObJ and Yar’Adua governments reversed similar orders and set free the ports. Buhari should do same. It promotes fairness, choice and efficiency.

  • Workers’ salary arrears

    Within the last two weeks or so, the nation’s consciousness was awakened to the backlog of salaries owed workers by many state governments. The attention of this writer was first drawn to it by a call from the Osun State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) urging the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to come to the aid of the workers by donating food item and sundry relief materials to save them from starvation.

    At first, one thought it was one of those gimmicks by politicians to gain attention which may eventually add up to nothing. But then, the elections were already over. What purpose would such a seemingly campaign of calumny serve at this point in time, one had reasoned?

    Soon, events began to unfold in quick succession such that it became obvious that the call was not just for nothing. At least, two demonstrations in the state capital that drew attention to the desperate plight of workers were to follow subsequently. One of such was by civil society organizations during the June 12 celebrations.

    As if these were not enough to generate public concern, the state governor, Rauf Aregbesola was to shock everybody when he reportedly said the resolution of the salary arrears imbroglio was beyond him. He told state house reporters “the truth is that I will not fail to say that it is a situation absolutely beyond my control”.

    Aregbesola hinged his position on the sharp drop in federal allocations which subsequently disorganized his budget. But, in an apparent bid to stave off accusations of any form of mismanagement, the governor was quick to add that he had transformed the state than he met it in 2010 and that such transformation was as a result of effective application of resources. The message the governor intended to pass across was that though the salary situation was that bad, it should not be misconstrued as an evidence of reckless spending. We shall return to this later.

    Then enter the case of Benue State that is also in months of arrears such that have compelled Governor Ortom to conclude plans to borrow money to pay just one month across board. He has also been shouting on roof tops that the departed governor, Gabriel Suswam left a debt burden of N90 billion as against the N9.2 billion he had claimed.

    The list is endless. No less than 18 states are reported owing between two and 11 months salary arrears at the end of May. These are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River and Ekiti. Others are Imo, Katsina, Kogi, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo. The rest are Rivers, Plateau and Zamfara among others.

    Some of the defaulting governors have put up spirited efforts to clarify their positions on the salary arrears index. But even as they strive to give the impression that the situation is not all that bad, the bold face they feign pales into insignificance in the face of the pressure they now mount on the federal government for some bailout. Some of them have even gone further to demand a restructuring of the revenue allocation formula.

    Others have been striving to exculpate themselves from the chain of events that led to the current predicament. They lay the blame chiefly on the dwindling receipts from the federation account consequent upon the drop in oil price at the international market.

    Attempts have also been made to shift culpability to the regime of Jonathan for mismanaging the economy. Jonathan can as well be blamed for everything under the sun, including obvious excesses and duplicity of some of the governors both immediate past and serving.

    But at what point will the governors take direct responsibility for the management of the funds entrusted in their care? Why is it that some states are not owing despite the fact they are not immune from the factors cited by some of the governors for scandalously attempting to starve workers to death? Why are states like Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Imo, Abia and Ondo that are oil producing and receive higher revenue than others also owing?

    Answers to these posers can be located in how effective the respective governors managed resources at their disposal. And they inexorably point to the incongruity in attempts to evade responsibility by trying to solely hold other factors culpable. It is the responsibility of the governors to determine areas of priority in the disbursement of their revenue. If they decide to inject them to some other projects in utter neglect of workers salaries, it is their decision and they cannot shy away from its consequences.

    Effective planning would require that all competing needs are weighed on the scale ensuring no sector is funded to the detriment of others. If the governors had done that irrespective of the dwindling revenue, the situation might have been somehow different. The governors should take the blame for the backlog of salaries owed workers. After all, they ought to have provided for the rainy day since it is common place that states can solely depend on receipts from the federation account at their own peril.

    It is mismanagement of resources to deploy funds such that workers emoluments are not paid for months no matter how competing other needs were. That brings us to the Osun situation in which the governor had sought to rationalize the salary arrears on the ground that he has transformed the state through judicious application of funds. That could as well be. But a ‘judicious application’ of funds that left a backlog of seven months salaries ought to face another verification test. The first law of nature is self survival. Labor is also rated the most important factor of production. Other factors without the human capital will lead to nothing. It is smacks of inverted logic to canvass the argument of effective application of resources in the face of the scandalous inability of the government to pay months of salaries. You cannot have effective application of resource when one critical sector is yawning for urgent attention through obvious neglect. That is the obvious flaw in pushing that argument any further. He may have done well in other sectors. He may have invested heavily in infrastructure that will benefit humanity in the nearest future.

    But a situation that compelled a sitting governor to publicly admit helplessness says it all. He may have presented the matter as honestly as he found it. However, in portraying the picture of helplessness, he opened his flanks to diatribe. For, the immediate question the admission conjures is what business he still has there if the situation has defied him? That is why the governor’ altercation with Senator Ben Bruce on his comic gesture to donate part of his wardrobe allowance to Osun workers is patently unnecessary.

    Beyond these however, is the urgent need for a fundamental restructuring of the federal order. As long as we concentrate virtually all powers on the central authority, so long will systemic stress from the component units impair any meaningful progress. Happily, we now have a regime that has promised change. That change must be fundamental and far reaching for real results to be recorded. But, there are vested interests benefiting from the decadent past that will not let go. We must muster the political will to do the right thing through immediate constitutional change. Such change should devolve powers by allowing a greater measure of autonomy to the components units.

  • Saraki, Dogara’s triumph

    The emergence of Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara as the president and speaker of the Senate and House of Representatives respectively is now a settled issue. So also are the treacheries and high-wire politics that followed the contests. This conclusion is however, without prejudice to threats from some quarters to challenge the elections in court. If what we have been told about extant procedure for inaugurating the assembly is anything to go by, it does appear not much will come from such litigation.

    Diverse interpretations have been given to events that brought that pass. And they vary depending on the divide from which it is being viewed. Blames have also been freely traded.

    But the commonly held view is that the APC did not properly handle the crisis arising from disagreements over its mock elections. Not only was the party tepid in its resolution of the rebellion of some of its legislators, it committed a tactical error to have called for a meeting in another venue on the day of the inauguration. With the letter of proclamation, date and time duly signed and delivered by President Buhari, it is curious a meeting with APC senators-elect was hurriedly summoned for another venue around the same time. This says volumes about the handling of the schism arising from the mock elections. The argument that Buhari had just arrived that morning from a foreign assignment may not sway anybody given that the issue was there before he travelled.

    Obviously, the PDP put the situation to its advantage and could have taken up the senate presidency but perhaps, for the firm agreement they reached with Saraki. The PDP is now touted to have come into reckoning again such that its capacity to play the role of an effective opposition is being further strengthened. The election of Ike Ekweremadu as deputy senate president again, illustrates this viewpoint. There is also the argument in some quarters that even if all the APC senators-elect were at the chambers that morning, the outcome would not have changed. The numerical strength of the PDP and that of the dissenting senators-elect is cited to buttress this. This angle cannot be discounted. If anything, the election of Dogara with the full complement of legislators from all divide gives fillip to this perspective.

    However, there are those who scorn the success of the PDP as pyrrhic victory given that both Saraki and Dogara are all of the APC stock. This standpoint is no less appealing depending on how the game unfolds in the days ahead.

    It would appear all the contradictions that shaped those elections are not very obvious now. They are more likely to take clearer shape as the Buhari administration settles for the business of statecraft. All that can be reasonably conjectured, is that the way the coalition of forces at play during those elections manifest, will have wider repercussions for the party especially given that it has before now, been criticized as an amalgam of strange bedfellows with no soul of its own. Possibly, it is the above scenario that is bubbling.

    Various possibilities have been visualized. And much of these raise fresh challenges for the ruling party in terms of its cohesiveness, party supremacy, the discipline and commitment of members to party goals and objectives. There are also issues relating to principles and lack of party ideology.

    Expectedly, the APC has shown serious discomfort with the development. The party has rejected the emergence of Saraki and Dogara lamenting that it amounts to the highest level of “indiscipline and treachery to subject the party to ridicule and create obstacles for the new administration”. The party is highly piqued that the duo entered into an unholy alliance with the same people they worked hard to replace and promised to wield the big stick against them.

    But President Buhari had a different perspective and has gone ahead to recognise the new leadership promising to work with them to deliver his campaign promises to the people. Though he would have preferred the party choices to have prevailed, nonetheless he recognized that a constitutional process had been concluded through the rights of the legislators to elect their leaders.

    There are issues of interest for our democracy in the position taken by Buhari. And they strike a chord with that of former President Jonathan in the aftermath of the last presidential election. Buhari would have preferred his party’s choices to prevail. But events did not dictate so. He has accepted the outcome and promised to work with the new leaders for the stability of Nigeria’s constitutional order and in the overall interest of the common man. The president’s decision has all the trappings of patriotism and shares much in common with that of Jonathan when he saw the outcome of the last elections had tilted in favour of Buhari. Both are concerned with order, peace and the deepening of the democratic process irrespective of their own interests and preferences. That is the way to go.

    There is little doubt that such compromise positions will go at length not only to stabilize the country but the democratic process especially given the schism that trailed the last elections. If this represents a new frame of mind by our leaders, we will soon be on the path to real progress and sustainable development.

    But for the APC, it will go for broke with errant members. It is utterly averse to any alliance with the PDP that would incapacitate the party from delivering on its promise.

    The party leadership is within its rights to be livid with errant members. They are also right in their anger especially given the emergence of Ekweremadu of the PDP as the deputy senate president. In their calculations, there is no way they would have factored in either the PDP or the South-east in the sharing equation.

    That alone may sustain allegations of betrayal, treachery and an attempt to ridicule the party. It is also at the root of the accusation that the action of the dissenting members would create obstacles for the new administration. Should it necessarily be so? That is the issue to ponder.

    The APC is at pains with the reality of sharing power with the PDP, a party they fought very hard to defeat at the elections. The feeling is that the PDP, still nursing the wounds from the last elections, may be out for vengeance. But the APC legislators will somehow, still have to work with their PDP counterpart even if things had gone their way. So instead of court action or the impeachment option, the legislators should cultivate each other and rise to the challenges of law making for the order and good governance of the country.

    We would not have arrived at this point if all were well within the party. And the situation may not easily abate as indications are there is more to it than the selfish interests of the dissenting members. Saraki and Dogara may be the arrow heads of the rebellion. But the tunes they are dancing are definitely coming from drum beats hidden elsewhere.

  • First storm

    First storm

    Some have called it Buhari’s litmus test. Others have said, he rose above the fray. Some others said, it had nothing to do with Buhari or APC, but it signalled that, in Nigeria, democracy had come to stay. A voice of a partisan edge growled that it was the rebirth of PDP.

    But the battles for the Senate and the House signified Buhari’s first storm. The cloud gathered, the lighting flashed, droplets of rain drew faint lines on the horizon. But President Muhammadu Buhari did not know they presaged a storm. Or did he encourage the elemental fury and play bystander?

    It was so perhaps because of his often quoted assertion that he belonged to everybody and belonged to nobody. While the Senate sat and anointed Bukola Saraki as Senate President, the senators regarded him as a nobody even though he called a meeting of all party leaders, including members of both chambers. Or was he the somebody who goaded them on as though he didn’t?

    The other miscue was when Femi Adesina, his media spokesman, broke the ice and said it “somewhat” served the higher purpose of democracy. And analysts wondered, how could it be good when your party lost in its first battle after the elections? Later, in an apparent contradiction, Garba Shehu pitched in for the president and said the APC senators defied their party leader and president. Is it the case of a stern, muscular Buhari playing a wishy-washy card?

    I chewed both releases and wanted to know if Adesina had one brief and Shehu another and whether one was intended to annul the other. That, I thought, was the problem when two persons serve as a president’s spokesmen. I think it is not neat and looks at best like duplication and potentially as a battleground. For the sake of both gentlemen, I hope not.

    “Somewhat” in Adesina’s statement implied ambiguity in the process. But Shehu’s follow-up indicated that the president was interested but not interested enough. For a party of change, that is not good enough.

    But by defying their party leaders and conniving with the opposition, we shall say it was the dubious triumph of politics over commonsense or over values. But what is politics, but the art of the possible. That was the point of the Saraki victory. But the presidency has not up to the time of writing made any indication of moral tone. It has spoken the language of politics and law, and not of values. The reason Buhari was voted in by those enamoured of his biography was his moral and puritan appeal. We did not see this in this first and auspicious test.

    Some have said Saraki was going to win anyway. So why did he not wait for the president? It was an overthrow of decency, if it was political marksmanship. But for me, neither Saraki nor even the PDP lawmakers deserve all the blame. Were the PDP supposed to wait for the president because of an APC meeting? The PDP lawmakers do not belong to APC, so they had the right to fuel the rebellion. On the meeting the party scheduled, we learned that Buhari’s advance party was at the venue, but he did not come. Why not? Shehu said he was about to come when the fait accompli of Saraki’s victory occurred. Was that not enough reason for the president to express open disavowals of condemnation rather than a tame Channels interview? Or shall we say the advance party of the president was a dummy and he was not going to appear at the meeting? After all, Adesina said it was a party meeting and not the president’s.

    That is where the spirit of loyalty failed in APC, and that is where Saraki and company, including Atiku Abubakar, lacked moral grace. More blame lands right at the doorsteps of the president. And I think the president knows that, and that accounted for the afterthought that was Shehu’s frenzied intervention on Channels Television to clarify the president’s stand. The meeting could have been held earlier. Perhaps the previous night.

    But the die is cast. Both houses have leaders that defeated the party choices. I think it is an early lesson for the president, unless the president wants it so. He should now understand that his presidential office compels him to be interested in the direction of politics. If he did not have his politics right, he would not be president today. He would not have the opportunity to set policies. Politics defines policies. What policies can he champion with a Senate full of the members and sentiment of the ancient regime?

    Atiku Abubakar, who lost to Buhari during the APC primaries, recently said the president is a leader and not interested in politics. Atiku, a restless man of ambition but little vision, received Saraki after the victory. He confirmed all the reports that he championed rebellion in his party. The peripatetic harlot of politics who sways right and left simultaneously, may be smacking his lips, but he is no noble man of this era.

    I hope Buhari has learned that he has to be both politician and leader. If you are president, it is because you have a vision. If you have vision, it is because you need men who think like you to pursue the vision. So, as president he was wrong if he stayed off who emerged as leaders of both chambers. And if he didn’t, what sort of agenda can he push now?

    Dogara emerged in a clear contest in the House, and a graceful Femi Gbajabiamila has conceded. If Saraki and his men had waited and allowed the other APC men to be in the chambers, he probably would have won. That could have dispelled suggestions of bad faith, desperation and even the air of hurried primitivism that sullied the process of his emergence.

    President Buhari has started off on a learning curve, and he ought to know that both houses can paralyse him if the PDP works with Saraki in a camp against those who were absent in the chambers.

    What has haunted the president is the “everybody” and “nobody” refrain. I don’t know of any successful leader in modern democracy that is not interested in the leadership of the legislature. The parliamentary system places the law chamber at the centre of activity. The challenge of the Obama presidency is the hostility, sometimes racism, of the Congress. He has not been able to work with Senate leader Boehner. And when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, she even sometimes did not pick his calls. Obama has disavowed the mushiness of schmoozing with the lawmakers. They have paid him back in brutal kind.

    The National Assembly story is good in that it has given the opposition a new bite, a potential fang. Opposition reminds me of the lament of Poet Walt Whitman: “my enemy is dead. A man divine like myself is dead.” You need your enemies. APC needs a soulful opposition.

    But the APC will end up a contraption of convenience if it allows itself to collapse so early. It will be bad for our democracy, and it will deprive us of the quality of dialectical tension required to build a vibrant democracy.  The APC was built in order to kill its merging partners. They should not hark back to ACN, CPC, ANPP, etc in the pursuit of a spoils system. It will only suggest that what we have is not a party but various parts that have come to pack their own parts of the booties. It will be naïve to shut out their birth places, but to hold on to them as reference points of loyalty only tells us that the party has a lot of work to do to build a family.

    It also tells us that the battle to entrench it as a platform of ideas has not begun. This is still a democracy of big men and not of conscience. That is the lesson President Buhari must take from the National Assembly narrative.

    The National Assembly story may determine much of the pattern of the Buhari era. He should beware not to shoot himself in the foot. As a solider, the message cannot be lost.

  • Amosun and LG autonomy

    Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun struck the right chord last week when he lent his weight to the agitation for local government autonomy in the country. That was not all. He equally had pricking words for those of his colleagues opposed to it.

    Hear him: “I support local government autonomy. The autonomy issue is in my own interest. Some governors said that granting autonomy to local governments will not favour them. Those governors that the autonomy thing will not favour are those governors that deduct from local government funds”.

    He has said it all. Apparently drawing from President Buhari’s inaugural speech in which he promised to ensure probity and accountability at all tiers of government, Amosun touched the heart of the matter when he fingered duplicity as the leitmotif for some of his colleagues’ opposition to autonomy. Now one of theirs has spoken so forthrightly on the issue, we can now fathom why the local governments in many states have proved incapable of rising up to their statutory duties.

    In that speech, Buhari had said that though there are constitutional limits to the powers of the three tiers of government, he would not close his eyes to what is happening at the states and local governments especially with the operations of the Joint Account.

    This has been interpreted by many as an indication that the era of state governors unduly dipping their hands into the funds of the local governments will soon be over. That will be a great relief. No doubt, the joint account system has been variously abused. Instead of the process ensuring that funds meant for the local governments are deployed for meaningful development, some of the governors have turned round to appropriate them for purposes other than that for which they were meant for.

    What we have seen since the return of democracy in 1999, is a situation in which the state governors appropriate these funds and only remit to the local councils any amount it pleased them. This has left the local governments increasingly incapable of discharging their statutory functions.

    Not unexpectedly, agitations have arisen regarding the desirability of the joint account system in the face of the interferences and withholding of funds meant for the development of the local governments. That has also been the basis for the raging demands for local government autonomy. Not only do the state governments through the powers conferred on the state assemblies by Section (7) of the constitution incapacitate the effective operations of the councils, some have gone ahead to reduce their tenure to enable them take charge of the funds accruing from the federation account.

    The first set of elected local government officials in 1999 were supposed to serve for three years. Since then, state assemblies, goaded by the governors have reduced such tenure, some of them to one year. Even then, local government elections are rarely held and when it pleases them to do so, it is at the whims and caprices of the state governments. What has been in vogue is the aberration called transition committees- a subterfuge for handpicking local government functionaries who do the bidding of the governors. This is so despite the fact that the constitution guarantees a local government system by democratically elected local government councils.

    Questions have been raised as to the desirability of retaining the local governments as the third tier of government in the face of the refusal of some governors to have in place democratically elected councils. Constant interference with local government funds by governors has also been an issue. The continued relevance of the joint account system given that its operations have been at cross purposes with the spirits guiding the delineation of the councils as the third tier of government has also come under serious challenge. All these are clear indications that our local government system is sick and therefore in urgent need of a dose of therapy both on a short and long terms.

    Those opposed to the independence of the local government base their arguments on some warped, unverifiable and tenuous grounds. They allege among others, immaturity of the local governments and their leadership to be left unchecked by the state governments. They also cite aspects of the constitution that empowers the state government through the state assemblies to regulate operations at that level.

    The issue of immaturity is neither here nor there. At best, such a sweeping conclusion is nothing but a figment of educated guess. Sadly, empiricism places very low value on matters of educated guess.

    The conclusion runs into bigger problem if it conveys the impression that state governors are better managers of funds and their mentoring is required for effective deployment of local government funds. This suggestion pales into insignificance when weighed against the monumental corruption that goes on at the state levels.

    Just last week, the EFCC rolled out a list of governors who served between 1999 and 2007 that are currently facing prosecution. It also reeled out some of the properties so far recovered from some of them. Both the number of former governors under trial, the quantum of property and money involved put a lie to any claim that they are better managers of public funds. There is therefore no justifiable reason why they should be allowed to continue appropriating local government funds to help themselves. The spirit of the joint account system has been abused and bastardized by some state governors for self-serving reasons. That has been the basis for their continued opposition to local government autonomy. That is the point Amosun has put very succinctly and he spoke the minds of many.

    Moreover, the local government system has been recognized as the fastest vehicle to convey development to the grassroots. This is especially so, as the boundaries of the 774 local governments coincide with the boundaries of this country. Thus, any development strategy that effectively targets that level of government with a high degree of success, would ipso facto translate to the development of the entire country.

    That underscores the importance of the local government system. It is for the same reason that more discerning and enterprising states have gone further to create local government development centres. It would therefore smack of a huge contradiction for state governors that have gone ahead to create development centres because of their capacity to quicken development, to now turn around and oppose local government autonomy. That was the background from which Amosun was speaking.

    If the immaturity of the local governments being bandied is referenced upon the quality of leadership at that level, the governors are solely to blame. They are to blame for handpicking surrogates and all manner of stooges to stand for elections that have been predetermined by the so-called state independent electoral commissions. They are to blame for not allowing real elections to take place at that level. So if the competences of the elected or appointed local government officials are in doubt, the governors should take the blame. They cannot turn around and hide under some of the monsters they created to fault the capacity and ability of that system to function optimally.

  • Eagle and earthworm

    Eagle and earthworm

    He strode into the hall to the cheerful buzz of editors. After the hoopla and acrimony of the polls, Lagos was  serene with hope. The task of the new governor was to articulate what he wanted to do.

    No, he was quick to note, he was not going to address us on his plans. They are all public knowledge, enunciated during the barnstorming and debate of the election season. That night was for the bonhomie of conversation. Over meals and drinks, he could hear from the gate keepers of news and commentary their sense of the city, of what the people yearned for. He, too, would unveil the entrails of his minds.

    Very quickly, the quiet evening eased into intellectual repartee. Jokes came as jibes, jibes as jokes. Introspections burned out of fiery lips. Questions rippled in the air. Suggestions laced insights. In certain moments, it reminded me of what I read about salons of Enlightenment Europe where some of the great ideas were birthed. But that night did not soar that high, it just had intimations of it. At least, as it referred to Lagos State, the oasis of Nigeria.

    The man in the middle was Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. With his beige agbada and cap now illumined with a smile, now shaded with a somewhat beatific mien, he knew quite early that the editors were pregnant with curiosity.

    What was he going to do about Apapa and its congestions? Lekki is a new suburb out of control with its traffic snarl? What the hell is the story about Lagos’ over N400 billion debt? What about the Ikorodu and the Mile 12 roads and Ayobo and the Fourth Mainland Bridge?

    The governor understood that the fulcrum of the night’s obsession was how to move in Lagos. To move Lagos ahead, the residents have to move well. This harked back to my first-ever conversation with him over a year ago. His passion then was transportation. His thoughts chimed in with the concerns of the editors.

    Once he spoke, he wrapped up the audience in the methodical cadence of his speech. Never mellifluous but never boring, he spoke like a man working towards a mathematical solution. The accountant in him was in rhythm. Whether he spoke about the financing of Lagos in which he clarified that the debt was a mere three per cent of the state’s mammoth money and it was to be paid in between 25 and 30 years, or about the train project inherited from the Fashola administration, he was focused on the dynamic of a city on the move.

    He spoke with the mastery of figure and place. His about three decades of work in various parts of Lagos shone through. He spent most of those years in local governments. Whether on Mushin, or Badagry or Ajegunle, he spoke not with professorial abstraction, but with the familiarity of a yeoman. Remember Maracanã Stadium? Not the fable of Brazil, but the athletic audacity of Ajegunle that named a playground after the South American landmark. He referred to it when an editor spoke about a yet uncompleted stadium in another part of town. He said he had just discussed it in an earlier meeting, in which he laid out plans to rev up community sports in the city of Lagos.

    He had touted his immersion in the interstices of Lagos as his special resume for governorship. He showed that with superfine lucidity, in answer to every question. It was as though he had spent his entire life preparing for the job.

    So, what about the traffic situation. “We are going to have a traffic summit in Lagos soon,” he announced, indicating that he had anticipated the worry about how Lagosians move. He also articulated some ideas roiling his mind in specific areas. Should we continue with roundabouts on the Lekki corridor, or introduce American style intersections? Although he admits erecting flyovers could ease vehicular flow, it will take some time to accomplish. His eyes were focused on quick wins first.

    On Apapa, an APC government in the centre could lead to better collaboration to decongest traffic while also focusing on the need to develop the other ports. He would leverage that virtue to revamp that economic hub. All developments seem to move towards the island. Reversing that trend is one of the virtues of the rail project, he said. The cost to complete it is, however, humongous, but it is a task that beckons. So, he noted the advantages. The journey from Mile 2 to CMS is about 20 minutes, including about four stops. That means businesses can erupt along the way with improved property value, and development can move to other areas, such as Ikorodu and Ipaja. Another deep sea port also awaits in Badagry with its promise of tourism. All these will take attention away from the island.

    As people move, so they dream. Life is nothing without movement. “There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here,” noted Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher of the human id. He said further that “life itself is but motion.” The whole purpose of movement is to stay still, so that we move again. When we leave home, it is because we want to stay at work, at that party, at that friend’s home, at the birthday, at that funeral. But eventually, as the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard notes, we want to go home. All literature from Soyinka’s The Road to Kerouac’s On the Road to Conrad’s Lord Jim to Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi, man’s chief aim is rest, an irony for a restless creature.

    The night left out some key discussions about health care and education, especially about Lagos as a melting pot, given the firestorm generated about lagoon and peaceful coexistence. It reflected either satisfaction with Ambode’s inaugural speech about building a rainbow coalition for all, or a sense that it was just a political distraction from a peaceful city.

    Governor Ambode told senior civil servants that he was not going to reinvent the wheel, but to oil it. As he simplified his mission to the editors, his dream is to make life easier and Lagosians happier.

    He is going to ride on the foundation set by the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu administration and built on by Fashola’s. As Seneca famously noted, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” With his clinical mind and ample experience, Lagos seems to have rolled into the hands of an able manager.

    Governor Ambode has the advantages of both the eagle and earthworm. As the eagle, he has been at the top tier of administration as the accountant-general of the state. He has walked through the portals of the world’s best schools from Harvard to Pennsylvania. As the earthworm, he has wallowed in the labyrinth of the people. He has worked and lived in Mushin, Ipaja, Ajegunle, etc. So, he has smelled the rose and touched the offal. He has the palate of the palace and poor. He has hugged kings and swaddled orphans.

    It’s time to turn these gifts into assets for Lagos. A man fondly called AA, Governor Ambode has an A-plus mind and has the potential to be Nigeria’s alpha governor, both in Alphabet and in Acts (AA). As the Nike add urges, just do it.

  • From Goodluck to Goodwill

    From Goodluck to Goodwill

    My great joy is that darkness did not fall on the country on May 29. A new democracy illumined the entrails of Eagle Square.

    Jonathan, with repressed, if dignified, reluctance passed the torch to the dangling septuagenarian general who should now rise to the role of avatar.

    The day began with the glory of the soldier. From my seat, I thrilled to the elegant discipline of the parade, the colours, the starchy beauty of the uniforms, the stentorian authority of the commanding officers, the blend of the martial with the cultural. The bright and sultry morning rippled with familiar church and folk songs drummed out by the military bands to the accompaniment of saxophones and cymbals. With gusto the audience watched the formations. The lines were now straight, now fluid, a jigsaw puzzle broken and restored. The soldier’s feet rose, zipped forward, stamped down, up again in rhythm. The shoulders turned and eyes glowed in tandem with erect necks. It was the military at the service of the civil order.

    The irony was not lost that in this transition, a man was morphing from a general to president. In this ritual, the army was playing the role of this glorious surrender. Perhaps it was the last rite of Buhari officially ceding the army in him to a democrat. He swiveled from GMB to PMB – President Muhammadu Buhari.

    There was a torch of vanity to some guests. Nigerians who came wanted to be seen and heard. They appeared and spoke with their sartorial displays, especially the ex-this and ex-that. They wanted cameras to click. Others saw it as opportunity to rise out of the shadows, to commingle with perceived potential powers brokers of the new dispensation. They twirled their business cards, fawned before the new big men. Some told the big men stories about their past meetings or something they did together. Some others just worked the memories of the big men to remember them. “I was that guy or that woman, do you recall?” they would ask, simpering. The big man would feign a kindled memory. Yes, he remembered and asked after the family, and both moved on.

    Some just wanted to be seen so they could be drafted into a project or job. Cell phones were at the ready to take pictures with the big men, just to force some sort of intimacy even if the big men only obliged out of courtesy. I observed this more at the two banquets, the inaugural one with Jonathan attending, and the gala, which was an APC gig.

    Once Jonathan and Buhari arrived, the formal ceremony began. The ushering in of GEJ was more dramatic than Buhari’s, and that’s understandable. It was the last grand act of the departing President. Guards accompanied his SUV on both sides as it glided slowly to the front of the state box. The man alighted and walked in with his usual casual gait and smile into the box and his seat, his last front roll in Nigerian history.

    When Vice President-elect, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) strode to the platform for swearing-in, the audience realised that something epochal was happening. Once he, and his elegant wife, had read out their oaths of office, a sigh of history filled the commodious square.

    Then we saw the rites that followed after PMB was sworn in, and it dawned we now had a new president. An era had passed. Jonathan stood with respect to the majesty of a system that ushered him in just four years earlier after he had eased into the position when Yar’Adua died.

    He seemed lonely from where I stood near the platform. He was almost unaccompanied in his last day in office. Not his wife, not many of his presumed great friends were present.

    More telling was when he walked out of the platform through the steps to his vehicle. He never returned to the state box to say a final goodbye. As he descended the steps, he met the tall ex-governor Timipre Sylva, shot out his hand and shook hands with the man he ousted with impunity from the Bayelsa throne and hounded with the EFCC.

    “Sylva,” he said with a smile. Sylva smiled back and greeted. It was curt and telling. I wondered what coursed through the ex-president’s mind. Was it disguised defiance or apology?

    What was more curious was when his SUV left. The crowd around the car waved with deep feeling, but it seemed a genuine pity glazed their eyes as they saw him go. He waved back through the tinted window.

    The stage turned to Buhari, who mounted a vehicle and rode around the square to inspect guards and wave to the audience. The army again regaled us with their poetry of the parades, a thing that made me wonder if it was this same army that chafed at the predations of Boko Haram. I also thought the army was so beautiful it is a pity they have to shed blood. I loved the 21 gun salutes and the chaotic flutter that greeted the release of birds at the inauguration.

    The highlight, however, was Buhari’s maiden speech. It was elegantly couched speech with the right tone. The crowd cheered to the everybody and nobody phrase. But I still wonder if it meant he did not belong to APC or those on whose back he rode to power. It will be clear in coming months. For his and our sake, I hope he did not mean he would not have primary constituency of consulting. No great leader in history shunned the platform on which he rose. His speech reflected a Unitarian impulse when he espoused the independence of local government.  A throwback to military era? He did not seem to be in sync with the idea of fiscal federalism by promising to interfere in erring states. Did he mean it in an authoritarian way or as moral leadership? I expect that he could use his bully pulpit to initiate a constitutional federalism that is at odds with today’s malformed structure.

    Some expected a hammer and anvil temper, but I disagree. His pitch dropped halfway through, indicating tiredness. His handlers must learn to manage the exertions of a man of his age. His speech might have been shorter given the ritual rigours of the day in relentless sun. For me the speech was less moving than the one he gave at the gala later that night where he spoke from the heart.

    On the gala, what was Tunde Ayeni of the N5 billion campaign donation for GEJ doing there? Has APC decided to associate with such characters? Not good. The beautiful Joke Silva, who was compere, either naively or out of sublime mischief, acknowledged his presence. It was a dark spot in a fine day. I expect that he – with the Vice president – will publish the declared assets as promised during the campaign. He owes that to Nigerians as a matter of honour. With Boko Haram pounding Borno and Yobe, it is surprising he has not even announced his chief security adviser, as well as key staff. As he has noted, the job at hand is urgent. It is still early days though, but Buhari must dispel fears of the dillydally.

    Well, “the revels now are ended,” noted Shakespeare in The Tempest, and Jonathan is no longer in “cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces…solemn temples…” His time, like an “insubstantial pageant,” has faded into thin air. The substance now belongs to Buhari. It will work not with good luck but goodwill with hard work.

    Ambo and the rainbow

    For all its grandeur, Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s inaugural speech struck a tone of harmony. After all the truculent cacophonies of the campaign season that saw religion pit itself against religion, and tribe overshadowed tribe in bitter acrimony, it was heartening to hear the new governor note that Lagos is for all. In his voluminous white agbada and sunny face, he promised to erect a big tent. I call it Ambo’s rainbow.

    His opponent had tried to cast him as the candidate of a part against all, and the image of lagoon drenched a sense of coexistence Lagos always knew. In the coming months, we expect to see fruits of this so that the past of doubt will give in to a future of peace and plenty in Lagos, the oasis of Nigeria.

  • End time signals

    Those tempted to construe this topic from the prism of the biblical end time should hold it. This is because the subject matter has neither anything to do with the scriptures nor the chain of events that will herald its projected end time.

    End time according to the scriptures, will be signposted by thunder, lightning, earthquake, fear and awe. On that day, humans, dead and living are expected to give account of their lives to the almighty God- a day of judgment with verdicts varying from the good, the bad and the ugly. That is as far as the scriptures are concerned.

    We are here concerned with events of politics and not religion. It would appear there is something in our current politics that shares some semblance with the biblical end time which should not be overlooked. This should not be surprising as the dividing line between religion and politics has always been a matter of intense debate.

    Medieval philosophers such as St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas made a classification between the corporal and ecclesiastical realms and contended that affairs of the state should be separated from that of the church. That has been a cardinal principle of the organization of modern governments in varying degrees.

    The end time setting may be handy in capturing the chain of events that played out in this country in the last two weeks or so leading to the change of leadership. Within that time frame, several negative events were either activated or played out within this country to raise fears as to whether we were about facing our own version of the political end time? With a few days to the handover to the Buhari administration which was eventually consummated at the weekend, the nation virtually came to a halt. It all started with independent oil marketers refusing to dispense petroleum products until they were paid all outstanding arrears of fuel supplied to the government. They were said to be afraid that the incoming government will not be willing to pay them especially given the controversy and scandals that have hallmarked the so-called subsidy payments. Then came in very quick succession, a plethora of strikes from sundry oil workers and organized labour unions demanding salary increases and all that.

    Their net effect was a virtual halt in economic and social activities such that raised fears as to whether our democracy and the impending handover would be eventually imperilled. The situation was so bad that banks had to cut down their working hours for lack of diesel. GSM providers also threatened to shut down for the same reasons. Not unexpectedly, these had very deleterious effects on power supply which further dipped to an all time low on account of non supply of gas and vandalism of critical power supply equipments. The nation was on edge as everything came to a near standstill. It was a period never witnessed even in the days of acute fuel scarcity which had stabilized in the last five years or so in many parts of the country.

    Since then, there have been varying views as to who to hold responsible. Accusing fingers have been pointed at the government since the buck stops at its table. Many see it as ample evidence of the running aground of the nation’s economy by the Jonathan administration.

    Yet, for some others like the Arewa Consultative Forum ACF, it was a deliberate plot by Jonathan to hinder the smooth take-off of the Buhari regime. Citing the energy crisis and fuel scarcity, the forum said the situation was a bad parting gift from Jonathan.

    But as the forum spoke, Jonathan was at the Federal Executive Council meeting blaming the chain of events on those who are out to sabotage his administration. Describing the situation as outright sabotage, he queried the coincidence of these strikes and demands for salary increases just a few days to the expiration of his administration.

    Before Jonathan spoke, the outgoing Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had on another occasion sought to know why diesel that has already been deregulated was also scarce. She left his audience without doubt that there is more to the strikes than the dispute between the government and oil marketers on subsidy payments.

    That has been the blame game even as the situation has been stabilizing as the strikes have been called off with fuel selling well above the controlled price. With these, our fears of the political end time has been stymied albeit, temporarily.

    But issues regarding who was responsible for those chains of events would linger for quite some time. Discerning people would have to make up their minds between the ACF and Jonathan who is saying the truth. They will have to make up their minds on whose side the weight of guilt tilts. We need to consider the possibility that Jonathan engineered those who nearly brought his administration down in its last days, vis-à-vis what he stands to gain from it. There is also the need to take a critical perspective of the alleged plot to scuttle the smooth handover to Buhari through contrived strikes. What gains are there for him to make by activating a chain of events which outcome would eventually ridicule his regime in its last days in office? And at any rate, who takes responsibility for anything that imperils the nation before the handover? These are the issues to ponder.

    They should be resolved taking into account the issues raised by Jonathan that the strikes were unleashed to sabotage his administration with only a few days to go. They should be resolved taking copious cognizance of the scarcity of diesel that has long been deregulated. What were the demands of the marketers on the issue of diesel that it also went scarce during the period? These are some of the moot questions that may lead us to resolve some of the issues that have been bandied.

    Beyond these, Jonathan appeared to have raised the bar of these contradictions when in response to calls for his regime to be probed, he accepted the challenge but with a proviso that it should go beyond his administration.  He wants the probe to include the way oil wells and fields were allocated in the past. He wants such a probe to unravel how oil fields, marginal oil wells and others were in the past allocated and if extant laws of this country were followed.

    Since it is all about oil and oil revenue, the challenge by Jonathan must be taken up by Buhari having now been sworn in. There is a lot going on within the oil sector that needed to be exposed. Jonathan must have some vital information from his vintage office and Nigerians should demand full investigations into the entire oil sector. Much of the corruption we finger in the oil distribution chain may be a child’s play in the face the monumental rot in the allocation of oil fields and wells. He has let out the cat and no attempt should be made to cover it up. The time has come to expose the cabal that is making a fortune of our oil resources taking advantage of the high positions they hitherto occupied.

    That should be the heuristic value of the dialectics that have been activated by the clash of interests among the ruling elite bent on circulating power between themselves. Buhari must take up this challenge to disprove the Marxian notion that the state and its structures are instruments of oppression in the hands of the ruling class. The probe must reassure Nigerians that oil is our collective patrimony rather than that of a privileged class. The time for reckoning has come; our political end time.

     

  • Curtain closes

    Curtain closes

    The Jonathan era ends in a few days, and he departs without the sort of farewell party that heroes get. It was a mock epic when he ascended the throne. We thought we had made a giant of a small man. When the curtain closes, it will be a humpty-dumpty disaster, an epic collapse.

    But it will be less a Jonathan collapse than the fruit of our collective naiveté. On voting day, we cursed ourselves with our thumbs. It was an example of how democracy can fall on its own sword. Every democracy, though, is entitled to its own tears.

    Yet, when his story began, many expected he would serve as a revolutionary tonic. That was what gave him a rousing mandate, if it was all based on sentiment. The sentiment was real across the country. As Oscar Wilde noted, humans are not rational beings. We are sentimental beings.

    The only region immune to that infection was the core north. That region, however, has had to sulk or yelp or resort to self-help in the past six years.

    But not they alone. Everybody. We all saw a man with a deceptively meek face and mellow voice and pious appeal con a nation with the apparent simplicity or even naivety of both mien and gesture. He was supposed to be the meek man upon the throne.

    When his predecessor Yar’Adua was sick, a cabal with a parochial world view and ruthless will to power shielded the frail, gaunt, disappearing soul and wove yarns about a miracle rebound. He was already on his way back to office and to duty, and all his detractors wished him dead. They were half right. His detractors thought the death of Yar’Adua would give the country a sort of divine verdict:  a victory over the north’s proprietary hubris that “entitled” them to rule over the rest of us.

    It was though not a case of whole-hearted malice. They did not wish Yar’Adua dead because they hated them. After all, Yar-Adua was, when healthy, a modest performer. But the detractors could live with his demise because it offered a bright new vista. It enabled the nation to robe their humble candidate with a royal apparel. Bring the casket for the solemn dead. But bring the diadem and let us crown the little man made giant by fate.

    So, Jonathan was a project of necessity. A son of a humble village tucked in the backwaters of oil who had no shoes and no pedigree and no royal boast. A son who had nothing but his instinctive connection to the common folk. A man Baba Iyabo loved and adopted as a son. Why not him this time instead of the hauteur of the past? Why not give him the grace of our collective claps and vault the pauper over the princes who failed?

    The rhetoric and intrigue of the cabal were barefaced, and they turned the national stage into a drama of the dead who must live in spite of the verdict of God. It was like the Poem In Memoriam by Leopold Senghor in which he lamented about the “dead who have always refused to die.”

    No one heard Yar’Adua speak in his last days, yet the cabal said his voice roared like the waves. No one heard his muscles crackle or his feet stomp, but they said he was up and about. No one saw him, yet they made us seem blind while they alone saw. They witnessed the miracle that was meant for us. They made us seem absent at our own theatre. We all became Thomas Didymus. But they did not let us believe until he was in a state beyond our sight. The only commoner who could see him was a mortician.

    It was also not about keeping Yar’Adua afloat but a contempt for a man because of where he came from, about a royal occlusion of a subaltern from power. This column fulminated, and defended Jonathan’s right to succeed Yar’Adua. I even titled one column, “Let Jonathan be.” It was injustice and it defiled the holy order of the republican spirit to deny him.

    But Jonathan eventually prevailed. Democracy and good sense had their way over the cabal, a word that suffused the national conversation. Peace defeated peacock. With the fears of the soldier’s return to power, the nation’s breakup and constitutional stasis over, Jonathan’s victory took another narrative. It was no longer about the right of a vice president to become president.

    It was the tale of a commoner who had a right to the regal palate. An Otuoke man had the right to be president. Even though his party signed a pact of zoning, he was immune. A caveman can clutch at his rights without honour. But a man of honour will not live with himself though he has a right to the prize. His honour forbids it.

    That was the beginning of this column’s falling-out with Jonathan. It was clear he was not going to run a country based on values, but crass opportunism. It was the birth seed of impunity and corruption. When most Nigerians lined up behind him, this column warned about the danger ahead. First, I believed that he ought to have stepped aside, and organised an election as a statesman and not staked himself for the throne. His zoning pact demanded that. The moral future of Nigeria deserved it. Ambition came before country, Jonathan rode on small sentiment and he became president.

    The other objection was that as acting president, his regime had begun wholesale awards of contracts of jobs not done. We were too dazed by the biography of the shoeless applicant for us to see the leaking roof.

    Today, we have seen him take trillions of Naira into a prodigal’s market. He bought a lot, but he brought home nothing.  We owe $60 billion. That is why, as he leaves power, power is worse than the first few days of his office when Barth Nnaji crafted the roadmap of power. The eastern brothers and sisters who loved him in spite and even because of his sins, cannot point to a second Niger Bridge. Maina, NNPC, Oduah, Alison-Madueke and subsidy parasites are poster faces of impunity and corruption. Even arithmetic was corrupted, and it took his defeat for 19 to regain its integrity, bona fides and superiority over 16.

    The commoner is poor, and the country too. As he leaves office, fuel queues have returned. It was so at the beginning of his reign. It is so today as he walks into the sunset. Sad. Anticlimactic. Paralytic.

    His story is the contrast to a man of history known as Mahatma Ghandi. He also came from a humble past. But he rose to become a lawyer, and during the nationalist maelstrom against British colonialism, he was both architect and point man of the fight.

    But he, unike Jonathan, began as a dolled-up aficionado of western suits with jacket, white shirt and tie. His feet were not of the Otuoke variety. He had shoes. But as the struggle wore on, he chose the path of true simplicity. Ghandi learned from Thoreau to actualise the principle of civil disobedience.

    He decided to do away with the finesse of social polish and sartorial nicety. He wore a spare cloth called khadi and he gave terror to Britain. So frustrated was Churchill that he barbed him with a racist slur, calling him a “half-naked kafir.” His simple ways were marked also by fasting for the cause of Indian liberation and peace. He ranks with few men of austere dignity in history like Jesus and Budha.

    Jonathan moved from the niggardly background of a shoeless man to a regime of profligacy and insensitivity. It is a bad way to draw the curtain on a man on whom a people were well pleased and invested their future.

  • As Buhari takes charge

    Four days on, the mantle of leadership of this country will switch over to president-elect, Gen. Mohammed Buhari. On that day, he would be sworn in as the president of the country for the next four years following his successful election.

    Preparations are on top gear with expectations very high on the good things to come with the change of leadership in national affairs. Representatives of governments, groups and individuals have been generous with suggestions on what the incoming government should do to make the needed difference. Issues that have been a recurring decimal, among others include the urgency to battle corruption, insecurity and the parlous state of the nation’s economy.

    Incidentally, these were some of the key campaign promises of the All Progressives Congress (APC) under which platform Buhari won the election. If there are constant references to them, they serve as reminder to the incoming administration of the imperative to live up to the high expectations of the people.

    In this wise, institutions, persons or groups that ought to attract the prying eyes of the new government in its new direction have been fingered very relentlessly. So also are the necessary policy measures to be initiated for our economy to rebound.  There seems to be a wide range of consensus that things must be done differently for this country to move forward. Not surprisingly, corruption in all its ramifications stands out as one cankerworm that must be uprooted for these high-minded expectations to be met. There seems to be a wide range of consensus that we are now ready for this all important crusade irrespective of the pervasiveness of the malfeasance and envisaged reluctance of some vested interests to embrace the new direction.

    The way the issue of corruption is being bandied, the impression one gets is that people are expecting a very quick fix to the cankerworm. But that would be a very limited understanding of the pervasiveness of the matter. It would imply that we are yet to come to terms with the dynamics of the matter. Corruption is more encompassing and pervades the entire gamut of the nation’s social fabric. It is every where. It has eaten very deep. Such a debilitating problem cannot lend itself to a quickly procured remedy as is currently being expected. This is more so because some of the systemic dysfunctions that are at the root of corruption will take a long time to lend themselves to serious therapeutic response. Some of them are deeply rooted in the very structure and organization of governance framework. Others have their root in the defective manner the Nigerian federation evolved. The role of ethnicity, religion and some other primordial influences in

    sustaining corruption can only be ignored at a great risk to the envisaged fight. So also is the defective federal structure that vests the powers of life and death on the central authority. There is also failure on the part of our leaders (past and present) to institute socialization processes capable of producing true Nigerians (in the way an American will regard himself) – the kind the Israeli did through their Kibbutz system.

    It is nigh impossible to fight corruption in a setting where ethnicity and religion are in constant competition with the government for the loyalty of the citizens. It is difficult to fight corruption in a milieu where civic institutions are seen as instruments of dominance by one ethnic group against the others. That exactly is the point the Nigerian federation finds itself now. So if we focus on institutions of governance without taking into account the latent sources that influence behavior at those formal levels, we may not get the right handle to it.

    If we focus on proper husbanding of our revenue without considering how to whittle down the prebendal nature of our politics, we may not achieve optimal results. This point is further underscored by our geo-politics that places higher premium on where the candidate comes from rather than suitability and ability to do the job. The logic of geo-politics in our case is rooted in the warped notion of sharing the national cake rather than issues of affirmative action or balance. The underlying thinking is that it is only when one of theirs ascends to that high office that their interests can be adequately taken care of. That has been the general feeling and it cannot make for real progress.

    Even with many years of living together since independence, rather than wane, these tendencies have been on their ascendancy. They got to a point about two years ago that two former heads of state, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida had to issue a joint statement lamenting the degenerate level the nation had sunk within this ignoble matrix. They were alarmed at a situation where some of those they hitherto regarded as patriots were increasingly beginning to question the basis for Nigerian unity. And their ranks are not few. The fears they then expressed were further taken to a dangerous level during the last electioneering campaigns and are bound to influence public perceptions for some time to come.

    The thing to consider is why we have not progressed beyond the things that divide our people. We need to factor in the role of the elite in sustaining and reinforcing these centrifugal tendencies and whose interests such divisions largely serve- that of the elite or the fetchers of wood and drawers of water.

    As Buhari moves to confront issues of corruption and development, he is bound to be challenged by these systemic dysfunctions some of which will entail fundamental restructuring of the polity.  He has to take both a short and long term perspective of them. Yes, he can start with the leakages in the system. He has said every Nigerian would be made to live within his means. For this to happen, all avenues for fleecing the government must be plugged and blocked. But corruption is not all about stealing money from the government coffers. It is also about giving disproportionate attention to some geo-political zones to the detriment of others. It is all about a skewed distribution of public goods based on some other hazy exigencies.

    It is the same phenomenon that gives rise to allegations of alienation and marginalization by the constituent units. Things must have to be done the right and proper way for the fight to be won. There are institutions of government that have been notorious in shortchanging the public. They too must have the searchlight beamed on them. One of such institutions is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    The corruption that goes on within that organization during elections must be stamped out without much delay. Since elections are the basis for conferring legitimacy in a democratic setting, a corrupt electoral process is unlikely to produce leaders who can meaningfully wage a relentless war against the cankerworm.

    So the fight must start from the electoral body. Much of the problems that marred the last elections in many places were as a result of INEC officials compromising their positions. Not only did they sell authentic results sheets to the highest bidders, falsification and mutilating of results sheets were all traceable to these officials.

    Somehow, there is the feeling that we should let go and move forward. Fine! But there is no guarantee people will be that patronizing the next time round.

    Buhari must move to unite the country; give all a sense of belonging through inclusive policies. He must at once, identify and redress the sources of frustration which forced Obasanjo and Babangida to deplore the increasing loss of confidence by patriots on the continuing basis for the nation’s unity 54 years after independence.