The Nation Newspaper

Category: Monday

  • Is Clara Chime a victim of love?

    Is Clara Chime a victim of love?

    The news came to everyone rather surreptitiously. The governor of Enugu State, Sullivan Chime, reportedly detained the first lady. The image was unsavoury: a governor, in his hectoring majesty, ordering the security aides to corral Clara. The image takes on more dramatic hue as we imagine the screaming first lady pinned down, her hands wrapped around her back, forced either to sit down or lie down, her clothes out of joint, before the doors are locked against her.

    This contradicts the temperament and powers of first ladies. First ladies often pin down their men, extract special favours and sometimes ride more glorious convoys than their husbands. Quite often, aides fear them more than their husbands. A person can be fired but a soft word from the first lady can redeem the job. Even when the governor confesses a special softness for an aide, the first lady who shares a contrary standpoint could reverse the affection. She could make life so difficult for that aide and the governor that her triumph is a foregone conclusion.

    She is the prop, whisper and, sometimes, bully behind the throne, the pillow-talk queen. That made it quite difficult for many to digest the narrative of a humiliated power dame. But some who had followed the story of Governor Chime had observed some traits counterintuitive to this picture of governor-first lady relationship.

    We remember Chime ushering in the New Year with stories of his failure to let anyone know if he was sick and why he would not convey, in simple language, why he could not communicate with the people of the state. The people who voted him into power knew nothing about the person they voted for, whether he was alive or dead. Consequently, the rumour mills buzzed, and depending on who you asked, they said Governor Chime suffered from one illness or another. Imagination overthrew reality.

    He never loved the media, and saw any reporter or editor as a predator in his holy of holies. In his recent press briefing, he said he did not hate the media but he had issues with them because when he was ill, some newspapers reported his death. No excuse for newspapers that soared on fiction. It was irresponsible, especially on a delicate matter like death. But Governor Chime fertilised errant imagination by not providing facts as the first information officer of the state. He never saw his own shortcomings. He only saw others’.

    Chime only recently knocked down the building of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries in his state against court orders. Is that not impunity? Does the law matter to the man who defies a court order? Again, he tried to resolve issues he had with university lecturers by unleashing dogs after them.

    Against these news reports, some members of the public had judged the governor as Clara’s predator. But then, he organised a press briefing, and the governor said that his wife was afflicted by mental illness, and he had to restrain her to keep her from ridicule. She was present at the occasion, as well as her present doctor, Aham Agumoh, as well as Clara’s brother.

    Governor Chime tried to paint himself as the husband and protector. And not a few people were impressed. But humans rights lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) has been pushing a different narrative. He said the woman had hired him as her attorney. But the woman had said that she did not hire Falana in the open interview. Yet, a letter leaked to the media that she had contacted a certain chief whom she wanted to contact Falana on her behalf. She admitted in the interview that her letter leaked. That corroborates Falana’s position that she wanted his help. The reporters did not ask Clara Chime why she wrote the letter and whether she insisted on the contents. I contacted Falana and he said Clara’s mother told him to help free her daughter from the grasp of the governor. He also said the woman asked him if she sounded like somebody who was mentally disturbed.

    Two important developments bear investigation. One, why did she ask for a different doctor, and why did she have to scream for the matter to be brought to the fore? The same doctor appeared in the press briefing. Was he supposed to appear there, according to his professional oath, even if the governor wanted to clear his image as a wife bully? Yet, she accepted in the open press briefing that Dr. Agumoh was her doctor, the same doctor she wanted replaced.

    The other question is, did Clara act under duress in the press briefing? What did they discuss with her when they took her away from the media for several minutes?

    What are the details of the doctor’s treatment that have riled even members of her family? Tony Igwe, Clara’s brother, may not have represented other members of the family given the fact that the members object to the present treatment of their daughter. This was clear in the intervention of the National Human Rights Commission. Both Chime’s and Clara’s families did not agree on how her matter was being handled. Could it be that her so-called mental condition is exaggerated? She described her state as nervous breakdown.

    If her situation is not as bad, then is Chime along with Dr. Agumoh not acting like Dr. Bero in Soyinka’s play, Madness and Specialists, where the specialist becomes in a sense guilty of what the patient allegedly suffers? German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “There is always some madness in love. There is also always some reason in madness.” Is it a case of too much love, which itself can injure, or violated love? Shakespeare calls it “cold fire,” “wolvish-ravening lamb,” or “fiend angelical.” Is Clara a victim of love?

    It is always a delicate matter in psychiatry not to over-treat a case or it may itself pass as madness. That was the case in Achebe’s short story, The Madman, when a sane man of high nobility, with no clothes on, pursues a madman, who stole the sane man’s clothes, into the market place. We cannot just forget that the Soviet Union established asylums for dissidents.

    Even the NHRC contradicted itself when it said it was established that she suffered from depression and hallucination. In the five-hour session it had with her, it did not see any such evidence. It is a human rights body, what was its business making judgment about her mental condition, especially when it knew the two families did not agree on the treatment? If they did not agree on the treatment, it means they did not agree on the diagnosis.

    In one breath, the NHRC agreed with a diagnosis and, in another, set up a committee to examine her true state of health. The NHRC said Clara had access to her son and keys to the apartments, but it had no knowledge whether or not that is a recent development prompted by her outcry. The NHRC’s retraction was an afterthought. It has compromised its integrity as a body.

    This has been happening for all of four months, and Governor Chime’s desperate press conference was not actuated by any chivalry but a necessity to save his name. It is not so much that he is interested in transparency.

    When he was flown out of the country, he did not believe in transparency then. He owes Enugu State citizens as well as Nigerians explanations for keeping the matter under wraps while he was abroad. His illness was more important to Nigerians and Enugu State citizens than that of his wife. The health of a whole state hung on him as the carrier of their mandate. No one voted in Clara Chime.

    It was wrong, and even wrong-headed to present himself as a latter-day convert to the doctrine of transparency. May be he is not a convert. He was just pushed to the corner by the cries of the media and the fulminations of Falana. So he acted not out of conscience but necessity. So, he is not Clara’s hero.

  • Oduah: Conscience versus law

    Oduah: Conscience versus law

    We seem to be missing the point on the raging scandal on Aviation Minister Stella Oduah. The hearings at the House of Assembly have cast the drama as a matter of rule of law. It is, but it is less important than the power of conscience.

    What if Oduah followed the rule of law, and what if the NCAA followed the rule of law? Does that mean that purchasing two cars of less than 40 million in the open market can now be whisked off at the sum of N255 million?

    If Oduah gets away with it, it will be because the law failed us, and the law fails us in the face of grave injustice when conscience runs foul in a society. Our lawmakers seem to have fallen so much under the spell of the law that they are losing sight of the origin of law. That is, the law was made for us and not us for the law.

    In her appearance at the hearing last week, Oduah said the cars were not bought for her. For the purpose of fairness, let us agree that they were not meant for her as Stella Oduah, but was it not meant for the office of the Aviation Minister? Now, how do we distinguish Oduah and the office of the minister? So long as she is the minister, is it a ghost who will ride the car, or a spirit that will inhale the blissful coolness of the air conditioner, or will the windows alone enjoy the sonority of the sound system?

    Granted that the car would not go to the office of the minister, is it not a property of the ministry? If such a car of outlandish luxury goes to a ministry, will it be assigned to the office of the directors or cleaners? So, the minister ought to understand that the law was not designed for frivolity. And if it was bought for the ministry at such a princely sum, was it possible for such a thing to happen without her knowledge? And if it happened without her knowledge, does it not show that she was not in charge? And if she was not in charge at such a delicate moment of her work, why should she remain as Aviation minister?

    It is in answering such a question that the law meets integrity. But the obsession with due process in a way that may sacrifice morality portends danger. Oduah and her fellow travellers are taking that tack.

    Whatever the trajectory of the scandal, some facts have not been denied. They include, one, that the cars cost N255million. Two, that the ministry in whatever guises purchased them and the minister knew and endorsed them. Three, that Coscharis sold them, and four, that the First Bank unspooled the loan.

    The ‘what’ of the story is so overwhelming that the ‘how’ is of subordinate importance. The ‘what’ is moral and the ‘how’ is due process. The ‘what’ contains so much rot, so much puss that how it soiled the house and its superlative stench will only be important in how we prevent it next time. But that will happen only after the cleanup.

    So, the cleanup should have happened since the facts broke into the public space. It should have entailed the resignation of the minister immediately and with an apology to the Nigerian public. If she did not, her boss President Goodluck Jonathan should have, at the most merciful, asked her to proceed on suspension pending the determination of the case. His committee to investigate the matter is unnecessary. Another fact has it that the national security adviser played a role in the messy affair. Yet he has not resigned from the committee. How do we expect fairness where a member of the triumvirate will be a judge in his own cause?

    The role of the private sector is a part of the mess that has had inadequate attention. The questioning of the Coscharis boss Cosmas Maduka should not shed light with a view to determining Oduah’s culpability alone, but whether the car dealer does business in consonance with the moral standards expected by business leaders in Nigeria. Obviously Maduka wanted to show that he did not break the law, but had to sell for profit. The real tragedy was that he did not violate the law. Ditto to First Bank.

    If this society cared for its own moral fibre, the chief executive of the bank and all those involved would have resigned their positions or the board of the bank would have demanded it. As for Coscharis, all governments would have blacklisted it, and members of the public would have boycotted it as matter of principle. This same bank, as others, will not grant loans to many enterprising Nigerians who need merely N2million loans to transform their lives.

    Punishing companies and their wheel horses will set example for others doing business in the country. But if the sense of right and wrong is footloose in the land and the culpable ones go scot free, what happened in the Aviation industry would be a model rather than a warning to all wrong doers. As I stated last week, this practice of collusion between the public and private sector constitutes the norm of corruption in Nigeria.

    The law does not make people good, but people make the law good and, consequently, people become good. People make the law good by example, and that refers to the leaders. The law is important, and it is the soul of every working polity. But the law can entrench injustice if it operates without vigilance.

    When a car that sells for five million Naira sells for N10 million, the society ought to frown against it. It does not have to be a matter of law but of conscience. It is not justice to sell one thing to a person for one sum and to another person at a different sum, especially when it is a government that thrives on due process. If it was haggled upwards, on what terms or circumstances did it happen? Did that justify swindling a process? Why smuggle a car with armour into a deal for the sports festival in Lagos when the state had no knowledge of it?

    “When men are pure, laws are useless,” noted former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. “When men are corrupt, laws are broken.”

    Clearly, the law is being manipulated in the breach in the National Assembly hearings. Conscience is a feeble and supporting cast in a drama of felony. We must uphold the law, but not at the expense of justice. Justice is mute without the tolls of conscience.

  • Jonathan at Jesus’ tomb

    Jonathan at Jesus’ tomb

    When I saw President Jonathan in a prayerful pose at the tomb of Jesus, I initially agreed with those who wondered what he was praying for when Jesus was no longer there. The tomb was a museum piece, not a worship ground. After all, when women visited the tomb after his resurrection, an angel asked, “why seek ye the living among the dead.” And Jesus himself declared, “I am he that was alive and was dead. Behold I am alive forever.” On second thought, I concluded he could say a prayer there if he keyed into the words of St. Paul who enjoined Christians to invoke the spirit of Christ’s resurrection. In that case, President Jonathan could have prayed Christ to imbue him with the spirit of resurrection when he returned to Nigeria, so that he could resurrect a dying nation: resurrect infrastructure, jobs, healthcare, rule of law, education, etc. But did he offer that prayer or a selfish one?

  • Ubah’s obscenities

    In the build-up to the Anambra State governorship election on November 16, the crown for the ultimate grandstander must go to Labour Party (LP) candidate and controversial businessman, Ifeanyi Ubah. He has outclassed his rivals in loudmouthedness , which unfortunately is a quality many politicians in the land crave, in the mistaken conviction that it works on the electorate.

    However, it is comforting that Ubah, contrary to his fantasy, does not have the exalted position in his pocket just yet. It will be an intense contest, with the magnetic Senator Chris Ngige of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the incumbent-backed Chief Willie Obiano of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) promising a tough battle.

    Interestingly, Ubah himself unwittingly betrayed the unappealing nature of his candidacy in a recent newspaper interview. His words: “I am a money maker, a magician trained by God. In fact, let me tell you something, if I can gather all my resources, what God has blessed me with; I can do 50 percent of Anambra without anybody’s money. If I gather my worldwide resources and I am given a free hand to change Anambra, I promise that I will do 50 percent of what is in my manifesto without touching one kobo of Anambra State government.”

    In concrete terms, Ubah’s suggestion, which might be no more than an “epic boast”, was that he could on his own provide over N50 billion to run the state. This implication, based on the state’s 2013 budget of N110.9 billion, is a point to ponder. If it was a conscious statement, uttered with veracity, then the people of Anambra need look no farther than Ubah. On the other hand, if he merely served entertainment, the people ought to give him a wide berth, like others of that ilk who speak superlatively about their personal wealth with little evidence of employing it to transform society.

    In the first place, it is apt to wonder just how much Ubah is worth, given his grandiosity. Then, of course, the question of his sources would be inevitable. Furthermore, it would be interesting to know how faithful he has been in performing his civic duties, especially obeying the law and paying tax that is due. Such contemplation would be appropriate against the background of Ubah’s complicated expansion. His 40th birthday two years ago was a study in lavishness, and a statement that stamped him on the collective consciousness. Shortly after, his name featured prominently in the oil subsidy payment storm, and then he got entangled with Cosmas Maduka of Coscharis Motors Limited over a gargantuan financial deal that went sour. Lately, he was forced to relinquish the management of his company, Capital Oil and Gas Limited, to the Assets Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) for two years on account of debt issues. And he is in court with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which maintains that he has a case to answer in respect of a fraud allegation concerning a parcel of land at Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, Lagos.

    Beyond his troubles, which would likely be assuaged by electoral victory, it is instructive to reflect on his social responsibility in connection with his town, Nnewi, and in the context of his self-publicised prosperity. He reportedly established Ifeanyi Ubah Foundation which is said to have awarded university scholarships, sunk boreholes, installed electricity transformers, repaired and graded community roads and provided free fuel to commercial motorcyclists and bus drivers weekly. However, the truth is that these might be no more than tokenist gestures, considering the stupendous riches he claims.

    Regrettably, the entrepreneurial model that makes obscene noise about personal possessions but unenthusiastic about sharing a reasonable portion with society is very familiar. Across the country, there are so-called people-oriented Foundations set up by the wealthy and powerful, which function simply in a cosmetic fashion, lacking not only consistency, but also the commitment to long-term service. In addition, they are fundamentally ego-driven and constituted merely to aid vain posturing.

    Perhaps Ubah could benefit from reading the book, What Money Can’t Buy, by Harvard University scholar Michael Sandel, which is a critique of the “market society”. For, there is a subtle market mentality involved in the method he chose to sell his candidacy, relying on the seduction of money and what it can buy, in this case, his private wealth flaunted as a cushion that the people can count on beyond state funds. His selling point should not be encouraged, particularly because it glosses over the deeper moral implications.

    Quite strangely, but revealing of the fact that his candidacy is basically deficient in integrity, Ubah in the interview said of himself, “I am one of the Villa boys. I am not in an opposition party.” The puzzling self- description was his answer to a question about his relationship with the seat of federal power, which is occupied by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). If Ubah’s suggestion is that LP and PDP are not rivals in Anambra, should this be interpreted to mean that the parties are one and the same, or perhaps partners? Whose interest, therefore, would Ubah represent, should he win?

    Again, there are moral angles. The people deserve full disclosure concerning Ubah’s actual leaning, rather than misleading double-speak. The lesson: Ubah inadvertently highlighted the sorry reality that the country’s political parties are separated by little or no differences in ideology. That is why he could so easily attempt to blur the dividing line. It is especially tragic that it involved LP, which is conventionally perceived as egalitarian and progressive, in contradistinction to the conservative elitism represented by PDP.

    Although the Anambra electorate is expected to have the final say, it is important to stress that political governance is too weighty to be left to moneybags, particularly the showy type who defines money in terms of a magic bullet, and demonstrates little respect for the moral core that should guide money-making and the purpose of wealth. It is equally crucial that the leader should be ruled by ideological clarity, the lack of which would create undesirable illusions for the people.

  • Edo’s ill-fated dialogue

    Outrage over the abortion of the interactive session of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue in Benin, Edo State is to be expected. This is more so given that the issue which led to the disruption of the session was the raison d’etre for that gathering. It therefore came as a huge contradiction that a committee charged with setting the grand norms for the impending national conference and supposedly the mirror from which the nature and texture of the conference will be seen, could find itself faltering on this basic test. So when infractions that detract substantially from a setting where views are robustly canvassed without let or hindrance cropped up, they cannot but cast serious slur on the credibility of the conference.

    That was the foreboding reality of the disruption of the South-south interactive session of the dialogue committee in Benin. Reports had it that a member of the committee, Col. Tony Nyiam rtd had launched a verbal attack on Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State as he was making his remarks on the propriety or otherwise of the conference. Apparently, the attack was to stop the governor from voicing his opposition to the conference which he viewed as unnecessary and a waste of resources. As he spoke, Nyiam rose to shout him down with his action spurring some thugs at the venue who rushed to the high table and disrupted the session.

    But for the security agencies, the charged atmosphere could have degenerated into serious confrontation.

    Nyiam’s unruly action has come under serious attack for very obvious reasons. Most of those who have deprecated his conduct are at pains to reconcile how the outing of a committee that has been put together to fashion out the modalities for constructive engagement among the diverse peoples of this country could turn out a theatre of high level intolerance and thuggery. That thugs could infiltrate such an occasion is a thing that is still difficult to reconcile. So also is the motive of their sponsors. But all those conjectures are now history.

    The incident has raised posers as to whose interest Nyiam was actually serving and above all, the desirability of his continued membership of the committee. Sadly, his conduct has deprived the South-south where he even comes from, the opportunity to make input into the formulation of the conference agenda. That must be a great disservice to his geo-political zone. Or are we safer to assume that being from that zone, he had some self interest to protect or scores to settle with some people hiding under the canopy of the committee?

    Whichever way, Nyiam must have disappointed even his most ardent admirers by his very rude conduct. Or is it possible to rationalize his action against the backdrop of the command structure and regimentation of his military background? But he has before now, been posturing as a social crusader and an apostle of good governance; offering views on a variety of issues of our national being. It strikes as a huge contradiction that someone who engages in informed dialectics at least on the pages on the newspapers, can display such a disdain to other views no matter how opposed they are to his predilections. That is the main problem with Nyiam’s conduct.

    He has offered some reasons for his conduct even as weak and unconvincing as they are. According to him, his action was spurred by the sarcastic remarks Oshiomhole made against the proposed national conference. Hear him: “Governors who have the penchant for insulting the president or making sarcastic remarks against the sense of judgment of the president of Nigeria should be ready to tolerate response from Nigerian citizens to tell them no”. He further alleged that the governor talked down on them when they paid him a courtesy visit only to continue the same at the venue of the interactive session. For these, he had to move to stop him, he seemed to be saying.

    But that is where he went entirely wrong. The impression created by his action is that he is intolerant of opposing views. Ironically, it is for the same reason that taxpayers’ money is being expended on the country wide tour of the committee. The committee was in that state to hear what the people of the zone had to say on the conference. That was part of the message Oshiomhole had for the committee. His, was by no means all there was to say. But it is his inalienable right. Neither Nyiam nor any other member of that committee can deny him of that right.

    It is a huge contradiction that a committee set up to ascertain the views of Nigerians on how to make the conference live up to public expectations can be so cheaply embroiled in disputations that cast serious doubt on the credibility of its members and the overall job they have set out to do.

    Oshiomhole’s views as the governor of that state must count. He represents a very key segment of that population. There are unarguably other views that may be supportive of the conference. But it is for the holders of such views to air them. Regrettably, the action of Nyiam and the thugs that disrupted the session could not allow such views to flourish.

    Going by his defence, Nyiam put forth himself as one trying to protect the interest of President Jonathan. That is the purport of all the argument about those who have the penchant of insulting the president or faulting his sense of judgment and all that trash. He is also opposed to those who make sarcastic comments about the conference. These, as justification for that unruly conduct cannot fly as they are not only puerile and unconvincing but equally ridiculous.

    First, he was not sent out there to defend the president. President Jonathan has an array of qualified aides that can enter defence for him if and when such need arises. Second, there is nothing new in the presentations of Oshiomhole that should warrant the conduct he displayed at that venue.

    Before now, so many Nigerians have raised issues with not only the timing of the conference but its capacity to address the plethora of national problems for which agitations for a sovereign national conference had been on top gear. Even then, scepticisms that this conference may go the way of others before it are neither new nor can they be solely traced to the doorsteps of the governor. These are issues borne out of our experience over time. They are being raised now so as draw Jonathan’s attention to the incongruity in expending our scarce resources on the conference if it is going to be consigned to the dustbin so soon after. That is the purpose of those criticisms and it is within the rights of people like Oshiomhole to say them loud and clear.

    The way forward is for the committee to take copious notes on these observations and advise Jonathan accordingly. It is not for any of its members to shoot down views that do not seem in tandem with their desire to go ahead with the conference. They would have done a great disservice to this country if they fail to properly reflect the views of its constituents on the need to subject the decisions of the conference to a referendum so as to guarantee its overall success. Jonathan will have the chance to prove sceptics wrong by what he makes of the decisions of the conference. That is the message. Before then, Nyiam owes unqualified apology to Oshiomhole.

  • Bamidele’s grandiose delusions

    Why is Opeyemi Bamidele in such a desperate and unconscionable hurry to be Ekiti State governor in 2014? Evidently, the answer to this penetrating poser does not lie on the surface. For clarification, it would perhaps be necessary to explore the depths of his psyche, an exercise likely to yield insights that are, paradoxically, baffling as well as enlightening.

    Only the Pollyannaish would have been taken aback by his publicised resignation as Ekiti Caucus Leader in the House of Representatives where he speaks for Ado-Ekiti/Irepodun-Ifelodun Federal Constituency, a position he attained on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which has morphed into All Progressives Congress (APC), courtesy of a merger. Evidences of disgruntlement were unmistakable not only in his utterances, but also in his body language, in the build-up to the formal declaration of his ambition.

    In words that were dramatically impressionistic, he sounded like a politician on a soapbox. He said in an ironic letter to Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi, the very target and hurdle in his path, “I can no longer tarry in responding to the yearnings and aspirations of the violated children, the deserted youth, the disillusioned women, the unfulfilled civil and public servants, the neglected artisans, the jobless and unemployed men as well as the heart-broken elder statesmen and frustrated founding fathers.” Besides the demands of official courtesy necessitating the notification of the APC National Leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, House of Representatives Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, and Minority Leader Femi Gbajabiamila, it was symbolically also to stress the avoidance of doubt, particularly for Tinubu, former Lagos State governor who was regarded as his political mentor.

    Interestingly, in July it took Tinubu’s calming intervention to reverse Bamidele’s suspension by the Ekiti Caucus over his then alleged eyeing of the governorship of Ekiti in 2014, despite his party’s apparent backing of the sitting governor for a second four-year term. At the time, Tinubu said, “I do not believe he should be sanctioned at this point where the most he has done is to make unofficial statements about contesting. While we have no problem in him pursuing his democratic ambition without intimidation and persecution, we will continue our efforts at persuading him not to rock the boat and play into the hands of our opponents, particularly the PDP.” Three months later, Bamidele not only remarkably vindicated his colleagues; he also disappointingly betrayed Tinubu’s confidence. It would be interesting to know what the champion of progressivism thinks now, and how he feels.

    Indeed, while Bamidele’s decision to swim against the tide suggests conviction, which would be puzzling in the circumstances, it seems more like reckless hardihood. In hyperbolic language, he described his move as “cogent and compelling”, arguing that the choice was “in response to the call by well-meaning Ekiti sons and daughters at home and in the Diaspora, who believe that our dear state needs a critical intervention at this time, so as not to become a failed state.” However, the creative embellishment employed to convey a sorry picture of Ekiti is itself a failed technique, for it relies on emotive words lacking in substance. This approach is especially suspicious because of its extreme erroneousness. From all indications, it certainly cannot be the truth that Ekiti is on a downward trajectory.

    Such skewed presentation could only be a consequence of psychotic belief, which makes it even more worrying. If there was any doubt about the state of mind that invented the fable of failure, the uncertainty was resolved by Bamidele’s elaboration of his mission. In long-winded words, his dream is: “to herald in a new and united Ekiti State, where our past glory will be brought back from sabbatical; where integrity and strength of character, which are the hallmarks of Ekiti personality, will be celebrated again; and where job creation, food security, law and order, as well as infrastructure and human capital development with high premium on health and education will be the utmost priority as the minimum agenda for good governance in compliance with global best practices.” Phew! Wasn’t that a bit overloaded? Bamidele is entitled to his grandstanding. But who is impressed?

    It is important to highlight the reality of the inadequacy of words, particularly when the issue is good governance. Indeed, what counts in that realm is action. In this regard, Governor Fayemi’s track record in office speaks for itself as an eloquent testimony to “integrity, hard work and performance,” to quote Chief Joel Babatola, a First Republic minister, who led members of the non-partisan Ekiti Council of Elders on a visit to the governor’s office at the mid-term of his first four-year mandate. It is noteworthy that, at the time, Fayemi also got the endorsement of leaders of the then ACN for re-election; the state chairman, Chief Jide Awe, declared that “the Fayemi administration has made a difference in the state.”

    Of course, Bamidele is not bound to respect these specific instances of praise for Fayemi’s 8-Point Agenda, but he is expected to be sufficiently modest in order to rise above denial. However, such elevation can only be achieved in the absence of optical illusion, which unfortunately is a possibility in this case. For Fayemi undeniably continues to grab the headlines with his “Legacy Projects”, touching an impressive range of people-oriented issues. Although, logically, it is possible that Bamidele could do even better, it is equally conceivable that he could do much worse. It would appear that Bamidele’s ambition belongs to his head rather than his heart. One central credit of democracy, likely to work against him, is that the people can distinguish between sugar-coated sentiments and measurable performance.

    Having crossed the red line by his demonstration of flagrant faithlessness in the party concerning his aspiration, it is fascinating to contemplate his next move, and the party’s official response. It is unimaginable that he would subsequently feel at home in the party, just as it is unthinkable that the party would pursue an accommodation with him. Furthermore, should he carry his imagination to a rival party, which is probable, would that minimise his grandiose delusions?

  • Beyond Odimegwu’s resignation

    Those behind the campaign to get the National Population Commission NPC Chairman, Festus Odimegwu out of office, may have cause to smile with his resignation. Odimegwu threw in the towel last week apparently due to his inability to withstand the heat generated by his scathing remarks on past censuses.

    He stirred the hornet’s nest when he averred that censuses in Nigeria since 1816 had been largely flawed with that of 2006 deliberately manipulated in favor of the north. Expectedly, this did not go down well with some interest groups in that part of the country with Kano State governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso demanding his removal. Even then, the Christian Association of Nigeria CAN northern chapter had risen in his defence.

    Before then, the former NPC boss had told a delegation of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, that had come for assistance in its proposed constituency delimitation exercise that there were no certified data for the various enumeration areas. According to him, politicians bought enumeration areas in the same manner they buy voters’ cards during elections to gain advantage. He then vowed to give the country a credible census in 2016 that will satisfy international best practices.

    But those who felt threatened by his revelations would not let go. They invented all manner of reasons including the support of a preponderance of NPC state commissioners to demonstrate that they were no longer on the same page with their boss. They contended that given Odimegwu’s mindset, he could no longer be trusted to give the nation a census that will be devoid of deep controversy. And in circumstances like this, one should not be surprised that opportunists and those not favoured by his style of administration will see it as an excuse to settle scores. That was the purpose of all those petitions in the national dailies by public servants in a manner reminiscent of the antics of politicians. Yet, no one saw anything wrong with them including the source of the fund for the sponsorship of those advertorials.

    They may have succeeded in heating up the environment and getting Odimegwu out of the job. They may have also succeeded in acting out the script crafted for them by their sponsors. But the substantive issues raised by their former boss cannot be wished away. Odimegwu can be blackmailed; he could also be denigrated and called names. But his salient message has come to stay. It is a message of hope which his predecessors shied away from either for fear of losing their jobs or they were working in collaboration with those who appointed them to produce predictable results and stall the overall development of this country. Odimegwu’s short-lived tenure has become a reference point for drawing attention to all that is wrong with our previous census and the inevitability of departing from that decadent and discredited past. Fair-minded Nigerians will not forget this message in a hurry. Not with the ruling by the census tribunal voiding the 2006 census figures posted for Lagos State in 20 local government areas. Not with the fact that all previous censuses including those done before our country’s independence had been entangled in deep controversy and disputation and roundly rejected by sections of this country.

    So Odimegwu said nothing new except his office gave huge weight and credibility to all that we already knew. And that was the only problem with his message. They know it is the gospel truth. But their grouse is with the messenger whose message is most likely to be believed. They questioned his neutrality and threatened that the coming headcount was doomed to fail if Odimegwu remained at the helm of affairs. In that circumstance, he had to give way even as the veracity of his statements was not in any iota of doubt. The consistent manipulation of population figures to keep down sections of the country hitherto shut out of the commanding heights of the nation’s bureaucracy is an old tale. This should not surprise anyone, given the crucial role population plays in the political affairs of this country.

    Those rejoicing at the exit of Odimegwu do not understand the current that has been unleashed by his revelations. They seem to gloss over the wider issues raised on the past national population censuses and their inadequacy and unreliability for planning purposes. It has become very clear to most Nigerians that whatever census figures we currently bandy are statistics that have little to do with the demography of this country. They are at best as worthless as the pieces of paper on which they are written.

    Little wonder our monumental failures in planning for the needs of the people of this country as epitomized in years of abysmal poverty, hunger, ignorance and disease. We cannot continue with this deceit and expect that raging schism among constituent units will abate. We cannot continue with this fraud and be pontificating on values that unite the people. You can only unite by doing what is seen to be right. That is the folly in silencing those who draw attention to the cruel realities of this country that must change for the better.

    Odimegwu may have played into the hands of those who have unduly benefited from the census fraud. He may have also underestimated how entrenched these vested interests are and the extent they can go to pursue their clandestine goals. These vested interests may have also succeeded in blackmailing President Jonathan to acquiesce to the view that the only way to redeem the credibility of the coming census is for Odimegwu to go. That could well be. It may also have found some allure in the reasoning that if sacrificing Odimegwu is all it takes to ensure that those who benefit from the discredited order do not blackmail and sabotage the 2016 census, so be it.

    But beyond this is the general awareness that has been created on the inadequacies of previous headcounts and the danger in using them for planning purposes. More importantly, it has underscored the compelling imperative for the 2016 census to be conducted in a manner that satisfies generally accepted international standards. That is the challenge that has been elevated to the front burner by the travails of the former NPC boss. Odimegwu’s action therefore was a very patriotic one that was meant to draw attention to the need to get our vital statistics right if we must make any progress in this country.

    This assertion draws enormous support from the fact that of all those who criticized his views, none faulted the substance of his contention. There was no such thing. They could not fault the message but the messenger. Now that that messenger has gone, it is only proper that his message must be our guiding principle as we prepare for the forthcoming census. The time is ripe to adopt the scientific methodology-aerial or satellite imaging to get at the nation’s accurate census. Any thing to the contrary will only expose the deceit of all those who rose to force the former NPC boss out of office.

    It is the minimum expectation that all those in the campaign against Odimegwu should deploy the same zeal in fighting for a census that is truly reflective of the demographic nature of this country. Ethnicity and religion must form indispensable quotients of the demographic statistics. Else, all the fuss would have turned out a subterfuge to perpetuate the decadent status quo. Such a scenario would have rendered a nullity, the heuristic value of that discourse and therefore must be strongly resisted.

  • Jonathan’s angels

    Jonathan’s angels

    Not many persons, including this writer, believe that the committee President Goodluck Jonathan set up will ever indict Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah. Quite obviously, we did not hear, not from the president, nor any top government official, any statement of moral umbrage in the first few days of the scandal.

    The media had to badger and the civil society had to roil first. Apparently cornered, we began to hear rhetoric of defence and promises of official action. Some facts were not in dispute even before the committee swung into being. First, the car was already procured. Two, the minister did not reject them; hence her spokesperson said the purpose was to offer security for Oduah in the light of threats. Three, Coscharis sold the cars. Four, First Bank anointed it. Five, the NCAA processed the buy.

    These facts, now available in the public domain, could not be invisible to the presidency. Even if it did not condemn the minister, it ought, at least, to have condemned the purchase for its material exhibitionism, even if no one was legally guilty or erred in the process of procurement.

    Matters of this moral magnitude did not require spokespersons’ voice. It hit the bulls’ eye of public service. So both President Jonathan and Oduah should have met the media and said something, or had question-and-answer sessions, however brief. Rather, both persons travelled to Israel to pray under the belly of the heavens. Even if the minister were not guilty, both should not have travelled together. It did not matter that it was to sign an inauspicious treaty about airspace with Israel. The president should have preserved the cathedral grandeur of the office unstained by any suggestion of partiality.

    A leadership should lead by example. But here the presidency responded to morality and conscience from below. The tail wagged the dog. We have seen this too many times, whether in the case of the empress of oil, Diezani Alison-Madueke, or the extortionist pension saga of Maina or its clasping of unrepentant convicts in its bosom, or in the president’s rhetoric of surrender recently when he downplayed corruption as a major challenge.

    The presidency waited for civil disapproval before, in some of them, taking token actions. In both Madueke’s and its convicts as well as in Maina, the presidency waited for the storm to fizz into silence. But a circus of scandal has emerged, and tragically it involves the President’s angels. They are four. The first lady, Dame Patience, the oil empress Alison-Madueke, the air hostess Stella Oduah and the Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The fourth is an intellectual scandal, and that is the worst.

    Okonjo Iweala reminds me of other top Harvard types who appropriate to themselves the superior answer to the African problem. She reminds me especially of Nicephore Soglo of Benin Republic who swept into power in the early 1990s in a landslide victory while flinty despot Matheiu Kerekou sulked. He marketed his Harvard pedigree but when he mounted the throne, he did not deliver. There have been others like that. They forget that Harvard and World Bank operate on an economic philosophery that applauds Western domination. So, her intelligence is servile. That is the scandal. How come we employ as our economic czar the slave of Western ideas?

    They also forget that society determines economics and not vice versa. How much of Nigerian economic history did Okonjo-Iweala learn in the U.S.? And from what perspective? She is presiding over an economy that cannot pay its bills, and, under President Obasanjo, we paid heavy loans while we could not offer Nigerians dividends of democracy in roads, power, health care? Did she not know that payment of loans is not always good economics? Economics is for the people and not the people for the economy. She said in a Thisday interview that the economy is strong with vulnerabilities. What does that mean? Has she weighed the vulnerabilities against the strengths? If more youths are out of jobs and more roads out of joint, where are the strengths? Is she not presiding over an economy that cannot pay the universities now on strike for four months while wastage happens everywhere, including the recent car scandal and the empress of oil junketing around the world on a N2 billion bill?

    The story of Dame is quite common? Governor Rotimi Amaechi has posed a question, how come a first lady has so much power as to preside over meetings and give orders to a commissioner of police? It is the tyranny of the President’s first angel. The sins are many, and they are common knowledge.

    Oduah’s story is pathetic because she is not the first to inflate or benefit from inflated numbers. She comes across as a scapegoat to her supporters, and they may be right. What she has done happens everywhere in this country, irrespective of state or party. But the nature of the scapegoat is that it has to be sacrificed. Oduah has not helped matters with her failure to perform. She could say that the recent air crash was an act of God, what of the purchase of the cars? Are they acts of God, too?

    But other than her own scandal, what of Coscharis? What company is allowed to sell two cars of that nature for N255 million? They are not Bentleys or any of the sort that James Bond exhibits, and even those do not cost that much. Is that not price gouging? Is that expected of any company anywhere in the civilized world? Economies are supposed to work according to ethical principles. If Coscharis sold it at that price, it is because it knows the government can pay anything for anything. What of the First Bank that presided over the transaction? Is it not supposed to follow strict ethical guidelines in approving such deals? The United States has nailed companies accused of taking advantage of a government-sponsored healthcare programme for profiteering. Did the bank find out the real value of the cars before accepting to finance them?

    This sort of deal exposes the different legs of government corruption. It begins with the government official, then a private concern and, finally, a bank. The Oduah N255m saga is a metaphor.

    The story of Allison-Madueke has been allowed to simmer to death. The peacock lady did not make any statement. She just ignored everyone. In the television series, Charlie’s Angels, it is Charlie the boss who sends the girls on redemptive missions. It is not clear yet, but it seems each of Jonathan’s angels is on her individual errands.

    What we see here is called hubris, which means the exercise of pride to impose suffering on others. It is rooted in Greek mythology and history, and anyone found guilty of it was punished according to the law. It is not a crime in modern sense but its damage is no less immense. The opposite is called nemesis, which means pride goes before a fall.

    What we see in Oduah’s and other cases is hubris. The people are calling for nemesis. But neither the query from, nor the committee set up by, the president gives any hope.

  • The Jonathan ambush

    The Jonathan ambush

    The idea of an ambush is military. It connotes surprise, and the executor of the ambush assumes the position of the superior, being the aggressor. President Goodluck Jonathan played the ambush man when he propounded the idea of a national conference. He seemed to have ambushed everybody. He set up a committee, sprinkled it with some progressives while also ladling it with his advocates and marionettes.

    President Jonathan had turned his about-face into virtue. He who pooh-poohed the concept as subversive and unnecessary turned into the spearhead. The imitator had become the originator. He was not the author of the story, but he had become the narrator, the protagonist and the omniscient raconteur. He understood the power of surprise in a story, especially the modern novel. He acted as if he read Ian Watt, who theorised on the novel as a genre premised on surprise as weapon. He imposed surprise on the narrative and it caught everyone, especially the progressives, with their pants at the knee.

    Other than that, he seemed to have read Harold Bloom, the author of the concept known as the anxiety of influence. That concept says the imitator so well emulates the original that the originator appears as the imitator. It is the ultimate fraud of identity. While it lasted, Jonathan was having the time of his opponents’ lives.

    So, in starting off his national conference, the president wore two hats, one of a literary genius and the other of a military strategist. He was at once a Napoleon and a Dickens. He thought so for a few days and his men basked in the new intellectual and political glory. Even many progressives, who had thought that the Nigerian moment had come to talk itself out of its age-old illusions, found themselves pitching their tents with the helmsman of Aso Rock.

    He turned out to be wearing false hats, an impostor in political fashion. The matter turned awry when he said the conference would report to the National Assembly. Suddenly, it became clear to many that the president alone understood what he meant by a national conference. The progressives abided the illusion of a sovereign conference. They thought that once the process began they would take the initiative from the president and his PDP viceroys, and Jonathan would lose control. They probably had history in mind, like the French Revolution when a mere meeting of the legislature turned into a conflagration of mass protests that torpedoed the system. Some groups had started unveiling their terms, and others started gearing to write their memorandums and positions. This was another ambush. They thought Jonathan, whom they often wrongly call clueless, would fall piteously into their traps.

    How wrong! Jonathan did not know that the victim of the ambush would be none other than Jonathan himself. By saying that the conference would report to the National Assembly, he committed a grave error. He assumed that those who had supported him would just tag along like a sheep. He did not know that many would suddenly realise that he did not know that he could not fool us.

    You can fool some of the people some of the time, crooned Abraham Lincoln, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Some who supported him retraced their steps and started telling him, “sorry, no cigar.”

    That is the story. What those who understand the concept of the national conference want its decision to be binding on everyone and every institution, including the National Assembly and the president. When such a parley begins, the people take charge of the nation. That is why it is a national conference. The progressives have often called it sovereign because they feel that every topic will be on the table, including the very survival of Nigeria as a nation. In fact, that would be the very first topic because on it hinges every other deliberation. The Jonathan administration set a trap by saying everything is on the table. How false. If everything is on the table, it will not be subjected to the wisdom of the National Assembly.

    If the national Assembly would have to ratify the proceedings, then the legislature would assume that it (the National Assembly) is not a topic for deliberation. But the conference would have decided also how the legislature would work, how its members are elected, how the constituencies are delimited, what powers they should wield, their terms of office, and their sources of funding. If such a matter gets to the assembly, the report would be subjected to a committee. That committee of a few men would now impose its ideas and distortions on the submissions of persons elected all over the country. Again, they could be at the receiving end of lobbyists from different political, ethnic groups as well as business moguls. At the end of it, the result will be a shadow of what the people’s representatives decided. It would look like the story of the Christian Reformation in Europe. The Reformation was mocked by historians who noted that Erasmus laid the egg but Martin Luther hatched it. But Erasmus said the colour of the bird was different from what he intended.

    Yet, once the National Assembly completes the job, the president must give his assent. The president and the lawmakers will become judges in their own causes. The presidency will also be a subject of the conference’s work. What if they curtail the president’s powers, what if they say the states will have more money than the centre and the police will no longer be at the beck and call of the centre? Ideally, once the conference begins sitting, all institutions, including the presidency must cede authority to the leadership of the conference. The president and governors become a little better than ciphers. That is how fundamental such a conference is.

    So, President Jonathan exposed the philosophical vacuity of his conference. So what it means is that he does not really intend this to be a groundbreaking affair, but just a conference to keep us silent and divert attention.

    Yet on the flipside, one cannot assume that convoking a conference will be easy. We cannot assume that voting the people into the conference may not be rigged or controversial. One cannot assume that the deliberations would not hit deadlocks or whether even after the conference has finished its work, the referendum would not be swindled out of the people with a fraudulent vote counting. These will be challenges. But we need to give it a try, and see if the people will insist on their own sovereignty and reclaim their mandate if the referendum is rigged. The great Yale scholar and philosopher, Robert Hutchins said, “the death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

    If soveriengn conference fails, then we can say the people ambushed themselves. But that will be a terminal ambush. We shall have assured ourselves that we have decided to rig ourselves as a people out of a future of progress. That is better than a rigmarole and cosmetic dance that Jonathan has placed on the Nigerian stage.

  • Conference decisions

    For very obvious reasons, the impending national conference will continue to dominate public discourse for quite some time. Not only will the processes leading to its final convocation be contentious, the conference proper promises no less rancorous. The envisaged controversy was given fillip when President Jonathan indicated in his Independence Day broadcast, that he too was uncertain on its appropriate nomenclature, which he then charged the committee to figure out.

    Since then, debate has centred on whether it should be a sovereign national conference or just a national conference with many rooting for the sovereign variant. Issues were also raised regarding the incongruity in having a sovereign national conference with all the democratic structures in place. The argument is that you cannot have two sovereigns at the same time.

    But Jonathan seemed to have responded to this dilemma when he said last week that the decisions of the conference will be subjected to the national and state assemblies for ratification and incorporation into the constitution. For this to be realized, he then urged Nigerians to persuade their representatives at the national and state assemblies to get the recommendations of the conference incorporated into the constitution.

    Expectedly, the proposal has attracted a wide gamut of reactions. Most of those who spoke, faulted the proposition on the grounds that it amounted to another constitutional amendment process and therefore an avoidable duplication. They find it difficult to fathom how reflective of the decisions of the people the conference outcome would become if it is subjected to these assemblies that are largely peopled by those who represent the status quo. And why dissipate energy, valuable time and resources if the conference is another name for constitutional amendment which the National Assembly is currently handling, they seemed to be asking. These posers seem to have further reinforced scepticisms by the national leader of the All Progressives Congress APC, Senator Bola Tinubu on the motive of the conference. It would seem the envisaged conference may turn out a subterfuge to buy time especially given the rancour generated by Jonathan’s political ambition.

    But some others have argued that there is no way you can get the decisions of the conference into the constitution without subjecting them to the body constitutionally charged with that duty. Senate committee chairman on information, Enyinnaya Abaribe said the president’s position was proper and in tune with the fact that the National Assembly is the custodian of Nigerian sovereignty.

    At stake here again, is the location of the sovereign powers of the people in a democratic setting. In this column last week, I had dwelt extensively on the larger philosophical and conceptual issues encapsulated in this argument. We do not intend to go over them again. But suffice it to say at this point that the argument on the location of the sovereign powers of the people in a democracy would have been superfluous if elected persons, extant democratic institutions and structures had been truly reflective of the collective will of their constituents. That Nigerians are wary of subjecting the decisions of the conference to the national and state assemblies is indicative of the dissonance and of loss of faith in the capacity of these assemblies to reflect the will of their supposed constituents.

    That is the tragedy of the contraption of democracy we purport to practice on these shores. It would appear it is this lack of synergy between the collective interests of the Nigerian people and their elected representatives that accentuates feelings for the nationalities to once again, take their destinies on their hands.

    We should be seriously worried why people do not have confidence in the capacity of the assemblies to reflect and represent the collective will of the Nigerian nationalities. It is because the Nigerian nation in a strict sense of it does not exist at present. In its place, what we have are ethnic nationalities that compete with the central authority for the loyalty of the citizens. With this competition comes mistrust and suspicion. The problem is further accentuated by the structural advantages which some sections of this country enjoy over and above others. These are reflected in inequalities in the spread of states, local governments and electoral constituencies among the zones.

    Because the central authority is largely seen in terms of what the constituents stand to grab from it, forging national consensus on vexed issues of our federal order has been largely illusory. Issues are perceived from the prism of how they satisfy the predilections of the primordial groups. It is difficult to build national consensus in such a prevailing circumstance. Little wonder nation building has largely remained a mirage.

    In the issue of subjecting the decisions of the conference to the national and state assemblies, the suspicion is that these differences will again come into play. That is where a sovereign national conference derives its greatest lure. But its problem lies in the fact that the sovereign powers of our people are now vested in subsisting democratic structures irrespective of whatever reservations we may have against them. This fact is not in doubt. It is also not in doubt that the residue of the sovereign powers of this country lies with its peoples. But much progress will not be made in the present circumstance if we continue to dissipate energy on the structure of the conference.

    The fact of the matter is that there are contentious issues of our federal being that needed re-engineering if we must make progress as a united nation. A way has to be fashioned out to get some of these trashed out such that they do not continue to hinder our development. Ironically, the National Assembly has not shown enough capacity to get these issues resolved.

    Jonathan has now told us that he has no place for a sovereign national conference. That is his message and the way it is handled will determine the success or lack of it of the conference. The challenge is how to resolve the myriads of these destabilizing tendencies taking copious inputs from the people without compromising the powers of the National Assembly on constitutional amendment. It is a matter of striking a balance between the resolutions of the conference and the powers conferred on the National Assembly to amend the constitution.

    Now we know the mind of Jonathan, it is only proper we channel our creative energies to the best ways of taking maximum advantage of the seemingly difficult circumstance we found ourselves. The alternative is to spurn the entire idea. But that will not be in the best interest of our people.

    It is at this point that one considers the intervention by a leading lawyer, Awa Kalu SAN very apt. He had suggested that a way out is to subject any new or radical idea to a referendum. If approved, it will be sent to the National Assembly which will then have no power to override any decision taken at the referendum because power belongs to the people. It will take time. But if there is genuine commitment, it is realisable because some consensus already exists on some of these issues.